Do you struggle with eating too much, feeling like a glutton after finishing a meal and wondering why you didn’t say “Whoa, that’s enough food!” before you got stuffed?
Here’s an approach that might help.
Don’t sit down at a meal aiming to fill up on food, but to fill up with truth. Pray your way through your meal rather than mindlessly forking food into your mouth.
Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Luke 4:4. Eating is a part of human existence, but it can be done with moderation, temperance and wisdom. The more thought is focused on filling up with spiritual truth rather than shoveling food into a physical body, the easier it is to master appetite and demonstrate balance.
Fill up with spiritual truth rather than quantities of food when sitting down to a meal.
The sage of Proverbs wrote, “Give me enough food to live on, neither too much nor too little. If I’m too full, I might get independent, saying, ‘God? Who needs him?’” Proverbs 30:8- 9, MSG
Material food is not what brings genuine happiness and contentment into your life. Spiritual understanding and inspiration does! Go for the good stuff when looking for a feeling of fullness. Fill up on spiritual inspiration instead of more food. Eat enough to get by, but don’t let appetite take over and block out the opportunity to feel close to God, demonstrate dominion over the body, and stay fit in all ways.
Fill up with truth and you’ll never feel too full. But just right!
I really can’t comment on this blog except to say when I was growing up, and this before C/S came into my life at the young age of 26 when my wife committed suicide, food, exercise and how the body appeared to others, wasn’t even taken in thought. It was just done. No damage was experienced either too much or too little. Life was lived to the fullest as best we knew.
Then, after 1960, when thought dwelt on physical exercise, weight loss or what foods were more healthy or not, life took a down turn. In this Century, C/S is definitely needed more than ever.
Dissatisfaction, (mortal mind’s) feelings of emptiness, ennui, etc., are easy targets for the advertising agencies. Not easy to step back and take a long look at ways that one may be a ready-prey to the hardly subtle suggestions of how to get that full and satisfied feeling, however temporary. It seems to be all around us…blatant temptations to buy, get, absorb, take on, achieve, etc, etc. It is not easy to stand apart and say NO! But clearly the more we look to our real Source of satisfaction and healthy living, the more we look to God, divine Mind, will we be more and more able to so do. It is somewhat like physical exercise, the metaphysical wrestlings with the aggressive claims and lures of matter…the more we do it, our strength and ability build up. It is work! But it is rewarding. And more than this, it is essential to our…salvation, really. Mary Baker Eddy says that we are to “Work, work, work, watch and pray.” She did, and look what she accomplished for our world!!
Thanks for yet another helpful reminder, Evan.
:<))
Responding to Tobias, I agree.
And it not just food and exercise and diet and how many steps you take in a day and heavens, treadmill desks, “jawbone” to alert you that you need to get up and walk again, etc., etc., but also the focus on disease, the ads for “cancer” treatment, the fear about Ebola, etc. We are inundated like no other time (because we cannot escape the news and news flashes which are ever-present) with images and enticements to think about disease and death. MBE said the less thought about the body the better, and boy we have to develop the discipline to live in that realm.
Thank you Evan for this great post.
Starting around 1960, as Tobias said, food began being widely used in our USA society as a “recreational drug”. This is pervasive throughout our society. So pervasive that many have mistakenly come to think of this behavior as “normal”, and think somebody is an abnormal “health nut” if you don’t do it. Many are “addicted” to this “recreational drug”. That’s why it often seems impossible to stop overeating. This needs to be healed as “addiction”, similar to the healings of alcoholism and smoking..
Well done Evan. Since being retired and spending a lot of time in the household, I am a victim of this nonsense of over eating.
This was much needed and I will change my habits ROW.
Thanks!
God always show up when I need him. Just two days ago, I went back on a diet plan that I hated every day bit that was effective. Again, I reflected, I was being prohibited foods I adore. However, this blog entry gave me new food “for thought. When the cravings come this time, I am going to remind myself of how God’s spiritual food “fills me up” —already!. Thanks, Evan, for being the messenger 🙂
I think mortal mind will find a way to confirm itself in a material way and sometimes it is food. But I think that whatever you choose to do, begin with the truth, and the rest filters through this confirmation of your true being and the right chose is made. Not to say there isn’t resistance.