I wanted to expand on last week’s post “Jesus Deserves the Best, but Passivity Blinds Us” about Jesus’ deserving the best and our need to actively pursue him. I realized other people also sometimes slip into mindlessly reading their Bible and saying prayers by rote without engaging their hearts and minds. As a result, I decided to share more about what God is showing me in this area.
I want to differentiate between the ways mindlessness can go from being a good habit to bad, since many mindless habits are good for our health, like brushing our teeth. The mindlessness of brushing our teeth keeps us doing it consistently. That is healthy. God gave us this ability to do some good things automatically. Our mindlessness is only a sin when Satan tricks us to use this skill when instead we need an active mind. When we frequently read our Bibles and pray, that activity can become a good habit, we remember to do at set times. Sadly that good habit can slip into mindlessness, and we may forget what we are reading or praying. It is so important that we don’t berate ourselves if we fall into that mistake, because we are using an essential skill God blessed us with. Satan wants to condemn us when we realize we have done this.
We simply need to recognize we have not been paying attention to what we are reading or praying, and ask God to help us direct our active mind and attentive heart to the Word and prayer. It is essential that we recognize the naturalness of this error and Satan’s condemnation of it. When we truly love God, we want more of him, but life can get very busy and hectic for gals (teens to mature women.) “Autopilot” for our brain feels right at this time, even though it is not. We must catch ourselves when we do this, because we will malnourish our spirits if we stop spiritually digesting the Word and God’s whisper to us via our prayer time.
Last week I shared how I found myself doing this and feeling spiritually hungry. On rare occasions, I’ve forgotten to eat, and I did not realize until I was very hungry. I allowed this to happen in my relationship with God, in the way he loves and sympathizes with me. When I read the more “serious” books of the Bible (such as books of lamentations, like Job) I don’t hear as many words of God’s love and adoration. While I can develop compassion for suffering people like Job, I leave these passages still hungering to hear God telling me he loves me.
In last week’s post, I briefly mentioned how I need to read passages of God’s love. For example, Zepheniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God is with you. He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.” I memorized this verse, because it feeds my soul. I have memorized many verses since I wrote my post “Why Memorize Scripture: The No Guilt Approach,” (written in June of 2022; be sure to check that post out.) Many of those verses center on God’s love.
Yet, for my spiritual discipline, I’ve also memorized difficult verses about suffering and overcoming sin. Because I don’t want to forget the older verses I memorized, I recite them along with the newest verse I am working on. This takes me about 11 minutes, so I find myself hurrying through those verses. The difficult passages do not feed the needy side of my soul, although they do make me grow, and thus I do need them as well.
Sometimes I can get away with hurrying through all my Bible verse, especially the loving ones that would feed my soul if I had actually meditated on them. At those times, I can only get my love hunger fed, if I am also reading Bible passages, infused with God’s love and friendship, like Psalms. For example, two verses that especially blessed me today (and I wrote about them in my prayer journal) are Psalm 25:14 “The Lord is a friend to those who fear him. He teaches them his covenant,” and Psalm 27:8, “My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me,’ and my heart responds, ‘I am coming.” I love the way God calls me his friend and wants to guide me and tenderly welcome me to come and talk to him. I feel loved and nurtured and surrounded by him when I read passages like these and meditate upon them. These passages feed the needy side of my nature that wants attention, but not the difficult passages. Those difficult passages strengthen my mind, and this is an important part of my spiritual discipline, just not all of it.
On a side note, this needy nature likely comes from my childhood. I am a middle child with two super smart, strong and exciting brothers. I have a younger sister who was known for being cute, funny and clever. She was adorable. They garnered much of the attention in my younger years. Although I can be talkative when I feel safe, if overbearing or angry people surround me, I clam up, and people assume I am shy and awkward. As a little girl, I would also clam up if I thought the people around me deserved more attention, and thus I assumed I was undeserving of attention and affirmation (especially around fun people like my strong siblings.)
Furthermore my neediness increased, because my dad was not home often and had a bad (at times irrational) temper. My good, hard working and dutiful mom did not seem to enjoy my little-girl questions and cravings for hugs and hand holding, and she did not encourage the vulnerable “talking and listening relationship” I craved.
All of my family members did their best and did love me in their own ways, but I often felt emotionally and physically (affectionately) starved. As a result, I developed this needy side. And this is my responsibility to feed my spirit (not my family’s responsibility.) So, getting back to the Bible, when I read the love affirming passages, I soothe that needy side of my nature. But if I rush through my memorized Bible verses, during a time when I am also reading difficult Bible passages, I feel spiritually hungry. I have to be aware of both my emotional side, and my spiritual weaknesses and let God feed them.
To do this I must be very honest about where I am weak. I appreciate the Bible passages that speak of me being weak, and then God is strong (2Cor.12:10.) Sadly, some Christians insist I must believe I am strong in all ways and not admit I am weak in certain areas, because I have been washed by Christ’s blood. But this is super strength is not true of my life on earth. I may always have certain tendencies to weaknesses and sin, even though I am forgiven and the Holy Spirit lives in me. Rather than flatter myself and claim I am a super-Christian, I would rather admit these areas may always tempt me. I do not mean I have to give in to them—just admit they still tempt me. Certainly we do not mock the recovering alcoholic who says he can never drink liquor again. So I have to admit I can never read exclusively the lamentations and other stern Bible passages without feeling hunger for affirmations of God’s love. I never feel so stuffed with God’s love that I don’t need to hear him tell me he loves me each day. He knows he loves me. Maybe my logical side knows it too. But my heart is weak and it needs constant feeding.
Do I have a spiritual leak? Maybe. But I know that when I center my morning on God’s love, I interact differently with people the rest of the day. I am more loving towards them, more patient, and I feel a contentment that might be comparable to Psalm 131 which speaks of the weaned child who has quieted herself and no longer cries for her mother’s milk. So I will humble myself and admit I have this weakness. And every single day I will hungrily and actively pursue God’s love and his affirmation. To any critic who says I am weak and a fool, I must say then let me be a fool for God’s love (1Cor.3:18, “Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age you should become fools so you can become wise.”)
And I also want to affirm I hunger for the difficult Bible passages. I love to learn about prophecy, and the ways Jesus is mentioned in the Old Testament. I love challenges to my faith as I better understand some of the more painful Bible passages (like loving enemies and not retaliating with insults when insulted—1Peter3:9.) I do not just want the milk of the Christian faith. I do want to learn and grow in the difficult passages. I just know that I cannot have those difficult passages and challenges to the exclusion of the loving passages. I absolutely need to hear about God’s love and affirmation every single day too. Once I have that love and affirmation, I can dig into harder passages.
In all of this, I have learned the good and the “bad” about myself. I have my own walk of Christian faith, and it is unique to my relationship with Jesus. Another Christian may have grown up in such a loving and affirming home that she does not need to meditate on those loving passages every day. That is what is right for her. Each Christian needs to find the aspects of her Christian walk that feeds her soul and then dig deeply into the Word and into prayer time based upon the individual way God guides her. Each Christian is different, and that is good. Each Christian has her own area of weakness. Some of us share commonalities in how we are weak, and we can sympathize with each other and do what God does in 2Cor.1:4, “Who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” And then in the ways we are different, we can choose to respect each others’ differences, knowing God is speaking to them uniquely (Proverbs 30:10, “Do not slander a servant to his master.”)
I pray I have blessed you with this post, either in seeing some of yourself here, or in having compassion for others who are so needy for God’s love. Keep digging into God’s word and finding your own relationship with him. He adores you, and we love you too.