Well, welcome to another podcast of Struggling Well. We're glad you've joined us and we have some more conversation for this week. And babe, I'm going to ask you to start it.
I will, but you know, first I have to tell everybody that we've just been having like a little wrestling match over the sounds that our phones make so that you all don't hear all these crazy sounds, which I know you do. Like the dog and the table and thumping and all sorts of stuff, but I think we finally have it figured out. Do we?
I think so.
Okay. Tech technology is great and it's also a curse
called turn our phones off.
Turn our phones off. Oh my god.
The sounds Ah, can we live without our phones on? Yes, I think we can.
Well, this morning or this afternoon, whenever you're listening to this, I've just been really impressed lately in my time with the Lord u that when I have spent time like elongated time where I don't I'm not trying to quickly get in a time of prayer or quickly get in a time of reading bi the Bible. that when I have a gentle time of being still and listening that it really feeds my soul. it changes my day. It changes my outlook. Not that everything turns into better. I don't mean that, but it just fuels me in a way that I don't think I understand all the time. And I've been thinking a lot about snack food. And let me tell you why. Because I am not a foodie. Now, Jimmy, if for those of you that know him, he lives to eat. Is that right?
That's true.
Yeah. He like if we're having lunch, he is thinking about what dinner's going to be, what the potential of how it's going to look like on his plate.
Well, let's go back even further. I can get up in the morning, even before breakfast, and start thinking about what I would like for dinner.
Okay? And I'm the other way. I eat to live. So, that means I could basically eat straw if it fills me up. I've never been a foodie, which is a shame because food is a beautiful gift that God gives us, but it's not my thing. But I love some good snacks. Again, there are certain snacks. Some of you have been sweet through the years and gifted me with those snacks. But it made me think about my spiritual life. And do I eat to live or do I live to eat the word of God? And most times I think that we fall into this place of being satisfied with snack food. Let me tell you what I mean by that. It's these small bites that you can yet through the social media. there's some wonderful things that are on social media. Instagram, let's just take Instagram. I don't do Facebook. I don't know how to tweet or X or whatever it is. Snapchat. I have no idea what that means. It sounds like you snap and chat. I don't know. Twitter. What else is there?
You get the big ones.
Whatever. I'm sure they'll come up with a new one. But what I have found is a danger that there are certainly there's a lot of garbage on Instagram, but there's also these sound bites of people that I admire, godly people, pastors, u, apologists, all sorts of people that I really like what they say, but it's just a snack bite. It's just a little bit. Even if somebody is talking about the Lord and giving the gospel, it's just a little piece of information that cannot sustain me and let me just take a little side street here. The thing that Instagram, Facebook, all those things do is it has grown so much in the dissemination of information. Like recently as I was walking away, they call it dead scrolling. I guess you're partially dead when you're scrolling. I don't know. But this is what I found that you can you need to buy this ring that you put on your finger and it tells you what your heart rate is, what your you know, your blood pressure, how much sleep you're getting, all that. So, you've got to have that ring. The new thing that I've just been seeing is you have to have grounding sheets. Like, it's not enough to walk in the grass and kind of feel the grass and whatever. You have to have grounding sheets, which, you know, for $9. 99 or $99. 99, you too can have them. You got to have your teeth white. you have to be healthy. You have to shop online. There are people that are influing influencing us to tell us all sorts of things and they're really just little sound bites because what our souls are after what we were designed for is relationship with a God that speaks in full sentences and wants our time. We want peace. We want a modicum of health. We want guidance. We want contentment. But we are we have dumbed ourselves down to take these little snack bites when what we need is so much more than that. So my question is, what are you doing to sustain yourself in your spiritual life? And this I'm speaking directly to Christians, but I got thinking this morning too about people that are in ministry, pastors, teachers of any kind. It's easy to snack bite your way to prepare yourself for a message or a retreat or whatever you're doing, but what are we doing that will sustain us for the long haul, for the dark nights of the soul, for the deep things that we go through. living in a culture that is trying to give us little bits of information, kind of like setting a an appetizer table, but it's not even that good. What do you think, babe?
So, you're not saying, or at least I don't hear you saying that there's anything wrong with social media's sound from a sermon or whatever.
The problem is if we stop there because there's nothing wrong with snacking. It's part of life,
right?
But if we stop there,
right,
it's not enough.
Like, okay, I love that we do this podcast, but this is really a snack bite. It
really is. What we hope to do is jar someone, let the spirit jar someone through some word that we might say that he's given us that somebody will go, "Hey, I want more than that."
Yeah. And I think that's as long as you understand the place that it should have in somebody's life, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. If I understand that if you listen to Struggling Wells podcast for 10 minutes, we're not going to change your life in 10 minutes. we wouldn't change your life if we were an hour long. But could God use that to stir something in you that causes you to go further and to go deeper?
Right.
And that's what our hope is. And that's what I think anyone's hope is. And again, to me, it's I don't want to just settle.
No,
I can have I can have communion and conversation with the God of the universe because he's revealed himself in the 66 books of the Bible. He's revealed himself through his son who lived here on this earth. He's revealed himself through the Holy Spirit who lives within me. And I don't want to settle for snacks.
Right? So, we want to encourage you today to not just have a spiritual life based on snacks. And we're not going to give you a how-to because I think everybody's study devotional time is different. There certainly a lot of resources out there. But even with that, you know, just dig get in there and dig. And I'm speaking to myself as well as you guys too. I'm not just saying, you know, here I am this deep well of time with the Lord. I think it's really important and let me tell you why. This past week has been a little crazy and a little disruptive. and I have found myself, this comes out of my own experience. I found myself looking at things on Instagram and taking like getting that little from something somebody says, "Oh, that's so good. Oh, yes, that's true." But then not taking that little snack and making a meal out of it.
Yeah. And I think and you and I have talked about this a lot. Our background which may not be everybody who's listening to this podcast background, but if your background was in kind of that legalistic formulaic church upbringing, reading God's word became a checklist thing to do. And so when we talk about spending time in the word of God, it's not a checklist that you have to accomplish. It's not a guarantee that your day is going to go well and there not going to be any struggles in the day. It's the a incredible privilege that we have to commune with the God of the universe.
And so just like I would say in any kind of relationship in order to deepen and develop the relationship, you have to spend time with the other person. So it's true with the God of the universe. And that's where reading his word, spending time in prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to open up your heart becomes I think such a necessary thing.
Yeah, I do. too. Well, we thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to come into your world for a few minutes and we just want to challenge you and we're challenging one another that we you can snack but don't think it's the full meal because it's not. And having time with God through prayer, reading his word, getting to know the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And you know, you might come to the word and go, "Ah, I don't get it. I don't understand what he's saying." But I know that the Holy Spirit who is within you, if you know Christ as your savior, he will teach you and he'll guide you. And it will be like brick by brick building this foundation that is steady and sure so that when storms come, not if, but when life is confusing, when you don't know what to do, you will be built. Your spiritual life will be on solid ground. and so we encourage you to do that today.
Have a great week.