Some people do not really pay attention to how they are nourishing themselves. Their eating habits are full of sugar and processed foods. They eat whatever, whenever they want. Some people eat much less than what they should, while other eat much more.
Building a consistent and balanced eating habit is important for our bodies. Through what we ingest, our bodies will get the necessary nutrients and vitamins to keep properly functioning. Overall, in order to maintain a healthy body, we need to take care of what and how we eat.
The same way, some Christians let themselves be influenced by a variety of doctrines. With technology and social media, spreading information and, consequently, the Gospel became much more convenient; on the other hand, it also opened the doors for the fast spreading of many false teachings. In this urge to consume information, some Christians fill themselves with a variety of teachings without really discerning right from wrong, the biblical from the heretical, and end up lost and failing to discern the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The same way a bad eating diet can be extremely dangerous to the body, an unbalanced Christian life is also harmful.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14:29, that we should weigh carefully what is said in a prophecy, according to what is written in the Bible. Therefore, we should also weigh every preaching we hear by what the Bible says. If the teaching somehow goes against the main and basic principles of the Bible, we can be sure that it is not trustworthy.
For example, we know that Jesus died for us on the cross, carrying away our sins, misery and diseases. When we accepted Him as our Lord and Savior, we were made new creatures, with our spirits connected to the Spirit of our Father. We now possess this freedom from the strongholds of misery and sin by faith. This is one of the workings of the grace of God. His grace cannot be obtained by our own merits, but it is a gift to us because He is good. Any doctrine that goes somehow in the opposite direction to this is false.
Some modern teachings try to imply that, after accepting Jesus and becoming a son or a daughter of Christ, you can remain the same because the grace of God already forgave your past, present and future mistakes. It is the famous “come as you are and stay as you are because Jesus loves you”. Even though it is true that we all can come to Jesus as we are, no matter how sinful we were before Christ, it is also important to understand that, as Christians, we need to live for His purposes. It is not simply our lives anymore. We are not the owners of our own lives. We became part of something bigger. Ignoring this fact is simply throwing away all the sacrifice Jesus made for us.
The Bible, in Ephesians 5, tells us to be imitators of God. Therefore, there is a journey we need to go through in order to perfect ourselves into being sons and daughters of God. Christ saved us and brought us to His kingdom for a purpose. And we need to understand this purpose. The grace of God, the same grace that saved us, gives us capacity to proceed in our Christian walk; however, it does not give us permission to stay the same as our old selves with old habits and thoughts. The freedom we have under God’s grace is the freedom of the strongholds of sin, not the freedom to behave anyway.
As Christians, we need to understand our true identity – who we are in Christ and the purpose we have with this new life. There are plenty of doctrines and teachings out there, trying to deceive us into accepting something other than the truth based solely on the Bible. Apostle Paul already admonished us about that in Ephesians 4:14 – “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming”. The existence of false teaching is not new; however, with the fast advance of technology, it seems that the spreading of heresy has become broader than ever before.
As Christians, we need to be aware of what the Bible really says in order to build a strong foundation in our hearts. The only way to build that foundation is through meditating in the Word of God. The Bible says that the Word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). The more we meditate on His Word, the more we set ourselves on the right walk with our Father, building an intimate relationship with Him. The same way we can educate ourselves into eating good and nutritious food that will nourish our bodies and truly satisfy our needs, we can educate ourselves into selecting what kind of sources we are going to listen and learn from, always based on the Word.