20/20: God's Vision For My LifeSample

You Are What You Eat

By Chad Sykes

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16–17 

I vividly remember walking on the beach in Sri Lanka. This once vibrant and beautiful place was now covered with the scattered belongings of people who had suddenly lost their lives. Shoes full of sand that had belonged to little girls and boys lay stranded with no one to claim them. The sun was slowly fading pictures of young families that littered the beach. I picked up one of the shoes and felt my cheek become warm and wet with tears. I had never seen devastation like this. My sheltered mind had never conceived that something like this could even be possible.

On December 26, 2004, one of the world’s most destructive natural disasters in recorded history took place. An undersea megathrust earthquake rumbled deep under the Indian Ocean triggering a series of devastating tsunamis. These massive waves struck the nations of Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka. The deadly force of these mountains of water hit with such power that they killed more than 230,000 people.

Shortly after the tsunamis hit, I had the privilege of traveling to Sri Lanka with a group of 15 short-term missionaries including doctors, nurses, and pastors. We went with a clear mission: to respond with urgent medical care to some of the hardest hit areas that hadn’t yet been reached and to demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ to the suffering people of Sri Lanka. To say that our journey was difficult and a bit perilous is an understatement. After multiple long flights, we loaded into vans for a ten-hour drive through rough mountainous terrain in an area ravaged by civil war.

There was no way I could have prepared myself for what I saw and heard, and I never imagined how these experiences would continue to affect me long after I returned. After hearing story upon story of death and destruction, I began to feel weariness overcome me. I became physically and emotionally exhausted after traveling for days and working nearly around the clock ministering to people’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

As the days passed, I remember being so physically tired that I had to force myself to eat just so I’d have enough strength to keep going. I can’t remember ever experiencing this before in my life. I usually ate because I could…not because I desperately needed it to have the energy to make it through the next few hours in front of me. This was completely foreign to me. 

As I ate, I could literally feel the food nourishing me and giving me physical strength to continue ministering to the Sri Lankan people with all of my heart. This strength was crucial as I ministered to these hurting individuals who had suddenly been thrown into the midst of a tragic situation—like the man who drank poison in an effort to end his life because his wife and two children had been swept away by the enormous wave.

After two weeks of traveling and ministering in Sri Lanka, I returned home. Leaving such an extreme environment of loss and suffering and entering back into my comfortable life was a jarring experience. My time of work and ministry in Sri Lanka and my normal life of work and ministry at home were worlds apart. As time went on, I noticed that the extreme weariness I experienced in Sri Lanka would curiously creep into my life at times. 

But this time the weariness wasn’t physical; it was spiritual. However, it was just as draining. Talking and meeting with people every day who had stories of tragedy, brokenness, sickness, and death left me spent. Just as the food I ate in Sri Lanka physically strengthened me for the work that was before me, I knew I needed similar spiritual nourishment for the challenges I faced at home.

Here is the truth I discovered—spiritual weariness is fought by a steady diet of the Bible. God’s revealed words to us in Scripture infuse life into our very bones. Paul explained to Timothy that the best way to become equipped for what lay before him was by the words of Scripture. I believe Paul wasn’t merely describing a knowledge-based intake of Scripture; he was talking about an intake of those words into both our hearts and minds. 

Through the Word of God, we allow ourselves to be taught, rebuked, corrected, and trained in righteousness. The Bible protects us from having the wrong view of God and of ourselves. It enables us to live ready to respond to God and others in the world, because it is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

We are—at the same time—people in the world and people of the Word. The world in this current age attempts to convince us of truths contrary to God’s revelation to us. And at times, we get caught in the rip current of uncertainty, hopelessness, and despair. The only way to swim out of that undertow is through the Holy Spirit revealing God’s truth to us. In and through Scripture, God Himself has spoken. In the battle for our hearts, minds, ideas, and the world, God’s truth overwhelms the lies of men.

God’s revelation to us is the fuel that enables us to live as His people in the world. Our duty is to receive His message, seek to comprehend it, obey it, and relate it to the world in which we live. Dedicate yourself to a steady diet of the Bible and allow God’s Word to nourish, strengthen, and equip you for life. And as you do this, you’ll discover within yourself a warm devotion to Christ set on fire by the truth of His revelation.

The Bible is as necessary to spiritual life as breath is to natural life. There is nothing more essential to our lives than the Word of God.
~ Jack Hayford

Memory Verse

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:11–13