What do you feed yourself? Weird question to start off a Christian blog if you’re not checking this out with the right mindset, but I’m not talking about the food that goes in your stomach to provide sustenance for your body. I’m talking about a spiritual sustenance, a metaphysical food plan. Because you’re feeding your heart, mind, and soul something, even if you don’t realize it, so let’s talk about what you should and shouldn’t be feeding it.
There are a ton of ways to go about this subject, but I’ll start you off with a story of unknown origin, though it is sometimes attributed to the Cherokee or Lenape Native Americans. It’s been adapted and worked into a number of popular movies and shows, and it goes something like this: “There are two wolves inside you who are always fighting. Which one wins? The one you feed.”
This applies pretty well to spiritual battle for us. There are two sides: Good and evil, God and Satan, and they’re fighting for control over your very being. They are literally warring inside you just like those two wolves. But because of free will, it’s not up to them who wins this battle, it’s entirely up to you. And it all depends on which one you feed.
But this can be a problem because the evil wolf is an incredible scavenger. He can feed off the dregs of pretty much anything. In fact, he gets sustenance merely by you being alive in this world thanks to the evil that occurs in it every day. This world itself creates food for the evil wolf and shoves it down your throat. Sometimes, this food is foul language, sometimes it’s lust, sometimes it’s greed, jealousy, murder, bullying, anger, pain, sadness, loss. Seriously, think of anything bad that happens in this world, anything that hurts you or someone else, anything that causes you to think something bad: it all feeds the evil wolf.
You don’t even have to try to give him food; he’ll just take it. You have to try and stop him from getting food. You have to lock him outside, away from the table, so he can’t get the scraps off the floor.
The good wolf, however, is picky. He only drinks pure milk and eats pure meat. The milk has to be at the perfect temperature, the meat cooked flawlessly, otherwise, he won’t eat it. Things that feed the good wolf include generosity, gentleness, peacefulness, kindness, joy, love. Basically, the Fruits of the Spirit. He’s pretty picky. But that’s because eating anything else makes him sick and keeps him from fighting. It’s detestable to him.
But there is a way to stop the evil wolf from getting any food. And it takes time, hard work, and dedication to the task, but it will work. And it involves you blocking out all the things that tempt you to sin.
Matthew 5:30 says, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” These are the kind of measures you should go to: If watching a TV show causes you to lust or be jealous or curse, cut that off. Stop watching it. If your phone or computer tempts you to watch porn just by being near it, throw them away. If playing and losing sports or games causes anger, stop playing sports and games. The only way to effectively weaken the good wolf is to completely cut him off from any chance of food, kind of like a siege.
The verses that brought this whole thing on actually come from 2 Chronicles 32 with Sennacherib’s invasion of Jerusalem. Verses 2-5 say, “Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he planned war on Jerusalem, so he consulted with his officials and his warriors about stopping up the waters of the springs that were outside the city, and they helped him. Many people gathered and stopped up all the springs and the stream that flowed through the land; they said, ‘why should the kings of Assyria come and find plenty of water?’ Then Hezekiah strengthened his position by rebuilding the entire broken-down wall and heightening the towers and the other outside wall. He repaired the supporting terraces of the city of David, and made an abundance of weapons and shields.”
Most important are the verses about cutting off the water access to Assyria. Typically, a siege works the other way around. By surrounding a city, an attacking army can cut off their supply of food and water so the city will have to survive from only what is stored inside its walls. But Hezekiah turned this around on Assyria by removing access to any water for the Assyrian army but granting his city access through means of a reservoir that channeled water from outside the city directly into its walls.
Instead of his people starving and thirsty, the Assyrian army was cut off from any sustenance and likely would have been forced to abandon its siege had God not stepped in and removed them Himself as indicated in verse 21.
It is to this extreme we must go to stop the evil wolf. We have to wall ourselves in with the good wolf, with God, and lock the evil wolf out, cutting off his access to our problems, fortifying ourselves until the good wolf is strong enough to go beyond the walls and defeat the evil wolf in battle.
The evil wolf brings despair and death with his victory. After he’s grown strong enough to defeat the good wolf, he will devour you and slink off to scrounge up his next meal somewhere else.
The good wolf, however, brings joy and satisfaction with his victory. After he’s grown strong enough to defeat the evil wolf, he follows you everywhere and hunts at your side. He helps you track down his food and food for yourself. And because you have help in the hunt, you both grow stronger and stronger the longer you work together. And one day, he will grow strong enough that he will hunt down the evil wolf and he will tear it limb from limb so it cannot hurt anyone anymore.