S3. E23. 1 John Series Part 3
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if Jesus really is not just your savior, but he's also your Lord, he needs to have reign over everything.
He needs to have access to everything, and we need to trust everything with him. And that can be hard to do. But we have to remember that
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.
Hello, hello. Welcome back to your Daily Bread Podcast. We are back in 1 John, 1 John chapter
2 this week as part of our 1 John series. And what we're gonna be talking about today [00:01:00] is, again, healing your relationship with food. But, what the Lord has really been putting on my heart is that healing your relationship with food isn't about inviting Jesus in to bless the plans that you have already made.
It's inviting Jesus in to actually lead them. And so we need to be surrendered enough, humble enough, letting go of control enough where we are open to being corrected and open to being led by Him, even if the plans that God has for us are different than what we originally thought. So we're gonna be getting into 1 John chapter 2.
Father God, thank you so much for this word. Lord, thank you for caring about our relationship with food, caring about our relationship with our bodies. Lord, your word says that you order the steps of the godly and you delight in all the details of their lives, you don't just care, but you delight in them, and we are just so grateful that our bodies, how we eat, our hunger, our fullness, the days that we feel bloated, the thoughts that we have about ourselves, the, how our clothes fit our [00:02:00] bodies, like nothing is too small for you.
And you are in all of those details, and you earnestly care, and you want to give us comfort and wisdom and direction, and you have equipped us with everything that we need to receive that and to receive all that we need, Lord. So help us to seek you above seeking any other thing in this world. So I pray that this episode renews our minds and helps to reconcile hearts back to you so that more people seek you and your kingdom and your righteousness, knowing that everything else will be added unto us after.
So I pray that everything that's said in this episode is not what I want to say, but is what you want to say through me, and it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. So we're gonna be getting into 1 John chapter 2, verses 20 to 23 that say, " But you have an anointing from the Holy One." And all of you know the truth.
I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a [00:03:00] person is the antichrist, denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father.
Whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. So you're probably wondering how this relates to our relationship with food, but what the Lord highlighted to me is that, oh, people that have the Son have the Father also. And all of us listening as new covenant believers, we believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, and so we have the Father also.
We have the blessings and the promises of God the Father. We have the Holy Spirit. We have God's wisdom. . We have access to God. And I find that sometimes we avoid it, and we keep God locked out of certain aspects of our health, things that we don't want to change or that we're not ready to change.
And I think sometimes we keep God locked out because we assume what He's going to say, where truly we don't know, and we may be projecting a response onto Him [00:04:00] versus, , really knowing. Now, sometimes we do know what He's gonna say because He has said it before time and time again, and we're just not listening.
But also sometimes it's like we're assuming , what He's going to say about a certain situation, and it seems easier to give Jesus access to all these rooms , in our house, except for this one. We're gonna keep this door locked and not invite Him into every aspect. But He's asking to be invited into every room and have full access and full reign.
And Jesus may be your Savior, but is He actually your Lord if you are locking Him out of certain rooms? And it's like, "Jesus, I surrender all of these things to you, and I wanna flourish in all of these areas, except over here. You can't come over here. You can't touch this. Like, I'm gonna hold on to this."
Is that you being fully surrendered? And I'm saying this now to y'all, but I'm also saying it to myself. I mean, this scripture really smacked me across the face because, and I talked about this in our gluttony episode, but I have been struggling with coffee and caffeine intake. And actually, I've been doing really well [00:05:00] with the coffee intake, where I am not having a cup of coffee in the morning, and I have decreased my caffeine intake to maybe a matcha, like, here and there if I'm, you know, going on a coffee date with someone and catching up in town.
, But most of the time I've changed my coffee dates with people to now be walks with people so that I'm not tempted to , , get a coffee. And I'm also like, why would I spend $8 on a decaf latte and it tastes the same, but it doesn't hit the same. You know? So I'm like, why would I spend $8 on that?
