Do you like fast food?

Hey, I don’t judge if you do. Sometimes, instead of making use of the many groceries we have at home, we opt to order in. It’s what people do, and the reasons for that depend on the person. Sometimes, it’s wanting to have something different. Other times, it’s laziness. There’s always something in-between those two as well, but in my experience, it’s either one or the other.

Laziness or curiosity aside, food is something I’ve always valued in life, but there was a time not too long ago where ordering out became a serious problem for me. Now, it wasn’t because I thought it was outwardly wrong to do so. I do think it’s acceptable to have takeout on occasion, especially if you want to treat your family to something new or fun. The many pizza parties we had when I was a kid are a great example of this, especially when we invited over our friends from across town.

The problem was that I was ordering out too much and too often. The pandemic changed me in a lot of ways, and while most of them were genuinely good, I can say for certain that this was not one of them. I went from being slightly overweight to barely over obese for my age, and it sucked. No better way to describe it than that, and I blame both myself and those blasted quarter pounder meals I used to order in every other day.

However, like other patterns in my life that were causing me trouble, I eventually broke through. Well, mostly.

Here’s what I mean: I knew eating out all the time was bad, but I did it anyways because I was too lazy to actually cook for myself or eat what was already in the fridge. Eventually, it got to be too much, and I was forced to put my foot down on a very cold Friday afternoon and say enough was enough. I uninstalled the delivery app on my phone, rearranged my bedroom, and started to work out. After it began to warm up outside in the weeks afterwards, I started going out for walks around the neighborhood as well, and later expanded it to a trip from my corner to a bridge several minutes away on foot. Gradually, I started to loosen up and lose weight, and although I’m still over 200 pounds, I’m much happier and more agile than I had been before. It’s a tough journey, but one I needed to begin.

Of course, there’s been some hurdles. I ended up reinstalling the app I had been using on my phone, but I’ve made sure to limit myself to only ordering when my friends and I want something or to occasionally have a very small cheat meal. I’ve kept to this for several months now, and I’ve been able to keep my weight in check while also being responsible. Sometimes the urge is there, but like the flies I get in my bedroom sometimes, I swat them away as best as I can. Effort is a must, and without it, there is no real progress.

There’s one thing I’ve neglected to mention so far, and that’s the impact that scripture has had on this journey of mine. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul mentions that our bodies are temples of the Lord, and that we are to glorify God with our bodies. To summarize, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth and rebuking them for many issues, including incest and generally poor choices. He stresses during this letter that our bodies belong to God, having been bought at the price of Jesus’s blood, and that by accepting Jesus as our Lord and savior, we waive the right to use our bodies for our own purposes. They’re meant to be instruments of God’s righteousness, not vessels of immorality and debauchery.

In many ways, we treat the temple of the Lord like our own bedrooms. Clutter everywhere, no organization, and reeking of laziness. The flesh always craves what the flesh loves, and what the flesh loves is in opposition to what God loves. We love self-pleasure and worldly things, while God loves purity and order. We often neglect God’s temple to seek something that’s there for us in the moment, and very rarely does it end up having any real use in the long run. This may be obvious, but scarfing down greasy cheeseburgers and salty fries isn’t really honoring to God, hence why I largely cut that out of my life.

Honoring God doesn’t stop with cutting out junk food and working out, however. Those are obviously good things to do, but it goes far beyond that. Cut out the idols in your life, for one thing. We aren’t meant to serve two masters, and in that scenario, God takes the utmost priority. Our worldly passions will be nothing more than dust one day, and we need to recognize that God has, and will always, remain eternal throughout time and space.

Another thing is to rest when needed. Life is very stressful for many of us nowadays, especially financially. However, there are times where money simply doesn’t matter. Working yourself to death to try and make a living with two or three jobs isn’t how we were meant to live, and our bodies aren’t meant to handle that kind of stress. If God, the almighty and all-powerful creator the of the universe, took a break during the seven days of creation, then we can take a break as well. We can trust that the Lord will provide even when things seem dire, and that he is always with us even without extra money coming in the door.

And above all, look at your body as a gift. God gave you this life and this body because he has a plan for you, and even though this life is ultimately quite short in comparison to what comes next, we are meant to make the most of it.

So go out and do that, if you haven’t already. Trust me, it’s worth it.