People have a lot of unorthodox views when it comes to losing weight.  I've met people who believe they will permanently lose weight if they could only convince themselves to eat one meal per day.  I also know people who bought into the lie that a person can eat whatever he wants as long as he works out.  You can imagine the surprise, disappointment, and feelings of failure that occur when an individual starts to GAIN WEIGHT instead after spending hours at the gym. Perhaps the strangest ideas come from those who fall for every new diet gimmick even though the last twelve (12) they tried didn't work.  It's almost comical.  No matter how obvious it is that the diet won't work, they pay for it anyway and swear they are getting results that no one can see but them.
 
Conventional, practical, albeit worldly wisdom, says that a real diet plan will require you to eat real, healthy foods, drink plenty of water, and moderately exercise several times per week in order to lose weight.  Nevertheless, people have been rejecting this very simple, straightforward notion for years. Consequently, instead of becoming healthier, over 1/3 of Americans are overweight, and many of the affluent nations of the world are also dealing with an obesity epidemic.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that those who are overweight, diagnosed with obesity related diseases, or eating disorders don't want to listen when they are told the solution to their health and fitness problem is Jesus Christ either.
 
People are looking for shortcuts and easy ways out of the messes they make of their lives.  That's true in weight loss and every other aspect of life.  Anything that requires a person to take responsibility for their actions and to put forth a modicum of effort to change their lives is summarily dismissed, but that doesn't mean you stop telling people the truth in favor of what they want to hear.
 
The truth is repenting from the sin of gluttony and otherwise taking care of your body because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit is itself an unorthodox method of weight loss, but it's the only way for a glutton to permanently and successfully lose weight.   Likewise, helping a person suffering from an eating disorder learn to eat and drink for the glory of God instead of abusing his or her body by starving or bingeing and purging is just as unpopular.  However, as people don't accept the worldly, conventional wisdom, they often reject the truth of God's Word, too.  In fact, the Bible teaches us that only a remnant whose hearts God moved returned to repair the damaged temple in Jerusalem (Ezra 1:5).  Your body was designed to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, but He will not take up residence where He is not wanted.  
 
Although you invite Him in when you accept Christ as your Savior, even believers who have spent years in the family of faith refuse to yield parts of their sinful lives to the Holy Spirit.  While it is His right to possess His entire temple, the Holy Spirit will only occupy the space you willingly provide.  Like the Israelites, the hearts of modern-day Christians are hardened against repairing the damage they have done to the temple of the Holy Spirit.  As a result, they too, choose to remain in bondage and die captive to a sin God would gladly set them free of.  Will you choose the diet gimmicks or the conventional wisdom of the world, or will you allow the Lord to change your heart so that you'll not only accept His unconventional approach to health and fitness, but also act upon it in faith in order to finally lose the weight and be free of the eating disorder that’s a stronghold in your life?
 
If your heart is moved to repair and rebuild the temple of the Holy Spirit, PURCHASE YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, ORDER your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!

​We have all heard the saying, "mind over matter," on more than one occasion.  Consequently, people use different strategies to mentally prepare for a given task.  For instance, some celebrities admit they employ an "alter ego" technique to get over stage fright.  Other people give themselves "pep talks" to reinforce the belief that they can accomplish a goal.  Then there are those who use meditation or other relaxation techniques prior to undertaking an important assignment.
 
People psyche themselves out to eat right and exercise, too.  Some rely on other people.  For example, making a commitment to be a workout buddy gives them a feeling of responsibility and accountability.  Others join weight loss programs because they need a structured environment to succeed.  Some people hire personal trainers to keep them motivated and to push them in ways they cannot push themselves.
 
We use these and other strategies for many reasons.  On the one hand, it is hard to make yourself exercise.  Likewise, it is difficult to find the time to prepare meals for yourself and your family for the whole week.  And honestly, the last thing you want to do after a long day is cook when it is so much easier to place an order to be picked up on your way home from work.
 
It is not that your body can't stand the discomfort associated with a workout.  It is not that your teeth are not capable of chewing vegetables, legumes, or baked fish.  On the contrary, you can not only swallow eggplant, but your body can also digest it.  The problem is that you do not want to do it even though you know intellectually it is what is best for you.
 
