What our soul eats...

This was very timely for me today...I'll tell you why tomorrow. But, in the meantime, enjoy and be encouraged by this blog post from John Piper:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Deuteronomy 8:3,Matthew 4:4)

When our bodies need energy, we know that we need to eat. So we eat a variety of foods, some better and some worse sources of energy (and bodily health, but more on that in my next post). Our body then digests these foods and converts them into energy and we can keep going. No food, no energy. No energy, no going on.

This physical phenomenon mirrors a spiritual reality. Our souls also run on a kind of energy, and so require a sort of food that they convert into that energy.

So what do our souls eat?

Before we answer that question, let’s first ask this: what is the energy that animates the soul? Answer: hope.

Our souls are hope machines. We consume hope every day. And when we run low on hope we start feeling discouraged, even desperate.

All the wonderful things that have happened to us in the past will not fuel our hope if our future looks bleak. We can be grateful for the past. But we must have hope for the future in order to keep going.

But what about faith? Isn’t faith what keeps us going? Well, yes, because you really can’t have hope without faith. They are inextricably linked. But faith is distinct from hope (1 Corinthians 13:13). Faith is the confidence we have that our source of hope is trustworthy (Hebrews 11:1). Hope is the energy of the soul.