Finding Peace Between Feasting and Fasting

As I look back over the last many years of my life, I’m hard-pressed to find a time when I was at peace with food. My yo-yoing weight and my constantly shifting body testify to the ongoing pendulum swing between fasting and feasting that has characterized my off-balance relationship with food.

It’s so tempting, then, for me to see food as the enemy — something that has to be tightly controlled and monitored, sometimes vilified and perhaps even avoided where possible.

But how can something Jesus uses as a type and metaphor of Himself — the Bread of Life — be a bad thing?

Of course it isn’t.

God doesn’t want His children to live in lifelong deprivation, starvation and leanness of soul. Psalm 34:8 calls us to “taste and see that the LORD is good!”

Jesus fed thousands of hungry people during His ministry. And we’re told in the gospels that the people ate and were full. These weren’t low-fat meal supplements. These were filling meals of fish and bread.

We need food to survive. God created us to require a fuel source. He orchestrated the sensation of hunger to tell us when it’s time to eat, and fullness to let us know when we can stop. He gave us bodies that automatically conserve resources during times of scarcity. He programmed us with instincts that crave things our bodies need — ask any pregnant woman. He made us in such a way that our bodies can process and digest pretty much any food source on the planet, animal, mineral or vegetable. Our digestive systems extract what we can use and expel the rest. The human body is God’s miraculous design, and food is its fuel.

Not only did God provide abundant fuel sources, but He provided flavor as well. How cool are taste buds? Imagine a world in which everything tastes the same, with no bitter nor sweet, savory nor salty. No umami (I’m still trying to figure out what that actually is). No thanks.

God provides abundantly for us. He intended us to enjoy the earth He created and the abundance thereof. He intended us to see it as a revelation of Him, His power, His authority, His goodness and His love for us. You could say that God loves us with food, just like my grandmother and countless thousands or even millions of good cooks spanning the world and all its generations.

If God loves us, in part, with the abundance of food He provides for us, why aren’t we all celebrating our nation’s epidemic of obesity as just one more sign of how loved we all are by God? That would be ludicrous, of course. While most references to food in the Bible are positive, fat is pretty much only celebrated when it’s being offered to God as a sacrifice. Being fat is not good. But you don’t get one without the other. So what’s the problem, if not food?

We are, naturally. Human beings are flawed. We have this built-in tendency to do too much of the wrong things and not enough of the right ones. We also tend to celebrate and elevate the creation rather than the Creator. Instead of loving the God who gives us every good thing, we love what He gives us a little too much.

This part of our human nature shows up in all of us, in myriad ways. For some, we are blessed with work and talent and we pour our lives into career achievement at the expense of our walk with the Lord. Some of us develop addictions to drugs or alcohol that take over our lives. Some people invest in their bodies through fitness and beauty and in that way believe they will find happiness and success. Some get rich, thinking money will buy happiness. Some people pursue sexual pleasure in ways God never intended. Or we take other risks for ever-greater adrenaline rushes. Or we pursue happiness and worth through relationships with people.

And some of us get fat because we pursue satisfaction through our bellies.

Suddenly, we discover our orbit has shifted a little off course. Instead of revolving around God, we find ourselves revolving around something else that has become more important than it should be.

Too much of anything — even any good thing — ruins us. This, too, is God’s good design. The ruin of excess, just like the ruin of deprivation, serves to remind us that nothing at all will save or satisfy our craving souls apart from God.

There’s no shortage of good things in this life to draw our attention. But God tells us to seek Him first. If we do that, the rest of it will fall into place in the right way — eating habits included.

When we forget to make God the center of our efforts, we’re still revolving around the wrong thing. When we depend most heavily on one eating plan or another as our means of freedom from weight issues, it’s still about the food. When we spend our time obsessing about what we can or can’t eat, it’s still all about the food. When we attempt to carefully replicate biblical diets as a means of freedom from overeating, it’s still all about the food. When our blood pressure spikes at the idea of never eating another (insert favorite food here), it’s still all about the food. When we’re planning our whole day around where we’re going to get our next (healthy, fat-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, flavor-free) meal but never stopping to thank the God who provided it, it’s still all about the food.

