Must Replace the Bad with the Good!

     When it comes to changing my eating habits, I became the 'Queen of Substitutes'! It is what made the transition from sweets and high fat foods bearable. It also allowed this new way of eating a more acceptable long term habit and not just a quick and easy four week diet. If you do not find healthy choices that you love, you will revert back to those things which aren’t so good for you. Ice cream was one of my favorite foods. Actually, I love it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or late night snack! If I had not found substitutes for my desire for the sweet, creamy, cold sensation, its temptation would have been the dagger to my weight loss. I have found that the ‘Guilt Free’ ice cream is great and very low in calories and fat. I freeze my yogurts and eat them as ice cream. Also, I make smoothies with frozen fruit, skim milk, and juice. It is very thick and I eat it with a spoon and call it sorbet. If we are out in a town with a ‘Cold Stone’, a cup of sinless ice cream with berries is my special treat and is less than 200 calories. I have found new food choices for every tempting edible favorite. I still eat all the foods I have always loved but they are prepared differently, with healthier ingredients, or substitutes. They have been 'skinnied up'.
     Beth Moore tells a story in one of her lessons that illustrates the need to replace the bad with the good. There was a woman who had a hideous green chair. It was worn and ugly. She hated it! Every time she walked by it, she just got more and more frustrated. One day, she had enough. She dragged the chair out to the trash for the trash man to pick up. For days she would walk by the spot where the green chair once was and notice the big empty space. She didn’t have the money at that point to buy a new chair. The space seemed so vast. It didn’t seem right. After a few days, she went out to the trash heap and dragged the chair back into the house to its place of honor. She hated the empty space more than she hated the chair.
     There are many things we hate in our life; our sin, our habits, our activities, etc. We want them done away with. Sometimes, we make a commitment to rid them out of our life. However, if we do not put good things in their place, we will soon drag them back into to their original position. Let’s say you decide to give up an activity you do every Friday night. You have determined it is not glorifying to God and causes you to sin. Your spirit hates it. You need to find a positive activity to do every Friday night in its place. If you don’t and you sit at home bored every Friday night, you will one day hate your boredom so much you will go back to doing the activity you didn't want anymore.
     Do you have a green chair in your life? Something you hate? Are you ready to drag it to the trash? What are you going to put in its place? If you end up hating the empty space more than the chair, the ugly green chair will be back in your life before you know it!

So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word,

making a salvation-garden of your life.

James 1:21