Is Your Belly Your God?
Glazed donuts, pork barbecue ribs, fruit filled pastries, potato chips, lobster, shrimp, ice cream, French fries, Coca Cola, sausage biscuits, sounds good, huh? The thought of enjoying your favorite foods can tantalize your taste buds just reading about them…
But what if you found out some of your favorite foods were actually being used by satan as a snare to strap you with a stroke, heart attack, degenerative disease or other diabolical sickness?
Would you still eat them? I realize this is a touchy issue for some Christians but it’s one that we must expose and deal with from the Written Word of God. Is your belly your God?
The Lady Whom God Could Not Heal…
When this lady, (I’ll call her Samantha) came to the altar for prayer for healing. She was having excruciating migraine headaches and sharp relentless back pains. As she was standing at the altar in tears, hoping for an instantaneous healing, the Holy Spirit said to me, “She doesn’t need healing; it is her coffee, soda drinking and the fact that she drinks no water that has caused those symptoms and pain.” I’m neither a doctor nor a biochemist but one thing I can boldly affirm is that the diagnosis given by the Holy Spirit laid the axe to the root cause of Samantha’s pain.
That pastor could have prayed for her until he was blue in the face but there was nothing God could do. Not until Samantha obeyed the voice of the Holy Spirit and cut the coffee and soda from her diet and started drinking water. Sadly, like many men and women Samantha had crossed the line. She had made her belly, (her appetite) become her god:
Philippians 3:19 AMP [Emphasis added]
19 They are doomed and their fate is eternal misery (perdition); their god is their stomach (their appetites, their sensuality) and they glory in their shame, siding with earthly things and being of their party.
Read that verse of Scripture again and then focus your attention on the part that reads, “…their god is their stomach...” The King James Version reads, “Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly…” There are a lot of questions we need to answer and issues we must deal with concerning a person’s belly becoming their god. We will start by defining what it means to make your belly your god.
How To Discern If Your Belly Is Your God…
Your belly has become your god when your appetite dictates what you eat and drink regardless of the health consequences. In Samantha’s case, she made it clear that she loved coffee and soda, and she was not going to stop drinking either. She hated water and just could not bring herself to drink it. When I first moved to Georgia, there was a couple in the apartment complex where I lived, to whom the Lord had sent me, to give them a word of knowledge concerning their appetites. When I shared with them what the Lord said, they shrugged off God’s warning as being trivial. They made it clear that they were not giving up certain foods.
About a year later the husband knocked on my door seeking prayer for his young wife. She was only 28 years old, but she was in the hospital receiving medical care for multiple sclerosis. As we talked, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “she hasn’t had a bowel movement in over a month, tell him to alert the doctors but make sure they do not give her any drugs to induce her bowels, it must be done naturally!” When I told him what the Lord said, he confirmed it. His wife only had a bowel movement about once a month even though she ate two to three meals a day. Before he headed to the hospital to share this vital information with the doctors, I reminded him of what the Lord had said the previous year about their eating habits. Once again he briskly shrugged off the Word of the Lord.
He and his wife had made their appetites their gods and as a result, she unwittingly sent her central nervous system into the self-destruct mode. She went from a cane, to crutches, to a walker, and finally a wheelchair in about 14 to 16 months. A year after his wife became bedridden, the husband sought me out for prayer, this time for himself. He had what he thought was the pink eye. His eyes had been reddish and irritated for about four days and the symptoms would not leave him. As I was about to pray, I sensed by the Holy Spirit that he had a greater problem than pink eye and I told him so. There was a sense of urgency in my voice based on the urgency I sensed from the Holy Spirit.
At my behest, he went to the hospital later that evening. It turned out that he had a brain aneurysm that would have killed him had he not acted when he did. The doctors had to cut into his skull to save his life. BUT! He and his wife could have avoided their physical afflictions had they listened to the voice of the Holy Spirit concerning their appetites. I get asked this question all the time, “If a certain food product is so harmful to a person’s health why are so many people consuming it?” Answer: The same reason people smoke cigarettes knowing smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease. Most smokers have read that prophetic (if you smoke these you will die) warning on the side of every pack of cigarette, every time they open up a new pack, but that warning means nothing to them.
Their appetite is their god and their appetite is screaming for nicotine, and hell will freeze over before they allow their appetite to be denied! Another way to determine if a person has made their belly their god is when they have an answer for every piece of irrefutable evidence presented to them concerning toxic foods. For example, would you consume the poisonous neurotoxin aspartame? In temperatures over 86 degrees Fahrenheit, (the average body temperature is 98.2 F) the wood alcohol in aspartame converts into formaldehyde and then to formic acid. Aspartame has been linked to migraines, seizures, vision loss and symptoms relating to lupus, Parkinson's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and other health destroying conditions.
