Fat. A word that causes more grief than the three letters deserve.
For most of us, gaining weight is much easier than losing it.
Those five pounds I lost from September to November? Yup, they reappeared in the three weeks leading up to Christmas. And it took until now to lose them again.
We’ve all heard how excess fat can create health problems, including high cholesterol levels and increased risk of heart disease and stroke.
But did you know spiritual fat can create spiritual heart disease?
In Acts 28:27, the apostle Paul quoted from the Old Testament book of Isaiah (Isa. 6:10) when he wrote:
“For the heart of this people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and they have closed their eyes, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them” (Acts 28:27).
Dull hearts. Other translations use words such as calloused, hardened and insensitive. But the meaning of the original Hebrew word in Isaiah includes reference to being greasy, gross and fat. That’s why the King James translation translates Isaiah 6:10 as “Make the heart of this people fat” and Acts 28:27a as “For the heart of this people is waxed gross.”
Yes, our spiritual hearts can become gross and covered in fat.
It happens when we no longer mourn over our sin, both individually and as a nation.
When we refuse God’s solution to our problems and seek our own futile answers.
And it can even happen when we become so numb to a world where wrong is right and right is wrong that we give up being salt and light.
Is this how you feel?
Discouraged at the state of our world?
Wondering how we could have gotten to the point where laws permit a baby to be born and then allowed to die without medical care?
Dejected at how intelligent people are convinced gender is something we can choose and change based on feeling instead of physical reality?
Please don’t let your heart grow dull. Calloused. Fat.
Don’t give up hungering and thirsting for truth—the truth of God’s Word and the person who is truth: Jesus Christ.
And please don’t throw up your hands in surrender at the hopelessness of it all.
Be salt and light. Don’t be fat. {eoa}
Ava Pennington is a writer, speaker and Bible teacher. She writes for nationally circulated magazines and is published in 32 anthologies, including 25 “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books. She also authored Daily Reflections on the Names of God: A Devotional, endorsed by Kay Arthur. Learn more at avawrites.com.
This article originally appeared at avawrites.com.
