WE LIKE OURS CANNED AND PROCESSED...

Well, the ol' quest hit a brick wall on Sunday. For our lunch, Mrs. Deen suggested steamed green beans. The men in my house revolted. There were snarling faces, talks about health, and it ended up with MC 1 declaring in a fit of disgust,

I HOPE THERE IS JUNK FOOD AT NANNY'S HOUSE!

Isn't that just like us? We want the stuff that is quick to eat and easy to swallow. I don't want to have to take the time to chew on it. What I have found is that the same thought pattern has been true in other areas of my life as well. Like...uhmmm.....church maybe?
I have wanted the fast food version of Christ at times in my life. The messages that were easy to take in and to swallow. The ones that were sweet to my spiritual palate. No chewing required. No thinking about it required. Just open your little, sweet spiritual mouth and swallow. Sadly, sometimes that is what I got served. Just as sad, if not more so, sometimes it was those types of messages I sought out. The healthy, takes a little work to digest sermons I was not so excited about.
Our culture is the same way. They desire to hear a version of the gospel that is sweet to them. They want sermons that are canned and processed. Sermons that make us feel good and go down smooth. Don't misunderstand, I like a "feel good" sermon too. But what I am learning is that nothing makes me feel as "good" as knowing Jesus Christ died for my sins. Knowing that He is with me. Seeing in Scripture God's promises to me fulfilled (past and present tense) in Christ Jesus. Resting in the assurance that there is a literal enemy of my soul and a hell, and that Jesus Christ, by His death, has defeated both.
I cannot tell you how many times over the past year I have gotten mad at myself for spending years as a spiritual fast food junkie. Not every meal, but enough. It was my choice. My choice to sit there and just take whatever in. My choice to seek out the easy stuff, the stuff that made me feel good. This is not a post about blaming others. It is about my responsibility as a believer to test what I have heard against the word of God. To seek out the "sit down to dinner" stuff of the gospel and chew on them. Let it make me healthier.
As I continue to look at not only my fast food eating habits, but my fast food Jesus habits, I want encourage you to do the same. What are you looking for? Do you and I want to be Christians who treat church as a drive-thru quick fix? Do we want to play on the playground of our doctrine, our core beliefs? Where we play church just enough to make us feel better? Feel like we are out there doing something? Or do we want to sit down at the table of the Christ and have a meal? Have some hearty food that takes a little effort on our part to work out? Yes, our pastors should be serving up those meals. Meals they have labored over. Meals they and the Lord have prepared together. Not meals that come in a prepackaged can. At least not every Sunday. Honestly, not most Sundays. I hope your pastor is such a leader. HOWEVER, you and I are responsible for our own spiritual diet. We are the ones who choose what we want to digest. We are the ones who choose to go for the fast food junk or the hearty meals.
You must know I have been wrestling with this for a good bit. Working out where I have chosen the easy way, and where I need to choose different. It breaks my heart to see a nation of believers and unbelievers alike, sitting in pews, or watching on the Internet, or reading from the latest book, with our spiritual mouths open ready to take in whatever is dished out. We have got to do better as the Church. I have got to do better as Rhonda. Otherwise we, and I, will wind up as spiritually obese people full of unhealthy ideologies and doctrines that do nothing for the body but hinder it.
Let us choose today.