This is part two in a series on dietary wellness. If you would like to read part one click here: Deciding to Decide: A Look at Dietary Wellness

The Journey To Success

So you have Decided to Decide to eat well and you have said something like, “for the rest of my life this is how I will eat!” You have gone a few days eating right and the thrill of dietary wellness is fading as the donuts, chips , and ice cream call your name. How do you “keep on keeping on” in the journey toward dietary wellness? First, we must define our goals. Then, define what success will be as it pertains to eating well.

WhatAre Your Goals

Are you goals to lose weight, lower blood pressure, curb diabetes or fight it outright? Are there other goals like recovering from a surgery or avoiding family history? Whatever your goals are write them down. Put them in your notes app on your phone or write them in your journal, and make sure that you take the time to look at them often, at least every week. Place them somewhere that you can’t miss them to keep your goals top of mind and your resolve strong.

Defining Success

What is your definition of success? Is success eating perfectly every day without missing a beat? Is it eating mostly well and having cheat foods here and there? Or is it completely giving into cravings and eating junk food when we want to and then when we feel guilty enough about it, getting back on the diet? Probably not the last scenario for sure, but somewhere in between the first two is where we want to be in the real world.

Let’s be honest and realistic, you want to live and have some occasional indulgences here and there. You’re going to end up somewhere that your only options are the friend chicken and the fried chicken.

Having these occasional indulgences are not going to set us back physically if, and only if, they are every once in a while. That is why they are called “occasional indulgences.” Webster’s Dictionary defines the word indulge as, “to give free rein to: to take unrestrained pleasure in”. This is where we must be careful as sometimes those indulgences can lead to our “giving in” scenario from earlier. We must consider these occasional indulgences to be satisfying enough for that moment, then leave that moment there and get back to our journey and what we are going to call “eating on purpose”.

Proverbs 23:20-21

Don’t associate with those who drink too much wine
or with those who gorge themselves on meat.
For the drunkard and the glutton will become poor,
and the grogginess will clothe them in rags.

Eating On Purpose

The phrase “eating on purpose” embodies this text. We must be purposeful in what we eat. Make food work for us instead of us being controlled by food. “Eat to live, not live to eat,” as the saying goes. What we put into our bodies effects not only our bodies but it effects our minds and our self image. It can make us feel sluggish and take our determine how in or out of balance our energy levels are.

At the end of verse 21, the phrase, grogginess will clothe them in rags is so true! How many times have you eaten a fast food dinner and then said, “I feel like getting a run in!” Processed and junk foods make us feel sluggish and we don’t very often achieve our goals as a result of that sluggishness. The couch looks a lot better than the pavement after a junk food meal.

How Do We Respond?

God wants us to enjoy the foods that He has given us to eat. Man has created lots of foods that can cause addictions. If we start by steering clear of processed foods (i.e. high fructose corn syrup and white flour) then we have started eating on purpose. There are many ways to eat on purpose and all of them take self-discipline. Meal Prepping, choosing healthier food options as restaurants and saying no to that fizzy beverage are a few of those disciplines.

Start by praying and dedicating your body to Christ. Ask Him to help you be disciplined and relieve the stresses, depressions and anxieties that lead to over indulgence. Finally, begin by asking Him, when those situation come up that He remind you of HIs abundant grace and ask for strength to stay strong in purposeful eating through those times.

Decide to decide that you will glorify God with your body and eat on purpose!

Matt Fairchild is the Worship Pastor at FBC Lake Dallas and partnering executive chef and owner of Extreme Cuisine Catering in Denton, Tx.

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Recently, I was heading home from a conference and found myself in an airport with six hours to kill. Like any self-respecting introvert, I found an outlet in a corner of the terminal, plugged in my starving electronic book, and grabbed a seat on the floor. This spot placed me right at eye-level with my favorite people- the kids.

A Look at Things From Their Angle

While I love my full-time work in women’s health at Parkland Hospital, my service with the children’s ministry team at my church is often the injection of joy I need to get through week of adults. Kids have an honesty and openness that refreshes my spirit and makes me laugh again. They’re just my favorite.

So there I am, sitting in the floor, exchanging funny faces with this adorable (approximately) 3 yr old girl. Tight brown ringlets shaking with laughter all over her head.  She was travelling with an older woman (grandma?) who was having some trouble, based on the looks she was giving her phone. Oblivious, the little girl was circling the adult’s legs, singing a little song, and overall, being a lovely person

A Change In the Situation

Suddenly from above, a hand grabbed the girl’s arm and jerked her up. Some corrective words were spoken, a little shake was given, and the girl was released to the floor where she curled up around her adult’s leg and cried.

