Word-in-My-Heart-Wednesday - Habakkuk 3:17-18

This week's Word-in-My-Heart-Wednesday verse is Habakkuk 3:17-18. (Word-in-My-Heart-Wednesday explained here.) This is a text that helps me keep my priorities straight. (Find it now scrolling at the top of the blog.) Since eating nutritiously is very important to me, I could easily get engulfed in a mindset that makes nutrition of too much importance. Believe it or not, this good thing could become an idol for me. If it wasn't for Christ I could become so dogmatic about food that any or all of the following could happen:

1. I could keep a "legal list" of foods. (That would make me a legalist would it not?) Those would be allowable foods.

2. If you did not serve foods from the "legal list", I would not come to eat at your house if you asked me.

3. I would police every potluck the church hosted, noting who brought what. Then I would eat only the foods on my "legal list" and then I might find an opportune time to talk to you if you brought something I could not eat.

4. Being the food police, if I saw you in the grocery store with non-allowable foods in your basket, you might get a stiff talking to.

5. I would probably talk to the people in charge of snacks for Sunday School (adult and children's), the nursery, youth group, mid-week children's club, etc and "kindly" give them my "legal list"of foods from which they should develop an acceptable list of snacks of their own. Then I would follow up to make sure things changed.

6. I could in essence become the biggest food snob, making food the most important thing in my life - more important than unity and fellowship and even more important than my relationship to Christ.

But I do not want to do any of that. I should never allow what I eat to cause a separation between me and my brothers and sisters in Christ. Fellowship should not be interrupted over such things.

When I first changed my diet to what it is now, I had to resolve to never put food in God's place. Sounds like a no-brainier, but my heart is so wicked that I could actually do that. Enter Habakkuk 3:17-18. The fields may not always produce food. I know that I may not always be so blessed that I can eat an optimum diet. I may have to eat processed food at sometime in the future. There may even come a time when I have little or no food to eat. Only God knows. What then?

Oh, if that should happen, I want to praise my Redeemer. I want to exult in the Lord and rejoice in the God of my salvation! And I want to do that right alongside my brothers and sisters in Christ! God will let nothing separate me from His love, so neither should I let anything keep me from loving Him and serving the people He loves. Certainly not food, when one day we will feast at His table and all the optimum food that I have worked so hard to keep stocked and prepared will seem like junk food in comparison.

Christ is my food and drink. If all else should fail, He never will and I will dwell with the Bread of Life forever. I will see the Holy One, the Living Water, face to face. No created thing can take His place or satisfy my soul like Jesus.

For now however, I will do what I can do to maintain a healthy body so that I can serve God. One way I do that is through the nourishing foods that He created to be received and eaten with gratitude. "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor 10:31)

If you are inclined to food policing, why don't you take a few moments each day to work with me in memorizing Habakkuk 3:17-18?