Today I would like to share some revelations of and insights into the theme of “Spiritual Fatness”. We are going to look deeper and explore how today’s comforts can lead into letting our guards down in the dangerous spiritual world. And I hope to help you become more spiritually alert and awake as well as be better equipped in dealing with challenges such as comfort, success and prosperity.
What is Spiritual Fatness?
“They turned against God. They were full of good food, but they turned away from God. He was the one who made them. He was the strong Rock who kept them safe. But they no longer respected him”. Deuteronomy 32:15 (Easy)
“Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. 16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. 17 And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.” 1 John 2:15-17 NLT
We often witness people who come to God when they are desperate and in need but then leave church as soon as they get their prayers and needs answered. Why does this happen?
URGENT takes over the IMPORTANT
Very often people haven’t evaluated the dangers of success, or even blessings. Once someone gets a new house very often you see them getting busy, making it a home and they even miss church and important meetings.
People get new jobs and they happily work whatever hours they get without fighting to attend church and so church becomes secondary. Or some come only if it is convenient. In all of those cases and many more for whatever reason, the power of Christ gets been overlooked and not taking seriously.
As a result, the spiritual world and it’s dangers is not taken seriously. That’s when you see the urgent being taken over by the important. But there is a great difference between the urgent and the important. Are you living only for the urgent? Then you will never have what is important, because there will always be the urgent.
The devil will always make sure you have the URGENT so you will never have the IMPORTANT.
Some people say that money is the problem, it takes people away from God, or maybe it’s their job, or they have too many blessings, or they have too many problems, they are too sick, they’ve had too many losses, their parents were too religious, or the church was not too nice, or someone in the church was nasty to them… on and on it goes. But is it the answer?
In other words, is money or their love for money really the problem? The church, people, work or blessings never were the problem. All the choices made come from the heart and mind of the person.
The old mind and human thoughts in control
“Some people do what their weak human thoughts want them to do. They think about the things that will make themselves happy. But people who live with God’s Spirit as their guide think about what will make God’s Spirit happy. 6 People who let their human thoughts rule them will die. But people who think about what God’s Spirit wants will have life with God. They will have peace inside themselves. 7 If our weak human thoughts rule us, we become God’s enemies. People like that do not want to obey God’s Law. They are not even able to obey it. 8 People who let their human thoughts rule them cannot make God happy.”
Romans 8:5-8 EASY
It seems very simple, when we are poor and desperate, when we have nothing to lose, we are open to receive Christ, as He is the only one that costs nothing and gives everything.
But once we get comfortable, we go back to our old ways. We get comfortable with our old ways of thinking rather than learning and practising new ones. We normalise our old self and the old patterns to the point where we start to resist the new and become defensive when our brother or sister in Christ correct us. At this point I have seen people also leave the fellowship and the church because they refuse to grow not because they were rejected. But usually, they see it as if they had been rejected, because their old self was rejected. However, our old self or our old way of thinking cannot stay in the journey with Christ because it is sinful and hurts other people. It is not centred on Christ, and it’s purpose is division and destruction of the body of Christ.
The deceiving heart
“But the words you speak come from the heart—that’s what defiles you.” Matthew 15:18 NLT
The heart can deceive the person because it stores all past traumas, hurts and wounds. It may not trust anybody because it sees the world as an unsafe place, or it may trust those that should not be trusted because it cannot discern anything, from all the bad experiences it has had and its own needs.
Some people trust others too fast just because they felt something good for a moment, not because they’ve done good spiritual analysis of that person’s qualities.
This is one of the reasons why people are in search of comfort and fulfilment of the needs of the heart and it is also a reason that some experience spiritual fatness – some examples of that may be because of addiction, love for money, ignorance, naiveté, not taking God seriously, being too self-absorbed, having attention seeking behaviours, being workaholics, having antisocial behaviours, having anxiety, suffering from extreme shyness, idolatry, adultery and etc.
The heart is like a soil that need to be taken care of daily. That’s why God instructs us to search our hearts daily to make sure it’s aligned with God. That’s why God tells us to make sure you have everything right between you fellow brothers and sisters because it shows also where your heart is.
If you struggle to be influenced by the people in the church, then you struggle to accept the cross also. That means your heart is fat and too hard. Why has this happened to you? Most likely because you were running from sufferings when you are with other people, not necessary that they were causing you any suffering, but they could remind you of the ones from your past or trigger you, irritate you. Fellowship is your thermometer. Your experience of fellowship can tell you how much you need to heal, renew your mind, grow and change.
Comfort centred.
Let’s read again Deuteronomy 32:15
“They turned against God. They were full of good food, but they turned away from God. He was the one who made them. He was the strong Rock who kept them safe. But they no longer respected him. Deuteronomy 32:15 (Easy).
God speaks here about His own people whom He brought out of captivity and who knew Him very well. His own people, who received everything from Him, became fat and lazy in faith and they stopped respecting Him and relying on Him. When life becomes comfortable for a little too long, how are you towards God, towards the cross and towards your brothers and sisters?
