Are You Hungry Or Thirsty?

If you go a day without eating, do you get hungry? If you go a day with out water to drink, will you get thirsty? Have you ever fasted? Have you ever went hungry?

We as human beings need food and water to survive! If we go without food or drink very long we get sick and have a hard time functioning!

Would you ever say, I hate going to the store and buying food so I'm never going to return there again!? I just don't like the people I meet there so I will not shop again!

You know I like grocery shopping. I like going to the store. I enjoy seeing people sometimes it is the only time I have seen them in several months. Sometimes I see someone I hadn't seen in years!

We humans are social beings. We need to have contact with others to stay mentally healthy! We need that interaction. Or we start having problems, like withdrawing into our selves. With out filling that social need, man will start to have mental problems. And once those problems start, they tend to keep us apart and separated so we end up having a hard time over coming our mental problems, thinking others will not accept us!

God new that man couldn't survive on physical food alone! He tells us in Matt4:4 "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

The word is not just a written book, it is a relationship, and action. God created man with the need for food and relationship to survive in this physical world! He also knew that man need something else to survive completely. Man wasn't just a physical being but a spiritual being as well. Mankind was given a Spirit unlike the rest of the animal world around him!

We are told in Hebrews to not forsake the assembling together! This helps us in two area's as Christians. It helps us with our mental health and spiritual health in having close family in Christ to share and communicate with, and in doing so, assembling together, we do as Hebrews 10 tells us to do!

Heb 10:23-25 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

We stay close as a family in our belief and help one another stay close to God and our Lord! Showing our love for one another in Christ and exhorting each other in our faith!

Many say they can worship and read at home by themselves, but in do so, they over look a much needed area of fellowship and staying health in our walk with God!

Just as you would become weak by not eating, and our health would go down hill, so does our spiritual health if we deprive ourselves from spiritual sustenance in the fellowship with the body of Christ!

Paul goes a little further with this idea in 1 Cor. 12, in saying we are all different parts of the same body and we need each other to survive!

1Co 12:14-27 For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: And those members of the body, which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked: That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.

A while back I heard about a man that got hurt in a field while working to take in his crop. He lost his foot, and a by passer saw him and helped. A sheriff's deputy went back to the field and found the foot. By getting the foot to the hospital on time, the doctors were able to reattach it and it survived and the man walks on it today. As a part of the body we need to be connected the same as that foot or we will die spiritually!

Arteries and veins carry our blood through our body, in the same way they carry the Holy Spirit that which gives life, through the body of Christ! Those arteries and veins represent Fellowship within the Body of Christ! We need that connection with each other to have those veins and arteries connected so the Holy Spirit can flow through us to one another, to other parts of the body!

No not everyone is as honored as the other! Some think they are better than the other, but we know they can not survive without us all! Sometimes we see people as hypocrites, they don't seem to be what we expect of Christians! Churches are just that, a place for sinners to go! We are all sinners and fall short! If it were not for Christ and what he did for us, we would all be lost!

So I hope you will think on not only your physical health but your spiritual health and see the need to fellowship with the rest of your spiritual body. It is then we can show them love by accepting them even if and when they are hard to accept! God accepts them!

Blessings,
Rev. Charles