I came across this passage when reading Proverbs 2 in the Message: “Tune your ears to the world of wisdom; set your heart on a life of understanding … make insight your priority … before you know it, fear of God will be yours.”  We live in a world of perpetual temptation; daily, we are enticed to live by what makes us feel pleasant. In a land of plenty it is difficult to live a life built around priority, especially the priority of God. With so much surrounding our lives, it is easy to adopt a false priority system and then wait years for the effect of bad priority choices to catch up with us. God seeks to help us “tune our ears to wisdom,” find out what God wants and then, with Him, figure out how do to it.   

Let me offer a current example. For years I have bounced between being 5 to 25 pounds overweight. I have carved into my weight by using crash diets, eating from packaged food, extreme exercise regimes and anything else that I have heard worked for others. The fact is I have tried everything except learning how to eat right. I know we live in a culture in which how people look really matters, but I am not so moved. I think people of all weights and sizes look great. The sensual desire and bias for people to be skinny is completely lost on me, so there goes that motivation. In my heart, people do not look the better for being a certain shape. The point is, however, God is my priority. What does He want of me? So recently I spent some money, joined a group and I am on a one-year excursion, learning how to eat in a God-honoring and body-caring way.

I am not involved in a crash diet where I eat a certain thing for a couple of months and relapse into old habits. It seems best not to be controlled by any extreme diets like “high protein low carb,” to “enveloping food,” to “slim down drinks,” to “pre-packaged fares,” to “pills and supplements,” or the way I have eaten in the past. So if I am going to be wise and God honoring, there needed to be a change in my entire approach to eating so food intake can accomplish its three purposes: encourage health, provide energy and be highly pleasurable.   

Some of my good friends who have come from drug and alcohol addiction tell me that sometimes they have to concern themselves with just today. “I just know today I am going to do the right thing,” or “One day at a time.” I knew what they were saying, but then again I never knew what they were really saying. Today I do. Sometimes I will smell a food that I have been known to over-eat and two compelling things happen to me: first, I make a decision to concentrate only on today. Second, I whisper up a prayer to God for help.

You know what prayer is? It is kneeling before God and giving Him reverence, it is making Him the priority of your life, it is fearing God, it is the beginning stage of learning something.