{Be Nourished} But What Does It Mean?

What does nourishment mean?

Like, really?

What do you think of when you hear the word malnourished?  Little kids in third world countries whose stomachs puff out from their bare rib bones?

I bet you don’t think of the overweight kids sitting in classrooms all over America.

In America, we have become obsessed with calories.  With knowing how many calories go in and how many we are burning.  We think we can control our looks and our bodies that way.  What is rarely realized is that the calories don’t matter if the content is empty.

You are either eating to live, or eating to die.

America is nutritionally starving.  We buy food to fill our bellies, to satisfy our emotions, and to adhere to tradition.  Yet rarely do we take into account how our bodies actually use that fuel.  We scour nutritional labels for fat, sugar, and calorie content, but we don’t go any farther.

We shop the middle of the grocery store because the boxes make life easier, make meals faster.  We forget what good food can do for us, and instead just eat to survive.  To make it through the day.

There is a spiritual implication in all of this.  We are told in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20:  ^“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” We need to treat our bodies as the temple of the Lord.  The temple!  We are told to be well, to take care of our minds, our spirits, and our bodies!

Just as our emotions and energy levels can be directly influenced by our diet, so can our spiritual health.  It’s all tied together.  It all revolves around Christ.

Perspective.

Center your life on Christ, and everything else falls into place.  Seek Him with all your heart, soul, and mind, and all your strength, and He will supply your needs. (Matthew 6:33, Mark 12:30, Deuteronomy 6:5)

Seek Him with all your heart.  Every day.  Every second.  Pray continually, and stay in His presence.  There are a lot of distractions out there, but the Bible clearly tells us how to live a blessed life.

It’s only hard because we have our priorities wrong.

I’ve been on my own journey the past couple of years.  I had a baby, at first such a wonderfully healthy baby, who wouldn’t grow.  For the first three months, things went from bad, to worse, to unimaginable.  I didn’t sleep.  At all.  For those three months I was distraught as our pediatrician would tell us one thing, our gastroenterologist would tell us other things, and it all culminated in the belief that we just needed to push through it.  That 3 months ended with him in the hospital for failure to thrive, and me feeling like I was totally disconnected with reality.  I was seeing things with my eyes that no one else was acknowledging.  Eventually, he was tube-fed, which saved his life and helped his torn up esophagus and stomach heal.  I realized that even though the GI doctor didn’t believe in food intolerances, my son could not tolerate soy or dairy, and if I gave it to him, there were consequences.  I acknowledged it, and it led to a food revolution in my house.  I realized how much stuff has dairy and/or soy in it.  Let’s just say everything in a box.  Soy and dairy proteins are added to almost everything that is processed because it is cheap and it binds things together.  I realized that most of what I thought was healthy really wasn’t.

And I realized that what I ate made a big difference in how I felt.  How much energy I had, how depressed I felt, and how able I felt I could serve God.  My whole self-image.  It’s not about the weight or anything else we can see, it’s about the emotions behind what we see.  Emotions are so connected to tangible things, like blood sugar levels.  What you eat matters!

Nourishment is about feeding your body so that it functions the way it was created to.  It’s about eating nutritionally, about eating to live.  But it’s also about feeding your soul.  Everything you do, eat, and think affects everything else about you.  To be well physically, you must be well spiritually.

So make sure and eat your daily bread (Word of God) and drink in the cool, refreshing waters of the Spirit.  Being obedient to the Lord in these things brings blessings on your life.  Spending time with God every day will center your day.  He wants you as you are, and He wants all of you.  He wants you to confess so that He can take away your suffering and make you clean, and it’s something we need to do every single day.  Once you are spiritually nourished, your overall perspective shifts.  Instead of worldly, flesh-driven desires, you see things from a spiritual perspective.  When we are saved, we are new creations, so take ahold of that truth, ladies, because that is the difference maker!   That is where your success, your obedience, and your blessings will stem from!