Good morning, Five Minute Families. Do you ever complicate an issue? Overthink it? Spend so much time thinking about it from so many angles that you lose sight of what’s important? We are to plan, yet, we are also to trust the Lord as Proverbs 16:9 states, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”

In life there are five essential needs of human survival. Those are air, water, food, shelter, and sleep. Likewise, as five-minute families, we need to remember the five essentials in creating a strong Christian household and we can use the five basic needs as an analogy, just as God did in His Word.

Air is the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew word for spirit is ruah, which, in its most basic sense, means breath, air, or wind. Without the Spirit, we find ourselves suffocating by the weight of our sin. Just as a patient with the lung disease COPD needs not just oxygen but also needs to expel carbon dioxide, if we do not keep ourselves attached to the spirit by praying, reading God’s Word, and obeying what it says, we will find our lungs – our lives – too filled with the carbon dioxide of sin to truly fill our lungs – our lives – with the refreshing, renewing oxygen of the Holy Spirit. Remember Acts 17:28a “For in him we live and move and have our being.”

The second essential need is water. In the Christian home we are talking about the living water of Jesus Christ. John 7:37-38 says, “On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.’” And Jeremiah 2:13 “For my people have committed a double evil: They have abandoned me, the fountain of living water, and dug cisterns for themselves—cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Next is food – the milk and meat of God’s word and teachings. 1 Corinthians 3:1 and 2 reminds us that “Brothers and sisters, when I was there, I could not talk to you the way I talk to people who are led by the Spirit. I had to talk to you like ordinary people of the world. You were like babies in Christ. And the teaching I gave you was like milk, not solid food. I did this because you were not ready for solid food.” As we mature, we eat more meat. Some say the meat of God’s Word is the deeper, more complex Christian teachings, but specifically in Hebrews 5:12-13 we see that the meat of God’s word is righteousness: “Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of God’s revelation again. You need milk, not solid food. Now, everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant.” Remember, five-minute families, we must grow in our understanding of God’s basic principles but we must also grow in righteousness.

Fourth, we all need shelter, shelter from the elements that threaten us. Thankfully, God is our strong tower as Proverbs 18:10 tells us “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are protected.”

And, last but not least, the final basic need in life is sleep. For the Christ-follower, that means both rest in the waiting and rest in the doing. We know from Matthew 11:28-30 that God will give us rest from the wearying cares of the world, and as we practice God’s Sabbath rest, He will also provide rest and renewed energy for our daily lives.

How are you doing in your homes to make sure that you yourself and your family have these five basic essentials of the Christian life met? If you feel like you are falling down in one of these areas, invite God to reveal to you what your weaknesses are and how best to address them in your family.

As always, we thank you for taking these five minutes each week to listen to the Five Minute Family devotional. We are excited to report that the podcast has now been heard in forty-seven countries. We started sharing the radio devotionals as podcasts when Dustin at WECO radio was kind enough to send them back to us with the intro and exit music added. We want folks to know about what we believe and what we teach hear at Clear View Retreat, so if you have enjoyed any of our radio shows or podcasts, please share about this Five Minute Family podcast with your friends and family. Thanks. Be blessed!