24. How Do I Live By Faith? (Part 5: During little decisions, like if I should order a Big Mac)

Posted by Conrad on 03.21.11 in Devotionals.

I had a good question posed about my ‘How Do I Live By Faith?’ devotional series and I thought it’d be good to answer it as a devotional.  It has to do with a Big Mac.

“I’m confused about how you define decisions not explicitly based on Scripture as sin. Are you saying God’s Word will tell you whether or not to eat the Big Mac, which shirt to pick out at the store, or how to organize the paperwork in your office? Did you ask God about which pair of underwear to put on today? Or, am I misunderstanding what you wrote?”

Good question.  Let’s start off with some verses so it can give us some direction where we need to go with our answer.

Romans 14:23 Everything that does not come from faith is sin.

2 Timothy 3[16] All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, [17] so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So these two verses combined ultimately say we need to make decisions by faith, and that Bible covers all the bases in life so there is some biblical principle that covers whatever decisions we have to make.

The thing is… the small decisions we make are actually part of some larger decision.

For example the question about buying a Big Mac.  One bigger question is “does God want me to eat something with 540 calories and 45% of the recommended daily fat intake?”

Well maybe it’ll be fine if you live a healthy lifestyle and you’re keeping track of your calories and fat for that day, and you’re eating well the rest of the day.  But what if you’re morbidly obese and you had just finished off a Triple Baconator with its 1330 calories and 190% of daily saturated fat?

We’d look to a verse like 1 Cor 6:[19] for that.  (“Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit”)

And that’s just one of the questions we can ask about the Big Mac.  There’s also the question of should we spend our money on a Big Mac?  Let’s say you’re dirt poor and you have $5 left to feed you and your family.  Should you buy one Big Mac instead of maybe buying a loaf of bread, peanut butter and milk?

Each decision we make has something to do with expending the resources God has given us – money, time, our body, our mind, etc.  We have to use wisdom (James 1:5) on where we’re supposed to expend those resources.  Using wisdom is also a Biblical principle.

Now in regards to what underwear I should wear, the larger questions actually have been asked and answered.  I’ve already lived by faith by not wasting His money on $100 boxers, but instead I bought the dachshund print boxers that were on sale for $2.99 at Banana Republic.  In fact I bought two.  (That’s totally true).

Some of the everyday decisions we make, we’ve made obvious faithful decisions – we just didn’t define it as ‘living by faith’ because the wise/godly thing to do was so obvious.

I would still be living by faith if I wore either my dachshund boxes or my monkey boxers to church.  The larger question is should I get dressed for church?  The even larger question was should I go to church today?  Well yes, I need to go to church and in order to go to church I need to wear pants and hopefully underwear.

We just need to know that our mundane decisions are a part of larger decision.  And then that larger comprehensive decision is where we can find Biblical principles and therefore try to live by faith.

And now I’m off to order a Baconator.  And of course not a triple Baconator, just a normal Baconator, because I obviously need to make wise, faithful decisions.

Col 3:23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.

Take Time To Pray: Ask God to help you be conscious of the decisions you make so they can be pleasing to the Lord.