Food and Drink

But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another. Eph 4:21-25

You don't thank Jesus for the food and walk away. 

God gives you good food to eat, but you have to take time to digest his blessings. You have to determine if the food is from God or not and walk away from bad food. Yet once you know the food is from God, you have to take the time to put it into your mouth, bring it into your inward parts and digest it so that it brings life to your whole body. You have to participate in the eating of spiritual food just as you do of physical food. Physical food is necessary whether you are doing strenuous manual labor or sitting in your rocking chair. Similarly, spiritual food equips you for daily life as well as the moments of spiritual warfare you encounter. God gives you the food to sustain you in every situation, but you have to take the time to bring the food into your soul instead of letting it sit on your plate. 

Participate in the good times not just the times when something needs to be fixed.

Just you eat food in all situations, you have to participate in every situation life hands you. You have to parent your children both when they are misbehaving and when they are behaving well. You have to take the time to praise just as much as you are forced to take the time to scold. It is not enough to fervently take off the sins of the old man, you have to put on the clothes of the new man and walk in righteousness. You have to engage with the gospel both when something needs to be fixed and when everything seems to be going well. Your goal in life has to be more than not to eat bad food, it has to include decisive activities to digest good food.

To have a good life, it is not enough to remove what is wrong with it; you also need a positive goal. 

A good life must take away the bad and add the good. It is easy to focus on the taking away of the bad without adding the good. A diet consists of both what you eat and what you don’t eat. If you don’t drink poison yet don’t eat good food, you will starve; on the other hand, if you eat good healthy food yet also drink poison, you will still die.  Your eating and drinking needs to remain constant in good times and hard times. Hard times don’t give you an excuse to drink poison, and good times don’t release you from the need to continually consume good food.