Saturday, January 17, 2015

Spiritual starvation



On Tuesday the 9th of December, I was really struggling with depression and having major emotional breakdowns because of health problems and anger. I went to Prayer night at Gospel for Asia, and there was a guest speaker: Pastor E.Z. (Emeal Zwayne). The message God had prepared for him to speak, was exactly what I needed to hear.

He began his sermon with the statistics of true starvation. How there are many people around the world and the U.S. who are truly starving

…poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children 
under the age of five--3.1 million children each year

….some 805 million people in the world do not have enough food to
lead a healthy active life; that's 1 in 9 people on earth

…1/3 of the world population is well fed, 1/3 is undernourished,
and 1/3 is starved

E.Z. then referred to our spiritual life, and how we can easily get undernourished and eventually starving. And it all starts with our silent 'skipping' of reading the Bible. It only takes one day of not being in God's Word, to start a downward spiral to depression, grief, guilt, and anger. Because one day leads to another day, then to a week, and finally a month of not reading the Word. You will then began trying to fill the void in your heart, soul, and mind with other materialistic and worldly pleasures.

And that my friends, was happening to me. I decided it would be okay to skip a day of having my devotions, and then a second day came and went until I had spent a whole month out of the Bible, and in the world. I wondered why I was so emotional and depressed all the time? The answer was right in front of me, all I needed to do was dig in His Word and find it. I knew in my heart that I was spiritually starving...in fact, I was almost dead. The problem was I didn't want to admit it. But that cold night in December, was one that would change the weeks to come.

I started reading the Word of God, and my heart was sucking it in as fast as it could. Every word was beautiful. Every verse meaningful. I all of a sudden realized how hungry I was...the spiritual food from Jesus was, and still is incredibly satisfying, totally delicious, and amazingly cleansing. My attitude started to change. My emotions started becoming more stable. I was filled with more of a peace about the situations around me. I could actually be happy again!

So I made a resolution at the beginning of this year, to read through the entire Bible on my own with no reading plans. Sadly, I've never actually read through the whole Bible in my 19 years of life. But this year is going to be different! I am going to find out everything there is to know about the Beginning, about the Middle, and about the End. I have also decided to get a piece of paper and write all the names of God on it. On another piece of paper, write who we are in God's eyes, such as: a royal priesthood; a chosen people; precious cornerstone. So far, I have already found 13 different Names for God just in the beginning 26 chapters of Genesis! I had no idea there would be so many in the first book of the Bible. It just makes it all the more exciting, to see how many names He has for Himself in His Word!

 Staying faithful to Jesus, by reading His Word every day can be challenging but totally worth it. He loves you so much, and wants you to get to know Him better. Why not? What is holding you back from knowing Jesus more intimately and fully?

He is worthy and greatly to be praised

 Olivia Grace

2 comments:

  1. Hello Olivia Grace. Wish you a very blessed, prosperous and a very Christ centered New year. I am so glad to stop by your profile and this might be my second time and I believe that the Lord has purpose in do so. I am blessed to stop by your blog post too which speaks of Starvation. I am glad to know about the meeting arranged by the Gospel for Asia. I am from Mumbai, India and I the mnistry of Gospel for Asia. I am in the Pastoral ministry for last 35yrs in the great city of Mumbai a city with great contrast where richest of rich and the poorest of poor live. We reach out to the poorest of poor with the love of Christ to bring healing to the broken hearted. We also encourage young people as well as adults from the West to come to Mumbai on a short / long term missions trip to work with us during their vaction time. We would love to have you come with your friends to work with us during your vacation time. My email id is: dhwankhede(at)gmail(dot)com and my name is Diwakar Wankhede. Looking foward to hear from you very soon. God's richest blessings on you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Mr. Diwakar for your response. Yes, this is your second time visiting my blog and commenting. I appreciate your invitation to go overseas, but I am not healthy enough at this time. I am not even able to drive due to my jerking condition. I don't mean to be rude, but I don't feel called to go to India right now, and don't appreciate how you go about 'recruiting' young ladies. I have looked you up before, to see what you do, and found multiple people's blog who received almost the same comment about your ministry and inviting them to go to India. All of the blogs were written by young ladies and all of your comments were generally the same. To me, that is someone I can't trust, someone who is not genuine, and realistically freaks me out to know that some man I don't know is following a bunch of girls blogs. I do have a friend who had received your comment (just like me) and is now working in India with you and ywam. I do hope you are doing a real ministry, and not a fake, and are helping the people over there. If I felt called to go overseas I can go with Gospel for Asia. Thank you for thinking about me, and for the invite. However I don't think I could trust you and go over there. So I would ask that you stop trying to recruit me. Thanks!

      Delete