Before you answer the question, you need to know how aspartame is used. It is used as an artificial sweetener. Where do you find aspartame? It is a common ingredient in chewing gum, candy, sodas, diet sodas, frozen desserts, diet foods and artificial sugars like Equal, Nutrasweet and Spoonful. You can also find it in powdered drinks, gelatins, coffees, and teas. It’s even in medications and vitamins. It is a proven fact that aspartame will burn a hole in your brain. So why hasn’t this product been banned from human consumption? Because like cigarettes, it generates billions of dollars of revenue every year!
The aspartame manufacturers are just like the cigarette makers. They are not going to roll over and allow their cash cow to be banned by a bunch of concerned citizens. If they are forced to make a decision between your health and their bank accounts, your health will lose every time! Read the shocking reports on aspartame by Arthur M. Evangelista, a former FDA Investigator, and by Christine Lydon, MD and Russell L. Blaylock, MD. After knowing what you know now, would you still consume products that contain aspartame? It boils down to this…
Whose Report Will You Believe?
Our diet, what we should, and should not eat has been the subject of many heated debates, pitting experts against experts, experts against the Written Word of God, ministers against ministers, and so on. Some ministers say, “as long as you pray over your food, it’s sanctified and therefore cannot harm you.” There are organizations that have ordained themselves as ‘food police' and they make it a point to vilify certain foods. Associations like the National Restaurant Association, counter the claims of the food police with their own tribe of experts who claim, “there are no good foods or bad foods; all foods in moderation can be a part of a healthy lifestyle.” Stuck in the middle is the average citizen who doesn’t know who to believe! Clearly, someone is either lying, or they don’t know what they are talking about!
I had a lady contact me to pray with her about her health. She had high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and some other alarming symptoms. Plus, her doctor put her on a daily regimen of about 14 different prescription medications. Each medication had its own hair raising side affects that included liver failure, kidney failure, loss of vision, loss of hearing, paralysis, and numbness. As she was explaining this to me, the Lord said her symptoms stemmed from the foods she ate. For all her diet was worth nutritionally, she could have eaten artificially flavored playdough and drank colored sugar water for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
When I told her what the Lord said, like most people who have been misled by the deceptive food manufacturers, she defended them. She claimed they would never lie about the nutritional value of their products. She refused to change her diet, citing how her parents and everyone else she knew – had similar eating habits. After changing doctors, her new doctor advised her to eliminate white flour, white bread, white rice, sodas and all processed foods from her diet if she wanted to live. Her response was, “I can’t do it,” and she didn’t! The last time I spoke with her, she was working on her second major surgery. Get this next irrefutable spiritual truth engraved into your heart…
The Curse of Sickness and Disease Does Not Come Without a Cause
Multiple Sclerosis, high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, prostrate cancer, clogged arteries, hypertension, blood clots, impotency, breast cancer and similar ailments, don’t just sneak upon a person without a root cause. Certain ministers have taught for years that satan can strike whomever he wills with a stroke or a heart attack at a moment’s notice. There is nothing further from the Truth! Chronic illnesses, degenerative diseases, cancers, etc., all have a root cause.
Even when the doctors cannot pinpoint the reason a person is sick, the Word of God reveals in Proverbs 26:2, “…the curse causeless shall not come.” The curse of sickness or disease cannot come upon you without a cause. Read the entire 28th chapter of Deuteronomy. Although there are numerous root causes of sickness and disease, (i.e., generational curses, sin, envy, stress, sexually transmitted diseases, unforgiveness, worry, man-made vaccinations, bitterness, etc.) the number one cause of sickness and disease in the western world is deceptive foods!
Deceptive Foods
Very slowly, read Proverbs 23:3 from the NIV: “Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive.” Here are five critical points you must understand about deceptive foods. (1) Deceptive foods are designed to make you believe they are healthy when they are not. (2) Deceptive foods are promoted to trick you into ignoring the fact that they are toxic (3) The makers of deceptive foods spew out false nutritional claims, opinions and research distributed by greed driven food executives. (4) God gives us a stern warning not to consume their deceptive foods in any shape, form, or fashion. His warning presupposes a very critical point - we must be able to identify deceptive foods. If it takes a biochemist, a toxicologist, or a food scientist to identify deceptive foods, the average person is in big trouble.
Which means, detecting deceptive foods has got to be a process anyone can perform. (5) He calls deceptive foods - delicacies. These foods will melt in your mouth! Their texture is just right and their flavor is simply irresistible. But He goes on to say in verse 8 of that same chapter, “You will vomit up the little you have eaten…” In other words, it doesn’t take the consumption of major amounts of deceptive foods to make you sick. Now I need you to brace yourself for this next spiritual truth - If you make your belly your god, something insidious happens in the realm of the spirit… you become an enemy to the cross.
