We need the Word like we need air. We need to fill our mind and our spirit with it just like we need air to fill our lungs to breathe and live. Without enough of the Word in us, we end up gasping for spiritual air and can easily drown in the lies of the enemy.
I know this all too well, from having cycles of distraction and not reading the Bible enough during different parts of my faith walk. The end result? Anxiety, fear, overwhelming stress and temptation.
I have been working with the Lord to come out of a difficult season, where I have allowed myself to become consumed by distractions and thought patterns of the old man. I touched on this a little more in Iron Sharpens Iron: The Importance of Fellowship.
Besides fellowship, a key missing component I was lacking was consistent reading like I used to.
Without enough of the Word in me each day, I was spiritually drowning, like someone who thinks they can swim in turbulent waters without a life preserver. Jesus Christ is supposed to be our Life Preserver.
I’ve watched people struggling in their walk, myself included, people who seem so close to losing joy in the Lord. One thing I have observed is this: They allowed the enemy to spiritually beat them down to the point that they only focused on ailments or struggles.
Then, those ailments and struggles became excuses for why they barely read the Bible anymore and seemed to have forgotten God’s promises.
Promises like:
Psalms 103:2-3: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases,”
Proverbs 4:20-22: “My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they are life to those who find them, And health to all their flesh.”
Psalms 147:3: “He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds.
Psalms 41:3: “The Lord will strengthen him on his bed of illness; You will sustain him on his sickbed.”
If you are not reading and meditating upon His Word daily, it can be easy to forget His promises. Circumstances, anxieties and fears can become more real than His Word if our focus is all wrong.
We must feed our mind and our spirit with the Word of God. Daily. As Jesus said in Matthew 4:4, “But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ”
No matter how busy we think we are or no matter how tired we feel, we must still fill ourselves with His Word. Remember Jesus’ words to His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Our flesh is weak, but our spirit becomes stronger the more we starve the flesh from worldly desires and feed our spirit with the Word of God (the Holy Bible).
If you know you are physically weak and/or tired and are struggling to read, just cry out to your Heavenly Father and ask for His strength to endure. Remember Psalms 145:18-19: “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He also will hear their cry and save them.”
I’ve been there where I was physically exhausted and feeling drained after a long stressful day. I opened the Word and just read and read until I felt refreshed and at peace, because I knew that’s what my spirit needed. I refused to let the flesh win, and that should be the mentality we all strive to have every day.
So, next time you feel drained, defeated, worn out, whatever the case may be, fight through it. Ask the Lord to give you strength, and pick up your sword (the Word of God, see Ephesians 6:17) to fight the good fight.
Make it a habit to reach for the Bible first thing in the morning before you reach for your phone to scroll social media, the news and/or YouTube. Fill your mind with the Word of God so that you can be spiritually armed for the day and be filled with the joy and peace of the Lord, not the stress and negativity of the world.
Until next time, Lord willing, shalom to my brothers and sisters in Christ. May you have a blessed rest of your week and a restful weekend.
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