START SOMEWHERE

For the first years of our marriage and before I could afford to buy what I liked in the grocery store, our three sons, Joshua, Josiah, and Zachariah were one to five. Eric was earning minimum wage as an Electrician’s Helper. My budget for food was $18.00 a week. The cost of much of “the healthy” food was often above my ability to pay; fruit and vegetables on sale saved us. I remember praying as I shopped and looked at the fresh fruit and vegetable departments, “Lord, I cannot buy those big red apples. They are there and out of reach. Help me to be able to buy them.” It was up to God to provide, I knew. We ate healthy low-cost food. The grapes and pears were expensive, so I looked for fresh fruit on sale. Vegetables, cut and bagged were beautiful and convenient, but I got good at chopping.

For many months I bought whole wheat flour from a friend who ground it fresh and delivered it to us. Baking bread came naturally. My mother had baked whole wheat bread often for our family of ten. Also, I could bake granola cereal with whole oats, raisins, honey, butter, and olive oil, simple ingredients. As I ground whole grains and made things from them it was from the example of my father, who strongly believed in "food wisdom" from the Bible. 

I made whole wheat chocolate cake, oatmeal cake, and carrot cake. The frosting, cooked on a double broiler with raw sugar and egg whites, then cream cheese added. Meat was for flavor: mostly beef, and chicken. 

As the years went by, my belief that simple whole food (often mentioned in the Bible) was one of the biggest benefits and offerings given to my husband and children.  

REPOSTED FEBRUARY 5, 2025

FOOD AND FAITH GO TOGETHER

REPOSTED: BLOG NOVEMBER 8, 2022

You can have a noticeable change in your health in ten days. It took Daniel, and his three friends that long to prove that “things grown” are effective quickly (in Daniel 1:12).

If food by faith is a new thought for you, think of this: the journey of your life is a one-time opportunity to do the best you can, to search for the most wisdom you can find. You can become physically, spiritually, mentally all God created you to be! It’s by faith. 

The variety provided by our Creator is vast, from cows and sheep to grains and watermelon, nuts, broccoli, and squash…how about a focus on our health!

If we believe in an all-wise Creator, eating the right food makes sense. He made everything to be for the wellbeing of all humanity: our welfare, health, and our eternal salvation. He poured love into our world through the life, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, “The Way, the Truth and the Life….”. His love also shows in the creation of the natural things grown for you to eat…

"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Thessalonians 5:23). Sanctified means set apart. Faith…or believing and acting on what God says is an adventure. 

Medical News Today

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com › articles › ultra-processed-food-consumption-linked-to-premature-preventable-death

Dietary patterns can have an immense impact on health outcomes. 

• Ultra-processed foods that go through large amounts of processing can lose nutritional value and contain unhealthy elements.

• A new study adds to a growing body of research showing that ultra-processed food consumption may cause premature, preventable death. 

THIS BLOG IS ABOUT HEALTH…NOT “YOU ARE RIGHTEOUS IF YOU DO THIS”

When my interest in health and finding food recommendations in the Bible stirred me to write to you about it, the thought came to me: “God mentions food throughout Scripture. This would be important to recognize.”

The Bible was written by “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1:21.

The challenge in our day, as I understand it, is to discern what is good and health building for us and what is harmful. Over time, the degermed grain, bleached and having chemicals added is made into bread that smells good, tastes good (is even addicting), cheap and easy to find. 

Other food, also sold around every corner in many towns, is harmful over time. Fats, seed oils, bioengineered (nonfood), “natural flavor” which is now known to have chemicals hidden behind the name, sugar that is bleached, corn syrup which is sold to sweeten food…the harm of “fast food” is clearly understood if you study how fried chicken is made.

This cheap, glamorously packaged “food” is often not food at all.

Here is the reason for my passion for healthy food: God created it for our health and wellbeing from the beginning. An incentive for me to eat food that God intended for humankind from the beginning of the creation: at eighty-two, with a long history of interest in food in the Bible. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Genesis 1:27. 

God changed the “rules” for food four times. Read the Bible, then read it repeatedly. Notice how often food is mentioned. When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." (John 6:35). The message is literal and in addition pictures figurative truth. Bread made well is a basis for good health as Jesus is the "living bread" that gives us eternal life when we accept Him. 

Jesus talked about “eating” the bread which He was! "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." John 6:51. This is offering you and me eternal life.

We have freedom to choose. They are not legal rules. Food is just there in the Bible to benefit by. "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." I Corinthians 10:31. Simply put be wise about your diet.

THE BETHLEHEM STAR...NOT A NATURAL OCCURRENCE

 Eric, my husband posted this on 12/21/2020

on PapaJ's Blog: CongaEric.com

THE BETHLEHEM STAR IS NOT A NATURAL OCCURRENCE

Some have remarked that the recent 2020 conjunction of planets could be the Bethlehem Star.  It was not.  The Bethlehem Star was not a normal occurrence.  It was a unique, God-instituted, one-of-a kind event.

The Bethlehem Star was the star that led the Maji to Jesus.  Mankind have known about conjunctions for centuries.  They knew what stars were and what were conjunctions of planets.  Since the Magi were called "Wise Men" in the Bible we must assume they in fact were wise.  People of wisdom do not willy-nilly run off after natural known occurrences like planet conjunctions.  They would note the conjunction but have no reason to see it as unusual.  Therefore, the appearance of the Bethlehem Star must have been a truly out-of-the-ordinary event.

