Have you ever ruined your appetite for an epic dinner by snacking all day? You wish you could work up an appetite, but it’s too late. The steak is on the table, and you’re not hungry. This is how we often treat God’s Word. Is it any wonder that nibbling long enough from the table of the world would leave us with little appetite left for God?1 If we’re snacking on cheese puffs, we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t have room for steak.

My first college roommate, let’s call him Michael, was a stranger when we met on move-in day. So I breathed a sigh of relief as we quickly hit it off. Ah, sweet relational bliss. Future groomsman material?

It lasted 48 hours.

Michael wasn’t my biggest fan. Okay, that’s an understatement. Michael hated me. What he loved was dispatching naughty words to remind me of that fact.

The cruelty began the moment I left to attend my first campus ministry meeting. Michael made it clear he had no patience for Christians like me. The more involved in campus fellowship I became, the more he seemed to resent me.

Though I can now look back on this situation and smile, at the time it was the hardest thing I’d ever faced. To this day I’m not sure I have ever tried to love someone with more intentionality than I tried to love Michael that first semester. But the harder I tried, the worse it became.

I wasn’t just perplexed; I was devastated. Here I was in college, trying to live for God, and I wasn’t even welcome in my own room.

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