I’m currently reading Pre-suasion, by Robert Cialdini, to learn more about effective influencing in my professional life. I never expected to be referencing it here, but I think this is instructive to the topic. In the book, the author posits that “what’s focal is presumed causal.” Boiled down, the idea is that what we’re focused on at a given moment is what we presume to be important and the cause of what’s happening around us. Cialdini applies this concept to influencing in business, marketing and branding, but it also applies here.

When we’re focused on the food, we’re going to look to our food choices both as the source of the problem and the potential solution to it.

But we’ve just covered the fact that the food isn’t inherently bad. In fact, it’s good. So food is not the problem. It’s not the answer either. Rather, the answer is in your focus.

Want to know the secret of a healthy relationship with food? Here it is:

Stop pursuing a relationship with food.

Pursue a relationship with Jesus Christ instead.

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. … For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:27, 33-35)

Yes, God loves us with food. But more importantly, He loved us by giving us His Son, Jesus. Chances are, if you’ve gotten this far in this article, you’re already saved. I truly hope so. If not, please reach out to learn more about it. If you are, remember that salvation is just the beginning of a relationship with Jesus. We are to abide in Him.

Abiding in him means loving Him, obeying Him, putting Him first, seeking Him not just for salvation, but for wisdom — in relationship to food choices and everything else. Christ is the wisdom Proverbs speaks of. Christ is the help begged for in Psalms. Christ is the love celebrated in Song of Solomon. He is the mediator Job cries out for. He is the manna that sustained in Exodus.

Christ is all in all, so when we focus on Him, we are rightly focused on what truly matters.

If you, like me, have struggled to find equilibrium when it comes to food, start here:

Before you put even one single bite or sip of anything in your mouth, thank the God who provided it for you. Ask Him to use it to fuel His good work through you.

Do it every time. 

I’ll be honest, this doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s a habit I’m still working to completely embed. But when I do it, I have found it level-sets me in moments when I’m eating for the wrong reasons. It helps keep me mindful of my choices, and centered in my priorities. It’s hard to ask the Lord to bless something we don’t feel good about, so it is a good gut-check. The converse is also true. When I’m getting off track or tending to overeat, I usually realize I’ve been lax about simply saying a blessing before I eat.

You don’t have to offer up a National Prayer Breakfast caliber of prayer, either. Just be sincere. One of the simplest blessings I’ve ever heard came from a local pastor during a trip to Israel my husband and I participated in with our church a couple years ago:

“Lord, thank you for the food.”

As with everything, it’s not about the words we use but the heart behind them. If we ask, He will answer.

Another important step is to start your day in the Word of God. Whether it’s a five-minute devotional or an hour-long study, creating a habit of seeking the Lord when you first wake up helps calibrate your focus before the distractions of the day pull us in other directions.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been working my way through a chronological study of the Bible. Because I’ve also been working to strengthen my body and get healthy during a lot of that time, I got into a habit of making a note in the margin of my Bible wherever I came across a verse about food or eating and related topics (fasting, feasting, gluttony, famine, starvation, etc.). Just that small step has given me a lot to think about in terms of how God looks at these issues and what I should do to align myself with that.

These two small steps — asking for God’s blessing on what you eat, and starting your day in the word — can go a long way to changing your perspective and helping you overcome confusion about the role food is supposed to play in our lives. And you’ll find He uses your investment to teach you so, so much more about who He is and His plans for you.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for providing for us so abundantly. Please forgive us for misusing your good gift of food and giving it attention in our lives that we should reserve for You. Teach us to fuel our lives — body and spirit — in a way that glorifies You and honors You as the center of our lives. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.