Gluttony and God’s Guidance – Purity 1590
Purity 1590 02/24/2025 Purity 1590 Audio Podcast
Purity 1590 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the sun dipping into the darkness of trees on the horizon across snow covered farmlands comes to us from your truly as I captured this February sunset scene while walking along Waite Road, Saturday afternoon.
Well, it’s Monday, and after a week of being away from my senses and vacationing in Myrtle Beach, I am happy to be back home in upstate New York and am ready to get back into the fullness of my regular routine as I was less than diligent in monitoring what I ate and how much I ate while on the road and I am feeling the pain of my fleshly compromises and the extra weight I am carrying because of it.
Even though I maintained my exercise routine and my spiritual practices while on vacation, I let go of the self-control in the area of eating and am now ready to repent and am praying that the Lord will help me to learn from this latest failure that I haven’t in the past.
Similar to when I struggled with my addiction to alcohol and went through phases of trying to find the right balance or the right type of alcohol until I admitted I had to stop altogether, my food addiction seems to be in an intermediate state as I made the transition from meat heavy keto to “vegetarian” over the last few months.
Apparently, I wasn’t addicted to meat because, much to my surprise, I have been able to change to a vegetarian diet with little to no temptation to “eat meat” but in the transition I have been struggling to find sanity as, although I have solidified my conviction to be a vegetarian, I have not been so keen on the amounts of the “healthy foods” that I eat and have faltered in the area of letting “foods I shouldn’t eat” back into my life in times of stress or during “special occasions”. The bottom line is that I realize that I eat too much, period, and if there are “borderline” healthy foods, that I like that are permissible in moderation, I will go over the border, and when I do, my over eating of “healthy foods” causes me to be more susceptible to eating foods that I “know” aren’t healthy at all and will go outside of the boundaries that I should maintain.
I also have been reminded that my body does not excuse these indulgences as the scale is quick to report significant weight gains in short order.
As much as my continual failures in the are of food addiction cause me to wonder if I will ever be free, I am choosing to look on the bright side as I am learning more and more about the nature of my problem and my tendencies to do the wrong thing.
Just like an alcoholic who realizes that booze under any circumstances will not work, I am beginning to realize that certain foods should be avoided all together and that I am vulnerable to unwise eating under certain circumstances and as much as I would like to be supported in my decisions to live a healthy lifestyle, I have been reminded that, other than the Lord, I am on my own in this walk.
A healthy lifestyle is my goal after all and no one else is really invested in whether or not I achieve it, but I know God is with me because His word speaks against the struggle I fight. Openbible.info provided me with 100 verses about Gluttony that I am sharing a link to on the blog today (https://www.openbible.info/topics/gluttony) but here are just a few that tell me that the battle of the bulge is spiritual as well as mental and physical and the Lord would guide us to crucify the flesh and defeat our gluttonous ways.
Philippians 3:19 ESV Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
Proverbs 23:20-21 ESV Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.
Proverbs 23:2 ESV And put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite.
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 ESV Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Proverbs 25:16 ESV – If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it.
Proverbs 23:21 ESV For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.
Psalm 78:18 ESV They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved.
These Bible verses about gluttony tell us that God cares about this struggle with food and wants us to be free of it. In order to be free though, we can’t just go along with the crowd because the crowd is in bondage just like we are, or they don’t have the same struggle we do. Following what everyone else is doing, doesn’t work. We have to follow the Lord and seek His guidance.
Speaking of guidance, today’s Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah addresses this topic and I am sharing it on the blog today to encourage us all to seek God’s inner guidance. David Jeremiah writes:
“Inner Guidance
And let the peace of God rule in your hearts. – Colossians 3:15
Nicky Cruz, saved from a New York gang, attended Bible college and struggled with his future. Each night he would pray, “Please show me what to do next.” One night while lying on the floor and praying, Nicky sensed a calm come into his heart. He felt the Lord’s presence, as though Christ was saying, “Nicky, my son, don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten you…. I have plans for you.” From that moment, Nicky knew the Lord wanted him to become an evangelist, a role he has been fulfilling for nearly sixty years.
When we come to Christ, we have peace with God. Then when we make difficult decisions, we have peace from God to help us. Whenever there are two or more options, when all other things are equal and we don’t know what to do, we can pray! As we pray, we often sense an inner conviction in our heart. The Lord whispers to us saying, “This is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21).
If you’re facing a dilemma or decision today, ask God to whisper His wisdom to your heart as part of His matchless guidance.” – David Jeremiah
With fear and trembling we must rely upon God for guidance in the inner depths.- Watchman Nee
Amen. After we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we are given the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. God gives us His Spirit to guide us.
“Listening Prayer” is the way we receive God’s inner guidance. After we surrender to the Lordship of Jesus and seek to do God’s will, we can ask the Lord to lead us in the way we should go.
Studying God’s word is the best way to train our minds and hearts to be able to discern God’s ways and it also prepares us to receive guidance.
As our hearts draw near to God, the Holy Spirit will “speak” to our spirit to lead us.
We receive inner convictions or intuitions in our spirit from the Holy Spirit when we ask God for guidance. When we trust the inner guidance we receive, we take a step of faith into doing God’s will.
God’s inner guidance will never contradict His word and may cause us to do hard things, but we can be sure we are “walking in the Spirit” when our obedience leads to good works and peace.
So, ask the Lord for guidance and when you receive it, follow it and you will see that God is truly with you.
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For those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple encouragements provide, I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s website, https://crossexamined.org/.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By John G. Kruis.
(While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick Google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late author’s work. (The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling By John G. Kruis on Amazon )
This morning’s meditation verse comes from the section on Loving and Serving Others.
1 Peter 1:22 (NASB) Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.
Today’s verse is the first of two passages of scripture that fall under the second point of our counseling reference guide resource’s section on Loving and Serving Others.
2. Love one another deeply.
Today’s Bible verse encourages us to love one another as a response to our being purified in our souls to the obedience to the truth.
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When we understand the magnitude of God’s love for us that is demonstrated through Jesus’ sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins on the cross, our hearts should cause us to be obedient to God’s ways that reflect His truth and love. Not only should we love God for what Jesus did for us, we should also love our neighbors as God loves them.
God’s love for our neighbor is the same as His love for us – He doesn’t play favorites – and so we should be obedient to God’s commands to love others and ask the Lord to give us His perspective to see others as He does, through the lens of forgiveness and love.
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As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.com where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from “Day by Day Along the Way” By Jay E. Adams.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage you all to purchase Adams’ books for your own private study and to support the late author’s work. This resource is available online for less than $20 at many sites.
Day 89
… and the reproofs of discipline are a way of life. – Proverbs 6:23
There is such a thing as reproof when one is learning discipline. For instance, the trainer of a sports team regularly tells one or another player, “No, not like that … do it this way,” or words to that effect. The player who refuses to heed reproof, as he is learning the discipline of the game, will either quit altogether (“I don’t have to take that from him!”) or be told to leave the team. (“If you can’t learn from the reproof given in practice, you’ll never make it out on the field.”) You may not have to take reproof from a coach, but you do have to take it from God! And if you don’t, He may retire you from the game altogether! That happened to some of the Corinthians. They were desecrating communion. “It is because of this that many of you are weak and sick and quite enough of you sleep” (1 Corinthians 11:18–30). Paul concluded his remarks by warning the rest that if they didn’t judge themselves God would do so, and discipline them as well. “If anybody is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you meet together for judgment” (vv. 33, 34).[1]
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[1] Jay E. Adams, Day by Day along the Way (Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020), 97.
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