As you have learned from previous experience, the mental tricks only work for so long.  Until you truly change your mind, none of the mind games will work long-term.  A made-up mind is a determined one that will not be changed because of a little physical discomfort due to a workout or the inconvenience of having to alter your lifestyle in order to conform to a health and fitness plan.  It is a permanent change because it is a part of who you are.  It is also much easier to do when it is a gift from God instead of the result of a daily, internal war between your cravings and your feeble will.  If you are willing to submit to God's will to eat and drink for His glory (1 Corinthians 10:31), then He will give you the gift of grace to be changed from the inside out by renewing your mind (Romans 12:2).
 
If you are ready to stop playing mind games and let God permanently change your health and fitness mindset through Christ, PURCHASE YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, ORDER your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!

​People often watch or participate in sporting events.  At times, the players can be so determined to win that losing is a painful experience which brings tears to their eyes.  Even if we are not active participants, we can still be very competitive about our favorite teams.  More than one friendship has ended because of an argument about who is the best basketball player or football player.  Likewise, many parents set horrible examples for their children by becoming belligerent with referees or other parents during a child's game.
 
Sporting events are not the only areas where we compete against each other.  We do it at work by comparing ourselves and our salaries to a colleague's.  We do it at church by comparing our spiritual gifts and the number of lives we impact with a fellow church member's gifts and impact.  Moreover, we compete with others in terms of our physical appearance.  Women are especially adept at making a head-to-toe comparison of another woman in contrast to themselves, especially when we go to the gym.
 
In fact, competition is so common place in our society that we hardly realize we are doing it.  We compare things as quickly and easily as we do people, and often our snap judgments are dead wrong.  Nevertheless, we continue to do it, and more often than not, the person who does not measure up to our standards is none other than ourselves.  For example, the woman who rolls her eyes and says about another woman, "She thinks she's cute," does so because she feels inferior to the woman she referred to.  She has no idea that the woman in question is also insecure, comparing herself to the other women in the room, and secretly afraid that everyone will stare at her.
 
This mentality touches every part of a person's life and hinders success, especially when it comes to health and fitness.  Many people will not go to the gym or to the neighborhood track because they do not believe they look as good as someone else in workout clothes.  Others will not go because they are afraid of being stared at and talked about by the skinny, healthy looking people.  However, they do not realize the enemy will continue to use this strategy against them in order to keep them overweight and on their way to contracting an obesity related disease.
 
The truth is the only person who matters is you!  Have you ever been a healthy body size and weight?  Do you want to become free of an eating disorder and be healthy again?  If you have never known a skinny day, would you like to finally experience it?  Then get tunnel vision and forget about what everyone around you looks like.  Very often what you perceive as health and fitness is merely a façade.  Instead, focus on the image of you that you want to become and trust God to help you achieve your goal!
 
If you are willing to stop competing against others and focus on obtaining your health and fitness goals through Christ, purchase your copy of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition today at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, order your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits today!

​When life is good, everything is, by and large, going your way and working in your favor.  Consequently, the hard times you left behind often seem distant as if they occurred in another version of your life.  Conversely, the good times seem light years away and unobtainable when your good life turns hellish.  It was that way for me when I gained weight and couldn't lose it on my own.  No matter what I tried, any positive results were short lived, and the weight returned quickly. And there was more of it.  Perhaps you feel the way I used to.  If so, don't believe your circumstances!
 
If you had told me ten (10) years ago that I would one day crave avocados, black olives, and kale, I would have thought you belonged in a mental health institution, BUT God still performs miracles in the lives of every day people.  If you're willing to turn your plate and your weight over to Him, He'll turn your mind and your taste buds inside out!  By His grace, working out and staying on a diet plan will become child's play, and eggplant lasagna will taste better than any pasta dish you've ever had.
 
Yes, in the past, you searched for your health and fitness solution in all the wrong places, but you'll never find the answer if you don't go looking for it.  The Bible says to "Ask, and it shall be given you.  Seek and you shall find!  Knock and it will be opened unto you!  For everyone who asks receives, and he that seeks finds, and to him that knocks, it shall be opened" (Matthew 7:7-8).  God has responded to your prayers by leading you to the answer to your health and fitness problem. He's left the door open for you to enter into the Promised Land of Healthy and Fit for Life!  In fact, Jesus is the Door (John 10:9-11).  However, it's up to you to walk through.  Trust Him and make the journey from bad times to good times. There's no need to fear another failure.  Through Christ, the best is yet to come!
 
If you believe your best health and fitness days are yet to come through Christ, purchase your copy of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, order your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits today!

