Verse 12, “The next morning some Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves
with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul.”
If you haven’t read the story, in the end the men involved in the plot do not succeed in their plan of murder. This made me wonder, “Did they keep their oath?” “Did they starve to death because of it?” “Or did they break it and eat?” To me, it seemed like a pretty stupid oath to make, mainly because it put your life at risk by possible starvation. Not a very wise thing to do, in my opinion. And not a very pleasant way to die, I’m sure. But even considering all my thoughts on the verse, at the time I couldn’t figure out why this verse stuck out to me so much. So finally, I decided it was an interesting verse and left it at that.
Not too long after that day, I found myself in a bit of a slump. I hadn’t read my Bible in several days, mainly because I felt inadequate. I knew I hadn’t been obeying God in a lot of ways lately and I sort of felt like I couldn’t come back and sit before God and read His word, when I was so far from living it. Unconsciously, I was not fellowshipping with God because I was trying to get my life in order first. I had unconsciously made an oath.
Finally, there came a day where I become so convicted of my idleness I, somewhat begrudgingly, sat down to read my Bible. For some reason, I flipped to Acts 23 once more. And as I read the passage, the reason verse had 12 stuck out to me suddenly became crystal clear. I had thought that making an oath not to eat or drink until a goal, such as the one in Acts 23, was fulfilled was stupid, but in essence I was doing the same thing. I was starving myself of God’s spiritual food, of daily bread (Luke 11:3) and living water (John 4:10) until I reached my goal of sorting my life out. But without it spiritual nourishment, I was growing weaker and weaker. And as I became weaker, I became less and less capable of fixing my life. I had no strength to stand up against my sin nature and do the right thing, because I wasn’t getting my strength from the Lord on a regular basis. I was just like those men in Acts. I was being stupid and I needed to stop. I needed to lay down my pride and nourish my soul. I needed to read my Bible and fellowship with God every day, even if my life wasn’t perfect. Because last time I checked, God takes imperfect people and makes them perfect. He can’t do anything with an already perfect person. He needs us to give Him our imperfections, so He can give us the strength to overcome them.
So moral of the story, don’t starve yourself of spiritual food. You wouldn’t start your day saying “I need to get everything on my to-do list done today, so I’m gonna wait to eat until everything is done.” No! You’d run out of strength! You wouldn’t be able to get anything done after awhile and you could even faint. Instead, you’d wake up in the morning and eat a good meal before going about checking things off your list. So, do the same thing with God. Start off your day nourishing your soul with His word and His presence. Use the strength He gives throughout your day as you strive to become more like Christ and fix your imperfections. Eat your daily bread and drink your living water. Don’t starve.
“Give us this day our daily bread” – Luke 11:3 “The Lord’s Prayer”
