A Bible-study Idea for Adults

  

 

 

Life is full with choices and dilemmas that keep us in need of prayer. But with prayer, choices become easier.

Some choices are easier when made shortly after being in prayer with others, like finally making peace with a decision just after leaving a church service, or days after beginning to pray for someone about a need.

But some choices also are made easier with grace. When you receive something — even the idea of something — with grace in Jesus, it's easy to receive* that something. But the Bible says if you the individual are not able to receive something in good faith, in good conscience, then that, for you, is sin. And grace may not help that sin.

When the King James Version of the Bible speaks of Heaven's "manifold grace," that means God's grace varies according to our individual relationship with Jesus. That's why, at one point as a minister, the apostle Paul made the decision to abstain from eating the meat he knew he was allowed to eat as a workman in the Lord. Paul reasoned, at least once, that it would be better to abstain, even for the rest of his life, as long as eating all that he was allowed to eat would cause a brother of weak conscience to stumble. That self-control, on Paul's part, could only strengthen Paul in faith.

Paul was one to rejoice, just like Nehemiah, that God made good our freely given sweet (like honey) and meaty foods. But Paul also was one to tell people bold truths: when people were twisting the idea of eating with grace, joy, and thanksgiving from the heart, together with thoughts of perversion or sexuality, as in Romans 1.

And Jesus, before Paul, had given stern warnings.

The truth of the matter is that anything of the life we are meant to have on this side of Heaven, can serve God's grace and glory, even if only for a season. Conversely, things of life on this side of Heaven, can be used ungodly, whether misuse is of food, or of the physical body.

It's shameful, but there are those who boldly say all things were meant for food, and that all appetites are for "God's" glory.

It's sickening, the way some feel.

But thank Heaven we can live delivered or separate from that. ... Thank you, Jesus.

And thank you, Lord, that, as Christians, we can have discernment about what's good for us, and what isn't — and can use that discernment to prepare both healthy foods and foods we realize are a little less healthy but joyful in a heavenly way.

That's because, in Jesus, we realize Heaven doesn't want bickering over food. He wants us to have fellowship, one with another, in as much as we can.

God gave Peter, the disciple, an uncommon calling — sometime after Jesus returned to the Spirit alone, or to His heavenly existence. I'm sure more than one disciple wanted to go onward to Heaven when Jesus wasn't physically present anymore. And I'm sure more than one felt convicted in Spirit, against doing anything of sin (because of a longing for Heaven, not so much because of legalistic feelings about Hebrew law).

I say that, because, in my walk in Jesus, I had so much a closeness to God's word at first, that a pastor who spoke with me personally, muttered, at one point, "too Heaven-bound to be any earthly good." I know that feeling, of being close to the Lord.

God knows that happens in the lives of some Christians. And to help bring our walk back closer to earth, for His good, Heaven may give special assignments. For example, in Peter's case, Heaven's instructions were to step away from His Hebrew understanding for at least a time, and go to fellowship, to eat meals, with Gentiles. Those (non-Hebrew) Gentiles weren't doing anything adverse to health, costly to faith, or against faith when they would eat "fourfooted beasts" (presumably, only those split-hoofed animals that ate grasses — because Heaven's morals had become part of the Christian heart — but maybe prepared in clean ways that were different than the Hebrew way), "wild beasts" (maybe chickens!), "creeping things" (maybe gators?), and birds that flew.

By grace, God gave freedom to make choices about meats He would no longer consider evil to consume for sustenance.

But being faithful, we know that can only goes so far.

Faith is a matter of living in good conscience.

~

* Dear Reader: Thank you for reading. I hope this is somehow a help to you or someone in your life. Please be patient, as I have been, wherever one of my posts may have an awkward sentence or word. I have a problem with someone hacking my posts, and I don't always realize, right away, that someone has changed something I've posted. ... God bless us, going forward.

It's Not about Having a Perfect Diet

     

There's so much to learn on this side of Heaven: how much to eat, and when; how often we can have a favorite unhealthy food; what's truly a blessing for us to eat; and how much we can be thankful for God's kind Grace on the a-little-less-than-healthy choices we sometimes need to make.

