Table for Two, Please

What's on your menu?

I'm not talking about those recipes that grace your dinner table, or those trips you take down to the local fast food joints. I don't need to know what you've got in your cupboard. What I'm asking about is even more important than what you put in your mouth - more life-sustaining than the groceries in your refrigerator. My question has eternal consequences.

I don't know if I've thought about this question before in just this way. It came from some agonizing over a sermon that I was scheduled to preach. Usually I have more topics wandering through my mind than I can handle, so grabbing one to create a sermon is not that much of a challenge. But this time it just wouldn't come.

I started thinking of things that had happened in my life, and since I have lost some weight and am involved in Weight Watchers, I thought maybe something about that could be modified into a sermon. I checked out what the Bible has to say about food, and somehow started thinking on the similarities between a healthy life and a healthy relationship with God.

The parallels are uncanny....

When you eat food that has little or no nutritional value, your body suffers. When you put things into your life that have little or no eternal value, your relationship with God suffers. These things don't even have to be "bad," but activities that take you away from your time with God. I'm sure you can think of enough things that fit into this category.

In some countries people don't have the luxury of a variety of foods to eat, and may have to try to sustain their lives on an occasional bowl of rice. They become what we call malnourished. You've all seen the pictures of the children with the distended bellies and felt sorry for their condition. Yet we have Christians that are just as spiritually malnourished. They feel that a visit to church every once in a while - as long as it doesn't interrupt their plans - is sufficient to maintain their relationship with God. Reading the Bible, engaging in regular prayer, fellowshipping with other believers on a frequent basis - those are things that they plan to do later in their lives. After all, they are good people, and God understands their hearts.

Then there are those people with eating disorders. There are some that may appear to be eating a lot of food, but when you are not looking they "get rid" of it. They never truly get the nutritional value taken into their lives. They are impostors - appearing to be something on the outside, but living a totally different life when no one is watching. The example in the Bible that comes to mind would be the way that Jacob and his mother deceived the blind and aging Isaac by making a savory dish from a couple lambs and covering Jacob's arms with lamb's wool to make him feel hairy like his brother Esau. It may have smelled the same and felt the same, but inside it was a totally different person. You can see the parallel in the lives of some TV evangelists. In front of the public they are amazing persons - such wonderful Christians - but off camera it is a different story.

We all need to grow in our relationship with God. And just like any living thing, if it stops growing, it starts dying.

So what is on your menu? What are you going to do this week that is specifically designed to enhance your relationship with God? What is going to make a real difference in your eternal destination? What tasty meal will you serve up just for you and God to enjoy?

I'm sure you have all of the ingredients in your house right now!

God bless you abundantly!