yummy yummy eat eat eat eat.. KABOOOM!: Food, Jesus, and me

I'm one of those people who's able to tell how their relationship with God is going by the amount or the type of food she's eating.

Strange, but true. It's not that the signs happen over a day or so- it's more a pattern that emerges over the period of a week or more. Bad signs are if I'm eating waaaaaaaay too much in general (I don't mean this as in ooh-I-usually-only-eat-a-carrot-stick-and-a-bran-muffin-every-day-and-this-week-I-actually-ate-five-potatoes-eek; I mean it in the I-usually-eat-three-or-four-solid-meals-a-day-and-lately-I've-been-eating-so-much-more-than-that), or if I'm eating way more junk food than usual. I say that this is a bad sign, because for me this is usually correlated with other behaviours that show I'm not trusting in Jesus as I should or that I'm succumbing to the tyranny of my body's unhelpful desires. (I like to eat healthily, you see, and I usually can't stand copious amounts of junk food.)

As it is, this week has been a baaaaaaad week eating wise, both in amount and in quality. And lo and behold, I haven't done any of my QTS in ages (not that this is a sin, but again, this is also one of the things God uses to draw my attention to how my relationship with Him is going). This has made me realize a couple of things:

1) Quite often as people, we get taken in by appearances.
e.g. If I were to go around telling people that I am a glutton (which I have already) people tend not to believe me because I'm not showing the evidence of my sin and I'm not 20 kgs overweight. I'm a hyperenergetic bunny with a reasonably fast metabolism, and so it is that the signs of my bad eating don't really show on my frame (unless I indulge in it for quite a while). But that's a false correlation, that people who weigh more are not self-controlled when it comes to food, and that those who weigh less, are. My gluttony stems from a heart condition - I'm just fortunate in that it hasn't become a physical burden as of yet.

2) As my friend Simon said, I should be feeding my needs, not my wants.
Why, you ask? Because otherwise I'm going to become fat? NOPE!! Wrong reason! (Well, that's a good reason for various health reasons, but that shouldn't be the motivating reason.) It's because the Bible says we should practice self-control. Because God has said that He will provide all our needs, so we don't need to overfill ourselves in fear of not knowing where our next meal is coming from (like as in the Bushman diet, as my one friend says). Another friend told me that he overeats when he's bored, but I suppose that's also a sign of discontent, something we should also not be?

3) Self-control is a valuable discipline.
Greed is not nice.
My belly says No!


I'm not saying that everyone's eating habits reflect my own patterns, but I've realized that God definitely uses this in my life to draw attention to Him. Perhaps it's a good time now, before the festive season begins to think about your own eating habits. Let me know what you think.