The Malnourished Christian

The Malnourished Christian

Can someone be saved but still spiritually malnourished? In this episode, we explore what it means to be spiritually undernourished despite attending church, serving, or calling yourself a believer. We’ll discuss the importance of feeding on God’s Word, the dangers of spiritual starvation, and how a lack of daily nourishment can leave us weak, stagnant, and vulnerable to the enemy. If you’ve ever felt spiritually dry or distant from God, this episode is an invitation to return to the One who truly satisfies.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Have you ever wondered why your temptation seems stronger than normal? It seemed like temptation is getting a little bit harder, or your anxiety is just getting way too loud, or your prayers are feeling empty. Like, what if the problem isn't that God has stopped speaking, but that you've stopped eating? So, welcome to the Endurance Flow Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. We're gonna go ahead and dive into this. I want to talk about a dream that I had a few years ago. The dream definitely scared me. Um, it was at a time where I knew God was real, I had an amazing relationship with God, then my relationship was jacked up because of me, not because of him. And I kind of started to, even though I knew the truth, I kind of thought that I could wiggle my way back to where I was before I got saved. And so I had this dream where I don't know the details before the only thing I just know the details up to this point. So I was somewhere and somebody threw an axe at my neck. The axe was stuck into my neck, and I just remember me like running around trying to find help. Somehow I ended up I ended up in a hospital, and I got on the elevator, and I remember it was a doctor on the elevator, and so I'm like, doctor, please help me, please take this out of my neck. And he looked at my neck and was like, she's gonna die. She ain't she's not gonna survive that. So when he said that, I was like, uh-uh, and I rebuked that in the name of Jesus. So all of a sudden, I'm standing like in a hallway, looking in a mirror, and I'm looking at the gas, I'm I'm looking at the axe in my neck, and I remember saying, I shall not die, but I shall live to proclaim the works of the Lord. Once I said that the axe fell out my neck and the gash had started to close, it didn't close all the way, but it did close from how big it was at first. And then I remember I just all of a sudden quoted this scripture. I'm looking at myself in the mirror, and I quoted this scripture, and it said, Men cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So when I woke up, I knew immediately that that was a warning dream. I knew that God was telling me, like, hey, you're going off the deep end. Mind you, this was only like two or three weeks of bull crap, and like, you know, it wasn't even like it was it was a long time that I was tripping. It was like two or three weeks where I decided that I wanted to go back and try to wiggle my way back into the lifestyle that I was living before I had got saved. And immediately God was just like, Yeah, we about to we about to cut this short, stop it right now. So I do just want to basically, I guess I'm gonna base this podcast off of that because sometimes we can be malnourished Christians because again, the scripture says that we cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And sometimes we can be spiritually alive, but malnourished. You know, we can attend church, we can still believe, we can still pray, and we can still be starving. So, like, what is a malnourished Christian? A malnourished Christian is a person who is not consuming the word of God on a consistent basis, you know, they consume the word once a week, or they only consume the word when their life is falling apart, or they only consume the word through a sermon, you know, through a podcast, or you know, just through someone else, but they are not personally, they're not feeding them themselves, they're not consuming the word themselves, and it can really cause a big issue in our lives. So, like, just using me as an example, I know that I was spiritually malnourished because my prayer life had changed. At one point, I was consistently praying the word of God, I was giving God his word because God says to remind him of his word. So I was consistently praying the word of God at one point, then all of a sudden, my prayers changed. All of a sudden, here I am, and I am praying basically based off my feelings, and I'm not praying based off of the word, and that ended up placing me well, it and that basically was letting me know, like when I look back, it was letting me know like I was definitely malnourished. Also, another way that you can tell, like, you know, like, hey, I might be a little malnourished, is if everything starts to seem heavier on you, like you feel like the world is against you, you feel like the world is on your shoulders, you know, your anxiety grows and the discouragement, it it lingers around, you know. And I realize that, like, even especially as a new believer, even if you like, if we don't consume the word for a few days, we will start to feel a change. Like, I know I know for a fact, like you will start to feel a change. You might be like, hold on, I'm getting a little too agitated too quickly, because the devil is looking for a way to ease right on by. And you know, at the end of the day, we can't go too long without water. They said we can only go like three days, you know. We might we can survive a little longer without actual food, but the word of God is our nourishment, so it's easy for the devil to sweep in if we're not on a consistent basis consuming the word of God, you know, and sometimes it can seem like the temptation it gets harder or your discernment it gets weaker. Like I know for me, I had got to the point where I was able to differentiate, you know, God's voice and Satan's