TRANSITIONING TO THE "PROMISED LAND" OF HEALTH

For most people, change is the most difficult endeavor ever undertaken. Combine the fact that eating strongholds are some of the most difficult to overcome, you’ve got quite a challenge.

If you were to take a survey among people asking what they should and shouldn’t eat, they’d probably give some fairly accurate answers. They’d say they should be eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and less fatty foods and sugar.

So if they know what to do, why don’t they, especially if it’s destroying not only their own health but their future?

If someone were to say, “You can’t eat certain foods anymore”, which foods would be the type you’d desire the most? Most likely it would be the type you were told you can’t have anymore. This is why I believe changing what we eat is

so difficult. As our taste buds get so used to certain foods, we actually begin to believe we couldn’t live without them or certainly couldn’t imagine life without them.

Have you ever wondered why an alcoholic has such an insatiable appetite for alcohol even though he knows it’s killing him? Well, our desires for certain foods can be just as strong. We still desire them, although we know these foods are going to shorten our life span.

We feel we have been given some revelation regarding making changes in our diet that will last a lifetime. For those who have had a life changing experience with Jesus Christ, did you give Him your life because you couldn’t wait to quit doing all the things you enjoyed doing, but knew were wrong, or did you ask Him into your life for what He was going to add? For many years I avoided giving my heart to the Lord because of what I thought I had to give up if I added Him.

A very interesting phenomenon took place though, as a by product of what He added. As He added the right things, the wrong things lost their value to the point I didn’t want them in my life anymore.

Well we’ve found the same phenomenon takes place as you add the right foods to your diet. As you add more and more of the right, you have less and less room for the wrong and ultimately lose the desire for the wrong, to the point you wonder why you resisted the change for so long. Your body actually begins to crave the right foods you’ve added.

Look at it this way, your plate is only so big and can only hold so much food. Let’s say your plate was filled with all cooked food and you wanted to add something raw, like a salad to your plate. What you added would force something off your plate, since it took the place of what was there before. So addition forces subtraction. As your stomach gets filled with the right things, there’s less room for the wrong.

This is just the opposite of what most diets do. Most diets come from the other side of the plate, pulling food off your plate thereby leaving a void. Just as the Bible describes the condition of a person who is delivered of an evil spirit as a home swept and clean, and is not filled with the Holy Spirit thereby leaving a void and ending in a worse state, any diet, leaving a void, ends with disastrous results. In the long run, many dieters end up heavier than before they began the diet.

Most diets deal only with the symptoms not the cause. If the goal of the diet is to lose weight, once the goal is realized, dieters many times revert back to their old ways. Long lasting changes are the result of a change of lifestyle, not a change of weight.

Genesis 1:29 states: “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat”. God’s initial dietary plan for man is raw, fresh fruits and vegetables and they were to be "meat" for us. The word meat translated from the Hebrew means food or nourishment.

I consider these instructions extremely important as it immediately followed His very first command for man in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it.” In other words, Genesis 1:29 is the fuel to fulfill 1:28. God doesn’t make mistakes and even modern science is validating the wisdom of God’s original meal plan for man.

Continually add His original menu as fuel for your life and enjoy the benefits for many years to com

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