​Having faith isn't always a simple thing.  Sometimes it's hard to believe especially when reality appears to contradict your faith.  Another thing that makes it difficult is when the object of your faith fails you.  For example, we all have faith that the chairs we sit in will bear our weight when we sit down, but on rare occasions, chairs have been known to collapse under the weight of the person who sits down upon them.  It's a very painful and embarrassing experience.
 
You have probably put your faith in the wrong things at some point along your health and fitness journey.  For example, did you trust your doctor to prescribe a diet plan that would work for you, but when it didn't, he blamed you, accusing you of not trying hard enough?  Have you consulted nutritionists or dietitians who provided meal plans that tasted horrible and left you feeling hungry?  Did you believe the testimonials about the diet pills and smoothies, only to discover after you paid for the products that they, too, were ineffective?
 
Just like the faulty chair, each painful disappointment is a direct hit to your belief that you ever can or will reach your health and fitness goals.  However, the worst part is that it eats away at your faith in yourself.  When you initially started to gain weight, you were probably confident that you could lose it by dieting and exercising on your own, and you didn't understand the people who allowed their weight to balloon out of control.  Those entangled with eating disorders may have had similar thoughts.  Over time, however, the repeated dieting failures resulted in you becoming one of those people.  Consequently, the guilt, shame, and disappointment you feel is mostly because you let yourself down. In other words, you are the chair that failed to hold your own weight!
 
As a result, you no longer have any faith in yourself.  Although you go through the motions of dieting and exercising, you don't truly believe that you will succeed.   You're just waiting on the newest, inevitable dieting failure to manifest itself.  Unfortunately, you're absolutely right!  It will happen again and again and again so long as you keep wandering in the Wilderness of Obesity and Eating Disorders by putting your faith in all of the wrong people and things. The only way out is to believe the report of the Lord that He will give you the Promised Land of Healthy and Fit for Life and to fight the battle for the territory according to His plans!  In the end, faith really is simple.  All you have to do is believe the Lord (Genesis 15:6).
 
If you believer the Word of the Lord and are willing to keep the faith that He will bless you to finally become healthy and fit for life through Christ, PURCHASE YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, ORDER your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!

​I'll be honest. I used to wonder how people could get up early in the morning to go jogging.  I stared at people who ate salads without salad dressing in absolute awe.  I was envious of the girls at the gym wearing the skimpy workout clothes on their perfect bodies.  I couldn't help but ask myself why they had willpower to stick with a diet plan, and at the time, I didn't.  I was ashamed of the fact that I was too undisciplined to get up at 5:00 am every morning to workout.  Instead, I preferred to sleep an extra hour or two or three.  Those thoughts were almost always accompanied by feelings of shame, failure, and doubt that this time would be any different.
 
To this day, I still don't know the answer to the question.  When I see a woman pushing her kid in a stroller as she runs, I don't know whether it's a normal thing for her to be at the track every day, or if she dragged herself out of bed kicking and screaming for the first time since giving birth.  And neither do you!  The person in the restaurant eating a vegetable plate may be doing so for the first time since falling back into their old, unhealthy eating habits 6 weeks ago.  Likewise, the girl in the skimpy workout clothes who looks like she's having the time of her life on the treadmill may be working out because she gained 10 pounds, and for the first time in her life she realizes she's going to have to make some changes to her lifestyle to keep her weight under control.  She's singing to the music not because she's having fun, but because she's trying to find a way to get through another workout session just like you!
 
You can speculate all day about what motivates another person to adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle, but it's a fruitless exercise because you'll never know the truth unless the other person tells you.  Sometimes the truth of the matter is that the person has not adopted a healthy lifestyle.  On the contrary, the individual whose body you’re coveting may be at the gym to mask the fact that she binges and purges regularly, but to all the world she simply appears to be another workout junkie.  The person who is rapidly losing weight could have had gastric bypass surgery or suffer from an illness.  Nevertheless, the enemy wants you to make unfair comparisons and dwell on those negative thoughts in order to belittle you in your own eyes.  He wants you to measure yourself against everyone else and find yourself lacking.  He wants you to covet someone else's healthy and fit-looking body without knowing that person is just two (2) payments away from being unable to afford to have the lap band implanted on their stomachs to help them lose weight tightened again.
 