So a matcha seems like, you know, a , good compromise, but there's still caffeine there. , But when I work out, sometimes I will still have, some pre-workout or some caffeine there. So the Lord is still working on me to go fully caffeine-free. So we've gotten rid of the coffee, but we're still kinda gripping onto caffeine.
So I'm saying all of this to you, but I want y'all to know that I'm struggling with this too. Like, this is hard, that we all have places in our lives that we don't want Jesus to touch, and we kind of keep it in this back office, in this locked drawer if Jesus really is not just your savior, but he's also your Lord, he needs to have reign over everything.
He needs to have access to [00:06:00] everything, and we need to trust everything with him. And that can be hard to do. But we have to remember that his ways are best. And in Romans 12:2, it says that his will is good, pleasing, and perfect. And so many of us earnestly want to please the Lord, but what pleases the Lord is actually doing his will because his will is pleasing to him So it's like we're trying to do all these things to strive and achieve, to please the Lord, when it's like, "Okay, what would actually be pleasing for me is if you would ungrip your hands, let it go, lay it at my feet, and invite me in to help you in this area," ' cause you don't have to do it alone.
And I think sometimes, at least at, with me with the caffeine, it can feel so hard because I'm like, "Oh, I have to do this," but Jesus is like, "No, no, no, you don't have to do this. I just need you to invite me in so that I can give you wisdom around it, and I can give you strength around it, and , you don't have to do that on your own."
I said before, we are so quick to assume what God is going to say, and our perception tends to be a lot harsher than what [00:07:00] Jesus would actually say in His true nature. He is so compassionate, and, abounding in love and rich in mercy, full of compassion, slow to anger, all of those things that it talks about in Exodus, but we forget about that when we actually wanna bring something to Him, that He is so sweet and so compassionate, and He levels with us.
Like, He gets it, and He knows how hard things are to lay down, and He gives us the strength to do so. And so yeah, I think that when we think, His thinking's higher than our thinking. His ways are higher than our ways. His ways are better than our ways. We have to remember that His will is good, pleasing, and perfect, and that He has good, good plans for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you.
And He's not trying to withhold joy or, withhold good things for you. If He is telling you to lay something down, if He is telling you to stop doing something, then He is doing it for a good reason, and you may not know why, but it is for a good reason. It is for your good because He is a good, good Father who has good [00:08:00] plans for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you.
And with keeping that one room locked, without surrendering that thing that... And I know you're thinking of what that thing is right now. Like, everyone knows what their thing is. Without surrendering that, it can prevent you from actually flourishing and stepping into the fullness that God has for you, and that can be a hard pill to swallow.
And so This verse starts off with, "But you have an anointing from the Holy One." We all have an anointing. We all have plans for our lives. We all have a purpose here on Earth. You have gifts and talents. You have different ways that God has graced you. You are anointed in some way, and God has a plan for you.
And so we need to give Him access to everything, so that we can fully step into His will, so that we can run the race that He has set before us, so we can step into those good plans. Or Ephesians 2:10, it talks about how we are God's masterpiece, and He has planned good works for us long ago.
So He has already ordained all of these things, and He has planned all these good things that He [00:09:00] wants you to do. And so if He's asking you to lay something down, He's doing that , for a reason, because there is an anointing on your life. There is a purpose in it. We might not know the full why behind it or the harm behind it, but we want to be obedient to that.
And I think what helps with this is what we talked about last week, getting in our quiet time with the Lord. And I talked about in that Habakkuk chapter 2, where it says Habakkuk got to a place. He got to, a, a position, an elevated surface away from people so that he could hear from God, and he got himself into a heart posture where he could be corrected.
And I think we need to humble ourselves so that not only we're not getting just to our quiet place to hear from the Lord, but we're in a heart posture where we can be corrected, and we can do His will. And we don't have to do it alone because when you have the Son, you have the Father too.
