How Do You Do … Without? Jeremiah 35:6-9.

Most of us are prepared to do without—on occasion.  Dieting is easy if it’s temporary. It’s not that hard to give up ice cream for a day or two.  But what if someone told you to give up something for the rest of your life? Jack Lalanne, the “Godfather of Fitness,” met a health food speaker when Jack was 15. The speaker, Paul Bragg, asked what young Jack had eaten in the last 24 hours.

“Cakes, pies, ice cream.”

“Son, you’re a walking garbage can.”

Bragg told him if he would eat right and exercise he could become “healthy, fit, popular, smart, and happy.” After that day in 1929, Jack NEVER ATE SWEETS AGAIN.  He went on to become a fitness guru, birthing a worldwide fitness industry through his gyms and television shows, and kept eating clean until his death at 96! (He lived forty years longer than his father. Read about him here.)

Has God asked you to give up anything for the rest of your life? Do you fear missing out? Face it: No one gets to do it all or have it all. (Consider the example of marriage: God calls most of us to to be married to only one person for our entire lives–billions of others on earth, and they’re all off-limits).

And God rewards those who exercise discipline–who live lives of appropriate abstinence. One day Jeremiah told the king to bring the Rechabites to the temple to drink a glass of wine. When the Rechabites heard the offer, they spoke up:

“We do not drink wine, for Jonadab [our ancestor] commanded: ‘You and your sons must never drink wine. You must not build a house or sow seed or plant a vineyard. Those things are not for you. Rather, you must live in tents your whole life, so you may live a long time on the soil….’  We have obeyed the voice of Jonadab in all he commanded us. So we haven’t drunk wine our whole lives … [or] built houses to live in and do not have vineyard, field, or seed” Jeremiah 35:6-9.

Can you imagine giving anything up for YOUR WHOLE LIFE? I can’t imagine giving up sweets for the rest of my life like Jack LaLanne. Yet, these people gave up not only wine, but HOUSES! What a commitment. And although God had told the Jewish people to build houses in Babylon and to plant vineyards, the Rechabites (worshippers of God, but apparently not descendants of Jacob) honored the wishes of their ancestor by living in tents for several generations.

And God blessed them.  “Because you obeyed your ancestor, … [your family] will never fail to have a man to always stand before Me” Jeremiah 35:18-19. Some believe descendants of the Rechabites are still alive today.

Abstinence is tough. Giving things up is tough. Self-denial is hard. Telling yourself ‘NO’ is hard.

But God rewards self-discipline.

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful, but to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” Hebrews 12:11. 

God, prepare us to live lives marked by great self-discipline. Grant us self-control and the humility and contentment to say ‘No’ to many things. Deliver us from F.O.M.O., the Fear Of Missing Out, and from envy of those who receive what we want for ourselves.

ΑΩ