Say Goodbye to Emotional EatingSample

Since we know God could have created our bodies any way He wanted, we have to wonder why He designed us to eat on a regular basis. After all, He could have designed us so we never had to eat. That would have saved time and energy as we wouldn’t need to grow or prepare food. I thought of three reasons God set it up the way He did.

First, God chose to use food as a means to energize our bodies so we can do the work He calls us to do. We see in creation that not only did He create us to need food, He also created animals to need food and provided that food to meet our needs (Psalm 104:10-15, 27-28). The food we eat will either give us energy or deplete our energy, depending on what we eat and how much we eat.

Second, God created food to draw us into fellowship. Meals are times for families and friends to gather together and share about their days with each other. We meet with friends for coffee, we have church potlucks, and we have holiday gatherings. Food draws people together and adds to our sense of community.

God also set up meals as a way to fellowship with Him! He set up feast days in the church, and He talks about the banquet we’ll share with Him in heaven (Matthew 8:11). When Jesus came to earth, He spent many a meal fellowshipping with both believers and nonbelievers (Matthew 14:15-21, Mark 2:13-17) . He also made the effort to have one last special meal with His disciples before He went to the cross, and He told them to do this often in remembrance of Him, instituting the meal we still share as a body of believers (Mark 14:22-25). Eating together was important to Jesus.

Finally, I believe God gave us food to give us pleasure. In the book of Genesis, we find that He didn’t create just one type of fruit, grain, or vegetable. Instead, He went out of His way to create a variety of good foods for us to enjoy (Genesis 1:11-12). Eating is fun. It’s a treat to our taste buds and an enjoyable, relaxing experience.

These are God’s good purposes for food. We get in trouble when we use food, not for His purposes, but our purposes: To comfort on a hard day. To provide excitement on a boring day. Relief on a stressful day. The list goes on and on. When we eat for emotional reasons, we eat too much and we wake up the next morning with regret.

But that’s not the worst thing that happens. The worst thing that happens is that we miss out on God’s good purposes for trials. We’ll look at those in our next lesson.