Soul Food

There are things in this life that do nothing for my soul.

Well, maybe not nothing. But rather, nothing to stir up affections for the One in whom my soul is satisfied.

I know in my mind that my soul is satisfied in Christ alone. Yet I too often lie to myself and engage in “good” things or “harmless” things that don’t help me love Him more. And though I engage in these activities without the guilt of “committing sin,” I always realize when it’s over that if it wasn’t done fully for His glory or if it didn't produce thanksgiving in myself or others, my soul is disappointed. It will again long for something meaningful. Namely, anything that boasts in Jesus as the all-satisfying Treasure.
(Thanks, Piper.)

Take, for instance, shopping. I need to first say that shopping is not sinful, and in much of life it is in fact necessary. But man. Going to the mall does nothing for my soul.

It does not remind me of how rich I am in Christ Jesus.

It does not remind me of how much I have been given to steward on this earth.

Nor does it remind me that the Lord is my Shepherd and I shall not want.

It does not help me to remember that more than seventy percent of the world lives on two dollars a day or less.

It does not remind me of the urgency with which I must preach that God—not stuff—is what we truly crave because our souls were fashioned to be satisfied in Him alone.

If and when I leave a mall, having purchased something for myself, I usually don’t feel bad and I don’t have to.  But deep down, most times, I can readily admit that I didn't need what I had just purchased and would have felt a greater joy in using that money to show how much more I treasure Jesus.

So if you know me you know that you will likely never run into me at the mall. And these years of rarely going have given me a sweet freedom that is hard to explain.

Huge parenthesis:

(But because I do like to purchase things, and due to being somewhat impulsive in buying, I have found a greater joy in going online to a couple of different websites where I can “shop.” Such as:

·  gfa.org/donation [buy sewing machines, scholarship for literacy classes, blankets, bibles, bicycles for missionaries, winter packets, etc.]

·    amazima.org [buy necklaces from impoverished women, many who have left shameful lifestyles to provide for poor families; donate towards feeding a village, etc.]

·  amazon.com [many of the best books were written by preachers from centuries past and they are both life changing and dirt cheap on Amazon.]

Again, my soul rejoices more in Jesus when, by His grace, I can stir my affections towards the things and people He loves most.)

As a second but last example for now, let’s take watching movies.

I’ve never been a fan of staring at a screen. So my boredom with television comes from my younger years not necessarily from when I came to know the Lord. I’ve always liked real people in real life. And even the movies that I do like are based on true stories.

In being adamantly opposed to legalism I have to say as I did with shopping: watching movies is not sinful. It can be very relaxing and entertaining at times.

But, let’s face it. The vast majority of what people watch in movies does nothing to stir our affections for the Lord.

There are many things the Lord Jesus despises that our society sees as normal.

It is normal in our day to know of couples who live and sleep together not being married. But not to the holy, loving God I know.

It is normal for people to flippantly use the Lord’s holy name. But the LORD has made it clear that we are not to use this glorious Name in vain.

It is normal to see couples on television or in life that are openly homosexual. And normal to joke about homosexuality. The Lord makes it clear that these relationships are unnatural and sinful.

It is normal in modern American society to see children defy their parents and openly slander people in authority. But our Creator demands that we honor our mother and father and all those who are in authority.

 What can we say about sexual immorality all together, if biblically we are not even to MENTION things that hint at sexual immorality or have any kind of course joking on our lips?

Or about hatred and murder? We can go on and on.

And yet these are all things we commonly see in the latest movies. Often, Lord help us, we laugh at the very things that God hates. The very things about man that our Savior was crucified for. We become numb to the taking of human life because we see people kill people in movies all the time. Relationships become cheap because they are based on lust, which Hollywood does a great job portraying as “love”. We see anger, jealousy and revenge and laugh. We hear our Lord’s name thrown around and we’ve become so accustomed that we don’t even notice.

I don’t know about you, but watching these things, even if they’re just hints throughout a movie, do nothing to help me love Jesus. Our fire can easily be quenched if we are in the habit of carelessly heeding to Hollywood’s way of life through constant viewing.

And worse. Over time, our minds, hearts, and souls shrink down to the level of what we see. We are what we eat. If our minds are constantly engaged in meaningless things that serve only to produce a quick laugh in the moment, our capacity to fathom true grandeur is greatly diminished. It’s like watching three hours of Family Guy and walking into church hoping to rejoice in the wonders of the cross and the glory of our eternal King. Good luck. It’s too long of a journey for my soul to go from profane to profound—vain to praiseworthy—in a moment. There’s too much of a disconnect. Our affections for Jesus are weakened. Our appetites for His Word are ruined. We fill our souls with crap and find ourselves too full to eat Bread of Life.

That’s not even to mention the countless hours spent watching and being emotionally involved with fictitious characters while real people, many who are on their way to a real eternity of suffering, surround us. Two billion (yes, two hundred million) are still waiting to hear about Jesus FOR THE FIRST TIME.

So I know that I have to be jealous. Jealous to keep my mind from being distracted. Jealous to keep my heart from wanting to be made complete in someone or something other than God. Jealous to keep my soul away from “good” things that don’t satisfy it and close to great things that stir me up in love and zeal for Jesus. I want to watch things that remind me that the world is LOST and hopeless without Christ. I want to listen to things that remind of God’s incomparable attributes. I want to read about things that remind me that as I lay down my life in love, He will use it to change the world. I want to engage in activities that at the end of the day leave me emptied of myself yet filled with Him. Yes. With Him.

My soul thirsts for the Living God. I will not give it anything less.   

Sweet meditation from one of my favorite chapters in Scripture:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  Incline your ear, and come to me; hear me that you soul may live..." Isaiah 55:1-3a