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.