We were discussing on FaceBook an article by Kirk Cameron, “Is It A Sin To Be Fat?” I have provided the link below for your edification.
D. L. Moody and Charles Spurgeon were both 5' 9" tall and weighed 350 lbs. Both won over a million people to Christ. If it is a sin, it would appear that God is not opposed to using such sinners. After all, all He has to use is saved sinners and failures so why would fat be an obstacle He could not overcome?
It is hard to fight genetics, I come from a line of tall and relatively skinny people on my Dad’s side and short chubby folks on Mom’s. You have the Standard American Diet (SAD) that does not help. Man was meant to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, not the furrow of his brow, so you have anxiety or stress eating of the SAD. That is why our great-grandparents could eat six eggs and a half pound of bacon fried in lard as well as grits drowning in butter every day for breakfast and still die old, fat and happy because they worked their tails off in the fields and factories, sitting on their tushes in front of a computer answering calls by rude people. In my college days one of my bosses trying to encourage me to lose weight asked me if I have ever been to the funeral of an old fat person. I said that nearly every old person’s funeral I attended was of a fat person. A few were skinny, but most were fat.
Our whole culture is wrapped around eating. There is Taco Tuesday, Doughnuts and Kolache Fridays at work. A Christian motto is We meet! We eat! We live in a fast society so we eat a lot of fast food. We snack our brains out watching movies or at sporting events. None of that is conducive to being a lean and mean fighting machine.
In other cultures being fat is a sign off wealth and admired. Others think a man is a lousy provider for his family if the wife is not fat. Indeed, the reason many expensive portraits were done in the 1600’s to prove that the reason a man had a skinny wife was not due to his lack of funds or support to her. If a man wanted to boast, I guess he did a portrait of his fat wife. My mother even told me that my dad found her more attractive after she put on weight after having me. She was a skinny doll before that and yet dad liked a full figured woman. The Scripture also says that the liberal (generous) soul shall be made fat. Fat again is a symbol of wealth. In America, even our poor people are fat. Unfortunately, that is because most of the food the poor can afford or choose is full of fat and sugar as well as other ingredients that make you fat,
I am not only old, fat and ugly, but I am not the greatest Christian in the world, yet God has used me in many ways that I did not deserve to be used and in many ways that I was certainly not humanly qualified. Not only did I have a pastoral ministry, but through the Internet I have ministered to people around the world including an MD in Bosnia. So the only limitations are what we put on ourselves.
Men can try to impose limitations. I have been too young and not too old. Too strict and not strict enough. Too educated and not educated enough. Too fat for one place. Could serve if I went on a diet. Yet, as you can see God managed to use me in spite of those limitations by men.
It has been said that the greatest ability is availability. I think that is pretty spot on. I have made myself available and God used me, in spite of my many weaknesses, because no one else would step forward. I have been a Captain many times when I was nothing more than a Private, but the Captains never showed up. ;-(
Just let Pastor or someone know that you are reporting for duty and let God lead you and him to show you your gifts and your place in the army. When you are in your place and exercising your gifts let the haters hate because more than likely the haters are AWOL or a 90 day wonder butter bar with a big head but a small brain. Go get’em, Brothers and Sisters! HOOAH!
Proverbs 11:25 The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.
http://kirkcameron.com/is-it-a-sin-to-be-fat/
