Earthen Vessels

Five years ago I stepped off the court. I was concerned that I would not have enough activity in my life to stay trim. I asked the Lord to help me eat only what my body needed to be strong and healthy. I started walking for exercise and pleasure. I learned to cook. I became interested in food, and its purpose and value to the human body. I found that I was getting sick less and feeling healthier. The Lord faithfully, lovingly, and most powerfully, guided my way and answered my prayer.

Then it happened.

I stepped on a scale.

The numbers began to calculate…16 pounds. Lost. It was here that the blessing was stolen. I was tempted to take control. And that’s what I did.

It wasn’t long before my mind was accepting credit and denying hunger. Somewhere the desire to be healthy became the lust to be thin. I lost 4 pounds, my way.

One morning, as I waited for my value to be calculated on the scale, I said to myself, “If I would just loose 2 more pounds I would not have to worry about going over my acceptable weight.” It was then that my Savior opened my eyes. And He spoke to my heart…”he is trying to destroy you.”
And I realized that this is how it happens. This is how people die…by believing that the exclusion or consumption of food brings them any peace.

Food is not a god. It was never designed to rule you. It was given as blessing. We make it a curse.

I am not my own…to fall to starvation or gluttony. And how exceedingly grateful I am for that.

1 Cor 6:12-13
All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them.

This is not a blog about food and fitness. The fact that food is so much the topic of conversation only confirms that it is a “god” of this world.

It is about the love, power, and glorification of God. That He hears our prayers and loves us deeply. That He desires to manifest Himself in us both spiritually and physically, in order that our lives are blessed and the unsaved come to salvation. And it is about our inclination to ruin the blessings of God. Not that that is our intention…but merely our nature.

2 Cor 4:7-10
7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 8 We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.