Page 30 - Western Recorder October Issue

30 Western Recorder ǀ October 2020 RECIPE CORNER
Amanda McGary is a missions mobilization ministry assistant at the Kentucky Baptist Convention.
She shares this Lime Jell-O Salad recipe
that was given to her by her great- grandmother. “Ma” would make
it for holiday gatherings. Amanda said she fell in love with it as a
child, prompting it to be known as “Amanda’s Green Stuff.” Amanda said she had to be patient to get the recipe — she was in her 20s before her great-grandmother would pass the recipe along to her.
Lime Jell-O Salad
3-ounce box of Lime Jell-O 1 cup of boiling water
1 pint of whipping cream
1 package of cream cheese 1 cup of fruit flavored marshmallows
20-ounce can of crushed pineapple
Take 1 cup of boiling water and place in large mixing bowl.
Add the Jell-O mix to the boiling water and stir until dissolved.
Add the block of cream cheese to the mixture. Using a fork, break the cream cheese apart into little pieces.
Add pint of whipping cream and stir until mixed.
Drain the juice from the crushed pineapple.
Add the crushed pineapple to the bowl and stir until mixed.
At this point you may transfer the salad to a Jell-O mold.
Add marshmallows to the top of the mixture.
Allow to set in the fridge for approximately 4 hours or until set.
If you would like marshmallows throughout the salad, periodically stir the mixture while in the fridge before it sets.
By LAINEY GREER
1 Cor. 6:19-20 serves as the grounding for stewardship as it declares the body belongs to God, and therefore, Christians are accountable for how they treat their bodies. God owns our bodies — He indwells them by the Spirit, and He redeemed them by Christ’s sacrifice. Given those truths, He commands us to glorify Him with our bodies, which must inform how we treat, or steward, the body.
Whether or not you are glorifying God with your body is between you and the Lord. Stewardship of the body is not a one-size- fits-all filter, and it certainly doesn’t need
to become legalistic. But this passage does call for a re-evaluation of how we care for our bodies.
Consider how you might answer these questions:
• Are you feeding your body enough
food or intentionally under-eating or
purging for weight loss?
• Are you regularly over-eating and ruled
by gluttonous desires?
• Do you try to get the sleep your body
needs or do you push your body to go on 4-5 hours of sleep a night to accomplish more?
• Are you spending too much time in the gym and abusing your body with too much exercise?
• Do you regularly push through pain just to get one more rep?
• Is your body breaking down because of a stress-filled life?
• Are you attempting to get even a minimum amount of physical activity every week?
These are just a few examples of questions we all need to be asking ourselves. I don’t have this down either. I know to ask these questions because of my own battles.
We all have areas of struggle, neglect or obsession. Life is also filled with seasons where we can’t get to the gym as much
as we’d like; we don’t have access to healthy foods; or we aren’t getting the sleep our body requires. Body stewardship always requires an evaluation of personal faithfulness to the Lord in the way we treat our bodies.
1 Cor. 9:24-27 tells us Paul disciplines his body to keep it under control so that he will not be disqualified. He likens the Christian life to a race in which believers run as if competing for a prize, as he observed in the Grecian games. He notes that if an athlete desires to win, he or she exercises self-control in all things, and yet the end goal is a temporary, perishable reward. Paul’s argument is how much more should the Christian, whose reward is eternal and imperishable, exercise self-control even if
it mandates beating the body so that he is not disqualified to preach the gospel.
Paul teaches an important point here about body stewardship. To maintain control of his body, he admits taking extreme measures against it. The call is
for Christians to engage in self-discipline
to whatever extent is required. Paul lives with the intention to be obedient, an intent that compels him to beat his body. This either means that Paul forces his body to do things he naturally does not desire, or he forces it not to do things that his flesh inherently wants. Guesses abound as to what Paul specifically refers to, but the point of application is clear. Are believers intentionally utilizing similar efforts of discipline and self-control in all areas of life, stewarding their bodies as Paul did?
In 1 Cor. 10:31 and Col. 3:17, Paul instructs the believer to glorify God in all things, even eating and drinking. We are left with the question: in what ways are my eating and drinking honoring God, or in what ways are they not?
Part of the context in 1 Cor. 10 is pru- dence in all situations, particularly whether or not we are creating hindrances to
the gospel by what we do or don’t eat. When the unbelieving world is healthier than the evangelical world, might we be creating a hindrance to the gospel by what our lifestyle communicates? The world observes the way Christians treat their bodies, and as a result, makes assumptions about our faith — based on our body stewardship or lack thereof.
Lainey Greer is a Ph.D. student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her blog is https://greerlainey.wixsite.com/ embodiment.
McGARY