Reading the Bible as an analogy to food or exercise - you need it daily

The Bible is like spiritual food. We need it daily. Although I had been reading the Bible daily for years now, I didn't "see" this analogy to food or exercise until recently.

While out on a run, I contemplated how convenient it would be if I could front-end my year's exercise into a big daily run for the first 3 months and then no more exercise for the rest of the year. I realized sadly that exercise simply does not work like this, any more than food does. You can't just eat lots and lots of food early in the year and then stop eating for the rest of the year.

The Bible is exactly like food or exercise in that way. You would be hurting your own spiritual health if you just stop reading the Bible, in the same way that you'd be hurting your physical health if you stopped eating or exercising. You would still be physically alive without reading the Bible, but you would miss out on all the benefits of having your own wise counselor right there (God). You would miss out on getting to know Him better. All of those things confer a lot of benefit to you. So even from a purely selfish point of view, you'd want to read the Bible. Of course, we should also want to read the Bible because God is so amazing (look what He did for us when Jesus died on the cross!) Our sins are forgiven! How could we not want to get to know Him better? But even if we were just being selfish, it's to our benefit to read the Bible.

It's true that it takes non-zero time to read the Bible, but I have found that being able to access God's wisdom that way actually saves me time by giving me better discernment. I feel like I know better what to do in a particular situation if I'm reading the Bible, versus years prior when I was not reading it regularly. This means a lot less time wasted on doing things that are unnecessary or things that won't actually help the situation I'm grappling with. 

So the Bible is like food. You do actually need it daily, even if it doesn't always feel like this to you.

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