Glorify God In Your Body

You both are in the food industry. You have been educated on how to cook, what tastes good, what goes together, how to make it look amazing and, most importantly, what's healthy. And that is what we want to focus on today.

My mom is in the hospital with intestinal issues. She's had these issues for more than 20 years. Some is genetics and some is poor eating habits. Now you can't do much about genetics, but you can do something about eating right.

Aunt Jodi and I were talking yesterday about how schools do not make nutritional eating a part of education. Not just teaching about the food groups and the number of servings you should have, but what exactly is healthy and unhealthy. There are so few folks who read labels on food, not realizing they are putting chemicals, and in some cases poison, in their bodies to eat. Your Daddy and I did The Daniel Plan last year (we continue to implement its teachings) and learned what we need with regards to good metabolism, what carbohydrates, proteins and vegetables enhance health and what we should avoid. Now if a product has more than five ingredients in it, we put it back on the shelf. If sugar is one of the first three ingredients, we consider it a dessert.

And if we see any ingredients we cannot pronounce, we will not purchase it. Let me tell you that makes grocery shopping more of a scavenger hunt. To find even one jar of spaghetti sauce with around five ingredients is tricky. But it can be done. And it can be delicious. When we eat right, we sleep better, have more energy, look better and feel better. When Daddy first started The Daniel Plan, he cut his insulin intake in half, so that is saying something. But it takes constant, every day planning. We only have one day at a time, so that's how we tackle it. But it is so important if you want to not only live long, but live healthily. 

Genetics already give you a disadvantage in some aspects - in our case diabetes from your Dad, diverticulosis and high blood pressure in my family - so eating healthy should be a no brainer. We want you both, at this early stage of life, to take care of yourselves. To eat right, exercise and get enough sleep. If our job is to further the kingdom of God, and our bodies are a temple to the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), it is important to keep that temple in good working order to effectively do the first part. Scripture says in verse 20 after the above, "For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body." That was a very high price Christ paid for us. Don't we owe it to him to take immaculate care of what He died for?

Doing it right at this stage of the game will help you immeasurably later. When I learned of my mother's diverticulosis, I made a decision that I would have 25 grams of fiber every single day. It means I eat Fiber One - a cereal not exactly known for its tastiness, but certainly for its fiber content - every day. Like Mr. Smooshy, my pillow, Fiber One goes with me on vacation. It's that important.

We are "fearfully and wonderfully made," Scripture says in Psalm 139:14. And in 1 Corinthians 10:31 "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." Before anything gets to our mouths, we need to ask if it will aid us in glorifying God. (And before you ask, yes, chocolate indeed helps me glorify Him; I just can't eat a zillion pounds of it.)

Take care of you. Take care of each other. Don't bring home foods that you know your loved one has little self-control with in regards to eating and drinking. Be supportive. And be healthy. You know how to do it, so do it well.

Discussion: Are there foods that are difficult for you to eat proportionately? Is eating healthy difficult for you? What are things you can do together to take better care of your bodies?

Prayer: Lord you have created us in Your own image, and how we abuse this body we've been given. We pray for help from the Holy Spirit as we face each day from a health standpoint. Inspire us to eat healthy, exercise and get plenty of rest, so that we may glorify you fully. In Jesus, Amen.

Rest and Recharge

We have a chime clock in our living room that plays the same 16-note song every single hour of the day, all day, every day. Because of that, we can pretty much tune it out. It's rare that I actually hear it. Unless, of course, the battery is dying. Then it becomes pretty hilarious. The chimes then sound like a sad, dying seal. Each note slides on the musical scale and drags on. The last time the chime battery got low was more than five years ago. We had friends staying with us at the time. We purposely didn't change the battery because it made us laugh hysterically the worse it got. Just recently the chimes started slowing slightly, and again I don't plan on changing it until I absolutely have to. It just brings me too much joy in it's sluggish heralding of the hour.

But the chimes most definitely need a re-charging. They need a fresh battery to keep the song crisp, alert and sounding the way the Rev. Dr. Joseph Jowett intended when he - along with two others - wrote the song based on a movement of Handel's Messiah 1792 at Cambridge University. The song played for a new clock in St. Mary the Great Church on the campus of the university, and was copied by the folks who made Big Ben in London. Thus the song goes by several names, Westminister Quarters, Cambridge Chimes and Jowett's Jig ... all three the same 16-note song (you can listen to it here). Without a recharging, without a new battery, it's just a weepy, whine of a tune.

The reason I bring up the story of our sad, slowing, chime tune is because of the necessity of rest. You come from a long line of folks who burn the midnight oil making the most of every second of the day then collapsing at the end of it. Sometimes we even neglect the 7-8 hours of sleep experts suggest we need to perform at optimum levels. God created our bodies to require rest so the body could recoup during the night. The brain, heart and our tissues are all repairing, replacing and strengthening during sleep. Without it we are lethargic, cranky, make poor choices and, with prolonged sleep deprivation, lower our immune systems to where we can get ill. We must have rest. And for that matter, must adequately fuel our bodies during the day to work right. A recharging and a new battery.

The Lord knew the necessity of rest. He created it. While designing our adult bodies to require about a third of the day at rest, he also insisted we take one day off a week to rest. Twenty-four hours to rest and recharge. It was so important to the Lord that he made it one of the Ten Commandments, calling that seventh day a Sabbath and making it holy (Exodus 20:12). The sabbath was Saturday and a day of rest and worship for the Jews. Early Christians can be thanked for the invention of the weekend, making Sunday, the first day of the week, a day of worship and rest also since Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday morning. But whether you rest on a weekend or week day, your body must rest.

We know you both love to work and love your work, and we are thankful to God for your hard work ethics. We pray you will love to rest equally so, so that you can be the best of yourselves during those work times. Make sure you take time to rest - sleep each day and rest from work at least once weekly. Your workaholic Grandpa Lauritzen commented to me recently how he hated to sleep when he was younger, thinking it was a waste of time. He got maybe 4 hours of sleep a night. Now that he's retired, he said he realizes how hard he worked his body to the point where he wasn't working as efficiently as he could. Get your rest.

You know there are lyrics to Jowett's Jig? The words are:

All through this hour

Lord be my guide

And by Thy love

No foot shall slide.

Rest in the Father. Rest peacefully at night. Rest weekly in recreation. Rest in each other. Rest in God's love. It will keep your foot from slipping in more ways than one.

Discussion: Do you make sure you get enough sleep each night? What do you both do to make sure you are getting a weekly day of rest? How can you hold each other accountable in a gentle way to remember to rest?

Prayer: Father, we want to make the most of the time you've given us, so much so, that sometimes we forget to take a break. Lord, we pray we always remember the necessity of rest, just as You did after the creation of the world. Help us to take care of ourselves and each other. We can do far more, more effectively for Your Kingdom when we're recharged and rested. Glory to you, O Lord. In Jesus name, Amen.