Minute Meditations

The medical profession likes to tell the story of the matronly patient that was on a strict diet but continued to gain weight. Finally, after weighing her for the sixth straight week only to find that she had put on another four pounds, the doctor asked her if she was eating anything else beside her diet and she replied, ”Only my regular meals.” There are many nominal Christians who take their religion just like this lady took her diet. Serving God is fine so long as it does not get in the way of the things they want to do.

Everyone who has ever dieted knows that self control and restraint are necessary to lose weight. Everyone who has read the Bible also knows that the natural inclinations of the flesh are as opposed to God as candy is to dieting. We can not truly be in Christ and also be slaves to the flesh. If our faith in God does not change our way of life and produce works for him, then our faith is a dead faith for James tells us, ”faith if it hath not works is dead, being alone.”

Jesus said, ”If ye love me, keep my commandments,” and Paul warned us that ”in the last days perilous times would come when men would be lovers of their own selves, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” Paul’s words aptly fit our day and generation and if we are not careful they could even fit us. Out of the 168 hours each of us spent this last week, how many were spent for our own pleasure and how many for God? Time spent before TV or on a golf course could only be charged up to our own pleasure. If our days are spent working or keeping house just as our neighbors spend their days and then our free time is taken up with the trivial pleasures of this life, how are we different from the world which Christ commanded us to come out from?

This type of self examination is uncomfortable but how much better that we ask ourselves this question now, than wait until our Lord calls us before him to ask us what we have done. If our life is not different because we are in Christ, then Christ is not really in our life. If we eat our regular meals in addition to our diet we are not really on a diet. The reward for dieting will only come to those who are faithful to their diet. The reward Christ has promised will only come to those who are faithful to his precepts. May our way of life so reflect Christ that when he comes he will find us in top condition spiritually, trim and fit, so that we may hear those longed for words, ”well done.”