Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,
who lives in you and was given to you by God?
You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price.
So you must honor God with your body.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NLT)
We cannot serve the Lord to the fullest if our bodies are run down, tired and not functioning as God designed them. Just because we, as Christians, have an understanding of our spiritual position in Christ does not mean we can break His physical laws of health and not suffer any consequence. The Word of God not only addresses the spiritual problems we have in this life, but what is healthy for us to eat.
Since the Lord created the human body, He certainly knows what is best for us to eat!
Many people have been eating according to the tradition of men instead of seeing what God's Word says about food. If we do not eat by the Word of God, our eating habits will be dictated by the patterns of society and what we have been exposed to during our lifetime.
Natural foods, those that are "living, whole foods" (such as fresh fruits and vegetables, sprouted and whole grains, legumes, certain meats, and limited dairy products) are best for us. "Dead foods" or "junk food" are those, which are highly refined and processed and have little nourishment.
In the Bible, Daniel and his companions proved the wisdom of eating properly when they refused to eat the King's meat and instead ask for vegetables and water to drink for ten days.
Please test us for ten days on a diet of vegetables and water,” Daniel said. “At the end of the ten days, see how we look compared to the other young men who are eating the king’s food. Then make your decision in light of what you see.” The attendant agreed to Daniel’s suggestion and tested them for ten days.
At the end of the ten days, Daniel and his three friends looked healthier and better nourished than the young men who had been eating the food assigned by the king. So after that, the attendant fed them only vegetables instead of the food and wine provided for the others.
God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom.
Daniel 1:12-17
Jordan Rubin, a nutrionist, naturopath and author of The Maker's Diet, believes that the Jewish roots of the Bible have a lot of wisdom and are very much needed today in the body of Christ. He is a firm believer in eating what God created as food, and eating foods the way that God created them to be eaten.
Rubin outlines two food criteria he has set for himself, which is good advice for all of us:
1. It has to be created by God as a food.
2. It needs to be consumed in the form that is compatible for the human body - in the form that God created it.
He goes on to say, "Throughout history, the world's healthiest people have known how to preserve, prepare and consume food in its healthiest form. So if it's animal food, it means that the animals were raised healthy. If it's vegetable food, it means the vegetables were raised healthfully. When it comes to grains and dairy, the least processing and the preparation that allows them to be more digestible is the way that history tells us to eat. And it's also using the laws of nature to preserve instead of the man made processes that we have put into place. According to God - pork, shellfish, lobster, crab - all the scavenger animals are not to be eaten. Also artificial sweeteners, margarine, the hydrogenated oils. I don't think white sugar is a food. The Bible talks about pork and shellfish, but obviously not aspertame or hydrogenated oils. But to me that's in the same category. They're not food, they're chemicals. Many people in the health community think milk is the worst thing in the world. If you consume skimmed, pasteurized, homogenized milk from cows that are fed grain with antibiotics and growth hormones and raised in a cage and never see grass, that's entirely different from organic, cultured, dairy products like yogurt, full fat, which is how the milk comes out of the animal. Those are as different as gold and fool's gold. They both may look the same, but one is valueless and one is extremely valuable."
Dr. Rex Russell, a board-certified invasive radiologist and author of What the Bible Says About Healthy Living, also held to Mosiac dietary laws. He found that in his own family and in his patients who tried the same approach, many chronic conditions went away or significantly diminished.
Dr. Russell's list of eats and don’t-eats:
• Eat only foods that God created for Human Food – No scavengers like pork, shellfish, fish with skin not scales, birds without a gizzard, etc. These are nature’s trash collectors and are full of toxins. Eat all the fruits, veggies, whole grains, seeds, and nuts you want.
• Don’t alter God’s design – Eat whole, unprocessed foods as much as possible. Drink water. Avoid meats that have been pumped full of antibiotics and hormones (because of organic meat prices and the very minimal amount of meat your body actually needs, this ends up greatly reducing the amount of meat you eat and your grocery bill). The food and drink that have been chemically altered, stripped, enriched, colored, preserved, hydrogenated, and fortified lose their nutritional qualities and fill you up with chemicals that have bad or unknown effects on your health.
• Don’t let any food or drink become your god – Eat in moderation. Practice fasting to give your body its needed rest and to break any food addictions.
Phillipians 4:5 (KJV) tells us "Let your moderation be known to all men".
Moderation = balance, measure, reasonableness, restraint.
The principles laid out in Scripture, and illustrated above through the writings of Jordan Rubin & Dr. Rex Russell pretty much knock out all of the food in the middle of any grocery store - the aisles where all of that processed, mass advertised junk is. With these guidelines, you mainly end up shopping the perimeter of the grocery store, and in turn, purchase items with price tags that are not inflated by advertising dollars. Eating this way can stretch your grocery dollar, reduce your visit to the doctor and dentist, and cut the amount of time you spend in the grocery store itself. Educating our children and communities to eat this way could benefit public health and allow the poor to eat and feel better.
I think that God gives us everything we need to be healthy physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally and we're just not taking advantage of it.
• Overcoming Life Digest (Nov./Dec. 1997 Issue)
• Jordan Rubin interview Beliefnet
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