I don’t eat out often but when I do go to a particular restaurant, one of the things I enjoy is their bread rolls. While you are still perusing their menu, the waiters bring these baskets of hot bread rolls and butter to your table. The baskets are usually endless and you can keep requesting for more bread rolls till your food arrives.

What usually happens when I go to this restaurant is that by the time my food arrives, I have eaten quite a bit of the bread rolls such that I no longer have much space in my stomach for the main course. This means that I usually have to take most of my uneaten meal back home in a “to-go” box.

I immediately refrigerate my meal when I get home, and reheat it at a later time when I want to eat it. Of course, the reheated food never tastes as nice as when I was eating it fresh in the restaurant, and sometimes I actually end up not eating all of the food I brought back home.

Recently, I was thinking about how this scenario can apply to our relationship with God. Our relationship with God can be likened to the main course that contains all the substance and nutrition we need to fill and sustain us. However, a lot of us have “bread rolls” that we fill up on which limits the space in our lives for the “main course”. Too often, we stuff ourselves with the “bread rolls” of social media, entertainment, people’s opinions, work, personal ambitions, other relationships etc., and become too full for what should be the most important part of our lives-our relationship with God.

We were created by God and our walk with God should be at the center of our life. When we prioritize God, we set ourselves up for success in other areas of our lives. The more time we spend with God, the more His essence and nature rubs off on us. We are transformed to the extent that we make space for God in our lives.

Some of us complain that we do not have enough time to pray, study our Bible, spend time in worship and fellowship with God but I wonder if the issue is that we really do not have the time, or that we have allowed other things take priority. Rather than start our day in prayer and filling up on the Word of God, we open up our various social media apps and become filled with “junk”. Then, we hurriedly mumble some words of prayers and go about our day.

Just like the bread rolls cannot nourish us properly, and reheated food does not taste as fresh, we cannot receive the best possible benefit of a relationship with God when we have other priorities before God. If we do not make the voice of God the loudest in our lives, we run the risk of allowing ourselves to be unstable and tossed about by people’s opinions and societal ideologies.

Jesus Christ made it clear said in the scriptures that love for God must be our priority!

…You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. Matthew 22:37-38 NLT

God is our source and so He must be our sustainer. In John 15: 4-8, Jesus explains that our relationship with God is the only way we can bear fruit. He further explains that we can find ourselves cast away when we do not take care to ensure we are abiding in Him. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. John 15:4-8 NKJV

Our relationship with God cannot be treated like left-over food in a to-go box to be consumed when we “feel like”. You cannot be one leg in and one leg out with God, you must be all in! This will require an intentional restructuring of routines and habits to ensure that God takes precedence. Like junk food, we may enjoy the taste and appeal of the bread rolls but they harm us more than do us good. This is why a lot of us remain spiritually malnourished and weak! Lack of proper spiritual nutrition is why we don’t have the spiritual stamina required to overcome temptations and surmount the challenges of life.

Remember, it is “the people who know their God (that) shall be strong and carry out great exploits” (Daniel 11:32b). Similarly, “those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

Our ability to be who God truly created us to be is dependent on how much of Him we know and have. We must stop allowing other things encroach into the space that God should occupy in our lives.

God is calling us into a deeper walk with Him and is ever ready to fill us up with Himself.

The question is are you ready to stop eating too many “bread rolls”?