Help for the Hungry SoulНамуна

Feast with Your Church

“It feels like it’s something I’m supposed to do.”

Heads nodded in agreement. Our small group was talking about reading our Bibles in the season of early parenthood with little kids needing us all the time. The phrase “supposed to” popped up more than once, and the universal struggle was evident.

These women wanted to want to read their Bibles. But it didn’t always happen.

Does that sound familiar to you?

This is a common reality for hungry believers with full lives. We know that reading Scripture is good for us—we know we’re “supposed to”—but when the choice to read doesn’t come with feelings of enjoyment, or when we end up choosing other things, we sink down into guilt. And the deep hole of guilt can be hard to climb out of.

Only later did the irony of our conversation occur to me: these believers, who were lamenting how hard it is to engage with Scripture, were doing just that. Right then. Together. These women regularly attended Sunday worship services with their families and were involved in a word-centric small group. They were feeding on God’s word with God’s people. And this reality changes things.

It’s the kind of encouragement that will help us climb out from the guilt hole.

Pietism and False Guilt

Where does this sense of guilt come from?

You know the thoughts: I should want to read my Bible. I should be reading my Bible more often. I should be getting more out of it. And while some of these considerations can be good and helpful, awakening us to obstacles and our tendency to hunger for things other than God, many are often rooted in false guilt.

In other words, we can feel bad about our engagement with Scripture, but we might have no God-given reason to. Our guilt may be false because there is no command in the Bible about having a daily quiet time.

So where did this idea of “quiet time” come from, anyway? It came from a movement that has impacted the way we interact with God’s word, which we know as the Pietistic Movement.

Pietism was spearheaded in the seventeenth century by German Protestants whose main goal was to promote individual Christian experience. After centuries of dependence on Roman Catholic priests to hear and understand the Bible, Pietists envisioned believers walking with God personally, growing in holiness and knowledge of God’s word themselves. This is one of Pietism’s positive influences, along with its emphasis on our walk with Jesus. But it also unhelpfully narrowed our view of what it means to engage with the Bible.

Enter the popular Christian idea of “quiet time.”

Enter the false guilt many of us feel about it.

In Western Christian culture, we assume certain components for this personal habit. Solitude. Silence. An hour or two of reading, study, meditation, and prayer. Good coffee in an inspirational mug. Perhaps some soft worship music in the background. But how realistic are these, really? (This mom is shaking her head as her kids scream in the background.)

True, as individuals, we will not grow in our hunger for God apart from personally knowing him and loving his word. But if we limit our engagement with Scripture to this individualized “quiet time” format—even without realizing it—we not only fall into false guilt and discouragement, but we also miss the many creative (and biblical!) ways of nourishing our souls with it—such as our main spiritual meal.

Your Main Spiritual Meal

Most Americans eat three main meals every day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We need these meals for proper nutrition and growth. We may be able to snack our way through the day for a while, but a sporadic, limited way of eating won’t sustain or strengthen us in the long run. Whole, well-rounded meals are necessary in order for us to grow.

So, in light of the concept of “quiet time,” here’s a question worth pondering: Have you considered that your main spiritual meal is to be enjoyed at church?

When you think about engaging with your Bible, does your thinking include the weekly worship service? Does it involve consuming Scripture alongside God’s people? Do you believe that this important “meal” matters? It doesn’t just matter. It is the believer’s main spiritual sustenance.

But, you may be wondering, isn’t it important for believers to be sustained, day by day, by reading their Bibles? Of course it is! Private, devotional reading and study are very good things, as we have seen so far. We will look at this practice more in the next chapter. But Scripture shows us that God’s words have overarchingly been directed to his gathered people, not solely to individuals.

For example, when God spoke the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, he intended them for the Israelites, his redeemed people (Ex. 20). When God spoke to the prophets, bringing them his words of remembrance and warning, he told them to relay these words to his wayward people (Isa. 1:4; Jer. 2:1–13). When God spoke his law through prophets like Joshua (Josh. 24) and kings like Josiah (2 Kings 23:1–2) and priests like Ezra (Ezra 7:10; Neh. 8:1–3), he did so in the hearing of all God’s people.

And what about the New Testament? This section of our present-day Bible was composed for the early church, God’s gathered people. Whenever you read your New Testament, you are reading historical accounts leading up to the church (like the Gospels and Acts), letters to the church (like 1 and 2 Cor., Eph., and Rom.), and prophecy about the church (Rev.).

The Lord clearly loves communicating with his people as the gathered church. And this reality tells us something vital about what happens on a Sunday morning.

Feast on the Abundance of God’s House

The next time you feel discouraged and guilty about not reading your Bible the way you think you’re “supposed to,” do this instead: remember the previous Sunday at church, and breathe a sigh of relief and praise.

You have consumed God’s word. More than that, you have feasted on its abundance. Through singing it, praying it, reading it, and hearing it preached alongside God’s gathered and beloved people, you have “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” Your soul has been truly nourished.

And over time, your appetite for God’s words will grow, and your hunger for him will be satisfied.