Enemies of The Cross
Have you ever wondered why some people cannot seem to get healed when everyone knows they should be? I mean they have done all the right things. They have prayed or have been prayed for. They are standing in faith yet their condition only worsens and eventually they die. I recall one incident in which a brother in Christ had been diagnosed with an unknown cancer. When he became ill, the doctors could not pinpoint why. They were so stumped, they didn’t even know what type of medication(s) to give him.
His pastor prayed for him. The entire congregation earnestly pleaded with God to restore his health but less than a month after their prayers, he died. Before he passed, the Lord allowed me to see the root cause of his sickness. He showed me that man, eating a lollipop. He was sucking on that candy as if it contained life-giving nutrients. That man had an insatiable appetite for sugar, which caused him to make his belly his god. There was nothing God could do about it but watch him die.
My first thought when the Lord showed him to me was to grab that brother, sit him down, and show him the root cause of his illness to help him break the power of his appetite. But the Holy Spirit put the brakes on me and said “No, he will not hear you!” I cannot tell you how many times I have had that happen. Men and women outright rejecting the Word of the Lord concerning their appetite and then in vain, pleading with God to heal them, going to one healing service and miracle rally after another, rejecting the fact that they had made their belly their god.
When these people don’t see manifestations of better health, they usually get desperate and start grasping at straws. They resort to using expensive but impotent vitamins and unproven herbal formulas. They allow themselves to be duped by shameless practitioners who promise healing through quack placebo pill concoctions. They follow the advice of well meaning doctors who put them on drugs that only magnify their health problems. I have watched pastors and other great men of God have strokes, heart attacks, and struggle with other debilitating sicknesses, forcing them to leave the ministry. Some died prematurely… Surely you sense by the Holy Spirit the critical seriousness of this issue. Read our passage of Scripture in Philippians again, this time with verse 18 included.
Philippians 3:18-19 AMP [Emphasis added]
18 For there are many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, who walk (live) as enemies of the cross of Christ (the Anointed One).
19 They are doomed and their fate is eternal misery (perdition); their god is their stomach (their appetites, their sensuality) and they glory in their shame, siding with earthly things and being of their party.
When you make your belly your god, you become an enemy to the cross and when you become an enemy to the cross, you become an enemy to healing. It was the cross that Jesus used to secure our salvation, (See I Corinthians 1:17-18 and Colossians 1:20) and part of that salvation was healing. Pastors and ministers listen to me carefully, you can save yourself and your congregations much heartache if you teach God’s dietary laws. However, if you fail to do so, I can tell you with a certainty, that you will end up with numerous sick folk in your congregation and you will have to bury many people prematurely. A person cannot maintain health while being an enemy to the cross.
Where Do I Go From Here?
The answer to preventing your belly from becoming your god is recorded in the Written Word of God:
Proverbs 23:1-2
1 When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee:
2 And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.
Are those the harsh words of a psychotic maniac? A thousand times no! You just read the health saving Wisdom of God. We are commanded to diligently consider any food we plan to consume. We are to make an intelligent decision about what we eat and drink. Haphazardly eating because it tastes good or because someone says it’s “ok,” is sin! If after diligent consideration, you determine an edible morsel or a beverage to be a deceptive food, the next set of instructions is located in verse 2. You are commanded to put a knife to your throat.
The message is crystal clear; don’t eat it and don’t drink it! PERIOD! The knife the Lord is referring to is the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, (See Ephesians 6:17). Ultimately, you are responsible for your health: not your doctor, not your pastor, not the food manufacturers, not the food scientists, health officials, or the Federal Drug Administration. You are in the driver’s seat concerning what you eat. You are the only one who can determine if your belly becomes your god. If you do nothing, if you ignore or take this warning lightly, the default will always be: your belly will become your god!
Deceptive Foods – One of Satan’s Primary Weapons
You need to understand; deceptive foods are one of satan’s primary attack weapons. He used food to attack the woman in the Garden of Eden, (See Genesis 3:1-6). He used food to trick Esau to abandon his God-given birthright, (See Genesis 25:27-34) and he used food in an attempt to prevent Jesus from laying down His Life and raising up from the dead, (See Matthew 4:1-4). The devil will not stop trying to use deceptive foods to cause you to lose your health. That is why you must get to know God’s dietary laws and be prepared to put the Sword of the Spirit to your appetite at the drop of a dime.
III John 2 [Emphasis added]
Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
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