God Wants to Change Your Diet

What would cause you to change your diet?  A need to lose weight? Build muscle? Improve energy? Other health concerns?

We’re increasingly aware of the importance of our diet physically. But have you ever realized that your “diet” is more than something physical? It’s also something psychological and spiritual.

Every day you’re “eating” what you read, watch, and listen to. As the slogan says, “You are what you eat.” This applies to all three parts of your being—body, soul, and spirit.

You may have worthy reasons to change your diet physically if for nothing more than to extend your human life.

But changing your diet is of an infinitely greater concern when you realize God’s highest purpose for you.

Now let’s consider why, to what, and how God intends to change our diet…

God wants to change your diet!

Why does God want to change your diet?  

Look at the picture of the children of Israel in the book of Exodus.

After God brought His people out of Egypt, He still needed to get Egypt out of them.  For over 400 years they had served Pharaoh in Egypt.  There they became Egyptian in their constitution.

Through the Passover, the exodus, and Red Sea crossing they were separated from Egypt outwardly. Yet,  they still had the Egyptian appetite inwardly (Num. 11:5).

God wanted to reconstitute them to be His heavenly people. So He rained bread from heaven. They called it manna, meaning “what is it?” It was a mystery bread that God gave them for 40 years.

It is so He can make you part of His dwelling place.

On the surface, God was supplying His people with food to live during their wilderness journey. That’s true.

But in figure, He was doing something much deeper. He was transforming their inner being from something Egyptian into something heavenly.

This was so that the holy God could dwell in His holy people (Lev. 20:26; Deut. 7:6)

This is what God wants to do with us today.

By feeding on manna, God’s people eventually became a constitution of manna. It was these manna-eaters that built God’s dwelling place. But in God’s heart they themselves were becoming His real dwelling place (Isa. 66:1-2).

It is the same with us today. As people constituted with the elements of the world, we’re not qualified to be God’s spiritual dwelling place. But as Ephesians 2:21-22 says,

In whom all the building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord;
In whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit.

This is God’s desire for us! This is our destiny!

Being a believer, a child of God, is just the beginning!  We need to experience a spiritual “change of diet,” that transforms us into precious materials, living stones, for building God’s spiritual house (1 Pet. 2:2-5).

In the Old Testament, it was the nation of Israel in figure (Exo. 19:6). In the New Testament it the church, the house of the living God in reality (1 Tim. 3:15). In eternity, it will be the New Jerusalem as His and our mutual dwelling (Rev. 21:2-3)

What diet has God chosen for us? Christ as the heavenly Bread.

God wants to change our diet to Christ as the real manna, the true bread from heaven (John 6:32). He is the bread of God, the One who is sent by God and with God (v. 33).

He is also the bread of life, the bread with the nature of eternal life (v. 35). So when we eat this bread we get reconstituted with God’s eternal life.

Christ is even called the living bread (v. 51). His condition is living, so when we eat Him we also become inwardly living. We live because of Him as our supplying factor (v. 57).

How can we enjoy God’s diet daily?

First, we need to see what it means to “eat” spiritually.

Physically, we know that to eat means to take some food into us to be assimilated into our body organically. In the same way, to “eat Jesus” spiritually is to receive Him into us to be assimilated by our regenerated new man.

Second, we need to see the way to “eat Christ” as manna.

In John 6, Jesus not only told us to eat Him (v. 57), but He also showed us the way:

1  Come to the Lord Jesus—Turn your heart to Him. Call on His name. Cry out to Him in a spirit of faith (Psa. 119:147). John 6:35 says,

“I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger, and he who believes into Me shall by no means ever thirst.”

Here is a post where I talk further about coming to the Lord.

2  Receive His words—Open your Bible, speak a few verses and pray into them. Turn what you read into your personal prayer (Eph. 6:17-18).

John 6:63 says,

“It is the Spirit who gives life; …the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

For the Lord’s words to be “spirit and life” to us means they nourish us and become our inner constitution.

Here is a post where I talk further about praying with the Word or pray-reading the Word.

3  Gather the manna in the morning—make coming to the Lord Jesus in the morning your first priority.

Exodus 16:21 says,

 “They gathered it morning by morning, each one according to his eating; and when the sun became hot it melted.”

Don’t leave eating Jesus in His word until later, or you may find that the manna has melted. Start in the morning and continue to feed on Him throughout the day.

Here is a post where I speak further about how to begin your day with God.

Change your diet! – see the vision and commit to the practice

See that feeding on Jesus as your heavenly manna will reconstitute you as one of God’s heavenly people for His eternal dwelling place.

Then daily practice to feed on this divine diet of manna, Christ as your Bread of life.  By enjoying Him through God’s Word with prayer in your spirit you will become a person of manna, transformed with His nature to become a living stone for His spiritual house.

If you have found this post helpful, please share your enjoyment in a confirming comment.

References and Further Reading

This post was inspired by Message 15 of the Crystallization-study of Numbers by Witness Lee.

Here are some portions of ministry that helped me learn how to begin my day with God:

• “Early Rising,” a chapter in Watchman Nee’s book, Messages for Building Up New Believers, Volume 1, chapter 12.
• A Time with the Lord,  a little booklet by Witness Lee.
• Hymns that relate to this post:
  • I Come to Thee Dear Lord. Don’t forget to click “View Lyrics.”
  • My heart is hungry, my spirit doth thirst. Don’t forget to click “View Lyrics.”

You can be find and freely read the book titles at: ministrybooks.org. The later title is also included in Volume Two of Basic Elements of the Christian Life, part of a free literature set offered by Bibles for America for download on their website: bfa.org.