Food and Fitness – Page 4

Pass the Salt, Please

Leave a Comment / May 9, 2011 September 9, 2014

Salt has gotten a bad rap in the last few years. High levels of it are thought to cause high blood pressure. Have you ever tried to eat any vegetables or soup without salt? I never realized the importance of salt until my mother started cooking without it. Needless to say, we keep the salt shaker close by when we go there for dinner. Salt is necessary to make food taste its best. Salt is also a necessary nutrient our body needs. But salt needs to be shaken on carefully. Because if you use too much the food becomes inedible.

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells believers that we are the “salt of the earth”. If we think about this in light of the salt shaker on our table, we can draw a few useful conclusions–

1) The salt is useless if it is in the salt shaker. In other words, if our only circle is made up of Church, Christian Schools, and spending time with our Christian co-workers, we are hanging out in our own personal salt shaker. Don’t get me wrong, my own kids are in Christian school and I know what a blessing church friends and Christian co-workers can be. But are you spending any time getting to know unbelievers? Are you getting opportunities to share the gospel? Do you have some contact with people who do not know the Lord? We cannot reach a lost and dying world, if we have sequestered ourselves in the salt shaker.

2) The salt needs to be shaken on in a small, measured amount. We need to season our speech with comments that lead the discussion towards God. We need to carefully discern the other person’s interest in the things of the Lord, and not come on full blast with heavy doctrinal issues that will make no sense to an unbeliever. We need to take the opportunities God gives us instead of trying to create our own opportunities.

3) We need to season the world, not be like it. It says in Matthew 5:13 but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. While I think it is good to have contact with the world and be friends with unbelievers, be very careful, lest you lose your saltiness. If you are becoming like your unbelieving friends in your thoughts and actions, you may have lost your saltiness. If you never feel uncomfortable or never speak up against something they want you to do, you may have lost your saltiness. If you join them in their bad language, coarse joking, and partying, you probably have lost your saltiness. And if you have lost your saltiness, you have become an ineffective witness for Christ, no matter how much time you spend with unbelievers.

4) Salt is a necessary nutrient for our bodies. You cannot eliminate all your sodium intake or you would see very negative consequences. Christians are on this earth for a reason–we should provide light and joy and life to those around us. We should bring a presence of unconditional love, boundless joy, and peace to relationships and situations. If we are criticized or disliked, it should be because of our stand for Christ*–not because we are a hypocrite or talking only of ourselves or causing strife or gossiping about a friend, etc.

May we represent Christ in such a way that we are sprinkled out on the world with grace, with love, with joy, with peace. Always in moderation and with wisdom. May we stand for truth, so that we still provide flavor instead of caving in and becoming flavorless and worth only to be trampled upon the ground. What kind of salt are you?

*2 Corinthians 2:14-15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. ¹⁶ To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things?

My Personal Battle

1 Comment / December 9, 2010 December 9, 2010

I am at war. With food. This battle has raged for most of my adult life but has taken on extra intensity as I have approached middle age. TVs, movies, magazines, and websites are filled with gorgeous, shapely women who are without an extra pound of fat anywhere on their bodies. We are bombarded by articles and commercials on how to lose weight. There is an unspoken rule in our culture that to be beautiful you must be thin. This time of year we are bombarded with a variety of mixed message because food plays such an important role in our holiday celebrations. We see tons of TV shows and articles with recipes and directions for making delicious, high calorie food and then are told how not to eat it.

In the recent years, there has been much more of an emphasis on healthy living versus dieting, and I think that is a great trend. Because, after all, isn’t that so much more important? Can we truly live our best if we are out of breath when we climb the stairs? Or if we have to spend our money on medications that treat diseases we could avoid by being at a healthy weight?

So what does the scripture say about food? Are cookies and cake evil? Are we commanded to spend an inordinate amount of time on working out and eating right? What is the balance? I found a few verses and I want to be very careful not to take them out of context. But I think there are a few basic principles we can glean from these verses:

1.) Overeating is sinful. To eat more than we need is not only unhealthy but it is sinful. When we eat more than our bodies require, we are gluttons. I only give one example below, but God uses drunkards and gluttons in the same sentence more than once in Proverbs. I don’t know about you, but I find this very convicting. Often is the time I have reached for that extra cookie or snack when I wasn’t the least bit hungry. That is a sin?? I believe the Bible says it is.

Do not mix with winebibbers, or with gluttonous eaters of meat; For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags. (Proverbs 23:20-21)

2) There are not “good” foods or “bad” foods. I know this will be a huge source of contention with some of you who read this. But, I think there are several scripture passages that confirm this. It is not so much about what we eat, as it is about how much we eat of it. Now, to clarify, there is an over-consumption of highly processed, high-sugar, refined products in our culture that render little, if any, nutritional benefits. Perhaps if there are any foods that could be labeled “bad”, it would be these. Partaking of these occasionally is not going to ruin your health. Partaking of these on a daily basis will. We are required to be good stewards of our body. We need to take responsibility and not live in default mode. We need to eat a variety of all kinds of food. And, yes, contrary to what may be popular belief, God did create sugar cane. And He knew that a woman somewhere in history would create a pie…cookies…cake. These things aren’t wrong in and of themselves. It is in the over-consumption of them that we move into the realm of sin.

But food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse. (I Corinthians 8:8)

3) The battle I wage with food distracts me from my spiritual walk. When I focus too much on food–which is shown when I am gluttonous and spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what I will eat OR when I count every single calorie and obsess about everything I put in my mouth and spend hours working out– I am not able to focus on the things that really matter. The bottom line is that God put food on this earth to sustain us and for us to enjoy in the proper balance. When that balance is tipped one way or the other, I move into an area where it distracts me from my true purpose on this earth.

Then He said to His disciples, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. (Luke 12:22-23)

This battle has raged on inside my head for many years. Most women (and men, too) naturally gain some weight around their middles during middle age. Is this sinful? Or is this how God created our bodies to be? I don’t really know the answer to this. I do know, however, that I have a responsibility to keep my body in tip-top shape to the best of my ability…not so I can meet worldly standards, but so I can maximize the amount of time I have on the earth to glorify God and spread the Gospel. But I have to admit…I look forward to not having to worry about it in Heaven! While here on earth, I know I will always find food a source of temptation. But I also know that in this weakness, God can show HIS strength.

Developing Self-Discipline

Leave a Comment / July 3, 2010 April 2, 2013

Here are some exercises for developing the fruit of self-discipline in your life. This comes straight from John MacArthur’s “The Art of Self-Discipline” sermon series (which is extremely convicting, by the way).

1. Clean your environment.

2. Make a schedule.

3. Wean yourself off entertainment.

4. Be on time.

5. Keep your word.

6. Do the hardest task first.

7. Finish what you start.

8. Practice self-denial.

9. Volunteer for tasks outside your own personal agenda.

In the 2-part series he goes on to talk more deeply about the reason we need to be self-disciplined as believers and how to truly work on this in our lives with the Lord’s help. However, this brief introduction of little things we can do to help us in this area of our lives is a great list! I thought I would share it. If you would like to take the time to listen yourself, which I HIGHLY recommend, you can find it here.