You Are What You Eat!

I know exactly how I got fat. It’s not a mystery, it’s not a glandular problem, it’s not aliens abducting me in the middle of the night and force-feeding me chocolate cake and ice cream. I’d always had a predisposition to weight gain, and traveling nine months out of the year while eating truck stop cuisine didn’t help matters much. Couple that with spending most days in a car, in a hotel, or going out to the nearest greasy spoon after evening service, and incrementally, almost imperceptibly the waistline started expanding.

You don’t put on fifty pounds in a week. If we did, I think the alarm bells would start going off much clearer. What happens, is that you put on fifty pounds over the course of three, four years, and it’s such a slow, snail’s pace sort of progress, that it gives most people cover when they refuse to acknowledge what is happening.

No, I was never one of the people that blamed his wife for shrinking his shirts. I knew what was happening. It wasn’t as though a consistent diet of pizza by the slice and gas station corn dogs would make me into an enviable physical specimen.

I kept telling myself that sometimes we make bad choices for the right reasons, because, let’s face it, those 800 miles from Colorado to Wisconsin weren’t going to drive themselves, and actually taking forty-five minutes to sit down and have something resembling a meal was a luxury one could not afford. We were doing the Lord’s work, and that required sacrifice, don’t you know.

Far too often, we have the same attitude toward what we consume spiritually, as I did toward what I consumed physically. We try our hardest to excuse our bad behavior. We come up with justifications, we twist ourselves into pretzels, because we just don't want to admit to ourselves that we are lazy, distracted, and unwilling to take the extra time to make sure that what we are receiving and allowing to provide nourishment to our spiritual man is actually beneficial to our spiritual man.

We can all spot the glaring deceptions when we hear them, like universalism, or Jesus having lied about the reality of hell, at least most of us can. What is harder to pick apart if we are unwilling to take the time and iron it out Biblically, are the small things, the seemingly imperceptible things, that become cumulative over time, and we wake up fifty pounds heavier without realizing it.

Every journey begins with one single, solitary step, and so does deception. As is the case in the physical, spiritual junk food tastes good. That’s just the plain fact of it. Sure, there are aberrations like my daughter who prefers broccoli over chocolate, but for the most part, junk food tastes good, and that’s why it’s a billion-dollar industry.

When someone finally realizes that they’ve been feeding their spiritual man junk food for the longest time, they have to reacquaint themselves with nutritious spiritual food, and that will take some doing. Their spiritual palate has been formed to enjoy unhealthy things, so the first time they get a big helping of truth, it may taste bitter, or wholly unpleasant.

It’s like having a nice big salad, after not having seen anything green on your plate for a year. It’s a shock to the system. Your taste receptors begin to rebel, you feel as though you've been sentenced to hard time in a gulag, and that's when you have to make the conscious choice to keep chewing, and swallowing, and chewing some more. 

For many a soul, the truth is so uncomfortable to stomach once they've given themselves over to deception, that they just shut themselves off to the idea that the truth exists, and is easily accessible. 

The reason truth is so uncomfortable for those living in deception is the same reason diets are so difficult for those who need to drop some serious pounds; they both require permanent change, both in attitude and in actions.

You make the conscious choice to choose wisely every time you are confronted with a choice!

Instead of reaching for ‘Prosperity Explosion 2019, Why YOUR Financial Breakthrough Is Only One Seed Away!', you try to work your way through the first chapter of Romans and understand the depth of it, perhaps for the very first time.

Instead of embracing the notion that no one goes to hell, ever, no matter the depth of their rebellion, you start going through the Word and discovering those uncomfortable passages about men being cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Everything hinges on choice. As I said, I know how I got fat. All I have to do to stop getting fatter is to stop doing the things I know made me fat in the first place.

Most people know how they came to be deceived. All they have to do to stop being fooled is to stop believing the men who deceived them in the first place. In both cases, easier said than done. In both cases, existentially necessary. 

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.