To this day, I don't love to work out, and I still don't fully understand the people who do.  However, I do love my lord!  Consequently, I count it as a simple thing to show Him I love and worship Him by obeying His commands to eat and drink for His glory and maintain the temple of His Holy Spirit by exercising.  My God is worthy of the sacrifice to eat right and exercise because of the price He paid for me on the Cross where He put to death gluttony and idolatry to heal me by His stripes and make me the new, healthy and fit creature that I desired in my heart to be.
 
If you count Him worthy of those same sacrifices, you'll discover that it's not your willpower that makes you choose to eat healthy foods and beverages.  It's not self-discipline that causes you to rise early to walk in your neighborhood.  On the contrary, when you surrender to His will in faith, love, and obedience, a strength exchange takes place whereby God's strength is perfected in your weakness, ‘For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:1).
 
If you want God to work in you to make you healthy and fit for life through Christ, ORDER YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  Do not procrastinate!  Order your copy on Amazon and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!

​Very often, overweight people and those entangled with eating disorders have a vision in their minds of the healthy and fit version of themselves.  That vision is born of a desire to reach and maintain their full potential physically as well as mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  This desire for the abundant life in every aspect of your life is given by God although we do not always recognize it as a gift from Him.  Nevertheless, Proverbs 29:18 teaches us that without a vision the people perish.
 
We see the fulfillment of this biblical truth all around us every day as one-by-one a multitude of husbands, daughters, friends, and co-workers lose their lives as a result of an obesity related disease or eating disorder.  However, failing to eat right and exercise are not the worst things you can do.  On the contrary, the absolute worst thing you can do is lose sight of the vision of the healthy and fit version of yourself!  When you stop believing it is possible to lose weight and keep it off for the rest of your life or to finally be free of an eating disorder that’s plagued you for years, you basically condemn yourself to die in the same way that a person is convicted and given the death penalty.
 
Hope is necessary to overcome obstacles in your life.  Those who lose hope miss opportunities, do not notice the way or ways of escape God provides, and fail to recognize blessings meant to improve their circumstances.  God gives you the vision of the best version of yourself to keep hope burning brightly within you and spark a passionate desire to succeed.  Don't let your fuel run out before you arrive at your destination!  Ask God to not only keep the vision of the healthy and fit version of yourself constantly before you, but also to empower you to finally attain the victory of leaving the Wilderness of Obesity and Eating Disorders and dwell forevermore in the Promised Land of Healthy and Fit for Life!
 
If you want God to make your health and fitness vision become your reality through Christ, REGISTER TODAY for the Eating as an Act of Worship Health and Fitness Course!  The next 12-week class begins on Monday, JANUARY 6TH at 6:00 pm CST!  The class is FREE! There are no registration fees or membership fees!  Participants are only responsible for the cost of the EAW Workbook which can be purchased online at Barnes and Noble.  Classes can be taken ONLINE via Periscope or IN PERSON at St. Mark Baptist Church located at 5722 West 12th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas. To register, visit our website at www.eatingasanactofworshipministries.org!
 
If you’re unable to take the course, PURCHASE YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, ORDER your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!  You can also follow us daily on Facebook and Twitter for recipes, and diet and exercise tips.  Lastly, don’t forget to read our weekly blog for motivation to stay healthy and fit through Christ.  Just visit our website at www.eatingasanactofworshipministries.org!

I wish I could tell you that losing weight and overcoming eating disorders will be easy once you start to obey God's command to eat and drink for His glory (1 Corinthians 10:31), but I can't lie to you.  It won't be a cakewalk, so to speak. However, I can tell you that it will be easier.  Before you aligned yourself to God's will, you were in the battle alone fighting with ineffective, carnal weapons.  Now you are a Christian warrior wearing and wielding the full armor of God on the battlefield, but that's not the only thing that makes it easier.
 
It's easier because Jesus removed the yoke of bondage to gluttony and making idols of food and your stomach when you repented of those sins.  It’s the same with eating disorders when you stop giving in to your triggers and honor God with your body by eating and drinking for His glory.  The weight of those sins was heavier than the excess weight you have been carrying physically and the mental and emotional baggage that left you in deep despair.  Consequently, the removal of those sins leaves you feeling lighter even though you may not have lost a pound.  Both your body and your spirit are relieved and happy to be set free!
 
