I’m going to look at the first three major choices that Adam had to make and I will be applying that to the first three important choices that you have to make in your life. The first one is what you choose to feed on; what you consume into your system, what you put into your system, what you allow to enter into your life.
15 Then the Lord God took [a]the man and put him in the garden of Eden to [b]tend and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you[c] shall surely die.”
Genesis 2:15-17 New King James Version (NKJV)
I want you to note in this passage that man did not create the garden; he found the garden after he had been created. It was God who created the garden and God created several trees, many options, and he put man in that garden.
So right from the beginning man is saddled with options and choices. The Garden of Eden is a beautiful place, there are many trees, and God says you can eat from any of them freely but of this one you don’t have to eat. The first major choice each of us has to make is what you choose to feed on. There is a right thing to feed on and a wrong thing to feed on. Now when I talk about what to feed on, I’m not just talking about physical food. Although that’s important, but there is something far more powerful than the physical food we feed on, and that has to be the words we hear, the books we read, and the words we use. Because the words you hear, read, and use consistently shape your personality and your outlook in life.
Words carry messages and the words we hear come from many sources. It can be conversations, instructions from books. But those words you feed on will determine who you become. If you feed yourself on words of hatred, you will be very hateful. If you feed yourself on a diet of fear, you will become fearful. If you feed yourself on a diet of lust, you will be lustful. If you feed yourself on a diet of love, you will be loving. If you feed yourself a diet of faith, you will be full of faith. If you feed yourself a diet of holiness, you will be holy. What do you feed on?
Now you have a choice. You have a choice which word you want to feed on. You have a choice which conversations you want to participate in, you have a choice. Because if everybody around you is conversing and the conversation is profanity, you will feed on profanity and you will be profane. If everybody around you is talking and their words are full of hopelessness and you feed on those words, you will start feeling hopeless about life, because you are what you eat.
What words are you eating? What words do you read? What words do you listen to?
I know that because of technology these days, most of us have our radio stations set. When we have our cars, we have the car’s radio station set, and listen to it constantly. We wake up in the morning and we are listening to a radio station. We get into our car, we are listening to a radio station and whatever they are saying, we are listening to them. Have you ever considered the impact of those words you listen to on your life? Have you ever considered the impact of the kind of people and the tone they use on your life? Because if you hear people talking angrily all the time, you feed on anger. And unfortunately some of us start in the morning and the words we hear are angry words, you are going to be angry throughout your day.
You have a choice on what you feed on. You can say, well I can’t help it – you can help it. You have a choice which conversations to listen to. You have a choice what to read and what not to read because the first choice Adam had was what do feed on, what are you feeding on? What words have fed you all these years? Look at your life, look at the people that surround you, look at the words they use, the phrases they use. Pretty soon, you start using the same phrases and you start becoming those words.
God said to Adam, you have an option what you eat and I’m here to tell you one of the biggest choices you have to make in life is what you feed on. If you feed on fear, you will be timid. If you feed on insults you will have low self-esteem. What do you feed on?
Ultimately what we have to feed on has been told us by Jesus. Jesus says in Luke 4:4
4 But Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, [a]but by every word of God.’ ”
Luke 4:4 New King James Version (NKJV)
If you want to feed on something, feed on what God says. Jesus says in
John 6:53-56.
53 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is [a]food indeed, and My blood is [b]drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.
John 6:53-56 New King James Version (NKJV)
Now Jesus is not talking about cannibalism here, but He says you have to eat my flesh. Now what does that mean? He said in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and the word was made flesh. When you eat Christ you are eating the word. If you want to feed, feed on the tree of life not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that is going to get you into trouble. You have an option what you feed on.
Check your life, your life is a mirror of your diet. Check your language, it’s a mirror of your diet. What you feed on. What you feed on also has to do with the kinds of images you feed on because you will worship and conform to the images you idolize. What are the images in front of you? Think of television, think of advertisement, think of movies, think of who are your celebrities, think of who are your heroes.
The second commandment that God gave to Israel was that you have no image, make no Images and don’t bow to images. The pictures you keep in front of your shape the image of yourself. The heroes and celebrities you keep before your eyes will mold your image of yourself. Your predominant thoughts will rule your actions. What you spend your quiet moments thinking about will determine your mindset. So what Images do you feed on?
You cannot feed on pornography and wonder why you are fornicating. You can’t, I mean that’s what you are feeding on. You cannot feed on filth and expect to be holy. You cannot feed on defeat and expect to have victory. If everybody around you is talking about how life is hard and how things are going down and nothing is working, how do you ever think that you will find the courage to face your future?
So, the number one big choice is what you feed on and I want you to make a deliberate choice as to the thing you feed on; the words you feed on, the images you feed on, you have to make a choice.
There are some conversations you must cut out of your life. There are some images you must take out of your life, there are some words you must get out of your system, and there are some things you must never listen to. It’s okay to keep up with news but I think that one of the challenges we have in our country is that our radio stations are becoming a terrain of verbal war and if you don’t want to agitate your spirit, you have to monitor what you listen to. I think we need more stations that play music, classical music, play jazz and people just tune in and listen to nice jazz music. You are going to the office and your mind is in a good rhythm. You haven’t been annoyed, you haven’t been polluted.
Listen to good classical music, by the time you get to the office your mind is creative; your mind is waiting to solve a problem.
But if you listen to the stations that people are complaining about the government, and feed on it while you are driving you are agitated and contributing. So you get to the office, they give you a problem and you are angry. You see a client, you are annoyed. You have to monitor what you feed on.
Don’t live your life on autopilot where everything just comes into your mind and you feed on all kinds of junk words, junk conversions that kill your sense of creativity because the world is difficult and hard as it is-don’t complicate it. There are enough problems – don’t complicate it. Get yourself sorted in a way that you can go and face life and solve life’s problems. Tell the person next to you to be careful what they feed on and tell them they have a choice.
The radio doesn’t broadcast itself, the television doesn’t turn on by itself, the newspaper doesn’t read itself – you read it. Listen it’s your choice, there has to be choice to make. That’s the first big choice, what you feed on.
Ultimately feed on Christ, feed on his word, feed on faith and let the word of God build you up.
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