Now, I don’t know what was said. Maybe the adult had told her to be still and she didn’t. Maybe that was the third day of singing that song and the adult couldn’t take it anymore.  I’m not saying that we should never correct children (FAR FROM IT), or that we don’t all sometimes loose our cool. I’m just saying that I had a different perspective this time, and the adult’s action didn’t make any sense to me. If I, a highly functioning, well-educated adult couldn’t understand why a child is in trouble, do you think the child could?

The Bible Meets Life

Jesus teaches us that children are a priority (Luke 18:15-17; Mark 10:13-16). He was busy- busier than that lady in the airport- and he stopped everything to spend a few minutes with some little kids. He hugged them and spent time with them. He warns us not to mistreat them (Matthew 18:6; Luke 17:2) and tells us that we need to be like them (Mark 10:15). 

Additionally (as if we need more than instruction and example from Jesus), modern experts in child development confirm that children’s well-being is based on parental affection, responsiveness, encouragement, teaching, engagement, positive discipline and clear communication of expectations¹. This basically means that we need to speak kindly and clearly, provide consistent consequences, respond to their communication efforts, and love them well. Kids are needy little things, but once we’ve made them, we have clear instructions from the Lord and modern experts to treat them well.

I know that we are all doing the best we can, and sometimes we are going to have a bad day. Thankfully the Lord gives grace abundantly and He wipes our sins far away. But I’d encourage you that next time you are getting to the end of your rope, take a seat on the floor. Change your perspective and let me know what you see from down there.

With you in this, Esther.

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One day a dear friend of mine came to me and said, “I am worried about you and want you to live a good long life.  You are not making good choices and you need to do something about it.” I knew they were right. It was at this point that I realized something:  this body does not belong to me. It belongs to God. I gave my life to following Christ and that means that I follow His Word. I Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “¹⁹ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

I was being disobedient by choosing to eat whatever and how much of whatever I wanted.  This was leading me to have poor thoughts and make bad decisions based on how I felt because of my newly found low self-esteem.  I had removed myself from God’s influence on my life’s well being. I Corinthians 10:31 says, “so whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God.”  I was not glorifying God with my body. I needed to change. I needed to get honest.

Wellness is described in Webster’s dictionary as, “The state of being in good health, especially as an actively pursued goal”.  So what does that mean in layman’s terms? It means trying to be healthy. The first step in wellness is deciding to be well. It is the conscious decision to make positive changes in one’s life.  This has to be the first decision. Then you must decide to act on that decision- or in other terms, decide to decide… easier said than done.

How do we get to the point where we can make that decision to be well? It starts with honesty.  You must be honest with yourself about your current state. Whether overweight, underweight, happy, sad, depressed, tired, grumpy, and the list goes on, you must be honest and come to grips with who you are.  The first step in doing this is having an honest talk with God and giving up our weakness and failures to Him who can set us free from those bondages. Those bondages can hold us back from making the decision to actually decide to do something about our wellness.  The next step is having some practical knowledge and tools to be able to make those decisions stick and change our thought processes to more healthy ones.

I started my journey to wellness by changing my diet.  I was 40 lbs overweight and on medication for high blood pressure.  My outlook on life was low and I was a cranky, tired, middle-aged man.  My outlook on life was getting more and more bleak with every step took.  I couldn’t make it to my car much less even think about going on a walk or doing something physical without getting out of breath.  I didn’t play any sports or outdoor activities and was completely tired and exhausted all the time. My self-image dwindled because of the person I saw in the mirror every morning.  

I prayed to God to show me how to start. Everytime I had already tried by myself I either fell off the wagon, just quit, or the ice cream was calling my name and after four bowls I got discouraged and binged because I felt I was a failure.  

God spoke very clearly to me during that prayer.  The words He spoke to me were these, “I am on your side.”   At this point I knew I could succeed. Not succeed for a little while but succeed for the rest of my life.   God is on your side. He is for you.

The first thing I decided to do was to clean up the food that was entering into my body.  If it had processed sugar or white flour I removed it. Processed sugar and white flour have been linked to multiple issues including diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, fatigue, sleep loss, inflammation and many more issues not listed here. For one month I went without processed sugar and white flour.  I lost 15 lbs.

