1 Corinthians 6:19-20

"You are not your own.  You have been bought with a price.  So glorify God with your body."

Powerful words.  And, while Paul is speaking about succumbing to sexual immorality and sexual sin, I find this verse applicable to a different idol in my life: food.

Oh, food, how much I love thee, let me count the ways.....

Unfortunately, counting the ways that I love food conveniently leaves out counting the calories.  ><

Food is a good thing, a gift of God that was given before the Fall of Man and will exist into eternity.  But like all good things, the problem of sin is that I want to twist that good thing into a bad thing.  I either run to food as a source of comfort and security or I use not eating as an excuse for sin (cf. last night) or I just eat because I feel like eating and don't want to discipline my body for righteousness. So 1 Cor 6:19-20 is today's verse.  Glorify God with your body.

In light of that, I am using the website SparkPeople to help me try and begin disciplining my body and my love of food.  Now, granted, I am not perfect at this and that pan of double chocolate brownies in the kitchen will probably break down my will to diet soon enough.  But I am trying to learn discipline.  And if that means today I only eat one brownie instead of three, then today is a success based in God's strength.

I remember Eric Simmons giving a great example at New Attitude one year.  He had this huge box of fresh Krispie Kream donuts sitting on the podium and proceeded to talk about how donuts for him had been an idol.  It was not the object in and of itself, he said, that was evil or idolatrous.  It was the fact that he wanted this little piece of dough TOO MUCH!  And it took much prayer and accountability and grace to get him to the point where he could eat that donut and Glorify God for it.  That is where I want to end up.

This is not dieting for the sake of losing weight.  This is trying to use the medium of SparkPeople as a means to keep myself in check.  And, with God's grace, I will do just that.