Are You Eating Junk Food?
Ruth Chou Simons on Craving God’s Word
In a recent interview with Family Life Radio, Ruth Chou Simons, the founder of GraceLaced.com, shared some invaluable insights about faith, surrender and our relationship with God.
Your spiritual journey is a two-way street. God is always there, knowing what you need before you do. But it takes an act on your part to choose to turn to Him, to surrender and to make room for Him in your life.
- God Knows Your Worries, So Surrender Them
Ruth acknowledges, “God already knows everything, right? So it’s not like He’s not surprised by the things that I’m worried about.” He is already aware of your deepest concerns and fears. But why then should you still voice them to Him? Ruth explains, “The reason why He asks us to cast our cares on Him is that we can find Him faithful.”
Surrendering your worries to God is not about informing Him of your troubles; it’s about adopting a posture of surrender.
Ruth says, “We’re not asking Him for help like we’re asking like a personal assistant. We’re saying, ‘You are all powerful.’ That posture actually sets us up so that we realize, ‘okay, I could pick this back up and shoulder it all again. … I’ll drag this another mile,’ or I can start with ‘I think God is one that’s powerful.’”
“When you go to Him and say, ‘I need your help,’ that is a posture of surrender and submission,” Ruth says. It’s a way of acknowledging that God is all-powerful and we are not.
2. God Has a Plan, Trust It
God has always had a plan for you. Ruth shared, “When you look at Scripture, you realize He’s had a plan since the beginning. He’s always known; He’s always had a plan. He had a plan to save us and to redeem us even before we even realized we needed saving.”
God’s plan for you is far greater than anything you could imagine for yourself.
When you keep picking up your worries, you’re essentially doubting God’s plan and His character. “So if that’s the truth, then that will affect whether or not we want to keep picking it back up,” Ruth points out. Trusting in God’s plan means laying down our worries and not picking them back up.
3. The Character of God
Ruth circles back to the character of God, emphasizing that our doubts and fears often stem from a misunderstanding of who God is. “The reality is, when I think like that, I’m actually forgetting who God is. I’m thinking that I’m God and He’s not.”
She recalls the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden, who doubted God’s goodness and thought she could take control. “It’s said she thought perhaps God was holding out on her, that He knew something that she could take for herself and know everything God knows.”
Ruth admits that she often acts like that, doubting whether God truly has her best interests at heart. “When I finally let God be God, turns out that’s what we were made for,” she shares.
4. Staying Rooted in Scripture
It’s so importatnt to stay rooted in Scripture, especially when life throws curveballs our way. Ruth confesses, “I don’t follow my own rules super well. So even if I’m just like, ‘I will use this Bible reading plan and I will read this exactly,’ I’m quitting by Leviticus or something.”
She likens our spiritual appetite to our physical one, saying, “I feel like I always bring things back to food. My natural propensity is to want to eat flaming Cheetos. But you realize what happens with the human body is, once you actually have really good food, you start craving what your body thrives on.”
The same principle applies to our spiritual lives. “I don’t know practically how to increase my appetite for God’s Word except to actually cut off how much I’m filled up by lesser things,” she encourages. Whether it’s social media, Netflix or gaming, we need to take a personal inventory of what’s filling us up but not satisfying us.
As Ruth so eloquently puts it, “Your ability to be anchored in God’s Word is going to be a combination of actually making time and choosing to make time, because we make time for everything, but choosing also to remove the things that are filling you up.”
Take a moment today to reflect on what fills you but doesn’t satisfy you, and make the conscious choice to seek what does – your relationship with God.
Ruth Chou Simons is a Wall Street Journal bestselling and award-winning author of several books and Bible studies, including GraceLaced, Beholding and Becoming, and When Strivings Cease. She is an artist, entrepreneur, podcaster and speaker, using each of these platforms to spiritually sow the Word of God into people’s hearts. Through her online shoppe at GraceLaced.com and her social media community, Simons shares her journey of God’s grace intersecting daily life with word and art. Ruth and her husband, Troy, are grateful parents to six boys — their greatest adventure. Learn more at gracelaced.com.
Follow Ruth on social https://www.instagram.com/ruthchousimons/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/@RuthChouSimons
https://www.facebook.com/gracelaced/
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