Unshackled Moments ~ August 10 ~ Spiritual Diabetes

I have a niece who turned 13 yesterday. She's a beautiful young lady inside and out who happens to have juvenile diabetes. Her pancreas doesn't work, and she can not regulate her own blood sugar. Sugar highs and lows cause different but equally serious, even life threatening, issues. She has been blessed with an insulin pump. The pump allows her to go through her day while it controls her insulin intake. Usually. When it works. Things can happen that cause it not to work right. Sometimes this is immediately noticeable. That pump site isn't correct. Sometimes though the issue may got unnoticed until she gets sick.

We have a similar issue spiritually. It's not our fault. We were born with it, like my niece was born to be a diabetic. But something in our spirit doesn't work right, and we don't produce goodness and righteousness in anywhere close to sufficient quantities to produce and maintain life. We can try and want to all we want. Our spiritual pancreases just aren't capable.  When we come to God through faith we are given an awesome spiritual insulin pump. It's a temporary fix that gives us the goodness and righteousness of Jesus to make up for our insufficiency. The main similarity with real diabetes is that try as we might we can not make ourselves produce what we need to live and need an outside source. Without it we will surely die. The main difference is that when we pump our lives full of Jesus, He replaces what we lack. He covers the need. But more than that, as the Holy Spirit enables us to walk in goodness, righteousness and love, our spiritual pancreases actually start to work some. And one day, on the other side of eternity, they will work as they were intended to when we were created. The other main difference is that unlike insulin, we can never have too much Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Today let us remember that we can not walk with God on our own. Let's make sure that we have our pump site right so that we can receive an influx of the Spirit as we go about our day. And while we're at it, let's say a little prayer for a sweet 13 year old with diabetes.