Choosing from the Menu
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue
with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness,
and steadfastness with godliness. 2 Peter 1:5-8
Restaurant chains are making it easier and easier to stay on a “controlled eating plan” (I’m sick of being on diets!). Before you ever enter the physical building you can go online and check out the menu – including calories, fat, and carbs in each dish. For the past few weeks I have been deciding what to order before I ever leave home. The results have made the effort worth the time and trouble.
The hard part for me has been sticking with the decision once I am in the restaurant. I am a little fickle about food, if what sounded good an hour ago doesn’t sound good when I am ordering, I am reluctant to stick with my plan. (This is not new for me, my poor husband has been given at 4 PM many a menu for dinner that isn’t even close to what I serve him at 6:30.) I resolve the ordering problem by not tempting myself by looking at the menu once I am in the restaurant.
Today I was thinking about how I should follow the same practice with the way I study the Bible. When I get into a situation that requires an ethical or moral decision, I need to know before I get there what I would do. Many of us say that the Bible is our rulebook for life – but when we see all the choices the world offers we falter and head in the wrong direction. Do we have a “controlled reading plan” so we have enough knowledge to decide beforehand what we will do?
Sometimes these decisions allow the opportunity to go back and look things up – to seek what God would have us do if we don’t know. Other times a decision has to be made in the moment. There’s no time to go back and plan. If we didn’t come into a situation prepared, we will not make wise decisions.
I battle with how important ten or twenty pounds are to God. Is it really important that I be the perfect size? Does He really care if I splurge on that piece of cheesecake occasionally? The answer I have for myself is that He calls me to be disciplined.
In 1 Timothy 2 we are told that self-control is one of the attributes that should adorn the woman of God. In 2 Timothy 2 the scriptures group a lack of self-control with things like pride, arrogance, being abusive, unholy, and heartless. On a more positive note Peter (2 Peter 1:5-8) tells us to add it to our faith along with some other godly attributes.
The discipline God calls us to is greater than things like our physical food. He would have us apply this understanding to our spiritual food, too. If we are being fed on the Word of God regularly we will be better prepared for any situation or decision that arises. If we say we believe that “God’s word is lamp unto our feet and light unto our path” (Psalm 119:105) we cannot treat it like we do a menu. We cannot pick and choose to eat of it one way today and another way tomorrow. Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Are we even as committed to follow His word as we are our own eating plans? (I don’t know about yours but mine rarely last more than a few weeks!) How prepared are you and I from our Biblical studies to make sound ethical and moral decisions when the need arises?