A Nova would have been much more unusual than a conjunction, it would have been a truly unique event and would have lasted much longer than a conjunction of planets.  However, a nova would, like the stars, always stay in the same position in the sky; rising in the East and setting in the West each night for as long as it lasted.  If you noticed where it set each morning over several days you would have traveled toward the West.  Where would you stop?  What is not far enough and what is too far?  This type of travel would not have led you to a precise point, such as exactly to where Jesus was. 

However, the Bethlehem Star would have to always be at the same compass bearing on the horizon to give an accurate line-of-travel.  Moreover, as  you neared Jesus' position the Star would appear to move to the zenith.  When you reached Jesus the star would be exactly overhead.  When it is so near the zenith to be confusing you would stop and ask for directions, which is what they did when they spoke to Herod.  The Magi were men of great importance.  We know because they came bearing expensive gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Because of their stature they could get directly in to see, Herod and Herod listened to them. 

The Magi traveled a good distance from the East to where Jesus was.  Being men of influence, they would have traveled with a large entourage: camels, servants, bodyguards, supplies for the trip and return.  Moving so many people over a great distance would have taken a long time: weeks or months.  Few people can afford such expense and time.

 It would take a very unusual occurrence, like an exceptional direction-pointing star, not a nova or a conjunction, to cause these men to take such long, arduous trip.

YES, WE CAN EAT BY FAITH...

Take these specific words of Jesus literally and figuratively. “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” The Bible is profoundly true on many levels. If we realize that food is mentioned throughout Scripture, recommended, commented on, given as the essence of God’s blessings to us, (“I have brought you into a land flowing with milk and honey,” Exodus 3:8) what does “eating by faith” mean?

Jesus said, “It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” To obey Scripture then is living by the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” John 1:1-3. This is God, the Word, who created you, created the world, created the magnificent body you live in, and designed and created your spirit, soul, and body. All of you needs the Word. Not bread alone, not food alone, but you need every word of God.

When I decided to accept the challenge of our son, Zach, “Mom, write about health;” I knew major study would be involved, but the depth of change in both my views on food and profound excitement about food in the Bible has given me new purpose. If living by every word of God is about food, life, and eternity, as I now think it is, then eating by faith is an important pursuit. For myself, it is a new ambition: glorify God by living “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

After fasting forty days, Jesus was hungry. The enemy told Him to do something he could do but Jesus would not yield to the temptation.

In our current culture, food has become somewhat of a temptation because so much of it looks like food, tastes like food and is so easy to reach. With bleached, degermed flour, bleached sugar, corn syrup, chemicals, additives, “Natural Flavor” and devitalized, processed, bioengineered “food” we are regularly tempted to neglect the knowledge and wisdom to eat as we should.

Fast food is the new “unclean food.”  

 

The Temptation of Jesus

Mat 4:1  Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 

Mat 4:2  And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. 

Mat 4:3  And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 

Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 

 

WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED

The controversial, varied opinions about “diet” disagree. There is a place to go that is right and good for you. In the end you must decide. "I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation." Psalm 119:99. Look closely, the Bible has food "understanding."

When Jesus came to earth to redeem us, Biblical instruction about food changed (it was not disagreement with earlier truth, but progression).

We can be confident that the Bible gives us the final  wisdom about our diet…throughout the pages of Scripture. God’s love for us, His literal and figurative truth to mankind includes what is good for us: figuratively this food pictures God’s blessings and the way to live. The literal food shows God’s nutrition examples for us to eat.

This care for our wellbeing, this wisdom in the Bible does not include chemical additives in our nutrition, bioengineered, fake food, bleached and degermed flour, highly processed seed oils and on and on.

Food for Adam and Eve and early mankind was "every herb bearing seed" and "every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed." Later, after the global flood, Noah’s instruction changed, "Every moving thing that lives shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." Genesis 9:3.  When God delivered Israel from Egypt, He gave the laws of clean and unclean food.

 After Jesus came, The Book of Romans explains: "...All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eats with offence. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbles, or is offended, or is made weak." Romans 14:20,21. We are responsible for each other, for caring about their understanding. "For meat (food) destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eats with offence." 

"It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbles, or is offended, or is made weak. Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth." Rom 14:20-22.

We can eat by faith. Faith is believing God and acting on it. It will always benefit you.  

PURSUING FOOD WISDOM

 

“HEARKEN DILIGENTLY”: PURSUING FOOD WISDOM

Interestingly, Scripture shows that guidelines for food changed four times. First, food provided to Adam and Eve was simple. Simple in the sense that there were no chemicals, additives, bioengineered, devitalized, bleached or the big lie: “Natural Flavor.”  "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." Genesis 1:29. (Right here is basic food: any combination of vegetables will create a stir fry meal. Combine this with Olive oil, butter, salt, onions, and garlic. Add baked potatoes, fruit, and nuts).

Later, God said to Noah and his family after the Global Flood, "Every moving thing that lives shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have, I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." Genesis 9:3,4. (Meat mixed with vegetables, butter, milk and cheese and wholegrains, with cut up pineapple or watermelon for dessert).

Later when Israel marched out of Egypt to Canaan, through Moses came “clean and unclean” nutritional laws. This fascinating law is in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. (I tend to pay attention to this list even though our fifteen-year-old granddaughter taught me about the freedom we have after Jesus came when her love for Octopus showed up at a restaurant one evening. Her cerebral Dad and Mom were ahead of me).

When Jesus came to earth, He changed everything when He said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Matthew 5:17. What does this mean?

NEXT:

WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED