You REALLY ARE What You Eat..Part II

If you missed "You REALLY ARE What You Eat..Part I" click here!

For the majority of my life, all I was doing was going to church once at week, waiting for the Word to be poured into me. And from that once-a-week event, I believed I was supposed to know how to live, know how to love others like I love myself, know how to be more like Christ....and wondered why week after week I felt like such a failure. Frustration and depression started taking hold of my life. There had to be more to life than this! Where was the love, the fruit of the Spirit, shoot, where was God, Himself? The life I was living was not one that I would want to present before God...yet there I was on the same treadmill of doom and gloom mentally and emotionally week after week after week...

I grew up in churches where hooping and hollering was the norm. It was all about emotionalism, nothing more. I sat through that crap plenty of Wednesday nights, and Friday nights, and through 2-4 services just about every Sunday. The pastors and preachers did not share the Word at all...just a'hoopin' and a'hollerin'! I am not sure to this day if it was because they were not knowledgeable about the Word themselves or it was simply to keep the sheep stupid, ignorant and controllable. We, the congregational sheep were fed several calorically empty spoonfuls several times a week, (not even enough to be counted as a snack!) but never growing one ounce spiritually.

At that time, bible reading on our own was never encouraged, (you never saw anyone with a bible in hand) and bible study groups were strongly discouraged. I do know that when I was 18 years old, I accepted Christ as my Savior, and I started to read my bible for myself, but I had tons of questions. So I helped form a Saturday morning Bible Study class for teens, so we could ask questions. What a dumb idea- I really should have known better based on the current situation in the church. Every question I asked the Pastor, he either said, "I'll have to get back to you on that Tish" or he bluffed his way through to an answer he thought sounded good. What a punk, I thought! By the way, he never got back to me with any of the answers. After about 2 months of this frustrating annoyance, I stopped going, and the teen bible study disbanded. (sigh!)

It was only after my own daily life experience held no answers, (after many years of this) that finally sincerely I sought out the Word for answers. I became so hungry for more knowledge of the Word, that I was kind of worried about myself. They say too much of anything is not good, right? Balance in anything is key, right?

Anyhoo, I now belong to a church steeped in teaching the principles of the Word with real life application. After all, the Bible is timeless! And even though I think what I learn at my church is 'off da hook,' I have learned even by more reading and studying on my own. As I read the Spirit unveils understanding to me. If I don't read on my own, how can I learn and grow? Just as my natural body cannot subsist on a weekly snack, neither can my spiritual body! It needs to be fed! (Feed me, Seymour!* --If you have to ask, never mind!)

Okay, okay -I'll tell you the reference, later on in this blog...keep reading here for "You REALLY ARE What You Eat"..Part III!