The processed food we have in this world is not what God meant for us to eat.  He gave us food in the form of fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, and proteins in the form of animals, beans and legumes. This weight loss gave me the energy to start walking which led to more rigorous exercises like lifting weights and running.  Soon I was off my blood pressure medicine. Am I perfect all the time with my diet? No. Do I let falling off the wagon lead to despair and feelings of failure? Nope. I just I have decided to decide to just make my next meal one that is with real food. The road to wellness all starts with putting God first in your life and getting honest with Him.  Let Him back you in your journey to wellness. Decide to Decide to put God first and be well!

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Last week we started a discussion about the Spiritual Tool of Prayer. It’s a tool immense importance. Prayer is our open line of communication with God. We covered last week that God is more concerned with the condition of our hearts than He is with how eloquently we can put together a prayer. This week, I want us to look at what I believe is a much forgotten aspect of prayer for us: Listening

Our relationship with God is just that, a relationship. By their very nature relationships are two way streets. One person speaks the other listens and respond and visa versa. But it isn’t always that case in our relationship with God. Often our prayers look like this: We speak God listens. We wait for God to do what we asked. You see we have cut out a very essential part of a good and healthy relationship…the part where we allow God to respond and we listen.

One of the hardest lessons I have had to learn in my life is when to listen. I’m a talker, I have been since I could talk. I said my first complete sentence at 13 months old…for that record that is now quite literally 30 years of me talking, mostly nonstop. We have to learn to listen. Psalm 131 talks about quieting our souls. Psalm 46 tells us to be still.

This week I want you to try something. During your quiet time when you pray, leave a minute or two, a full 60-120 seconds of time to just be silent and listen to God. See if He moves you, directs you, speaks to you. It may not be that He hasn’t heard the prayer you feel like has gone unanswered, it may be that you haven’t given Him the opportunity to speak. Quiet you should be before the Lord this week and allow Him to speak to you.

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As another eventful week in the life of our church is passing I think it’s time to unpack the spiritual tool of prayer. Fasting and Gratitude are important tools for us to use on a consistent basis they are both important and are given greater power in when used in tandem with prayer.

Prayer is our open line of communication to the throne room of heaven. it’s often something we say that we are going to do but fail in execution. We’ve all heard someone say “I’ll pray for you” yet we knew that they aren’t going to. The intentions are there but there is no follow through. For many of us we feel like we don’t know how to pray. We feel like there are some magic words that we are supposed to say that will move the heart of God to respond to our request. The Bible is pretty clear in letting us know that isn’t the case. When the disciples asked Jesus in Matthew 6 how we are supposed to pray, He gives them the Lord’s Prayer. It’s an outline for how to pray. Paul in Philippians 4 tells us that we should rejoice and with thanksgiving make our request known to God. James 5 tells us that the urgent prayers of the righteous are powerful. You see there aren’t any magic words or special sequences, God already knows that’s in our heart and He wants to respond to it. Pray is a disciple. Our relationship with God is like all others in the sense that it has to be nurtured. Open lines of communication are important. You wouldn’t want to be known as that friend who only called when they needed something, would you? Of course not, it’s the same in our relationship with Christ. This is a point that we’ll explore a little more next week. For now just remember that there aren’t special words for us to say to move the heart of God. That He wants to hear our hearts and knows what is in them. Prayer is a powerful tool. It’s time that we take it out and use it.

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Most of us when we hear the word generosity think of benevolent giving to the less fortunate or charitable work. Thoughts seem to vary though when we think about Christian Generosity or Christian Giving. It’s important to note that these two phrases never actually come up in the Bible. So if they never actually come up in the Bible what do they mean and why do people within church culture use them?

As Christians there we are supposed to live lives that are compassionate and sometimes that goes hand in hand with being generous, but not just generous with our funds generous with our time. Over and over again in the Bible we see people investing into the lives of other people. While we are called to give to the church a much greater emphasis is put on discipleship and whether or not we are investing into the lives of the younger Christians around us. There is, in the Bible a premium that is placed on serving. While the money that is in our bank accounts can be replenished we can never make a deposit that will replenish our time, however we can invest that time into someone else’s life.

While gifts are great, time is the greatest gift that we can give someone. This week ask God how you can be generous with your time and the gifts that He has given you.

