S3. E16. NYT Article
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eating biblically is not just eating sourdough, drinking raw milk, bone broth, eliminating processed foods, or eating as people did in ancient Israel.
It is so much more than that as new covenant believers
Welcome to Your Daily Bread podcast. I'm your host, Abbie Stasior, a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor. My prayer is that these bite-sized episodes will help you heal your relationship with food, improve body image, and ultimately help you grow closer to God. Now, I can't personally heal you, but I'm gonna be directing you to the one that can, and that is Jesus. Also disclaimer, I'm not a pastor, but a sister in Christ that's offering you some food for thought that you can take into your quiet time with the Lord as your daily bread. Let's dig in.
Y'all, I was featured in The New York Times last week. Oh, my goodness. I am so excited, so grateful, and thank you to so many of you that have read the article, that have reached [00:01:00] out.
It truly was such a surreal experience, and it was so random. The reporter saw a couple of my reels and DM'd me on Instagram, wanted to do an interview, and she was writing a story about biblical eating, and I am just praising God for the feature in that this is a growing conversation. And with that, what I wanna talk about today is to clear up a couple things around the article.
It's hard because the interview that I had with the reporter was 35, 40 minutes, but then you just get one line, and multiple people were interviewed in the article. And y'all know that I have very distinct views on food, especially eating biblically, and I don't agree with all of my colleagues out there.
So that's what we're gonna be getting into today because this conversation about biblical eating is so important, so essential. I praise God that the news is talking about this. W- what a gift this is. However, eating biblically is more than just following a list of [00:02:00] foods to eat or not to eat.
It's not just eating the foods that are listed in the word of God. It is also about modeling Jesus and how he ate, and also why we eat. So it's more than just what we eat. And of course, the nutrient density of our meals matters. I mean, I, y'all know I'm a registered dietitian. Of course the nutrient density of our meals is so essential.
We need that to support our health. However, you could be eating a healthy meal, but it doesn't mean that it's holy. You could be exercising, you could be stewarding your body in a way that seems healthy, but you may be relying on your own understanding. You might not have the right heart posture behind what you're doing.
It may not truly be out of a place of obedience, it may not be honoring to the Lord, and it may not be actually giving him glory even though what is on your plate is deemed healthy. So we're gonna get into that today.
So Father God, thank you so much for this day. Lord, we just praise you and thank you for this feature and this [00:03:00] conversation.
Lord, we just are so grateful that more people are talking about the Bible and your word, and are hungry and thirsty to eat your way, and people are curious, Lord. So we are just grateful that people have a genuine curiosity for how to eat biblically because I do believe at the heart of it, people do want to honor their body for you, and I just pray that this episode guides people in the right direction, Lord, and helps people see your heart in all of this and they feel your compassion.
Lord, I pray that- This is not what I want to say, but it's what you want to say through me, and what you have anointed me to say, and my unique message for your people, Lord. And I'm so grateful that you have chosen me to be a vessel for you. So Lord, have your way, and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
We're gonna be getting into Mark 7, which is a verse that we've talked about before. But y'all, I don't think we've, in, in our three years of podcasting, I don't think we have [00:04:00] actually read it through where Jesus declares all foods clean. So we're gonna be getting into Mark 7, starting in verse five. It says, "So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, 'Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders?
Instead eating bread with ceremonial unclean hands?' He answered them, 'Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written, - this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines human commands. Abandoning the command of God, you hold on to human tradition.'"
And then it goes on to say in verse 14, "Summoning the crowd again, he told them, 'Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that goes into a person from outside can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.' He said to them, 'Are you also lacking in understanding? Don't you realize that nothing going into a person from the outside can defile him?
For it doesn't go into his heart, but [00:05:00] into the stomach and is eliminated.' Thus, he declared all foods clean." Y'all, that is the word of the Lord.
What I want to first clear up is that eating biblically is not just eating sourdough, drinking raw milk, bone broth, eliminating processed foods, or eating as people did in ancient Israel.
It is so much more than that as new covenant believers because Jesus has declared all foods clean. We are not bound by the Jewish food traditions as new covenant believers. And it's so funny to see people correlating eating biblically with drinking raw milk and seeing the pasteurization of milk as something that's totally sinful when actually it is safer to drink pasteurized milk, and I encourage you to do so. As someone that has personally been victimized by E. coli and has contracted that foodborne illness, I would not recommend that you drink raw milk because you are more likely [00:06:00] to contract a foodborne illness from raw milk and it's unpasteurized.
So l- for in the name of Jesus, please drink pasteurized milk. It still keeps the nutrients. It just kills off the bad bacteria. Please, for the, for the love of God.
I feel like so many people correlate, okay, here's the list of foods that you can eat, and if you deviate from that, you're sinning, and that leads to a lot of guilt and shame, restrictive eating, or potentially binge eating because people are so restrictive.
