Its your Health 2 - FooteNotes Page

"FOOTENOTES"

The following are selected articles from a section of our quarterly newsletter titled "Footenotes". We pray these thought provoking articles will inspire and encourage all who read them to a greater application of Godly wisdom in both their physical as well as spiritual lives.

We give all praise and glory to our Heavenly Father and Lord Jesus Christ for the wisdom and whatever gift of writing He's blessed us with, that it might be passed as a blessing to others.

LIFE IN THE LAZY BOY"

These days we live in a society of “comfort seekers”. We desire all the comforts life has to offer and usually spend our entire lives pursuing them.

“We’re constantly bombarded with advertisements from the world attempting to sell us their form of comfort and for the most part, we make every effort to purchase them, even going into debt and ironically becoming a “slave” to those comforts.

Comfort shouldn’t be our goal but the fruit of our obedience. If comfort becomes our “North Star” to guide our darkened paths, we’ll miss the will of God for our lives. If we have our hearts set on the comfortable path, we’ll end up rejecting the uncomfortable one, even when we know it’s the hand of God directing us.

There’s nothing wrong with comfort in and of itself. The problem is when we can’t give up the comfort or the pursuit of it to follow the will of God for our lives.

Many times the comforts we seek become “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches” Jesus refers to in Matthew 13:22 that end up choking His Word and plan for our lives.

Many today who think building “bigger barns” is their answer for a secure and comfortable future end up finding their “barn on fire” with things like medical expenses that completely wipe out their life savings. Our only true security for tomorrow is doing the will of God for our lives today.

The tragedy for many who have found the “Comfort Zone”, is that it becomes very difficult for God to make changes is their lives. Who wants to change when life is all “comfy and cozy”? Look back on your life and see when the Lord has made some of the biggest changes. Was it during a time of comfort or discomfort?

The path to His will for our lives won’t be a four lane super highway. It just might likely be a road few dare to travel and in fact, it may be a path no one has ever traveled. We may have to get our “spiritual machetes” out and clear our own path.

The Lord told me just after I got saved in 1986, “If you follow man, you can only go where man’s been before; if you follow me, I’ll take you where no man’s been before.”

It’s true, a Lazy Boy recliner is more comfortable than a cross on our back but as believers, we’ve been called to do His will not our own.

As an average American “comfort seeker”, a change of diet doesn’t quite fit into a comfortable lifestyle. It requires discipline and sacrifice, a price not many are willing to pay even when their lives are hanging in the balance.

The fruit of obedience is always sweet. We may feel like obedience has a heavy price tag, but it’s always worth it in the end.

"THE CASE OF BACKSLIDDEN TASTE BUDS"

I wonder what the percentage of dieters begin their journey of healthy eating only to return to the all too familiar territory of “convenient” eating.

They look back and wonder what in the world happened. “How did I end up back here? I had such good intentions and was doing so good for a while. I even set goals and had them as a part of my New Year’s resolution.” Well, this was just another case of “backslidden taste buds”.

It all started with that chocolate doughnut on the way to work when you left the apple sitting on the counter top at home. Or was it that little splurge treat on Saturday morning while out shopping and running errands? All harmless little “treats” causing weak spots in the “junk food armor.”

I doubt there’s any part of our body more responsive to temptation than our taste buds. Give them an inch and they want a mile. Then once they get that mile, they won’t budge an inch. Kind of reminds me of the woman being delivered of a spirit of gluttony. When the spirit was commanded to leave, this little voice returned saying, “For a cookie I will”.

The devil isn't dumb. His tactics of taking ground have worked since Adam and Eve. In fact, because they work so well, he continues using them over and over...same old book, new chapter, different victim.

The Bible says in Ephesians 4:27 to give no place to the devil and in II Corinthians 2:11, we’re advised as believers not to be ignorant of Satan’s devises lest he should get an advantage over us. His purposes are to steal, kill, and destroy. He knows our weaknesses better than we do and he can prey on them skillfully.

You might say to yourself, “Where’s the devil in a chocolate doughnut?” Well, if we look to see the wind, we’ll never find it. We’ll only see its effects.

We can never underestimate the power of a little leaven. Learning to cherish and appreciate the value of ground we’ve gained will make us less likely to give it up.

So in the future, as we claim new ground along our road to dietary improvements, it might be well advised to post NO TRESPASSING signs as we go.

BEING "GROOVY" AIN'T SO COOL

So many times we, like electricity, travel down the path of least resistance. Like multiplied trips down an old dirt road, we carve grooves difficult to escape. It requires decision and effort.

I heard a saying while growing up, “what you are becoming today, you will be tomorrow”.

Many of us eat what we eat today because of what we ate yesterday, since tastes are acquired. We have found an extremely effective way to change one's diet is to add new, live foods, in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables, to one's daily diet in order to acquire new tastes for these healthier foods.

It wasn't as difficult as we had thought to get out of the old “grooves”. But it did require a determination on our part.

If this strategy has proven successful for our family of 9, we're confident this strategy will bring success to others as well.

Andrew & Romsey Foote
It’s Your Health
E-mail: andrew@itsyourhealth2.com