voice. And I'm like, I would always direct God's word with the word of God, like whenever God would speak to me, whenever a thought came or something, I'm like, you know, I know this is God. And it got to a point where with me, I'm not necessarily necessarily saying that I like mixed up the voices, but I will say is that I began to believe the discouragement, I began to believe the problems that were around me, thinking that they were never change, you know, thinking that, you know, well, God, I literally came to the point where I'm like, you know what, God, I love you. I'll still, you know, have a relationship with you, I still believe in believe in you, but I don't want to expect anything from you. I don't want you to try to promise me something knowing that I'm not gonna get it. Like, I have really started to believe the the plans of the enemy, and that becomes the issue. Like, that's the issue when you're not consistently consuming the word of God, you're going to consume something else, you know what I'm saying? And that could possibly be the thoughts of the enemy because the devil speaks in first person, he'll have you thinking he'll the devil will say, I this, I this, I that, and it is not you, it is the devil himself, and then it's like I'm gonna tell you now, if you are depending on someone else, if you're depending on your grandmother, if you're depending on her prayers to get you through, which they will, okay. But I'm saying, if you are depending on your relationship, your salvation, your nourishment, if you're depending on someone else, you're depending on going to church that Sunday and consuming the word of God and thinking that that's the only word that you need for that week, thinking that's the only you know, consumption that you need for that week, you're definitely, you know, you definitely might be you are malnourished. Because Sunday should not be the only time that you consume the word of God. It should not be the only time when you have personal time with God, you know. It it just should never be that. Like eventually you will starve if you are depending on your salvation and your nourishment on the pastor, on the preacher, on the podcast, on TikTok, on Instagram. You get a little 60-second reel, you know, you're definitely gonna starve. And I just feel like that was me for a long time. This was after I experienced God's goodness. This was after I had an encounter with Jesus, and I ended up being a malnourished Christian because I basically was I was like, I'm still young, I want to party, and I me listening to the thoughts of the enemy, and I began to believe, you know, like, well, dang, do I really want this life, or do I still want to kind of do what I want to do for now? Because in my mind, I always thought that I would live my life, and then when I got maybe 50, I would turn my life around and start going to church. Like, that was literally the mindset that I had. That was the plan that I had for me when it came down to God. Like, I'll go to church on Sundays, maybe even stop my Bible study. But as far as like a full-blown devoted Christian moving in a church and doing things in the church, yeah, when I get in my 50s, my 50s, I'll do that. And that is not a good thing to it's not good to be like that, but that's literally the plan that I had for me. Not realizing that God, He He created emotions, you know. So God feels, God loves us. Okay? So He feels angry, He feels sad when we don't want to spend no time with Him, He feels hurt when we don't want to spend no time with Him. Imagine being in a relationship with someone who only comes to you when they want you, like when they need something from you, when they want to benefit from you, but they don't want to just spend time in your presence. Like this man or this woman only calls you because they need you to help with something. But they don't they never want to just, I just want to be around you. I just want to be in your presence. That is a problem. But, anyways, though, so it's the thing is that Satan wants us malnourished because it's like a starving soldier, he is very easy to defeat. A starving athlete, he cannot compete. He can't play, he's too weak. So a starving Christian cannot fight. And the devil's plan is to keep you distracted. He does not want you to be nourished, he doesn't want he wants you to be malnourished, so you can be weak, so you cannot fight. I'm telling you now, the word of God is the food that you need to survive. Jeremiah literally said, he said, I found your words and I ate them. And that's what he said. So, like, even retracting back and going back to my dream, like even when I'm looking at the axe, like, well, not looking at, but thinking about the axe. The axe, it represented like a fatal wound. Like in my dream, I literally thought that it was over for me. And then the doctor, who was supposed to help me, he didn't even try to help me. It was just like he gave me hopelessness. He literally told me, like, uh, she's gonna die. He looked at me and said that, like, ain't no helping her. But he didn't bring me back. The thing that brought me back was the word of God because the word, that's what they call it, the living word, the living word of God in my dream. That's what made that axe come out of my neck when I began to quote the word of God. And this is not something new. I have seen me plenty like in my dreams plenty of time when I have actively quoted the word of God, and things have instantly changed in my dream. Like I know the word of God is powerful. The moment I started to quote it, the axe fell out, and the and the womb started to close, and that's often how healing works spiritually. The word begins a process, and healing is sometimes immediately, often is gradual. So, how do we become malnourished again? We have to consume that word, we have to read the word of God, even if it's a verse, two verses, three verses. And nobody is saying you have to gradually build up this