Another reason why it's easier is that you now realize that you were looking for comfort and love in the wrong places.  Many people eat in response to the negative circumstances which occur in their lives, and chances are you were one of those individuals.  However, now that you've renounced the false gods of food and your stomach, you have come to receive true comfort from the God who Comforts all who believe in Jesus Christ.  Experience proves that the Holy Spirit's comfort is incomparable to anything else on earth, including food and beverages.  As a result, you can testify that the joy of the Lord truly is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10).
 
Most importantly, it's easier to lose weight and be free of eating disorders through Christ because the void that was usually left when you attempted to diet on your own is no longer an empty bottomless pit demanding to be filled with whatever your weak will craves.  Likewise, the pull of the triggers dragging you backwards toward eating disorders lessens over time.  This occurs because the Holy Spirit now resides in and completely fills the once empty space your dysfunctional eating habits used to occupy.  He brings with Him wisdom to see obesity and eating disorders from a spiritual perspective, discernment of enemy attacks designed to make you return to your former eating habits, and power to not only stand firm against the opposition but to also defeat the enemy by resisting the temptations you used to so easily succumb to.
 
If you want God to make your health and fitness journey easier through Christ so you can finally obtain permanent and sustained victory over obesity and eating disorders, REGISTER TODAY for the Eating as an Act of Worship Health and Fitness Course!  The next 12-week class begins on Monday, JANUARY 6TH at 6:00 pm CST!  The class is FREE! There are no registration fees or membership fees!  Participants are only responsible for the cost of the EAW Workbook which can be purchased online at Barnes and Noble.  Classes can be taken ONLINE via Periscope or IN PERSON at St. Mark Baptist Church located at 5722 West 12th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas. To register, visit our website at www.eatingasanactofworshipministries.org!
 
If you’re unable to take the course, PURCHASE YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, ORDER your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!  You can also follow us daily on Facebook and Twitter for recipes, and diet and exercise tips.  Lastly, don’t forget to read our weekly blog for motivation to stay healthy and fit through Christ.  Just visit our website at www.eatingasanactofworshipministries.org!!

​As crazy as it may seem, for many people, fear is the primary deterrent to starting a health and fitness plan.  It presents itself in many forms, but the most prominent and most effective types of fear in regard to health and fitness are the fear of failure and the fear of success.  While it may be understandable that people are afraid to fail, especially when they have a history of failing on diets or treatment plans for eating disorder in the past, being afraid to succeed directly contradicts common sense and reason.  After all, isn't achieving a healthy weight and living a healthy lifestyle what you want?
 
If you are truly honest with yourself, you'll admit the answer to that question is, "No."  That's why you're afraid to succeed.  For example, successfully losing weight and keeping it off means saying goodbye to cheeseburgers, fries, Philly cheesesteaks, funnel cakes, macaroni and cheese, and chocolate cake, to name a few.  It means eating kale, Brussels sprouts, eggplant, baked fish, grilled pork, rotisserie chicken, fruit and drinking lots and lots of and water for the rest of your life.  It's a complete overhaul of your current existence.  It's change!  And most people don't like change.  Change is particularly difficult when you like things exactly the way they are.
 
For instance, hiking up a mountain may not be your idea of fun, neither is using a treadmill or enrolling in a Zumba class.  Moreover, your taste buds might actually recoil at the mere mention of cauliflower, beets, or star fruit.  Yet you're well aware that the end result of your current lifestyle is an early, and often long, torturous death.  That should be even more frightening than the idea of changing for the better!  So why is it that the vast majority of people continue on the road of obesity and eating disorders?  That has a lot to do with the fear of failure.
 
The fear of failure says you won't succeed before you even begin.  After you begin, fear insists that you won't last much longer, so you may as well quit now.  When you achieve health and fitness milestones, fear switches gears and says you're just going to gain it all back or insists that you’ll start to binge and purge again.  Once your fitness goals are attained, fear still insists that the clock is ticking on when you will slide backwards into your old habits.  For many people, this constant barrage of attacks is enough to make them give up before beginning, acquiesce to defeat shortly after starting, or slip one unhealthy meal at a time back into old habits they were conquering or had successfully conquered.
 
Don't let fear defeat you again!  The lifestyle you're desperately holding on to isn't worth comparing to the glory which will be revealed in you if you don’t quit (Romans 8:18).  Furthermore, God promises to give you victory over your enemies, including the evil spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7).  "Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).  You are going to get to the Promised Land of Healthy and Fit for Life.  Although fear may be one of the giants dwelling in the land, it's already defeated in the Name of Jesus if you will "be strong and of good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them, for the Lord your God goes with you.  He will not fail you nor forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6).
 
