I Give Up Dependence

Day 26 of Lenten Devotional Series

Guest Post by Alex Hollifield, Broadway United Methodist Church

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

For Lent I chose to give up fast food. Sounds like a classic choice, right? But for me it comes from something a lot deeper, and that is dependence. Gluttony, out of all of the Deadly Sins, I feel is the easiest to fall for. I used to eat fast food to relieve stress. After a hard day at college, the thought of some fast food made everything seem alright. The sad fact is that fast food is so easy to get. Anywhere you work, anywhere you live, I’m willing to bet that there are at least two or three fast food restaurants within walking distance. Fast food is everywhere; plus, not only is it easy to get but you can get a lot of food for very little money. I found myself eating three whole hamburgers and a large fries for about five dollars. I found it easy to use fast food to deal with stress. I convinced myself that this was better than using alcohol, drugs, or porn to deal with my stress. I have become dependent on fast food. I went from eating it once a week to sometimes five times a week. I’m not trying to give up fast food completely; I’m trying to give up my dependence on it. Fast food is not always a bad thing, but it shouldn’t be something you eat every day; it should be a once in a while type of thing. It also wouldn’t hurt to eat less of it when I do eat it. Like instead of having three hamburgers and a milkshake, I could get only one hamburger and a small fries. Our bodies are temples and I should have been treating mine better. I want my body to become the temple God sees it to be, which is why I am replacing this dependence with faith--faith that I don’t need fast food to fight my stress because I know that God is by my side helping me fight every single battle. And if our God is for us, what could stand against?

Dear Lord God:

Our bodies are your temples and we are sorry that we sometimes forget that and punish them to deal with our stress. We pray that you give us the faith to fight the dependence that food sometimes has over us. We do not need fast food to fight our stress as long as we have you, because if you are for us that what could stand against. God, we love you and it is in your name that we pray, Amen.