You have His promises. You have His power. The Holy Spirit's dwelling inside you. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, and you have access to that. [00:10:00] And The blessings from God don't flow from our habits, but they flow from abiding. And what we talked about last week is, like, really striving to abide in the Lord and create space so that we can have that quiet time with Him.
, It is similar with this. We need to give Jesus full access to all parts of our life, fully surrender to Him, ungrip our hands so that we can fully be abiding in Him, and the blessings flow out of the abiding, not from anything that you're doing. And so many of us are like, " Well, , I'm eating well, and I'm exercising, and I'm tracking my macros, and I'm weighing myself, and I'm staying on top of all of these things, and I'm hitting my workout streaks.
, And maybe I am getting up, and I'm doing my quiet time, and I'm going to church, and I'm serving, and I'm doing all of these things." And God's like, "Yeah, yeah, you're checking a lot of boxes, but are you actually spending time with me? And are you actually doing the things that I have called you to do?
Because I didn't ask you to track your macros. I didn't ask you to weigh yourself weekly or every day. I didn't ask you to be [00:11:00] obsessive or worry about all of these things. I just want you to abide. I just want you to seek me. I just want you to give me that. I just want you to , lay that down." And, this might be, like, kind of a crazy story, , but I kinda feel called to share it, the Lord's been kind of talking to me about the caffeine thing for a long time, and
so When the Lord started to put on my heart to decrease my caffeine intake, the first thing He said to me, He didn't say to cut out caffeine entirely. First, He said, "You need to stop going to Starbucks every day." And just the kindness of God, too, to not be like, "You need to cut everything out." Like, He was meeting me where I was at.
Like, He wasn't like, "You need to give up coffee entirely." He's like, " You just need to delete the app. You need to delete the Starbucks app, and you need to lay this out, and you need to stop going to Starbucks every day." And I said, "Okay." And then it's crazy because I started to see all of these different TikTok videos of people being like, oh, , , , the history behind the Starbucks symbol and how it's, you know, demonic and things like that.
It has, like, demonic origins and things like that, and I'm like, "Oh, okay. Maybe that's why God doesn't want me to go to Starbucks because it's demonic and, like, not honoring to [00:12:00] Him and blah, blah." Meanwhile, like, that may be true, but it also is like, no, I was relying so much on caffeine, not on the sufficiency of Christ, and every time I would drink caffeine, I would be overriding my biology and not resting in Him and being very self-sufficient and falling into my achiever tendencies.
So, like, that may be true, but it's also like, okay, God's like, "I got so many other things, like, , why I'm asking you to do this," and I didn't see the full picture then, and I probably still don't. So anyway, I was obedient with that, and I was like, "Oh, okay. The Lord doesn't want me to go to Starbucks.
I'm gonna delete the app, and I'm not gonna go to Starbucks anymore." And in my head, I felt like I was taking a stand against things that were demonic, and I'm just gonna do things that are honoring the, the Lord in my life. And then, you know, once you start seeing things on social media, it starts feeding you more and more and more of the same.
So then I start seeing things about other brands that are demonic and things that are not honoring to the Lord and people saying like, "Hey, I felt convicted in this way, so I stopped shopping at this store or doing this thing and blah, blah, blah." And then I started to [00:13:00] see things about Nike, and Nike is one of the Greek gods, I believe, and - this person on TikTok was like, "Hey, I just felt really convicted personally to not do anything, like, Greek or pagan, and I just wanna honor the Lord, so I stopped shopping at Nike."
Meanwhile, I'm watching this, and I'm wearing, a Nike workout sweater, and you would never know that this sweater was Nike. There was, like, maybe a very small logo on the side, and it was, like, monochrome with it, so, like, you would never know that it was Nike. And honestly, I always forgot that I got it at a Nike outlet, like, a million years ago.