If you are ready to face and overcome your health and fitness fears through Christ and finally obtain permanent and sustained victory over obesity and eating disorders, PURCHASE YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, ORDER your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!  You can also follow us daily on Facebook and Twitter for recipes, and diet and exercise tips.  Lastly, don’t forget to read our weekly blog for motivation to stay healthy and fit through Christ.  Just visit our website at www.eatingasanactofworshipministries.org!

​Each day of your health and fitness journey is a new day of testing.  There is the test of your will, meaning do you have the resolve to stay the course regardless of the circumstances and opposition that rise against you?  There is the test of your faith.  Do you truly believe that you can successfully lose the weight and be free of the eating disorder you are entangled with, or have you been filled with doubt from the start?  The test of discipline.  Can you bring your body under subjection, or will you give in to its cravings?  Finally, there is the test of consistency.  After you have achieved your health and fitness goals, will you continue to live a healthy lifestyle, or will you return to the sinful behavior that caused you to become overweight or suffer from an eating disorder?
 
The truth is most of us do not like to take tests.  We do everything in our power to avoid testing.  However, we fall to realize that each day's journey through life is filled with tests, and God knows whether or not you passed.  For example, did you lose your temper and curse at the person who cut you off in traffic, nearly causing an accident, or did you obey God's commands to be slow to anger (James 1:19) and to forgive every trespass against you (Matthew 6:12-14).  When your child interrupted you while you were obviously very busy, did you snap at him, or did you stop to patiently explain you will help him once you have completed your task (1 Corinthians 13:4, Galatians 5:22-23)?
 
It is the same in terms of health and fitness.  Whether you are currently on a diet and exercise plan or complacently traveling in circles in the Wilderness of Obesity and Eating Disorders, you are taking a test.  The days you take proper care of the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is your body, you are passing the test.  The days you do not, you are failing it.  So how can you finally and consistently pass the tests you are given on a daily basis, especially the ones pertaining to weight loss and eating disorders?
 
The difference between success and failure is the blood of Jesus Christ, your past successes through Him, and your faith.  Revelation 12:11 teaches that we overcome by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimonies.  Likewise, 1 John 5:4 says, "For everyone born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith." In other words, the first thing you must do to successfully and permanently lose weight and overcome your eating disorder is wholeheartedly repent from the sins of gluttony, failing to eat and drink for God’s glory, and making idols of food and your stomach.
 
Second, obey God's command to eat and drink for His glory and honor Him with your body by repairing the damage you have done to the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 10:31).  Each day of success is a testimony of victory through Christ which builds upon itself, increasing your faith that you can achieve your health and fitness goals through Him.  Consequently, you will be graced with the mind of Christ concerning food and beverages.  Then you will also understand the Scripture that says your food is to do the will of God (John 4:34), which will enable you to stay the course.
 
You will start to believe you can succeed because you will understand that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you (Philippians 4:13).  Furthermore, you will be able to discipline your body and bring it under subjection (1 Corinthians 9:27) instead of giving in to your cravings.  Lastly, you will live a healthy lifestyle for the remainder of your life because whom the Son sets free is free indeed (John 8:36), and your love for Christ will cause you to obey His command not to become entangled with the yoke of bondage again (Galatians 5:1).  Over time, you will come to realize that today’s health and fitness test is tomorrow’s testimony of victory through Christ!
 
If you are ready to become equipped to pass every health and fitness test and finally obtain permanent and sustained victory over obesity and eating disorders by the Blood of the Lamb, the word of your testimony, and your faith, then PURCHASE YOUR COPY of the Eating as an Act of Worship Teacher’s Edition TODAY at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center located at 501 West 9th Street in Little Rock, Arkansas!  In the book, you will learn the biblical principles regarding the body, dieting, exercising, and maintaining a healthy body for the glory of God!  If you live outside of the Little Rock area, ORDER your copy at Barnes and Noble.com and start serving the One True Living God in every aspect of your life, including your eating habits TODAY!  You can also follow us daily on Facebook and Twitter for recipes, and diet and exercise tips.  Lastly, don’t forget to read our weekly blog for motivation to stay healthy and fit through Christ.  Just visit our website at www.eatingasanactofworshipministries.org!