As a boy on the farm, I recall my chores of feeding the animals. Hens who laid eggs had to have a bucket of wheat each day. I had to keep the dish of ground oyster shells full to ensure they had the needed calcium for laying eggs with hard shells. They also needed a bucket of laying mash in a feed trough every day.

The pigs ate a great variety of vegetable waste from food preparation, plus skim milk mixed with dusty powdered food from a big 98 lb. sack of pig food. I remember the stick of kindling wood used to stir the pigs’ food in the bucket.

Then I had to gather eggs every day. We had a kind of laying hen called Plymouth Rock. They had narrow stripes of white and black, something like zebras. Their temperament was such that I could gently reach under a hen on her nest to pull out any eggs there and she would not bite me. That was an important consideration for a 7-8 year old boy.

Cows had to be milked twice a day or else they got very upset. I learned a great work ethic. I learned that you do not get anything for nothing and I learned that you had to work consistently every day in order to see results from your labour. Farm life is no place for the lazy or irresponsible.

So as I read Scripture and realized that faith is a living entity, I quickly saw that faith had to be fed regularly and with good food or else it became ill and wither. But what is the food of faith? How do we feed our faith?

The Bible has numerous suggestions for us in this regard. Our text today gives us the first example. Faith needs to be fed on the Word of the Lord. We require regular healthy intake of Scripture to sustain our faith. Promises from Scripture feed our faith to believe God for our needs. So if we are to trust the Lord, we must know what He has promised.

This was precisely how Satan sowed the seeds of doubt in the mind of Eve. He started by asking the question, "Really, has God said...?" Then after questioning the Word of God he moved to a flat contradiction of what God said by stating, "You will not surely die."

The best food for feeding your faith is the Bible. What has God said? What has He promised? How may I pray in faith? These questions are answered in the Bible, the flashlight for the path of obedience.

Are you feeding your faith regularly, daily, weekly? Are the sermons you hear each week full of the Scriptures or simply a few human interest stories punctuated by some funny jokes? At church and in fellowship with believers, do you learn the fear of the Lord which is really the beginning of wisdom?

You need a robust faith to endure the difficulties of life. Get busy this week feeding your faith from the Bible. Your growth in faith will not only bless you but it will encourage others as well.