And this is why it's so important to pray on these things because instead of fully giving up coffee and caffeine, , like, I ended up that day throwing out that sweater. Number one, I could have donated it. I don't know why I threw it in the trash. Like, I don't know. I was just trying to honor the Lord, and I felt like I was doing that, and the Lord was like, "I never asked you to throw out that sweater."
And y'all, I wore that sweater all the time. I would always wear it to work out. It was, like, my favorite athleisure piece to wear. It was so [00:14:00] convenient. It was cute. , And after I threw it out, I looked to see if there were other ones like it or if I could get it back, and, literally it was at a Nike outlet I got, like, a million years ago.
Like, I simply could not find the sweater again. And so it was really gone, and the Lord literally said to me, " I never asked you to throw that out. Like, I don't have a problem with you wearing that Nike sweatshirt. Like, that's not dishonoring to me. Like, other people may have that conviction, but for you, I never told you that."
And so this is why, and we've talked about this on previous podcast episodes, the Lord desires our obedience, not our sacrifice. And the Lord's like, "I'm trying to get you to drink less caffeine. I never said anything about Nike." Like, but I'm like, "Oh, Lord, I'm gonna sacrifice everything to you. Like, my, my life is yours.
Whatever you want, I'll do." But he's like, " Okay, but you're not doing the thing that I actually told you to do." And so I don't know, like, , going into all of that, I hope that that resonates with someone, that, you know, we can do the wrong things but for the right reason. Like, I had the right heart.
Like, I want to honor the Lord, but the Lord's like, "I never asked you to do that. So I don't desire your sacrifice. I desire your obedience, so just [00:15:00] do what I actually told you to do." So I hope that that helps someone. So as you're kinda navigating through all of this, and stepping into the good plans that God has for you, because you have an anointing, you have a purpose on your life, and you have access to Jesus, and because of that, you have the Holy Spirit, you have God the Father, you have all the promises of God, all of this applies to you.
So as you're thinking about all of that in this scripture in 1 John this week, I have some reflection questions for you. Number one, have I invited Jesus into every part of my health journey? Have I invited Jesus into every part of my health journey? Yes or no? Number two, am I following habits or the Holy Spirit?
And for me, it was like, "Oh, I saw other people doing this. They have this conviction, so I'm gonna do that," versus actually doing what the Holy Spirit was inviting me to do. Number three, what room have I kept locked? Where am I leaving Jesus out? And this also makes me think of Revelation 3:20, where He's standing at the door knocking, and those who hear His voice and [00:16:00] open the door, He will come in and eat with that person and lay with them.
It doesn't say He's gonna come in and, like, wag His finger at you, and shame and condemn you and yell at you. No, no, no. He wants to share a meal with you. He wants to build rapport with you. He wants to break bread with you and talk about things, and probably over a meal. He probably wants to eat with you, too.
, And so that's a call to not be working or scrolling on our phone , while we're eating every single meal. Not that you can't ever watch TV or whatever while you eat, , but we wanna make sure that we're making time for God, too, because He desires to eat with you , and give you that wisdom.
I think about all the times that Jesus was eating with His disciples. It wasn't just breaking bread and, telling jokes or whatever. He was depositing wisdom, and He was teaching, and He was preaching, and He wants to do the same with you, too. So if you hear Him knocking on a door in your life, come in and let Him in because He is gentle and lowly, and He is kind and compassionate and loving.
We started this first John series off talking about how God is love, and so He's loving in the way that He communicates with you. , He's gentle and kind , and He's gonna meet you [00:17:00] where you're at. So if there is a door of your health journey that you have locked, it's time to let Him in and , answer His call.
And if you need help with that and help healing your relationship with food and laying these things down and making... You know, kind of bridging this gap. If you have your health over here and your faith over here and you need help bridging the gap, then I encourage you to head to the show notes and book a free call with me because, as your Christian dietician, I would love to support you on this journey of blending the two and not having your faith in one camp and your health in another camp, but getting Jesus at the center of it all.
I'll see you all next week 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 [00:18:00] 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.
