Spiritual Nutrition: Introduction
Good physical nutrition has been a huge focus in our family for decades. It all started when my wife decided to take the education classes necessary to become a registered nutritionist/dietitian after getting her master’s degree in biology and teaching for several years. Her hunger for this knowledge of nutrition was instigated by her strong desire to raise our three children as healthfully as possible. Many of our kids’ memories, some humorous, of their Mom, after she went Home to Heaven, circulated around the various meals that we ate with high nutritional value and the many vitamin supplements she had us take. In fact, she was so convinced that this was essential that she got a job to share her knowledge with other mothers, many times low income and impoverished, to help raise healthy kids. She also would provide not only these mothers, but each new mother with whom she was familiar, a notebook digest that she had compiled for good physical nutrition for their families.
When feeding the body, there is “healthy food” and there is “junk food.” Healthy food enhances the operation of the body’s complex systems, strengthens its resilience against disease, and increases its durability and longevity. Junk food, on the other hand, has essentially the opposite effect in all these areas, and contributes to the breaking down of the body over time. Both physical and spiritual nutrition are important because we always become what we eat. We must take greater care, though, in what we spiritually eat, because so much more is at stake. The world and the devil are very aware that we feed ourselves spiritually, which is why junk food spiritual alternatives are everywhere. They are heavily marketed, attractively packaged, tasty, convenient, and have a strong allure.
Our Heavenly Father has provided us a book, the Bible, for good spiritual nutrition with a huge focus to spiritually grow His kids healthfully. In Matthew 6:11, Jesus taught us to pray saying, “Give us today our daily bread.” To digest the truths of Scripture, to prevent the onset of spiritual disease, we need our daily intake of His bread. The Bible is spiritual food, and bread is a symbol for Scripture. Deuteronomy 8:3 says, “. . . man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Abundant healthy spiritual living comes from nourishing our spirits with the Word of God.
Just as we don’t see the immediate benefits of physically eating good meals or taking vitamin supplements, we usually do not see the immediate benefits of good spiritual nutrition. Growth comes over time, sometimes over years. However, without good nutrition, both physically and spiritually, growth can be dramatically affected, and negative results occur.
This series of Spiritual Nutrition articles will focus on many of the Bible verses which have been and continue to be instrumental in my personal spiritual growth.
