LIFE IS TOUGH
Controlling your diet is hard work. You need determination, intense discipline and high motivation to achieve your desired figure, form or body weight. How can you overcome the urge to eat when you’re on a diet? How will you refuse sweets when it looks so sweet? How will you say no to sodas when the weather is too hot? How can you deny yourself of another cup of coffee if you can smell its aroma tormenting you? Hope you’ll find something helpful from our learning in today’s story.
YOU NEED A LAUGH
A fat man was imprisoned and punished for an offense that he committed. He was put inside a special chamber and the door to his prison cell was intentionally left partly open and unguarded for the purpose of giving him a conditional chance to escape. One problem he needed to overcome, however, was that he could not fit through the opening as his size was double the space of that narrow passage.
The solution: he must control his diet, exercise regularly and even fast for a month or two for him to be able to go through that door and be free.
Every day, this fat man received a ration of delicious food in abundance. And every time a course of food was served, it was a struggle for him to resist it for the sake of reducing his size. Before partaking of the food, he used to look at the door and imagine himself passing through it without any hardship. But his vision gradually got clouded every time he gazed upon the food set before him. He couldn’t help but eat all of it! After two months, he admitted noticing three distinct changes: his belt ran out of holes; half of his shirt buttons popped off; and he could no longer imagine how he would fit through the door!
THINGS TO LEARN
- Self-control helps you manage your diet and accomplish your goal of reducing weight.
- You become what you continually see. Your outlook determine your outcome. Having a vision of what you desire to be is very important in reaching your goal. When losing weight, be careful where you fix your eyes on; the food on your table or your slim figure 5 or 10 years ago. Joel Osteen, author of the book Your Best Life Now, said, “What you keep before your eyes will affect you. You will produce what you’re continually seeing in your mind.”
- Appetite is very powerful but your power of choice and your vision of freedom can overcome it.
- Fasting will set you free from gluttony but feasting won’t.
- Temptation is not sin, but yielding to temptation is.
- We are what we eat is still true. Be careful then what you put in your mouth and in your tummy. If you think you can overcome overeating, yes you can. But if you think you can’t, you’re also correct, you can’t.
LIVE A HAPPY LIFE
1Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
Proverbs 4:25, “Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.”
2Corinthians 4:18, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
1John 2:16, “For everything in the world— the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does— comes not from the Father but from the world.”
In every temptation we face, in every struggles we encounter, in every discipline we want to develop, we may exert all our efforts and give the best that we could but still fail. But if we allow the Lord’s empowerment, we can overcome and be the person we want to be. Be disciplined in what you eat, not only for your body, but also for your soul and spirit. For what is true in the natural can also be true in the spiritual.
The Holy Spirit will enable us to overcome any form of temptation because self-control is the fruit of God’s Spirit in us (Galatians 5:22-23). 2Peter 1:3 says that, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.”
God’s Holy Spirit is God’s power at work in us who believe. You can be what you desire to be. By the Lord’s help enter into that narrow door and into your freedom, onward to a happy life ever after.