God’s Word is to our spirits what food is to our bodies. It strengthens and nourishes us. It causes us to grow.
If we feed our physical body junk food by eating cake, cookies, and potato chips instead of vegetables, fruits, and other nutritious foods, we’ll get weaker and weaker. Our bodies will start to fail us. That’s an indisputable fact and we all know it.
But here’s an indisputable fact we sometimes overlook. If we feed our spirit on magazines, news broadcasts, and other superficial stuff more than we feast on the Word, the same thing will happen. Our inner man will start to waste away. Even if we’ve been spiritually strong in the past, we’ll become spiritual weaklings, unable to lay hold of the good things of God.
Galatians 6:8 warns us about that. It says, “For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.”
Have you ever wondered how Christians can attend church for 35 years and yet never be changed?
It’s because they’ve cultivated nonproductive patterns in their lives. They’ve chowed down on spiritual junk food while their Bible reading remained sporadic, fragmentary, and infrequent.
Such believers stay spiritually stagnant because they haven’t established a pattern of feeding on the Scriptures. They miss out on the satisfaction, the success, and the prosperity God wants to give them because they don’t spend quality time reading, studying, and meditating His Word.
Don’t make that mistake!
Become a spiritual health-food fanatic. Determine to be like Joshua and “desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Peter 2:2 KJV). Open up your Bible every day and get “nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine” (1 Timothy 4:6).
Feed your heart daily with the Word!
Scripture Reading: Psalm 119:1 – 32
On the chilly March night in 1972 when Lynne Hammond took her first step into a life of Spirit-led prayer, she had no idea what was about to happen. All she knew was the hunger in her heart for God wouldn’t let her sleep. In the few short months she’d been born again, her desire to fellowship with Him had grown so strong she could hardly contain it. “Help me, God!” she cried. “I want to know you. I want to be able to talk to you. Please, teach me to pray!”
Suddenly, a heavenly presence flooded the room. Lynne sensed waves of spiritual fire sweeping over her and a beautiful language began to flow like a river from within her. Although she’d never heard of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, she knew instantly, without a doubt—this was God!
What began that night soon blossomed into a life of prayer that ultimately became a ministry of prayer when, in 1980, Lynne and her husband, Mac, founded Living Word Christian Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Under Lynne’s leadership, the prayer ministry at Living Word has become an internationally recognized model for developing effective pray-ers in the local church.
A teacher and an author, Lynne publishes a newsletter called Prayer Notes, has written numerous books, and currently serves as the national prayer director for Daughters for Zion. Her passion for inspiring and leading others into the life of Spirit-led prayer continues to take her around the world to minister to believers whose heart cry, like hers, is “Lord, teach me to pray!”