Psalm 119:103 Tasty

If you eat only the same types of food continually, you'll develop a distaste for anything different. People who have been raised on bland foods tend to have little interest in spicy foods. The opposite is just as true, with spicy eaters eschewing bland foods.

The best way to develop a taste for more flavorful foods is to try them. Work your way up to them.

Instead of going straight for the habaneros, try eating foods seasoned lightly with jalapeno. When I was much younger I wasn't at all fond of hot spices. I've slowly tried hotter foods, to the point where I now enjoy eating pickled jalapenos and fried jalapeno-and-cheese poppers, the hotter the better.

For the first fifty years of my life I hated the taste of coffee. Then I experienced a sudden coffee conversion during a mission trip to Mexico. My best friends and my family were all shocked at the seemingly overnight change.

Although it felt like it happened suddenly, my new taste for coffee had taken a gradual and natural progression. I've always loved chocolate and developed a taste for dark chocolates. My favorite is now chocolate bars with 85% cocoa, sprinkled with crumbled cacao bean nibs!

I had also gotten hooked on Arby's Jamocha milkshakes, which is basically a chocolate shake with a hint of coffee flavoring. Today a Jamocha would seem very little like actual coffee, but at the time it was a gateway drug for me, leading me from the bitterest of chocolates to the bitterness of coffee.

I've spent a lot of time over the years around college students, and many of them learned to love coffee when they arrived on campus, but they began with frothy cappuccinos containing about 20% coffee, mixed with sugar and dairy products and assorted flavorings. It takes them a while for their taste to adapt to actual coffee.

How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Psalm 119:103

New believers sometimes experience a similar gradual change in their spiritual taste buds.

Prior to conversion, many people find any talk of spiritual matters distasteful. God-talk makes some uneasy, while it causes others to respond with outright disdain. Those silly Christians and their make-believe God.

But as the Spirit works on their hearts, the God-talk elicits a confusing mix of sorrow and joy. Sorrow as they come to realize the many ways they've been turning away from God. Joy as they discover God has always known them and is waiting for them with open arms.

But even then, the scriptures can take some adjustment. The millenia-old terminology and sentence structures are off-putting, even when translated into modern English. The counter-cultural doctrines elicit shock and even horror among some. If they had a bad experience with religion and church earlier in life, it will take hard work to see through those ingrained legalistic or licentious interpretations and discover the truth of God's love.

And for some it can take a long while to stop seeing reasons why God should hate them, in spite of His repeated promises of grace and mercy and love.

Only by steady devotion to meditating on the Word will they develop not only a taste for the words and ways of the Lord, but a delight in their sweetness.

If you're struggling to develop a taste for the scriptures, build up to it, just like you'd gradually acclimate yourself to coffee or tea or habaneros.

Begin by reading the Gospels. The straightforward stories of Jesus' life are the most welcoming parts of the Bible. Also spend some time in Psalms, which will tug at your heart, and the Proverbs, which will season your mind.

Then move on to the shorter epistles, from Galatians through Philemon, where your mind will be challenged and opened. Eventually you'll move on to discover the more complex flavors of Romans and Corinthians, Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Through it all, remember your goal is to learn to love the words of God, which will deepen your love for God himself.