What Kind Of Nourishment Do You Give Out?
And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come, and that his purpose was to make war against Jerusalem, he consulted with his leaders and commanders to stop the water from the springs which were outside the city; and they helped him. Thus many people gathered together who stopped all the springs and the brook that ran through the land, saying, “Why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water?”
(2 Chronicles 32:2-4)
King Hezekiah was a wise king. He saw that the enemy, King Sennacherib and his army, were near and was determined not to give him and his army nourishment. He commanded his army to stop the water flowing to the outside city but when the people from the town saw what the leaders were doing, they worked together to stop the water as well so the enemy outside the city could not be nourished with their water.
So today we must look at the kind of nourishment we give out not just to other people, but to our spiritual enemy as well. The enemy thrives on negative nourishment from us in our thoughts, words and actions. It helps him to grow “bigger” and stronger in our lives. If we are in constant battle with people, our thoughts are constantly negative and our actions produce hurt and pain, the enemy grows stronger in our lives, keeping us more in bondage. But if we stop the flow of nourishment to him by watching our thoughts, words and actions, following the commands of the Lord and giving encouraging words to others as well as to ourselves, we then stop the flow of negative nourishment to the enemy which then makes him weaker in our lives. This is the same with other people. Sometimes we encounter people who are negative and seem to bring arguments wherever they go. If we refuse to argue with them and give in to the anger they may produce in us, we cut off negative nourishment. We must strive to seek resolution and peace with them but refrain from engaging in the battle of words.
As we see in the scripture, the leaders helped King Hezekiah stop the water flow to the enemy and then the people got involved because they did not want to nourish the enemy who wanted to make war with them. Sometimes at our workplace, schools or even churches we can have times of problems with people who produce negativity within the environment, but when we work together to stop the flow of negative nourishment, we will see a positive result.
When we learn to put this into practice, we will be able to weaken the work of the enemy not only in our lives but in our environment around us. We must feed ourselves and each other positive nourishment that we get from God’s Word so we can grow stronger on a daily basis.