Spiritual Obesity
In a sermon a couple of Sundays ago, Pastor David was talking about verse-by-verse teaching and contrasting it with 10-15 minute sermonettes. He likened sitting through a sermonette to expecting a buffet but only getting a piece of lettuce.
In the Bible, God uses a lot of natural things to portray similar spiritual concepts. Obviously the analogy that PD was referring to was that of food and the Word of God. This got me thinking about gluttony and obesity, and wondering if this analogy of food and the Word could be extended to that length.
Both gluttony and obesity can be boiled down to taking in more food than you need to live. Stop pointing to my belly… I’ve got a “thyroid problem”(j/k). The more active you are the more you can eat and not worry about either gaining weight or falling into the sin of gluttony. So as I thought through how this might work in regards to the Word… could it be possible that you could feed too much on the Word? What came to mind was the below scripture.
James 1:22-24
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
I suppose part of the answer lies in what quality of “food” you’re feeding on. If all you’re feeding on is junk food, such as prosperity gospel/legalism/purpose driven/etc, then your activity level probably doesn’t matter, you’ll still be spiritually fat. But what if you’re getting a healthy, holistic diet of the full counsel of the Word, can you ever get too much of that? I believe the answer is yes, if we are not being doers of what we are hearing.
With a steady diet of the Word we should be learning how to live and serve as a believer, but if we are not applying it to ourselves, it’s highly likely we’re applying it to everyone else. That outward application of knowledge without first the inward application is a shortcut to pride/selfishness/condescension… ie spiritual fat.
Imagine if you were chubby(this is tough for me:-)) and you looked into a mirror and then turned around and forgot what you looked like and started giving someone else a hard time about being overweight. That in essence is the concept behind that verse.
We’re blessed to be able to pull up to a virtual buffet of good teaching here at Calvary Chapel, but make sure you are putting those spiritual calories to work in serving the Lord. Both here in the body of Calvary Chapel and also in your intentional acts of kindness required by the command to “love your neighbor as yourself”. What I’m not saying is to pull away from the buffet… just start putting into action what you’re learning and then you can just feast that much more on the Word.
This post is geared to those who have accepted Jesus as their Savior. If you have not, please read the “Good News” post. I don’t want to give the impression that there is anything you can do to earn His favor. He already loves you so much that He died for you to pay the full penalty for your sins. All you need to do, is to recognized that you have sinned and recognize Jesus as the Creator and God of the universe; ask Him to forgive you of that sin, and to be your Savior and Lord.
Lord Bless you!
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October 15th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Thanks Joel for sharing that insight. That’s a great explanation and tie in with the passage quoted. I have also always tried to understand the part about the mirror, but its purpose has never quite clicked. Along the same lines as your example, I see a parallel of differentiating between being passive and being proactive. A hearer is passive, a doer is proactive. We, as #1 critics of ourselves, are usually the ones to look in the mirror and fix whatever we see wrong – being proactive in response to what we see. But if we turn away and forget what we look like and what needs to be fixed, then there is a passive spirit that characterizes us, being only a seer and not a doer. And what a perfect parable God gives us with the mirror because who is not most interested in themself that they would look in a mirror and not scrutinize every aspect of their face and remember it? So we should be in our proactivity of doing God’s Word.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Good point… I think a lot of times we sit around and think “Lord change x in me”(passive), and He can do that, but I think more often He gives us the will and the strength to change but requires us to take an active role in that change. Like when Solomon asked for wisdom, the Lord gave it to Him seemingly immediately, but when we ask for wisdom, that usually requires the active effort to read the Word.