As soon as they get access to food that they don't normally allow themselves to eat, now all of the sudden they're overeating. They're eating past the point of comfortable fullness. They're sneaking food, and it can lead to a lot of guilt and shame and then further restriction, and you're just stuck in that cycle, and it doesn't create a good relationship with food.
God is in the relationship business he is so much so in the relationship business that he sent his Son down from the throne in heaven to come on Earth, to put on flesh as a human, to dwell among [00:07:00] us and die on a cross, be resurrected from the dead so that we have the Holy Spirit and he dwells within us, and we're never separated from him again.
God sent his Son to die for us so that we could secure a lasting relationship with him. So God is in the relationship business, and how this relates to our eating is that God cares about your relationship with food, and he cares about a genuine relationship with you before he's gonna correct what's on your plate.
He's going to build that relational equity with you first before correcting what's on your plate. And that is the heart of God, and he genuinely cares about your relationship with food more than just what's on your plate.
It makes me think about 1 Samuel 16:7, and we normally talk about that verse in relation to body image, that God doesn't look at the outward appearance, but he looks at the heart, and that is the heart of Mark 7 and the verse that we're talking about, that God is less concerned about how things look on the outside [00:08:00] because He sees through it. He sees the real motivation. He cares about the heart. In Proverbs 4:20-23 talks about how we have to guard our heart, for everything we do flows from it. So the motivations behind our actions are based on what is really in our heart, and that's what Jesus is referring to here in Mark 7, that whatever is in your heart on the inside, that is what defiles a person, because that's the motivation behind your actions, and that's what people can't see.
People can see your plate, so it may look healthy, but it doesn't mean that it's holy if you're eating from the wrong heart posture. If you're eating it just to lose weight, or you ordered a salad at a restaurant to compare because you were comparing your plate to your friend's plate, or you felt like you couldn't order that Or what you really wanted, so you stuck with the salad with chicken.
And it was so cool. I was talking to a client earlier this week, and, I always start my client calls off, y'all know that I did an episode about this, um, and seeing the good earlier in season three.
So I [00:09:00] always start my client calls off with a win. What's going well? What's something that you wanna celebrate? And she was like, "Abby,, I didn't order chicken and vegetables at a restaurant." And I'm like, "Praise the Lord." I'm like, "But tell me more. What do you mean by that?" Because someone could hear that win and, , think that I'm encouraging people to just eat cake, cookies, ice cream all the time and d- not eat in a nutrient-dense way.
And I can assure y'all that this client eats in a very balanced, just super nutrient-dense way. But she said, " I have been so afraid to go out to dinner, because, it led to so much stress. She couldn't track her macros. She felt like she was gonna gain weight.
She didn't know how it was cooked, what h- what oil was in there. It gave her so much stress and anxiety that she would really isolate herself and say no to plans and not go out with people because she was so afraid of the eating experience, and it was so stressful and anxiety-inducing that she just avoided it altogether.
Or if she would go, she said [00:10:00] she could only have vegetables and grilled chicken. That's all she would allow herself to have. So the fact that her win was, "Hey, I didn't order that, and I actually got what I want," and she ordered a burger. And it's so funny because I always use that as an example, and y'all that have been listening to the podcast for a while know that I do use that as an example.
Like, hey, if you're at a restaurant and you feel pressure to order the salad, but you really feel like a burger and fries, get the burger and fries. A burger is warm and hearty and savory, and a salad is cold, crunchy, fresh. And there's nothing wrong with a salad, and you could get both, right? You could get a burger with a salad on the side.
However, if you're really craving something that's hot and savory, and you choose something that's cold and crunchy, that y- that's not gonna be satisfying. It may get you some more fiber, but it could set you up to potentially binge later on in the day from that lack of satisfaction at the meal. So it was just so cool to hear this client say as a win, "I didn't order the salad and chicken, but I got what my body was really craving for."
And she was on her cycle, she needed the iron, that's why she was [00:11:00] craving the meat, so she was in tune with her body, and she chose that, and she didn't have any guilt or any shame. Praise the Lord. So there's more to eating biblically, eating in a way that honors your body, which then honors God, than just the nutrient density of your meals.
It really is your heart posture behind why you choose certain foods, why you steward your body in a certain way. So if you are eating out of fear, out of control, out of comparison, vanity, pride, any of these reasons then it is not honoring to the Lord, even if what is on your plate is nutrient dense.
Jesus doesn't just model what to eat, but He models how to eat. We see that in Luke 9:14-17 when Jesus feeds the 5,000.
This is a verse that we talk about so much on the podcast, but this is our recipe for how to approach mealtimes. We see Jesus, He has the disciples go out [00:12:00] and organize the group of... Now, it was 5,000 men, but there were women and children there, too, so there were more than 5,000 people. And Jesus instructed the disciples to organize the group and get people in groups of about 50 each, and to have everyone sit down. So mealtimes, at, Jesus demonstrates here that mealtimes are meant to be orderly, and we're meant to sit down, not shoveling in a protein bar when you're rushing around trying to get ready in the morning, or standing up over the sink in a rush. But mealtimes are meant to be calm, orderly, organized as best as you can. And then Jesus prays over the meal, then the food is distributed, and then people eat until they're satisfied, not until they're stuffed.