relationship, you have to gradually build up your strength. You know, you don't get a six-pack overnight, you don't get these muscles overnight. You have to gradually build it up. Trust and believe it will work, but don't try to put too much pressure on yourself because you might not, you know, it might not last that long if you try to just go in doing two or three hours when you're or even an hour when you're not used to that. You can start off with 10 minutes and gradually increase the five minutes. Trust and believe God loves those 10 minutes where you when you are in his word, you're in his presence. So even those 10 minutes that you're spending with him a day, he loves it. And don't feel like while you're consuming the word of God that nothing has changed in your life or that you have have not changed. I'm gonna tell you this now. God, yes, he can do things immediately, but God often does things gradually. I'm telling you now. So it's okay if you don't see an immediate change, but you will slowly start to see. I don't have the taste for this, I don't have the desire for this anymore, I no longer want to do this anymore. God will do these things and he'll do it gradually. So give him time to work on you because he definitely gave you time to do what you wanted to do. He is long-suffering for our sake, that is scripture. So you have to read the word, memorize as much as you can, meditate on the word. Most importantly, you have to obey the word, and you also have to pray the word. God says to remind me of my word. So you have to pray the word of God over your life. Pray the word of God. So I do believe that one of the greatest dangers in church, it isn't the persecution, it isn't the suffering, but it's the starvation. Because when you're dealing with persecution and you're starving, you how are you gonna win that battle? When you're dealing with suffering, how are you gonna come up out of that suffering and you are spiritually starved? You you're gonna be too weak. You're gonna be too weak to understand your suffering, you're gonna be too weak to understand your persecution, to know what's going on. You can survive, you know, for a little while without food. But the thing is that many Christians they've gone months without feeding on the word of God. Some have even gone years without feeding on the word of God, and then we wonder why we are weak. We wonder why we are weak when the word of God says that men shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Even when I think about my dream when the axe was in my neck, it was it was in my neck, and that's the place where nourishment passes into the body. So Satan, he is not playing fair. That's the thing. He does not play fair, we don't have the time to say, why is this happening to me? Why is my life like this? We don't have time to put God on the back burner, we don't have the time, we have to put God first. That's the thing. The Bible says to seek the kingdom of heaven and everything else will be added unto you. I'm telling you now, your bills don't matter. Nothing matters but God. Nothing matters but Him. We have to consume the Word of God. We need to be able to hear from God these days, seriously, because we don't have the time to sit here and play. He is not playing fair. People are leaving this world, this world, they dropping like flies. And I and I'm so serious because it can seem so scary. But we we have to know Jesus on a deeper level. We can no longer depend on someone else's relationship to get us into heaven. We can't continue to believe that, oh, Jesus died for me. He already died for our sins, so we can go out here and sin. No, we all make mistakes, don't get me wrong, but you out here willfully sinning, where sin has become your character. And I'm not doing this to beat down on anybody, I'm doing this because I know this is stuff that I did, this is the way that I thought. I thought I had time to live my life the way I wanted to, and then to just come to God when I feel like it. No, you come to God now. Don't ever have that mindset that I'll come to God when I'm done living my life, when I'm done doing what I want to do, when I'm ready to change. Because truth be honest, you ain't never gonna be ready to change. God is gonna be the one to change you. We don't change on our own. God is the one who changes us. So I just want us all to just focus on God because He is what matters, and we need to be able to consume the Word of God because the Word of God is more than just words, it is life, it is life. I just let's all anybody who is listening to this do a 30-day challenge. Whenever you listen to this, a 30-day challenge to whatever your current situation is right now, you go and you find scriptures. You find scriptures that go to that go to your situation, that's that can help you with your situation, that can give you encouragement. You write those scriptures down and you consume those scriptures three times a day. You read those scriptures out loud three times a day. It don't matter how you feel, because the devil is gonna try to make he'll try to make you feel like you don't want to do it. When all you're doing is opening your mouth and reading something, don't listen to him. Read the scriptures, read the scriptures, and you will see a change. It might not be a heavy change, but you um what I'm saying is you'll see a change. God may tell you some instructions, he may direct you, you may grow a deeper relationship with him, but you I don't know what the change is. You have to start somewhere, you'll see a change, and it can be a small change, it can be a big change, it could just be you're you are more encouraged now to keep going. That those words that that that you have been speaking for the past 30 days, it has given you encouragement to fight on, but consume the word, consume it, anyways. Y'all, I don't want to take up too much of y'all time. So, thank y'all so much for tuning into the endurance glow and please be blessed.