Soul Food

“Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”-1 Corinthians 10:31-

Eating is good. (Did I just hear an “Amen”?) Yet every gift God gives us can be twisted into a lure to pull us away from Him.
The gods of food work overtime in the United States. You walk into a restaurant, an environment filled with stimulating sights and smells. The host hands you a menu so thick it has to be divided into chapters, illustrated with mouthwatering pictures. Nobody goes into such a place simply for bodily sustenance. It’s all about satisfaction, isn’t it? We are looking for a little slice of heaven. In fact, we seem to invoke heaven or spirituality quite often where food is concerned: “This cake is heavenly,” “This pie is out of this world,” “soul food,” “angel food cake,” “nectar of the gods.”
Food can be just as much a god for people who would never eat anything except organic health foods. Some people build their lives around diet & exercise, obsessed with outward appearance and enticed to worship their own image.
Whether you eat to indulge or eat to be healthy, either way, you can be drawn into serving something other than the God who created the food itself. In the Scriptures, food is always a gift from heaven. God Himself showed Adam and Eve the great bounty of good things He had prepared for them to eat. He designed us to enjoy eating, not simply to eat as a matter of sustenance. He created a vast spectrum of foods and flavors. He even tells us, “Go, eat your food with gladness.” (Ecclesiastes 9:7).
But we’ll never be fully satisfied until we find our satisfaction in Him. Jesus calls Himself “the bread of life” (John 6:35). And when we come to Him, we’ll never go hungry; when we believe in Him, we won’t thirst again. Even though we can’t see it, He is the food we’re really looking for.

DENYING TODAY
Next time you sit down for a meal, say grace with fresh appreciation for what God has provided. Deny food power over you; it can’t assuage your guilt, and it won’t provide any lasting comfort. Instead, acknowledge that God Himself has provided everything we’ll ever need — physically and spiritually — and be grateful.