Mind Your Manna

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

Deuteronomy 8:3, NIV

My parents were always telling us to mind our manners. That’s good advice, of course. But I wish I’d known as a child the importance of minding our manna, too. Maybe I wouldn’t have missed so many years of feeding on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

For more than twenty years, I shied away from reading the Bible because I thought only pastors, Sunday school teachers, and seminary scholars could really hear God. I honestly did not know that the Bible was God’s personal book for me, too.

This belief was so strongly entrenched in my mind that all through middle school and high school I did not even speak to a boy who went to my church because he told me he was going to marry me. Because he was a preacher’s son, I thought he was closer to God than I was. If God told him about our future marriage arrangement and didn’t tell me, that added to my insecurities about God and was too much information for me to handle as a young teen. I literally ran in the other direction when I saw the boy at church or school! I finally apologized years later at a high school reunion.

Minding our manna is simply an easy way to remember to make God’s Word a habit. When we do what He says by the power of His Holy Spirit, we grow practically in our faith. Guess what follows? Joy! We feel good inside when we follow God’s instructions. As minding our manners is important for our social skills, God’s Word—our manna—is essential for our spiritual growth.

Read God’s Word, chew on it, and do what He says. Remember, the manna did not fall from heaven into the mouths of God’s people. They had to go out of their tents and gather this one-of-a-kind food. Mind your manna.