Glorify God in Eating

I’m a Mennonite. Mennonites have this thing for food–at least, the ones I know. Almost every time a group gets together, there’s food. A non-Mennonite man who attended my church for awhile declared that we could gather on the top of the water tower and still have food! I’ve heard and had conversations about eating healthy, eating too much–just eating/food in general. 🙂 And I have thought, at least in passing, about my eating habits and how they should change.

But it wasn’t until I read Michelle’s post that I really started thinking about it. And after I commented, I started feeling fairly convicted and challenged. Listen to yourself, Julie; take your own words to heart. After all, you did say you want to think about what you say and believe it and apply it to your life.

Anyway, the topic has stuck in my mind, and I decided to delve into it and share with you. 🙂

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What we consume is so much a part of us. I’m starting to pay attention to that.

Michelle, “How to Eat (and other things I’ve discussed recently)”

“You are what you eat.” While this is (at least somewhat) literally true (since the nutrients from the food we eat basically turn into our cells), that’s not what was originally meant. The statement originally came from a Frenchman and a German, who wrote respectively, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are” and “Man is what he eats.”

Neither Brillat-Savarin or Feuerbach meant their quotations to be taken literally (that would be rather messy). They were stating that that the food one eats has a bearing on one’s state of mind and health. …

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/you-are-what-you-eat.html

When I asked some of my friends what they thought about this whole topic, one of them said that when we eat bad, we feel bad; and that a lot of health issues and diseases can come from improper diets (over- or under-eating, eating unhealthily, etc.). I myself had commented on Michelle’s post, “…what and how much/often we eat is related to how we feel/act/look.”

… If my sugar crash causes me to be grumpy to my neighbor (whom Christ told me to love), then the issue is mine. I need to control myself not only in my response to my neighbor, but also in my consumption of sugar.

Michelle, “How to Eat (and other things I’ve discussed recently)”

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1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and 6:19-20 tell us that our bodies are the temples of God. Temples are to be holy, consecrated, well-taken-care-of, etc; we are to bring God glory. When, as you said, we eat to “delight the tastebuds and not nourish the body,” how does that bring God glory, or keep the “temple” consecrated?

Julie, comment on “How to Eat (and other things I’ve discussed recently)”

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19-20 (KJV)

(I’ve heard several things about “temples” since I started thinking about this topic. I won’t elaborate here, since most of it wasn’t directly talking about eating and glorifying God in that. But I might do a future post {or several; we’ll see} about being temples. So if you have any comments/ideas/etc. on that topic, feel free to share! 😉)

Since the God of the universe, the Almighty, the Judge, the Creator, the Father, the Savior–since that great God sees fit to dwell in these mortal, from-dust-and-returning-to-dust, temples called humans, how can we not strive to upkeep those temples? To keep them clean and pure and holy and open to Him and set-apart and consecrated and glorifying and pleasing Him in every way possible?

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…whatever we think of as belonging to God must be thought of as holy.

A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

God is holy. I am His; my body, my soul, my life–all belongs to Him. So my eating habits should be holy: dedicated/consecrated to God, devoted to the service of God.

I realize that [how/what we eat] not the most important part. After all, Jesus said that it wasn’t what goes into a man but what come out that’s important.
But here we are, stuck in human bodies that need to be fed. And if we are feeding them with the idea that food is for energy and stamina and for recycling into building the Kingdom, how different an approach that is to food [than it] being for simple pleasure, for tickling our tastebuds and for giving us a short-term high.

Michelle, “How to Eat (and other things I’ve discussed recently)” (underlining added)

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I eat dessert sometimes. I ate Thanksgiving dressing and mashed potatoes. And you’d better believe I enjoyed every bite.
But when every day becomes a desire to only delight the tastebuds and not nourish the body, I have a problem. …

Michelle, “How to Eat (and other things I’ve discussed recently)”

A sermon preached recently at my church was about sin. A portion of the notes I took says:

Some things are good or at least not wrong. But when we love it more than we should, when we let it control us, when it’s taken in excess–it’s sin.

Eating junk food, sweets, greasy food, etc. isn’t necessarily wrong. But when we love unhealthy food more than we should, let it/our desire for it/our appetites control us, when it (or even healthy food) is taken in excess. . . it’s wrong. It’s sin.

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I’ll admit I used the Internet quite a bit to find ideas, definitions, verses, etc. And that’s how I came across this interesting post! It lists five ways to glorify God in eating:

Instead of living in fear, I would encourage you to use the Fruit of the Spirit in your eating, making eating an act of worship by responding to food with:⁣
1. Joy
2. Peace
3. Patience
4. Self-Control
5. Faithfulness

Becky, “5 Ways To Glorify God In Your Eating”

She also included the following verse, which I think is a good way to close this post. 🙂