Becoming A Special K Christian In A Krispy Kreme World

In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.
–Psalm 16:11

One day I discovered I was out of my usual breakfast cereal. So I went to the supermarket, and the closest thing they had was Special K cereal. As I was about to make the purchase, I was approached by a temptress. She was seductively dressed in green, red, and white.

She was a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Suddenly I had a choice to make. I had to choose between taste and nutrition, between health and happiness, between the short-term exhilaration that comes from a sugar high and the long-term satisfaction that comes from a bowl of healthy cereal.

That is a choice we all face, not just in our physical diet but in our spiritual diet. All of us have a hunger for more in our relationship with God–we want more joy in our worship, more power in our prayers, more success in our struggles. The question is how we satisfy that hunger. Do we go for taste or nutrition? Sugar or substance? Short-term exhilaration or long-term satisfaction?

This week, as we conclude our study on the Holy Spirit, we are going to talk about the difference between a Krispy Kreme Christian and a Special K Christian. The Krispy Kreme Christian is always looking for new revelations, new manifestations of the Holy Spirit. In other words, he is looking for spiritual experiences rather than true spirituality. What do I mean by that? In his book “The Life God Blesses,” Gordon MacDonald listed four qualities of spiritual experiences:

• They require little discipline. The Krispy Kreme Christian is focused on the external–he is always looking for a new song or new preaching to give him that buzz. Therefore, he never has to engage in mundane disciplines such as reading the Bible or obeying God.
• They focus more on emotion than on transformation. When the tears dry up and the goose bumps subside, the Krispy Kreme Christian is the same person he was before.
• They are short-lived. And when the Krispy Kreme Christian comes down off that high, many times he finds himself lower than where he started.
• They focus on the participant rather than on God. For the Krispy Kreme Christian, it is all about him and how he feels, not about God and His purpose.

The Krispy Kreme Christian seeks out spiritual experiences that will lift him up in the short term, but the Special K Christian looks for lasting satisfaction.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “Becoming A Special K Christian In A Krispy Kreme World” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2011.

Gordon MacDonald, “The Life God Blesses” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 56-59.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.