What God Has Blessed

"God's ultimate desire for us is His freedom and enjoyment of life."

“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith … Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:” (1 Timothy 4:1, 3-4)

WHAT YOU DECIDE TO ABSTAIN FROM for whatever reason you decide to abstain from it, becomes a rule of law unto you and an entrance to errant beliefs with unwanted consequences. Now, didn’t God create all things? Including sugars and all forms of fat and grain. Yet, though some are diagnosed in some manner and should avoid these things, others have adopted them unwarranted. Both can be freed from such destruction through faith in the blood of Christ. God delights to heal the body and the mind of what the enemy uses to cause sorrow and affliction.

Did not Jesus cure lepers, considered unclean by Old Covenant law? These could not come into public society. Too, the faith of the woman whose blood issued continually cured her when she pressed through the crowd that she should not have entered in the first place. She was also considered unclean.

In Peter’s vision of the sheet let down from heaven, he saw many unclean animals as offered for eating. Though the vision meant, at its heart, the inclusion of the Gentiles to the salvation of Jesus Christ, it did mean to take and eat of anything thereon. To think of going against centuries of tradition as the disciples and those Jewish Christians did in the early church is a brave thing. We know they struggled with those who did not accept it.

The apostle Paul made this comment to the church at Galatia. Peter had been intimidated by some who did not want him eating with Gentiles and so he had returned to eating only with the Jews. Paul called him out on it. “Man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:16).” Point is, there is no condemnation for what we eat nor how we eat, but we are bid to eat what God has made for consumption and to use neither the item eaten nor the rule against it as something that puts us into bondage to what our faith in Christ Jesus has set us free from.

All things must be done by listening to the Spirit, who guides us in all decisions, including eating and drinking. There is a story told by Minister Bill Johnson of a woman whose son had some diagnosed food allergies. She chose to exercise faith after prayers were made in the congregation, and her son, that evening, ate two meals of foods he could not eat before. Another woman saw her child healed entirely of autism and speaking paragraphs to her because she believed and did not settle for a diagnosis. v
We must turn loose of fear and embrace what God wants to do in us and to us for He is good and doeth good. This is not to say, in complete converse, we should become gluttons and covetous of foods. The Word also speaks of moderation and self-control, a fruit of the Spirit. But God’s ultimate desire for us is His freedom and enjoyment of life. He has said we can live until we are satisfied and in full health. But we must believe it and lean upon the Holy Spirit to help us walk through life successfully. In all things, He is our Helper, and we are benefited by His care for us.

Image by Shelley Evans from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com