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Apr 22, 2022 18:30pm

It’s For Our Own Good

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Recently, my father-in-law was diagnosed as a diabetic. With a really high glucose level, the doctor took immediate action and told us we had to get it down. 30 grams of carbs per meal was our max, so grandma and I got to work. We read every label of every item in our house. We took out the sweet snack cakes, chips, breakfast bars and easy, go-to high sugar items. We researched what’s good and what’s bad and got rid of the bad. We planned out meals according to the plan and we have successfully been keeping his sugar level at around 100.

But it hasn’t been without backlash.

Can you imagine being in your 70’s and someone telling you that you have to change everything you eat? What if your favorite things are chips, ice cream, and Dr Pepper? That’s a hard pill for anyone to swallow. Many times, he’s made the comment that we are starving him – although he gets plenty of food. His gallbladder needs to be removed so we’ve also had to limit fatty foods, and he has a history of heart problems so we have to watch his sodium. We also recently went through a bout of dehydration. So, I took away everything with caffeine in it and looked for zero sugar options to get fluids back in him. Of course, he didn’t like that. On top of everything else, I had taken his diet Dr Pepper and his morning cappuccino away.

It’s for your own good.

I’ve told him that time and time again, but of course in his mind, I’m keeping him from “good” things. Our heart’s desire is only to protect him and improve his health.

If you know much about the Bible, you know the book of Leviticus is rarely read or studied. It’s a book of rules for the Israelites. In chapter 11, God shows the people what they can and can’t eat. He describes food as clean and unclean to help them differentiate between the two.

“For I am the LORD that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. This is the law of the beasts, and of the fowl, and of every living creature that moveth in the waters, and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth: To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten.” (Leviticus 11:45-47)

Why could the Israelites not eat pigs, sea creatures without fins and scales, and certain birds like vultures and owls?

There were several reasons.
1. To ensure their health as a nation. A lot of the animals that were forbidden were animals that scavenged on dead animals. This could have caused the animals to be diseased and that could have spread quickly through the nation.
2. To set Israel apart from other nations. God wanted them to look and act differently than other heathen nations because they were His people. They were to be holy.
3. Some things were symbols of sin or false gods. Other people would sacrifice pigs to their false gods so this was an unclean animal. Snakes were a symbol of sinfulness so eating snakes was forbidden.

It’s for your own good. I can just hear God telling that to Moses and Moses relaying that to the people every time they would complain.

Even today, God calls us away from things that are not helpful to us, things that will harm us and our testimony.

What is God calling you to stay away from? What has He told you “no” to for your own good?