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Last week was a wonderful time of worship and fellowship together as we shared in the Lord’s Supper. In the space here we talked about what worship looked like in forms other than congregational music. Reading Psalms, reciting scriptures, and writing about the characteristics of God. The last part of that trio is going to be our focus this morning.

 One of our often neglected tools in our spiritual tool box is journaling. If we look throughout the course of history we see that most great leader kept journals in fact of all 44 Presidents that we have had only one didn’t keep a journal. The Psalms are mostly Davidic writings and what we would consider in modern times to be his journal entries. There is something powerful about seeing your thoughts in writing.

 Writing is a special form of expression and I know, personally, that as I start to write the things that I really want to pray for and the things that are buried deep within my heart begin to surface. There is a psychological and spiritual connection we make when we are writing that we cannot duplicate in any other form. It is a great way to begin to sift through the things that are in our hearts as we, in spirit and truth pursue Christ and His righteousness. The more we are honest with Jesus about what is in our hearts, the more He rids us the things that rob our joy and fills us with His peace.

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The Lord’s Supper is one of the most powerful acts of worship and fellowship that we get to share together as a church. Today’s tool that we are going to examine is the spiritual tool of worship.

When we think of worship it’s hard to keep our minds from thinking about music. Worship is so closely associated music throughout church history that it is hard to look at one without the other, but it is important for us to realize that worship goes much further than just the songs we sing on Sundays and Wednesdays when we assemble together.

Worship and adoration of God should be a part of our daily life. Whether we make it a part of our daily quiet times or if it is something that we make special time for on its own, worship is our way of letting God know the high place that He occupies in our lives. Reading Psalms of praise (like Psalm 23), writing about the characteristics of God, speaking words of adoration in our prayers are all forms of worship. Serving one another and serving at FBC Lake Dallas are forms of worship.

This week, find some time in your daily schedule to worship God in one of the ways we looked at today. You’ll be amazed at how worshiping God in a new way can grow your relationship with Him.

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Last week we took a look into the spiritual disciple of fasting and how we could use that often ignored tool in our spiritual tool box. This week we’re going to take a look at something that we are probably a little more familiar with: Gratitude.

This is the month of Thanksgiving, soon we’re going to be circled around a turkey and table full of grandma’s famous desserts with our family and asked the question: What are you thankful for this year? For many of us this is going to be the only time that we look in the tool box and pull out our spiritual tool of gratitude. Throughout the Psalms we see prayers of thanksgiving and gratitude. The Apostle Paul in his letters reminds us of the necessity of gratitude in our prayers. Telling us with thanksgiving to make our requests known to God.

Don’t wait until the 23rd to be thankful. Start this week. Sit down with a pen and paper and make a gratitude list. Write down ten things you are thankful for everyday. Take the time to thank God for those things and be genuinely thankful for the good things He has done. You could even post it to your social media and encourage others to do the same. Showing gratitude to God for the things He has done in our life is an important way of honoring Him with our hearts and can help open the door for us to see the good things He is doing that we may be missing.

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One of the greatest tools in our spiritual tool box is something that we haven’t discussed yet in this space. It is one of the three parts of our “How” that we discussed last week in our conversation about the Golden Circle concept. Today’s tool is discipleship.

I’m not sure what you think when you get hear or read the term discipleship, but I have, since I was a little kid always thought about the 12 disciples. When I think discipleship I think about 12 guys in robes sitting around a fire or on a mountain listening to the words of Jesus, just like it happened in the coloring books from my childhood Sunday School class.

While this may or may not have happened this way it does conjure up similar images in most of us. Although it may not be totally accurate it does give you a picture of what discipleship can look like. Discipleship can be learning in a small group environment. We talked about this idea when we discussed fellowship a few weeks ago. Discipleship can also look like and is often most effective in one to one interactions. Older generations set examples to younger generations. We take our cues from the people that have been there and done that before. Discipleship takes this to the next level because it requires a commitment from both the person who is being the example and the person who is following that example. Instead of observing one another from a distance the two would have to engage in conversation, accountability and even some biblical study. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Prov 27:17)

Discipleship is essential in how we spread the Gospel, it is actually how we were instructed to spread the Gospel. It’s important for us to remember that discipleship wasn’t something that Christ suggested to us, it was something that He commanded us to do. This week pray about who in your life you could begin to disciple, also pray for someone who may begin to disciple you. Growing together in our faith deepens not only our knowledge of God, but our desire to serve Him.

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