Skip to main content

What You Feed WILL Grow

I had a mini epiphany two Sundays ago, when a friend at church said this:

"Imagine two dogs. You starve one, hit it and keep it locked away from everyone else. With the other, you're nurturing, kind, and give it all the love, attention and food it can stand. Which one do you think will grow?"

The obvious answer was Dog B, and the whole audience agreed. 

What was she talking about? Our flesh, our spirit and the constant tug of war between the two, going on within us.

But although the answer was pretty obvious, this analogy helped me (so much) understand the reality that WHAT YOU FEED GROWS.

Although in practice, it comes with its challenges, it's a pretty clear (and dare I say, simple) logic.

That transformed everything for me! (I'm dramatic like that. Apologies.) I promptly went on Google Images, typed in "Feed your spirit" in the search box, looked for an appealing-enough image and made it the wallpaper on my phone - because I just had to keep reminding myself on why this is so important.

Increasingly, I spend more and more time working, and less and less time 'doing my own thing' (which mostly revolved around watching Scandal and scrolling through my Twitter timeline). So, these days, I'm super selective about what I spend my time on. Within that limited time, every day, I try to make speaking to God and reading His word a top priority. Is it always easy? No. But now, I understand that it's what I nurture that will produce fruit. If I spend large chunks of time tweeting, sure I'll laugh my head off, but will that help or hinder the growth of my relationship with God? It's a choice I have to keep making - everyday. These little things might seem insignificant, and like they don't matter much, but tiny drops of water make an ocean. 

Now (*in my grandmother's elderly, wise tone*), that doesn't mean you don't deserve chill time. We all need time to kick back and just do what we enjoy. But I - and I sincerely hope you do too - want to be close to God (in a David-in-the-Bible type of way), and that most definitely requires time and effort. I also want to let go of my anxiety, negative thinking, self-centredness and hurt - all of which require FEEDING my mind with God's Word day-in-day-out, and reminding myself of God's unquestionable love for me, His unrelenting grace towards me and His unending presence with me. 

Because WHAT I FEED WILL GROW!

Remember: Progress is what matters, not perfection.


Lots of love,

Kunmi x





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Simple, Practical Solution To Reading More of Your Bible

At the beginning of the year, I decided I wanted to read the entire Bible - for the second time - in a year. (I also started using these amazing reading plans on my even more amazing Bible app, YouVersion. It's awesome; check it out! )  My aim is to get more of God's word into my head, mind and heart, and as a result, get to know Him better, as... "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was  God." (John 1:1) Simple, yeah? If God and His Word are one, then by getting to know one more, I get to know the other, right? But to achieve my goal, I obviously had to carve out more time to read God's Word.  Now, truth be told, I often find reading the Bible a little bit tedious (I'll have you know God appreciates my honesty), ESPECIALLY when it gets to certain, not-so-Jesus-loves-you-you-can-do-no-wrong-everything-is-all-GOOD chapters like Numbers, Leviticus and a few others (let's cut them some slack, shall we?). But I rea...

What Teaching Young Kids About The Holy Spirit Taught Me

I'm lucky enough to teach a lovely, lively bunch of children at Sunday School every week. Two weeks ago, at a Saturday session at church, I had learnt more about the Holy Spirit, who He really is and why we have Him (and need Him). Immediately, I thought: Hey, this is a great lesson to teach the kids soon. Yesterday, I decided today would be the perfect day to approach this topic with my young squad. I particularly thought this was a good idea because I needed to learn more about the Holy Spirit. While preparing to teach, I researched how to go about teaching younger children about this not-so-easy topic. You hear so much about God and Jesus, but not that much about the Holy Spirit (which they affirmed today, btw). I got help from this great Sunday School website, which suggested to use a great visual analogy: An egg. An egg is made up of three parts: The shell, egg white and yolk. Although the different parts exist, it's still an egg; each part is 'folded' into ...

What I Really Learnt About Prayer This Week

With prayer and I, it's been a mostly up-and-down relationship. We haven't always seen eye-to-eye, we've fallen out of love quite a few times, and we've oftentimes flat out ignored each other over the years. Luckily, it's been more on the 'up' lately, for which I am super glad, because God knows I need it more than anything. The real transformation came when I realised that I didn't have to say the "right" things when I prayed, speak 'Christianese' (meaningless words that God is supposed to be impressed with), or lie to God about how/what I was feeling. A good friend of mine, Jen, once said, "Don't tell God, 'Oh Lord, I just want to worship Your holy name', when in fact you are about to combust from pain, sorrow, difficulties and frustration." That statement TOTALLY changed the way I pray. Now, that's not to say that I only run to God to cry about my problems (there's ALWAYS something), and I am complet...