Biblorexic: Refusing Sufficient Spiritual Nutrition

Anorexic

• Defined: Refusal of sufficient physical nutrition.
• Symptoms: Restricted diet resulting in malnutrition, weakness, and distorted views. If anorexia continues unchecked, the health problems only get worse. Can also lead to depression, severe mood swings, and thoughts of suicide.
• Treatment: Anorexia is a treatable condition by identifying  distorted thoughts,  understand importance of daily nutrition and partaking of daily nutritious meals.
• Tips: Promote healthy eating behaviors through the use of rewards, reinforcements, self-monitoring, and goal setting. Be aware of  family dynamics that may contribute to anorexia or interfere with recovery. Encouraging an anorexic friend or family member to get treatment is the most caring and supportive thing you can do.

Biblorexic

• Defined: Refusal of  sufficient spiritual nutrition.
• Symptoms: Restricted Bible time resulting in spiritual malnutrition, weakness,  and distorted views. If Bibliorexia continues unchecked, the spiritual problems only get worse. Can also lead to depression, severe mood swings, and a downward spiral.
• Treatment: Bibliorexia is a treatable condition by identifying  distorted thoughts,  understand importance of daily Bread, and partaking of daily Bible reading.
• Tips: Promote Bible reading habits through the use of rewards, reinforcements, self-monitoring, and goal setting. Be aware of the family dynamics (busyness, spiritual warfare)  that may contribute to Biblorexia or interfere with recovery. Encouraging an Biblorexic friend or family member to get into the Word is the most caring and supportive thing you can do!

Are You Voluntarily Starving Yourself? Your Children?

Are you battling  mood swings?anger? depression? Do you feel like you are losing the spiritual war? The problem may be a lack of time in the Word. You need your Sword of the Spirit.

The Word of God is nourishment like milk or meat (Hebrew 5:12). To help you really grasp the importance of this truth here is a disturbing photo of a poor, starving child’s hand. Now imagine that there is a bottle of rich nourishing milk on the table that would save his life and comfort him, but his mother leaves the bottle sitting on the table because she thinks it’s too much trouble to give it to him.

Growth is development or improvement toward a goal called “maturity.” When one is “born again” as a child of God, he is spiritually immature. As time passes, we should be feed nutrition through God’s Word and develop the qualities the Bible  characterizes as mature.

Would you skip feeding your child a meal?

Visualize that image every time you feel tempted to skip Bible study. Paul told Timothy that we are nourished by words of faith and good doctrine (1 Timothy 4:6). God’s Word contains nourishing life-giving power–don’t withhold it.

Imagine the Potential

Can you imagine the potential results if every Christian homeschooler in America began devoting the first part of each school day to studying God’s Word?

Time spent in God’s Word can produce a spiritual transformation. Christ’s prayer in John 17:16-17 was that His followers not follow false loves or the values of this world, but that they would be holy.

It is possible for us to produce an entire spiritually mature generation comprised of young men and women trained and equipped to feed themselves the Bread of Life–and to be able to discern the sacred and spiritual from the profane and carnal–a generation that would know Truth and be able to boldly answer a false teacher by saying “That’s not what that verse means. You are taking it out of context.”

Daily Bread

Jesus asked God to “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Again, Jesus is not talking about food alone. He is declaring that we should seek our “bread” of the Word every day, not every other day, not every week, not every month.He said, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Joshua 1:8

What can you do today to motivate yourself to have daily Bible study?