By: Rachel Choi
My brother Michael is three. He eats all the time. And by all the time I mean that every five minutes he’s telling someone, “I’m huungryy...” For those of you who know him, you know how true this is! He’s growing, and the obvious truth is that when you grow you need food! Although we grow less and less physically as we get older, this shouldn’t be the case spiritually. Rather, we should be spiritually growing for as long as we live. And like our physical growth, this won’t happen if we don’t feed ourselves. The point of this blog isn’t necessarily to tell you how to feed yourself, or even how to turn your students into self-feeders. Rather, it’s to show different characteristics and obstacles of being a self-feeder.
Here are two characteristics: discipline and desire. The goal is to desire spiritual growth so much that you discipline yourself to “eat” even when you don’t desire to “eat.” Sometimes desire motivates and leads discipline, making it easy, and sometimes it just flickers and dims. That’s when you need discipline to come through. The great thing about being disciplined even when desire is absent, is that it often reawakens your desire. Sometimes I just don’t feel like reading my Bible. . . I can either follow-through on this feeling or discipline myself to read my Bible regardless of how I feel. When choosing discipline, my heart and attitude change as I read, and my desire begins to return.
Unfortunately, the majority of students aren’t self-feeders, or at least, not consistent ones. They only eat the big meals like student conferences, church events, maybe even weekly church services. Why is this?
There are three main obstacles to a student becoming a self-feeder:
1. They don’t have any desire to be a self-feeder
2. They don’t realize they can be a self-feeder
3. They don’t know how to be a self-feeder
The main reason students don’t desire to be a self-feeder is because they don’t see a reason to be one. “What good does it do?” “Why should I read my Bible?” “What difference does praying make?” As their leader, you’re in a great place to help them answer these questions, and therefore, find reasons to be a self-feeder.
Students also need to realize they can be a self-feeder. A lot of the reasons they only eat at spiritual events is because they don’t know they can eat anywhere else! They don’t know they can meet with God in their bedroom the same as they can at WarCry. Sometimes simply telling them this truth is all that’s needed to shift their thinking. The best person to tell them is someone who already has influence in their life. Like. . . you!
Though there are many ways to feed ourselves, the most important ways are praying and reading God’s Word. These serve as the foundation, and the way this foundation is established depends on the individual student and their circumstance. Perhaps the best and most natural way to start is to hold the student accountable to a plan/goal they made.
To sum it all up, if we want to grow spiritually we need to eat, even when we don’t want to. At the rate Michael’s eating, he’s going to be huge! I dare you to eat as much as him--gorge yourself! In this case, you won’t regret it.
--Rachel Choi--
