After God began to work in my life to convict me of bad grocery spending habits I began to search out new ways to save and be frugal. My biggest concern was feeding my family healthily and saving money. Was it possible to have a modest budget for my groceries and still eat healthily? The way I had been doing it wasn’t working. I was buying and preparing fad foods and listening to so called experts online about what kinds of foods were healthy.

I don’t know why I was listening to what people who set themselves up as experts tell me about food, I learned everything I needed to know about what is healthy and what is not healthy from my Mother when I was at home as a child and young woman. So I went back to that knowledge and examined it to see if it was still usable. It was definitely usable! And it is serving us very well.

Here is a reminder of the questions I asked myself and what set me on this quest to eat well and spend less…

  • Is God in control?
  • Does He care about me and my children?
  • Is He trying to teach me something?
  • Will God take care of me, my family and our health if I simply buy what I can reasonably afford?
  • Is it right for me to spend so much money on organic food that I have nothing left to share?
  • Is it responsible of me to spend so much on food for my family that we don’t have money for other necessities?

Is God in control?
Well, either He is or He isn’t. I believe He is, but that He allows us to make choices that can alter our lives for good or bad. If He is in control, I have to also ask myself whether or not I can trust Him. My answer is that Yes, I know I can trust Him with my life, my family, my health and finances.

Does God care about me and my children?
As a Christian, I believe He cares about every facet of our lives. Therefore, I believe that He cares about our health, welfare and finances, and how we use the resources He has given us.

Is He trying to teach me something?
Obviously, He was trying to teach me something about faith and reliance upon Him for what we needed in addition to lessons in good stewardship.

Will God take care of me, my family and our health if I simply buy what I can reasonably afford?
This is the gist of my thoughts. If I cease buying expensive whole foods and organic foods, and just buy foods that I can reasonably afford and stay within my budget, will God take care of my health? Can I expect Him to do that, even when I don’t buy the best? I believe He will! I believe He does. I believe He is trustworthy, caring and protective.

Is it right for me to spend so much money on organic food that I have nothing left to share?
I believe that it is NOT right at all to do this. The Christian life is all about giving, caring for others, sharing and taking responsibility for helping those who need help. We are not wealthy. I have a specific amount of money each week and when it is budgeted, it is not available for other things. We budget money for utilities, gasoline, groceries, personal items like medicines and school. When I was spending huge amounts for organic and specialty foods, I was not able to give anything! I rationalized the expense by saying that I was keeping my family healthy. But the problem with what I was doing was this:

I was trying to do something good for my family and at the same time I was violating at least three other principles of God’s Word! I was not walking in faith, I was not giving to others and I was making our healthy eating an idol.

Is it responsible of me to spend so much on food for my family that we don’t have money for other necessities?
No, it was not responsible of me to do so. I was skimping on things that we both needed and wanted. Our wants are not great, but I was not even able to buy occasional treats like popcorn or craft items for the children to work on because I was over-spending at the grocery and thought it was a good thing.

Now, I want to remind you of this: There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying and eating organic and whole foods. Absolutely nothing! My whole point is that we must eat within our means. My family still eats whole foods, I just don’t make the expensive recipes and use exotic ingredients that bump up my grocery bill.

Part three will include some steps that I took to drastically reduce my grocery bill and make it possible for me to serve nutritious foods to my family and to have money in my budget to share with others.