Walking with the Lord by Greg Mann

...that is when I carried you.

Walking with the Lord is a banquet and not a buffet. We don't choose a god of our liking to be the meat of our spiritual sustenance—our Truth is not Jell-O that wobbles and wiggles into any shape we like. And dessert does not come first.

Our society prides itself on being able to serve up the best desserts. Indulgences prove prosperity and the most expensive sweets are dished up to whoever opens their hands. I'm afraid the church has broken its diet while still proclaiming it has lost weight. We put on expensive clothes to hide our spiritual obesity and offer the same bad habits to all who accept the invitation to get in the buffet line. Just pull out your wallet, pay the man, get your ticket, and then gorge. There's plenty of soda and sticky buns. But it's OK because the soda is diet.

Over using, the metaphor of food, churches today look like Dairy Queens. Flashy neon advertises the Blizzard of the month, soft serve cones, greasy fries and burgers that are little more than dressing on dry bread with a chip of meat hidden in the middle. We are spiritually obese worshiping the god of the buffet and promising the world spiritual food that doesn't require much chewing and is healthy if we remember to spit out the bones. Cheap meat has bones. Bones will choke.

Our diet is obedience and repentance. We eat in the order the Lord serves. We may not like vegetables, but they make us strong. Dessert before dinner makes us spiritually fat and lazy, then there's no appetite for the Bread of Life. Therefore the sweets we eat are the fruits of the Vine, a blessing for the discerning.

If anyone has overeaten the offerings of the world, fast and pray. The Lord will cleanse and provide a program of proper eating—the Bible. This word is now finished because it's lunchtime. Praise the Lord and pass the broccoli.