Lately I’ve begun to see that I lack spiritual discipline. Spiritual discipline in the sense I’m thinking is different from the common place discipline. To discipline someone is to correct them of wrong doing. To have discipline means to be committed to a certain means to obtain a certain ends. Discipline in the sense that I am talking about is forgoing “good” and “better” in an attempts to obtain the best.
What sparked this train of thought? Well… I’m starting to feel convicted in an area of my life. Conviction is not something that I feel on a regular basis (or sometimes at all); so I figured God must be trying to tell me something important. What is strange though is that of all the areas in my life where I feel I come up short, what I’m feeling convicted about is the food I eat.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the food I eat, and since my bout with cancer I have certainly been more careful about not eating foods with chemicals and a lot of preservatives, but my spirit is hinting to me that I’m coasting along at good and better forgetting about what is the best. This is where the discipline would come in.
A Bible passage that keeps being brought to the forefront of my thoughts on this matter is Daniel 1:5-15.
5 The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service.
6 Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. 7 The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.
8 But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. 9 Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, 10 but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your [c] food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.”
11 Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, 12 “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” 14 So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.
15 At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. 16 So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.
I find this interesting because there was nothing wrong with the food and wine that was presented to Daniel. It was better in fact; it was from the king’s table. The Bible doesn’t even hint that it would have been wrong for him to eat it, and yet not only did he not eat it, but in verse 13 he challenged the official to test the product of this discipline against the product of lives without such discipline.
I don’t know why I’m feeling lead to develop a discipline in this matter, there are so many other aspects of my life that I think deserve more of my “spiritual attention”, so I’m marking this down as an issue of faith. For the first time since presenting myself for prayer before the elders of the church almost 3 years ago, I’m going to step out on faith forsaking what is good, and sometimes even better, to obtain what is best.
Goodbye McDonald’s Breakfast burrito. I will miss you the most.
June 20, 2008
Quest for Faith