Committing Spiritual Suicide

Have you ever experienced a loss of appetite? It happens when the thought of food makes you sick to your stomach. You don’t want it, and you feel fine without it. You loose all pleasure in eating, and you don’t even think about breakfast time, lunch time or dinner time. Your once favorite meal takes the back burner and amazingly, sweets don’t look appealing anymore. When offered a good meal you turn it down because you don’t have hunger. The idea of tasting something good just doesn’t seem very good to taste anymore.

You become weary. You loose energy. Laziness quickly settles in because you don’t need to cook meals. Your body begins to take a different shape. You become thin and therefore look different. And as a result of the lack of food, your stomach shrinks. It doesn’t have the capacity to allow the same portion of food it once did so eventually it becomes harder to expand. Your doctor tells you to eat small meals throughout the day, increase fluids, balance your carbs, proteins and fats, and lift weights to increase your muscle mass. Well gosh, now gaining your appetite back causes you to work harder than you anticipated, when you're feeling your weakest. Now it becomes a discipline.

In the medical world, loss of appetite is a symptom that can trigger a more serious, underlying health problem. It could be a link to a number of different diseases and illnesses, including cancer, one of the top ten most deadly diseases in America next to heart disease. When you’re not hungry anymore it should cause you to think about your health and contact your doctor.

Ironically, the same results happen when you loose an appetite for the Word of God. When you loose your appetite to read it, you quickly disregard it because for some reason you don’t find pleasure in it anymore even though it's critical to your survival. It looses its essential portion in your life. You put devotional time on the back burner because you're not hungry and the result is complacency. You're committing spiritual suicide without even knowing it.Just like your body lacks food and suffers, your spirit lacks spiritual food and suffers. Your Doctor knows that what will replenish your spirit is increasing spiritual milk, eating the Word of God throughout the day, increasing and keeping balanced the elements that stabilize your blood, or lifeline that keeps you alive (worship including praise, prayer, Bible reading, fellowship, outreach, etc) and exercising your spiritual muscles (using your spiritual gifts, stepping out in faith, etc).

What have you lost an appetite for? What are you lacking? The surface of your life reveals a lot about the condition of your heart. Practice humility and truthfully examine what your spiritual symptoms may be. You can only jump the bridge when you get to it. Ask your holy Doctor to reveal to you the underlying cause of your loss of appetite. And then be prayerful, intentional and faithful about using discipline to regain your spiritual health. Taste, and see that the Lord is good. :)