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Print By Tyler Braswell Bulimia is an eating disorder. A bulimic person will devour enormous amounts of food and then throw all of it back up (purging). Somehow, the person suffering from bulimia feels that throwing the food back up ensures that s/he will not gain weight, thereby making him/her more attractive. Yet bulimia is anything but attractive, and the repetitive motion of forcing your body to throw up has lasting and damaging effects. The body’s equilibrium is affected and the bulimic person’s throat becomes raw and damaged from the constant amount of bile and acid that it must withstand. Finally, due to the body’s constant lack of nutrients, the patient inevitably becomes weak and prone to sickness. So many times we Christians are spiritual bulimics. We go to a conference, a convention, or a congress. There we proceed to fill our faces at a spiritual buffet table, gorging ourselves on God’s tender mercy and grace, basking in His anointing. Yet, as soon as we go home, too many of us jam our fist down our spiritual throat, forcing our blessing to be “thrown up.” Spiritual Binging and Purging A personal experience is a good example of this. My youth group is constantly involved in a mighty move of God. We have our valleys and our hilltops, but we prefer to focus on the hilltops. An annual spiritual hilltop for a youth group is the annual youth retreat. I have felt no stronger anointing or power than the anointing and power that falls upon us at our youth retreats. Offer me National Youth Congress or any other large and important service, or any week of services for that matter, and I will always choose our youth retreat.
As great as the anointing is, youth retreat still generates some problems for me. Let me explain. Youth retreat is the biggest spiritual banquet of my life; proverbially, it’s my dinner with the president, it’s a five star restaurant free of charge, and it’s my buffet of good Southern home cookin’. The downside of all this is that so many times I have found myself coming out of those services on fire and ready to take on the world, only to find once I returned home and I lost the close support of my youth group, and instead it was just me and God, I found myself jamming my fist down my spiritual throat and throwing up everything I learned and felt at the retreat. This abrupt change in spiritual pace has broken my heart on many occasions, and I imagine I am not the only one. For me, to go from my greatest spiritual hilltop to my deepest spiritual valley generates more self-hate and guilt than anything else I’ve experienced. And after several retreats, this pattern becomes disgusting and mundane.
As a spiritual bulimic, you cannot hope to be spiritually healthy. Bingeing on the Holy Ghost and then purging will not provide the spiritual quota for your life. While spiritually bingeing and throwing up, your life will remain empty and unfulfilling, and you will never find the happiness or peace that you so desire.
Spiritual Addiction Addictions, unlike bulimia, demand a constant supply. Don’t tell a twitching heroin addict, “I’ll get it for you tomorrow.” For an addict, tomorrow just will not cut it. Tomorrow isn’t good enough; neither is today. An addict lives in the mind state of right now. Spiritually, we need to have an addict’s mindset. The mindset of a bulimic will only damage you in the long run, but the mindset of a spiritual addict will insure that you get the constant supply of spiritual renewing that you need.
Daily Commitment Jesus said, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). A biblical definition of bread describes bread as necessary food. Bread can easily be taken with a spiritual connotation. As Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, bread most likely refers to the praying person’s desire for God’s spiritual sustenance, or bread. Jesus does not say, “Give us some bread every week or two.” Bread translates as “necessary food, or daily food.” In the eyes of Jesus, tomorrow is too late. Only the daily bread will meet the desired fulfillment.
Likewise, Jesus said, “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). As Jesus is speaking to the people, He refers to those who would desire to follow the path He has set. Jesus quickly narrows the field by requiring a daily commitment from his true followers. Jesus did not ask for those who would be willing to give themselves once in a while, or even those who would follow weekly. Jesus specifically asked for a daily commitment.
Jesus’ focus on the daily commitment further proves my point. In our spiritual life, the path of a bulimic will not work. As Christians, we cannot settle for long periods of spiritual drought, and then try and make up for it with a spiritual binge. Instead, we must focus on becoming a daily addict for Christ. In Christ’s eyes, our daily addiction for His anointing and power sets us apart from the “weekly” Christian.
Living in the moment for Jesus Christ is the best decision you or I could possibly make. Moving past other desires to focus on our growing addiction to God’s anointing and power will guarantee a change in our lives, and unlike bulimia, this change will be for the better.
ninetyandnine.com © 2006, Tyler Braswell
------- Tyler Braswell thinks deep thoughts about bulimia from the comfort of his home in the St. Louis metropolitan area. |
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