I don’t know about you, but I love a good fast food meal! Whether it be the grilled chicken and waffle fries from Chick Fil A, the spicy chicken sandwich and fries from Wendy’s, the whopper from Burger King, or the Italian from Firehouse subs, I love a delicious meal made quick!
Here’s the problem: fast food meals, while convenient, are not necessarily healthy. They are certainly better than not eating anything (at least in my opinion), but there are plenty of other more nutritious meals out there.
A step up from fast food is a nice sit-down restaurant. Now there are plenty of unhealthy options, but usually the sit-down restaurants offer some good healthy options as well. At T-Bones I love a good chicken salad! When I go to Golden Corral I always start out with a salad. Sure, I can find a lot of unhealthy things, but as long as I am intentional, I can get by with some decent meals.
But do you know what is even healthier? Home-cooked meals! While it takes more time and effort, nothing beats a good home-cooked meal. I am able to control what ingredients go in my food and can make sure I don’t overdo it with the unhealthy stuff.
Why do I bring this up? Because your devotional life has a lot of parallels to your eating life.
Think of like a spectrum where one side is super unhealthy and the other side is super healthy. The worst thing you can do for your devotional life is to simply skip it. No good nutrition comes from that! That would be on the far side of the unhealthy spectrum.
Move one step away from that and you have fast food. A fast food devotional would be like listening to your Bible while driving in the car or quickly having a devotional time on the go. Like fast food, it is better than nothing. However, if your entire diet consists of fast food, you are setting yourself up for some health problems! Fast food devotionals should be more of a “last resort” instead of the “go-to” meal.
Moving all the way toward the healthy side of the spectrum is home-cooked meals. Now again, these take more time and effort, but they also produce better (healthier) results! Home-cooked devotional times are when you have intentional times at home reading and studying your Bible. They take longer, require more effort on your part, but are also much healthier for your spiritual life.
You probably know where I am going with this… What type of devotional life do you think is healthiest for you? Not eating is not good. Fast food is only as a last resort. The more in-depth sit-down restaurants are better. But the best, healthiest option for your devotional life is an intentional time at home.
So what type of devotional life do you have? If it is more of a fast food diet, or even a “fasting” diet, what can you do to move toward healthier devotional habits?