Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

Yesterday, I introduced you to Caleb, one of my all-time favorite Bible characters. Talk about a guy who stayed fit! What makes his story so exciting is that the man—at 85 years old—was still at it. He was ready for a brand-new challenge.

There aren't many things better than exercise to keep all of us feeling, thinking, and looking younger than we are. For almost 10 years, my wife and I lived in a home in Dallas, Texas, located about a quarter of a mile from the renowned Cooper Aerobics Center.

The great apostle Paul loved athletic events. Anyone who has made a serious study of the man's writings in the New Testament cannot help but come to that conclusion. He often used word pictures that reflected his knowledge of and interest in the athletic contests of his day.

As we read yesterday, there is a brief and clear section of Scripture that addresses the subject of lust. It is located in three verses found in the first chapter of James. . . . We're urged not to place the blame elsewhere when we're tempted—certainly not on God!

Only humans have the wide range of emotions that we experience. Some of them are so powerful that they can take charge of our lives. They range from the super-positive ones—feelings like joy, peace, contentment, relief, enthusiasm, hope, excitement, and romantic love—to the opposite extreme.

Several years ago I determined to deal with my attitude. I found myself getting pretty testy, even argumentative at times. Our children were young and often had needs that required my time and attention. More often than I'd like to admit, that irritated me.

We've been thinking a lot about the negative impact of out-of-control emotions. Let's turn the subject around and consider the flip side of this—the value of a positive mental attitude. By that, we're not referring to some sort of self-induced motivation to "think positive."

Cain failed to heed the Lord's counsel. Allowing the crouching, hungry beast within him to attack, Cain later murdered his younger brother—and to make things even worse, he could never escape the consequences.

We've all heard the expression "mind over matter." For the sake of our thinking today, let's alter the saying to "mind over emotion." To tie it in even more directly to a story from the Bible where these words would really apply, we should change it to "mind over madder."

Yesterday, we saw that God made us emotional creatures with feelings, but these feelings must be controlled. Let's relate this to food. Food is fuel. It's not your enemy; it's your friend. But food cannot be your best friend and, for sure, it must not be your god.

Sometime during the crazy decade of the 1960s, when everything went topsy-turvy, emotions were promoted to first place. Feelings became more important than logic, more important than clear thinking, even more important than common sense.

Once a person comes to know Jesus personally, an amazing inner transformation occurs. Paul pinpointed that fact in his second letter to the Corinthians: "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come."

Unlike animals, God made humans in His image. This is clearly stated in the first book of the Bible: "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27)."

No one is immune to problems in the areas of exercise, digestion, and diet—not even those in ministry. For example, consider a middle-aged minister of the gospel named Timothy, who was the pastor of a church in the busy, heavily populated city of Ephesus back in its heyday.

God did a remarkable act of creation when He made the human body. The more advanced the medical profession becomes, the more we discover what an amazing machine the body is.

Most of life seems to revolve around eating food. We're either growing it, shopping for it, or planning on it. We gather around it to highlight special times of celebration where our meals are mixed with laughter. We also sit together around it following a funeral, where tears are shed and grief is shared.

Yesterday, we looked at the fact that our food is meant to be savored and enjoyed. Today I want to apply that thought to our spiritual lives. My sister, Luci, has often reminded me (and many others) to "savor the moment" while journeying through life.

Not enough is said about taste. Hunger and thirst may begin in our brains, prompting the digestive salivary enzymes to start flowing . . . but the satisfying part of the digestive process happens in the mouth. We have those tiny taste buds to thank for allowing us the pleasure of enjoying everything we eat and drink.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary offers this definition of the word digestion: "the process of making food absorbable by dissolving it and breaking it down into simpler chemical compounds that occurs in the living body chiefly through the action of enzymes secreted into the alimentary canal."

While the Bible was not written to be a scientific journal on the human body, it is amazing how much is included in the Scriptures that has to do with this subject. Frequently, we come across statements that specifically mention how God designed our anatomy and put us together emotionally.