Do You Eat Well Spiritually?

Food for Spiritual Health

A third reason we need food, says Food and Nutrition, is "to regulate the health of  the body . . .and prevent disease."  The health benefits of good food are not immediately obvious. When we finish a good meal, we seldom think, 'That has done my heart (or my kidneys or my muscles, and so on) a world of good.'  Yet, try to do without  food for an extended period of time, and the consequences  to your health become obvious. What consequences?  The most common picture," says one medical reference work,  "is a negative  one: failure to thrive, failure to resit trivial infection, lack of energy or initiative."  A comparable  kind of  spiritual ill health affected ancient Israel for a time.  The prophet Isaiah said of them:  "The whole head is in a sick condition, and the whole heart is feeble. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no sound spot in it." -Isaiah 1:5, 6. 

Good spiritual food gives us the power to resist such spiritual debility and the consequences of spiritual infection.  Knowledge from God helps keep us in a good condition spiritually-if we feed on it!  Jesus Christ commented on how the majority of the people in his day did not learn from their forefather's negligence int he matter of proper spiritual feeding.  They too refused  to feed on the truths that he was teaching. With what result?  Jesus said:  "The heart of this people has grown unreceptive, and with their ears they have heard without response , and they have shut their eyes; that they might never see with their eyes and hear with their ears and get the sense of it with their hearts and turn back, and I heal them." (Matthew 13:15)  The majority  never benefited  from the healing power of God's Word.  They stayed spiritually sick. Even some anointed Christians became "weak and sickly." (1 Corinthians 11:30)  May we never show contempt for the spiritual food God is providing. - Psalm 107:20.  

Next time: Do You Eat Well Spiritually? -Spiritual Contamination

From the Watchtower magazine, 1997