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” — C. S. Lewis
Many Christians live comfort-centred life and not Christ-centred. Their whole lives – jobs, studies and even social cycle is all comfort-centred rather than Christ-centred. Some people isolate themselves to suit their emotions and their mindset, they choose their social cycle to suit their own needs, they choose their priorities to suit themselves, they make decisions and choices according to what they want.
As a result, we become spiritually fat from all this comfort-centred life.
What’s wrong with comfort?
Paul explains it in Philippians:
“I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.” Philippians 4:12 NLT
It’s so interesting that Paul talks here about learning how to live with little and with plenty, as if it were not so simple at all.
When we live with little, we learn a lot how to depend on God, trust in Him and be content with what we get. The danger in little could be the anger and frustration for not having more, the jealousy and rebelliousness, the fear of insecurity and lack of trust in God.
But what are the dangers of having plenty and living in comfort?
“In the end, God will destroy them. Their stomach is what they worship. They are proud of things that should make them ashamed. Their thoughts are full of things that belong to this world.” Philippians 3:19 (Easy)
This illustration already shows some dangers that are in living in comfort – greed, self-sufficiency, dependence on things of this world, never being content or never having enough.
And what about pride?
When did we first see it happen? In heaven, right? Was it pride? When Lucifer, the greatest angel, who was so perfect, who had everything and was so excellent in everything, what did he feel?
So, what’s wrong with comfort? Can it be spiritually dangerous?
Yes, it can. Looking at all these dangers we can make sense now of those people who, once they’ve had their needs and prayers met, they leave the church, or those who struggled to socialise and be in the fellowship.
Some people become self-sufficient, or too dependant on the world and not on God. Some become dependant on their image and status, blessings and happiness, or even on their health. Some trust more their own knowledge and truth than Christ’s truth. Some fight with their brothers and sisters for mistakes they see in them instead of offering to help them so they would not keep making those mistakes.
Their own truth becomes their God instead of them seeking Christ’s way. Their thoughts became full of things of this world, just like Bible says, and they don’t know how to deal with success, power, knowledge, dreams and comfort without becoming spiritually fat. So, what is our solution?
The cross is solution
So, how can the cross help us overcome spiritual fatness?
Go back to our first love.
“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp-stand from its place—unless you repent.”
Revelation 2:4-5 (NKJV)
Go back to your first love with Christ and repent, which means remember the day God first saved you and the way you adored Him and clung into Him and repent. When your life becomes more stable and the light shines every day, then it’s easy to forget your sufferings and hardships of the past. It becomes natural to live with blessings and take things for granted. And that’s when we begin dealing with spiritual fatness. You become too relaxed and too naive and too self-absorbed.
We know from the bible how Solomon was greatly blessed with wisdom, and yet he ended up sinning greatly at the end. Was wisdom the problem? No. He became too confident and too relaxed, He married many women that worshipped idols even though God did not approve of it, but he did not take it seriously till this became his trap.
Take care of your heart
Search your heart daily to see what needs to be healed, fixed, changed or replaced by God. Check the thermometer – your experience in the fellowship. Are you developing good friendships, are you consistent or isolating? Are you developing emotional closeness with people? God placed us among people so that we may be healed, and that means that some of our wounds be re-opened in order to heal. Some of us were betrayed and abandoned, abused, and hurt in the past. Our trust has been deeply broken and the only way to heal is through fellowship. We can only heal and learn to trust again through fellowship, which is accepting the cross and learning new ways of thinking and living. That’s why the cross heals, because people and their love for one another is healing, and even when we fail, we learn the power of forgiveness.
Prioritise what is important not the urgent.
Organise your life to be Christ-centred not world-centred. Urgent will never end but the important will. If urgent is the priority, there is never enough space for the important. But if the important is in priority there is always enough room for the urgent. When you have all that is important, then there is nothing you cannot do as everything is possible to those who have Christ.
Renew your mind and reject the old self
Trust Christ to make things right by living the life of Christ not the life of your old self, your own mind or your own truth. Remember God loves the merciful not the one who thinks they are always right or knows everything. God loves the peacemakers not the one who loves to argue for their own sake. Also, you won’t be able to trust others unless you can recognise them in Christ, and you won’t able to do that till you have the mind of Christ yourself.
Christ centred-not comfort-centred.
If you look for the truth you will find comfort in it but not in any other way. If you look just for comfort, you will get destruction unfortunately. The Bible says if you put God’s kingdom first everything else will be given to you, and so it will be.
In conclusion
I want to encourage you today to look seriously at this word of God and put it into practice. No one has had an easy life here but my desire is for you to find true comfort in Christ, not a fake one that leads to destruction. Remember, you won’t be able to truly connect with Godly people if you have a fat heart or an old self set. You will end up going towards destruction.
Also, one more important point to take home for consideration. Fellowship is your thermometer. If you struggle with it, then it’s an indication that you need some healing. And this is good news, because you know you need fellowship in order to fix the problem – get healed by accepting love, learning how to trust, and receive guidance and correction from fellowship. Stay connected.