All over this world of ours, we're growing to have a little more awareness of God's Grace on our foods. We can thank Heaven for the healthy stuff we can only eat occasionally. And most of us can thank Heaven for the milk and eggs that help fortify us almost each day.

But some of us, like me, need to learn more moderation. And we ought to start talking with others about the moderation we already have.

When it comes to me and bread, for example, I'm not very moderate. I'll eat a lot - a lot! - of the wrong breads, every day, if given the chance. I have the potential to go for a large, factory-processed honey bun, every day, if I don't watch myself, and that's despite the fact that I know those honey buns are made of a fine cake flour and other stuff that a body digests so quickly, that it all (right away!) converts to sugars that put a sudden heavy load on those organs that are trying to handle my blood sugar.

And I know the same about the type of bread and the type of sugar used to make canned ravioli. But if there's ravioli like that to spare, and I'm having a difficult day, and I'm stranded for lunch, that's what I have to be thankful for. Yet it's days like this that remind me how much we need to do better than we are.

When we're thanking God for bread each day (both the bread of His word and the bread that helps us to physically live), we ought to be sure we're thankful. We ought to be sure we're thankful, from our heart of hearts, for whatever it is - thankful whatever it is has come from a place of Grace, and that whatever it is will help sustain us and help shape our sense of peace, thankfulness, and sometimes joy.

We also can be thankful for skills gained and lessons learned on those days we participate in preparing our own meals. Of all the things to be angry about while we're living this life, learning through food preparation isn't anything to protest!

In fact, did you know preschool babies as young as a year old, now, are dabbling in the kitchen - and not only at home? Before COVID, some preschools were having family-style meals, where toddlers were learning to appreciate selecting vegetables to eat at the lunch table, or were growing to like putting fresh lettuce on their individual sandwiches, for example.

Those babies were becoming more mindful and contented about food choices that were good for every day, instead of expecting foods that would have been candy-like, every day.

And some preschools took that a little further. Some encouraged their children by showing them the work that goes into cooking from scratch, and the fun in participating. That's something that has the potential to help a child develop, from an early age, in so many ways!

Just a few strengths built by participating in food-preparation tasks:

• Having stronger fine-motor skills (Fine-motor skills are those that give us dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and overall control of small muscles, including those muscles that help us use our fingers. Internet sources like WebMD say we need fine-motor skills in order to stir or mix food, for example, and imply early development of those skills helps better suit us for more complex tasks, such as playing instruments or participating in sports. But that's not all!);

• Having more aptitude to stand or sit still to engage in a task;

• Developing an ability to keep on task longer;

• Being better able to do coordinated, start-and-stop tasks (such as pressing a rolling pin to start, and quickly stopping to change direction);

• Having an overall awareness that food needs work to prepare;

• Knowing it's fun to complete tasks in a group setting;

• And beginning to know there's more to our day-to-day than just eating whatever we see!

It takes thought to make our meals, and to make food more healthy (and tasty). But I do not mean to say we have to have perfect diets, low-fat everything, or anything else on that order.

Instead, I want to say, we can do better at with our everyday ways of living! We can be more aware and active in living a little better.

We don't have to be vegan. We don't have to have organic. We don't need expensive. And we don't have to ban butter and buttermilk. We just need to be more aware.

We may need to recognize there's not one fresh fruit on God's green earth, that will give anyone diabetes!

And we need to maybe think things like: That old, family teacake recipe is naturally low on sugar; the small ratio of sugar to flour makes it nearly two times lower on sugar than a sugar cookie; it has only half a cup of traditional buttermilk (spread over 40 to 50 cookies!); and it's tastier than bread, because of the citrus juice in the traditional buttermilk, and because the just right amount of butter and sugar combine and caramelize. It's a perfect occasional treat, without changing anything about it. It's much lower on butter and uses a healthier flour than croissants do. And it's better to have that SOMETIMES, than lots of factory-made cinnamon sticks from Pizza Hut.

We need to maybe know a little more about how we digest one food compared to another. And we just need to want better in our every day.

Amen?