eating to live

I was thinking about why we eat...and it came down to two purposes: for energy and for replacement of living cells.  To function and continue living we need fuel in our tank just to support basic life processes, as well as to think...to move...to respond.  And our vast array of specialized body parts need repair and replacement.  And so we take in fuel for energy and fuel for life.  And this is certainly an apt metaphor for our spiritual needs as well.  We need spiritual fuel for our spiritual activity and to build and replace or repair or spiritual lives.  With our physical food there is a biochemical process to convert food into energy and some is used right away while other energy is stored.  There is also a process by which the DNA map of our proteins is constantly building and replacing needed proteins in our body cells.  Eating proper foods provides the raw materials for energy and for replacement life.

There is also a spiritual process by which words are converted to spiritual energy and spiritual repair and replacement in our frame.  The Holy Spirit is the operator who takes the input of word from God's inspired Word and converts it to the immediate and stored energy we need as well as providing the repair and replacement of spiritual tissue.   Jesus, Himself, was known as the "Word who became a body of flesh".

If we eat properly in a physical sense and balance diet with exercise we tend toward physical health.  If we eat properly in a spiritual sense and balance that diet with spiritual living we tend toward spiritual health.

As we feed on God's Word we are given the energy to live and the building blocks to repair, replace and grow spiritual life!

John 6:⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. ⁵⁰ This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world."