Has our spiritual diet become less nutritious?

A shocking stat is in the news.  Some food crops are losing nutritional value, some even down a whopping 50% from just 70 years ago. One site even noted that we would have to eat two carrots instead of one to get the same vitamins and minerals as before.

Sorry, but I ingest too many calories already! And not only carrots...

But that opens up another field of growth, pun intended. Spiritual nourishment.

Have we, as believers, lost vital nutrition there as well? Yes, the studies, boiled down, reveal malnourished spiritual lives.

We are starved, to put it bluntly. Even those who attend church may lack those values:

1. Less personal nourishment: reduced engagement with Scripture, prayer, worship, and Christian teaching. We cannot blame a pastor for what we do not enjoy at home!
2. Poorer integration: religious belief becomes disconnected from everyday decisions, relationships, and moral conduct. Thoughts are not words. Words are not actions. Personal beliefs don't change the world unless you act on them.
3. Weaker growth: families and communities become less effective at passing on a living, practiced faith to the next generation.

Nostalgia for a supposedly more potent Christian past is not the point. The point is the need to recover vital Christian discipleship in the present, not better worship music or programs, but faith lived out daily.

Believers, in our part of the world, are lured with spiritual substitutes, the bottled multivitamin equivalent, and get preoccupied with comfort, wealth, and lifestyle for ourselves.

Simply put, God is told to fit into our lives and not the other way around. We eat what and when we feel like it.

If ever we were doomed to fail, that would be the way!  A diet of sweets and fats never brings health. For spiritual failure, we don't have to look far. Just look into the Hebrew nation. Time and time again, the nations of Israel and Judah rested on their own goals apart from God.  They reaped the whirlwind as a result.

So, what to do?

A new diet!  Where?

Are we part of a church body that forms Christians who know Scripture, love God, serve others, persevere through suffering, and embody the character of Christ, and above all, follow Him as His disciples?

That is the place to head for real food!

Above all, prepare yourselves a hearty feast in the Word, grow in Him, and live out His purposes.