And then there were leftovers. We know that there were 12 basketfuls left over, so it's okay if there are leftovers on your plate. You eat until you're satisfied, not eat until you're stuffed.
And we see Jesus in [00:13:00] John 21:1-14, that He models eating breakfast with His disciples.
And He has fish and He has bread. He has protein and He has carbs, so it's a balanced breakfast.
And we also see at the Last Supper that Jesus had the opportunity to emotionally eat, but we don't see Him do that. We actually see him at the Last Supper eating from a place of abundance, not a place of scarcity.
He shares the bread, he shares the wine and the other food that they were eating at Passover with everyone else that was at the table. And we don't see him shoveling food in or eating until he's stuffed or eating from a place of emotion. But then we see him in the Garden of Gethsemane afterward, and it is like he is sweating blood.
It says he is sorrowful to the point of death, so distressed about going to the cross. So we know he was feeling very deep emotions, but we don't see that at the time of the meal. So Jesus had the opportunity to [00:14:00] emotionally eat, but we don't see that. We see that he nourished himself adequately, and then he processed his emotions with God.
So he nourished himself, and then he metabolized his emotions with God, so it was separate from the meal.
To limit what the Bible says about food to just being a list of foods to eat and not to eat is so shortsighted. It really is, and I think it cuts Jesus off at the knees. Jesus is like, "I did so much more with food. And there was so much more that I wanted to teach you about food, not just modeling what I eat."
And so I think that people are really missing that piece, that there's so much more to eating biblically than just a list of foods. And I just pray that that, gets across, because my goal is to help people live a 1 Corinthians 10:31 life.
Whatever we do, whether we eat or drink, we do it all for the glory of God. And if you wanna be eating for the glory of God, it gets down to the heart, and asking the Lord, praying Psalm 139, "Lord, search me. You know me, but Lord, search me and get me [00:15:00] back on the path of the life everlasting." So that the Lord can search your heart, change your heart, so that your actions that flow out of that are going to be honoring to Him.
Like, that's the prayer that we should pray if we truly wanna be eating for the glory of God, is to have God change us at a heart level, because that's what He says in Mark 7. It's the heart. What's on the inside that defiles a person, because that's what comes out, not what goes in. So I pray that this episode helps to renew your mind, and rest assured that like, "Okay, I listen to this podcast every week, and I'm on the right track, and the Lord is renewing my mind."
I just know if you are listening to this podcast every week and you are applying the scriptures and really meditating on the scriptures that we give you every week, 'cause that's the point of the show, is I give you a scripture, my little commentary on it, but I want you to take this as your daily bread.
Take it to the Lord, and have Him speak to you on it and to your specific situation, because He knows you best. If you're doing that and really applying the scriptures that we're talking about, I just, I [00:16:00] know that you're improving. And if you are listening to this now and you're curious about how to steward your body for the glory of God, how to eat biblically, and like truly getting to the heart of God in your eating, then I encourage you to head to the show notes and book a free 20-minute call with me, and I would love to chat with you and I would love to serve you.
I'll see y'all. Actually, I will see y'all, , in three weeks. We're taking two weeks off. I'm getting married in two days. Ah. I am so excited. Praise the Lord. , and then next week I'm going on my honeymoon, and then I'm gonna be adjusting getting back to life after that and getting adjusted back to the time zone after the honeymoon.
So, we will have an episode in mid-June, and y'all are not gonna wanna miss that episode when we get back. Y'all, it is a very powerful guest episode, and we're gonna be talking all about gluttony and what gluttony is and what gluttony isn't. And I know that that is a topic that is a very hot topic, very sensitive topic.
But the guest that I bring on, we talk about it with so much compassion and [00:17:00] mercy, and it is just dripping , in God's nature. And I'm really, really excited to bring that conversation to y'all. So we're gonna be taking two weeks off. I appreciate y'all's grace on that. , I very rarely take a week off from podcasting.
I can think of maybe two times that I have done that in the last three years. So I appreciate y'all's grace, and then I will see y'all back in mid-June. See you soon
. Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Your Daily Bread Podcast. Now, if anything about this episode resonated with you, I wanna encourage you to send it to three sisters in Christ who may also wanna steward their bodies better.
I read every comment, every review of the show, and I love hearing your testimonies and how the Holy Spirit is meeting you through these episodes. And if you haven't left a review yet, I wanna encourage you to do so 'cause it truly does help the show grow and it. Ultimately benefits the kingdom. And if you need any personalized support with your nutrition and your relationship with food or your body image, head to the show notes and you'll see all the different ways to work with me.
See you next week.
