Spaghetti Sauce and Chili

At the beginning of each week, I often prepare several meals ahead of time.  Last week, I made some spaghetti sauce (I like to make my own) and a batch of chili.  I told my husband and son, who are both at home during the day, that these meals were in the refrigerator for their lunch, if they wanted.   

On Thursday evening, the spaghetti sauce was gone.  I asked my husband if they'd had spaghetti for lunch. And...well...you know the rest of the story.  Yep, seriously, he ate the spaghetti sauce.  He ate it for lunch, not once, but two days in a row, thinking it was the chili.  Until I told him that he'd eaten spaghetti sauce, he was sure that he had eaten the chili.  

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I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this story, and I figured there must be a faith lesson here as well.

So, what are you eating?  

I'm not talking about the daily food that we physically eat.  I'm referring to our spiritual diet.  

Jesus told his disciples:

I have food to eat that you do not know about.  John 4:32

We get our spiritual nourishment when we:

• Attend worship, listening to God's Word being read and preached
• Spend time reading God's Word and praying
• Partake of the Lord's Supper, during communion
• Share our faith with other Christians

These days, there's also an abundance of religious writings and teachers.  But Jesus warned his disciples to:

Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.  Matthew 16:6

Beware of false prophets...You will recognize them by their fruits.  Matthew 7:15-16

For us today, I take that to mean that not all books, sermons, or teachers that are labeled Christian are actually edifying for the Christian.  But, like chili and spaghetti sauce, we can't always tell the difference.  

Being discerning is a tricky concept.  Some people think anything called Christian is good.  On the other hand, there are people who find flaws with everything.  

It's hard to know what or whom to believe.  And many books and teachings do have academic value to the Christian or are a useful guide for Christian living.    

But, and here's the rub, our soul desperately needs real bread, that real manna from heaven.  Our soul needs to be taken to that place of despair, of truthfully seeing how horrible our sin is, of seeing our need for a savior, of seeing our need for Jesus.  We need God's Word and preaching to convict us.

And then, we need to know and to hear the love of God for us.  We need to hear that Jesus lived among us, suffered with us, and died on the cross for our sins, and that He defeated death and rose again.  To have hope, to have peace for our souls and rest in this life, that's what we need to hear; that's what we need to ingest into our very being.  That's our bread and our manna from heaven.  We need to "take that in" lest we starve and die.

It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."  Matthew 4:4

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8