I don't know the exact statistics but 40% of Americans are addicted to coke. And 30% are addicted to Pepsi. The rest drink diet Dr. Pepper.
The number 1 addiction is sugar in America. Honestly. Another one on top of the charts is prescription medication abuse. I strongly feel a neglected one is prescription medication USE in general. The food industry addicts us with high fructose corn syrup, and our fast food nation infuses the calories at an off the charts pace, and we are too busy spending 50 hours a week sitting on a chair eating chips and clicking a mouse at our jobs to exercise, and this translates to the medical industry convincing us that we need their drugs to survive. The diet causes the health problems, but the food industry is in cahoots with the medical industry it seems, and they claim they care about our health, but they lie. Why change when we can just give you pills so you can live and eat as you want? The drug store that sells the smoking cessation products also is selling the cigarettes. They want the money plain and simple, and they don't care what you buy as long as it is one of the two. Either get addicted to the food or totally depend on the medical and pharmaceutical industry to keep us alive. And rack up the medical treatment bills and make healthcare as essential to survival as oxygen and cause the people to embrace socialism and communism by the government in the Trojan horse called Universal Health care.
I don't know all the answers, but I think that the devil is ultimately deluding us. One huge problem in the church today is instead of true holiness produced, and Christians exhibiting true fruits of the spirit, where the world looks at the church and says, "Eureka! There is where we can find the TRUE AND LIVING GOD!", we instead exchange addictions. We came in drunks and pornographers and adulterers and fornicators and drug addicts and crack heads. We get saved (though most stay lost but know have a head knowledge of salvation) and the world comes at us in a Trojan horse.
I try fasting and by 3pm I have a headache and am in withdrawal. I will leave early so I can go through Timmies (for those who don't know Timmies is Tim Hortons, a coffee and donut drive thru place where your car automatically pulls into every time you pass it for some unknown)unexplainable reason) but I don't have that same ability to get out early to do bible study. I am addicted to sweets, sugar, soft drinks, and Spot coffee (Timmies didn't begin with an S). Try dropping sugar and caffeine cold turkey and see what I mean. We get irritable and sluggish and can't function. We depend on our coffee more than our God. We would fast but we just past a McDonalds. We want to lose weigh, but Easter dinner is just around the corner. We would diet after Easter, but we have Timmies 2 year old bash to attend, and then it is Mother's day all you can eat brunch, and then it is the 4th of July Picnic and then the graduation parties and cookie fellowships and bake sales and candy bar drives and after easter 50% off Cadbury eggs, and the food courts after our summer revival. We get more calories from junk food than most get from normal diets in third world countries.
Meanwhile, we don't see we are still a bunch of addicts. The Bible says the truth will make you free and the Bible says our body is not our own. We have liberty yes as Christians, but our country and our churches needs us to be fasting and praying for our nation. Do you fast anymore? Am I the only one struggling with American cuisine? If I went to a gas station and the gas there was polluted and full of junk, I would go to another station. Why do we put junk in our bodies and instead of embracing help with our diets, we shun them off as legalists. How much junk food do we buy in a week? How much soda do we drink? How much do we spend out on coffee?
Having a treat or a date with our wives is one thing. But daily dropping $30 bucks on fast food and $10 every time you pass a Timmies is absurd but that is reality. We can't give to missions, we can't fast and pray, but we can eat everything we want because I have liberty. We are too fat to have any stamina for God, too broke to support the work of God, too irritable when we put God over our appetites, and too tired running on empty to do much for God. If I diluted my gasoline with 50% water my car would have problems. We dilute our diets with 50% junk and wonder why we crash by 3pm.
And at 3:02 it is time for my Snickers break.
All I am trying to say is we need to really see how much the devil is coming in the back door like a Trojan horse and wearing us down not by starving us but by fattening us up so we are fat and happy and loving the hand that feeds us. The world's junk food and world's processed garbage and the world's fried fast food and the world's liquid crack cocaine called high fructose corn syrup (which literally causes a sugar HIGH) give us a great appetite for the World. We could care less about praying but are excited because we have a $10 Outback coupon to use up.
I had my coffee with 2 sugars today and half of a toaster strudel and 3 cokes at Outback during our family dinner and a frosted cookie from Wegmans ($11.99 a pound) and another coffee and a slice of chocolate fudge cake for dessert and wonder why I don't feel like fasting. It was funny, as I was heading to check out at the grocery store today,with my cookies and cake in hand, I passed a guy doing a demonstration for a special $500 juicer. I tried the juice, it was good. I had the credit card and almost bought the thing. And it would have sat with all the other impulse purchase because I am too lazy to take care of it. And if I really did buy it, it probably would have been used to make milk shakes instead of fruit smoothies and if I did make fruit smoothies I would probably just have added them to my pizza and wings.
Anyone else guilty? The bible warns about the glutton and drunkard coming to ruin. The church nails the drunkards. I am afraid instead of true repentance, the majority of us switched addictions. Even us saved folks seem to be addicted to either our diets or coffee or our sodas or our double Whoppers. And if we aren't snagged by food, then it is the media, our cell phones, etc. Those are the addictions we wear and everyone sees and yet we tell everyone they need to quit their smoking and stop boozing while we are chomping down our 3rd vanilla dip donut of the day. We are like the Baptists down South who were so shocked at the European Baptists drinking wine at the bible study that they choked on their cigarettes. And the North East Baptists were so disgusted by the smoking Southerners and the drinking Europeans, they couldn't finish their coffee.
We think we are better because the guy in our cell killed 6 people and we only killed 3. That is self righteousness. We need to humble ourselves and repent and pray. And if we can't pray and fast because our diets control us, something has to change.
I speak for myself. Am I more in love with a hot fudge and peanut butter Dairy Queen Sundae with whipped cream and a cherry and chopped pecans than a soul that is about to drop into hell? I think I can top that sundae with extra souls and be ok. Yet as my embracing of the American foods increases, the intensity of my prayers decrease. I am full and content now. After I go get myself another bowl of ice cream, of course.
American Christians we need to fast for our country. But I am finding that the power to fast and desire to fast is FAST FALLING AWAY. Maybe it is just me. Maybe everyone around me is fine and fasting. But as one who used to regularly fast without problem and now is finding major obstacles and major withdrawals now, I suspect that is not just me.
I know I need to radically change my diet to get into position to truly fast on a regular basis to impact this world. Prayer makes a difference. Yet I am too selfish and addicted right now to do so. Am I the only one? Will the rapture happen before I can see my diet turned around? And do I see that this is a big enough deal to bother?
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