No More Substitutes - Choosing God Above EverythingSample

Full but Not Nourished

Have you ever gone grocery shopping on an empty stomach? It’s almost as if the chips and fattening foods begin calling you by your full name as soon as you enter the store. You are more inclined to snack while shopping or pick-up items lacking nutritional value, resulting in overcompensation and overspending. Why? All because you were hungry and needed something quick to take away your hunger.

Something similar happens in our spiritual lives. We have a hole in our soul that only God himself can fill. Oftentimes, because we’re hungry and maybe even desperate, we’re taking whatever is offered to fill the hunger and then there is no room for what will fill the soul.

Being full and not hungry anymore doesn’t mean your body has what it needs. You can be full of an experience, music, or even reels while scrolling social media. If you aren’t careful, you’ll think you’re full and encouraged - but in actuality, you aren’t nourished.

Consuming a 90-second sermon clip of someone else’s study time won’t fulfill you throughout the week. That satisfaction will be fleeting. What God is calling us to is a consistent diet of Him.

In Deuteronomy 4, we begin to see how God invites us to truly know Him. The people had an encounter with God. He had SPOKEN to them from Horeb, but they didn’t SEE Him. He knew that it would be difficult for them to worship the unsee,n invisible God.

The same rings true today: God knew that in our human temptation, we need to put our eyes on something for us to really believe it. That’s why Christians must walk by faith, and not by sight, without needing to fill in the blanks. He wants you to resist the temptation to create something to take His place. Resist the temptation to create something physical to represent what’s really spiritual.

If you’re taking in spiritual junk to meet a spiritual need, ask the Lord to give you the strength to make better decisions; then change your actions. There is a consequence we will pay overtime if we continue to feed legitimate hunger with illegitimate substitutes.