The Body’s Role in Achieving Your God-Given Purpose

Synopsis     1Sam 14:26-34     9/19/2018

The battle of Michmash was raging. The king’s son Jonathan had started a great rout of the Philistines with a surprise attack on a remote outpost. The unexpected attack, in combination with a strong earthquake, caused the Philistine army to panic and flee.

The Israelites pursued and killed many Philistine soldiers. While pursuing the enemy, Jonathan stopped at the site of a honey comb that had broken open and was flowing with honey. He ate some and felt energized.

However, his soldiers informed him that his father had made an oath that no one from Israel should eat anything until the battle was complete. Jonathan noted that this was an ill-advised edict.

As a result of Saul’s order, the men were so famished at the end of the day that they began taking captured domestic animals for food. They slaughtered them and ate them without first draining the blood. Saul recognized their error and made a place to properly slaughter the animals to avoid the sin.

An Army Fights on Its Stomach

Napoleon said, “An army fights on its stomach”.

When Saul made this vow, he thought his edict would focus the attention and resolve of the Israelite forces to completely destroy the enemy before doing anything else. It was the modern equivalent of saying, “we don’t have time for supper”.

But the reality was that the army was weakened and less effective because they were denied food. One interesting, brain-science fact is the restorative power of glucose after acute stress. Honey is more than 50% glucose. Eating the honey would have actually given Saul’s army the physical ability to achieve his purpose. But his edict had just the opposite effect.

The Body’s Role in Achieving Your God Given Purpose

Gandhi famously asked, “Do you eat to live or live to eat?”

So, it’s unwise for me to be led by my appetites. I can accept that. It’s unwise for me to be enslaved by any bad habit.

But it remains important to recognize fundamental truths. One of these is that I am a bodily being. I have a body. And it has its needs and demands.

It’s a big mistake to believe that you can disregard the legitimate needs of your body and still enter into the possibility of your life. Eating is a part of the process of actualizing your potential.

So, if you want success, then let your eating habits align with your God given vision.

“It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles that person; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one.” Matt 15:11