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Starving the Skinny Idol

Starving the Skinny Idol

by | Aug 6, 2014 | Blog, Renew Mind

Matthew2237b

A few weeks ago, the Lord told me to “starve the skinny idol”.  This was shortly after He showed me that I had made “skinny” an idol in my life.  It was quite shocking news!  Me?  Serving an idol?  Yup!

I dreamed of having “rock hard abs” or “flat abs”.  I had envisioned myself looking like Denise Austen or other exercise gurus.  I sought after it.  I deemed myself too flabby and went on a quest to “live the dream”.  Well, that so-called dream became my master.

“That other person, idea, or dream is your master, and it takes you over without your being aware of it.”*

That’s exactly what happened to me.  I lived and breathed this desire to have a certain look.  I wanted to be strong and to be at a certain weight.  If there was a book about it, I read it.  If there was a diet to help me live out my dream, I tried it or at least considered it.  I joined a fitness forum online so I could discuss this dream.  I counted calories.  I tracked points.  I stopped eating certain foods.  I tried to eat only raw foods.  And on and on and on.

I made skinny my “functional god”.

“They’re trapped, they’re deceived, and they’re miserable because they made a functional god of something or someone other than the one true living God.”*

I thought, when I am skinny, I will be happy.  I wouldn’t be satisfied until I lost a certain amount of weight or looked a certain way.  But even when I lost the desired weight, I thought, “How about 5 more pounds?”  You see, the enemy loves that we serve the skinny idol, or any idol for that matter.  He wants us to feel like we are never enough.  So I thought if I tried a different method, diet, technique, workout program, etc., that then I would have what I wanted.  Sure, I asked God for help, but “God won’t help us chase our idols.”*

My heart was set on being skinny.  “Idolatry is who or what you worship, what you long for, what your heart is set on.”*  And the sad thing is that back in the day, when I started on this quest, I was completely fine the way I was.  I believed the lies of the enemy that I needed to be more or less.  I didn’t think I was good enough where I was; so without realizing it, I built up my altar and started serving the skinny idol.

This is a photo of me from 2005, when I thought I needed to lose weight:

DCP_2705

Oh how I wish I could go back to that young lady (myself) and tell myself that I was fine and to STOP obsessing.  I wish I could go back and tell her the truth.  I know different ones in my life did try, but I wasn’t convinced.  I really thought something was wrong with me because I didn’t have rock-hard abs.  I remember asking my husband to take pictures of me when I was sitting down so I could see if my stomach stuck out and rolled out as I was imagining it to be (it wasn’t).  The funny thing is, after having two babies, and looking back, those abs look great!  Ha!

So when the Lord revealed this idol to me about a month ago, I started to sort of panic.  I have served this idol and it has served me.  It’s been my familiar friend, my companion, my security blanket all of these years.  It’s what I could obsess over; and boy, have I obsessed!  “It’s hard [to demolish the idol], not only because they don’t want to leave, but also because we don’t really want to lose them.”*  Exactly!

This idol has kept me “fixed”.  It’s like a drug.  I feel “high” when I focus on the things that feed this idol: like thinking about starting a new diet.  “We may experience initial relief, so then we cling to them, making them the objects of our desire.  As these objects grow in importance, our behavior becomes habitual and we can no longer satisfy or relieve our needs in healthy ways.  Even if we want to break free, we find ourselves enslaved.”**  I have looked to my idol to fulfill me; but only God can fulfill me.

I’ve often asked myself why I would give into this idol, this addiction.  When I look back to when I erected this idol, there were a lot of things in my life that I felt were spinning out of control.  Relationships were changing.  Boundaries had to be placed.  There was a lot of emotional uneasiness.  Looking back, I am beginning to see that instead of depending on God completely, I began to place trust in this idol to help me through.  I grasped onto anything that felt solid at the time to hold me up.

Now that He’s revealed this idol to me, I’m accountable to tear it down.  In 1st and 2nd Chronicles,  it talks about how there would be a new king on the throne and it would say if that king demolished the high places and idol altars or not.  Kings built, tore down, and built them up again.  I want this idol to come down for good and not ever be built up again.  I’m starting to see that it comes down to 2 choices: either I can trust God or I can trust the “golden calves” of the skinny idol.  I can serve God or “mammon”, but I cannot serve both.

I didn’t trust God to take care of this area of my life.  Oh, I would claim He was leading me (which I think He did at times–to turn away from the idol), but I did NOT want to give up the control of this area of my life.  It’s ridiculous because idols only hurt us.  “We think they’re more predictable than God is, and they keep us in the driver’s seat.”*  Oh yes, I have told God to move over plenty of times.  I’m driving!  I will get my rock-hard abs no matter what!  Trust God?  Whatever!

I didn’t want to wait on God.  “And so we turn to idols, often just to remove the uneasy feeling of waiting and depending on God.”*  I think a lie I have believed is, “God won’t help me, so I will do this myself.  He probably just wants me to be fat.”  Yeah…not cool!  “We are anxious about our idols.  We think, “What if I don’t get what I want?  What if I lose it?””  I held on dearly to what I wanted because I was afraid God wouldn’t give it to me in my way and in my time.  Truth is, God is more concerned about my heart than my outward appearance.  Of course He wants us healthy and at our God-given weight, BUT He wants my heart.  He is a jealous God.  He doesn’t want us bowing down to any other gods.  And I certainly made a god, an idol, out of skinny.

“Addiction and disordered eating end and dependence begins when we stop relying on our own will to get what we want and begin trusting God to give us what he knows we need.”**

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be slim, but it’s not ok when it’s ruling my life.

I want the guarantee that I will never be overweight again and that I will lose the “fluff” if I am going to follow God’s ways.  But the thing is–nothing in this life is a guarantee!  Only God is unshakable and unchangeable.  He is our only guarantee.

So what it all boils down to is this–is God enough for me?  If I never release another pound, is He enough?  If I never have rock-hard abs, is He enough?  Yes, yes, yes!!

What does it mean to “starve the skinny idol”?  That’s something I’ve been asking the Lord and learning about.  When you starve something, you don’t give it anything that will keep it alive, not even a crumb.  So what’s kept this idol alive in my life?  I can name a few things: obsessing over food, researching food and diets, being fixated on my body, reading anything that brings on the obsession, etc.  So by starving the idol, that means not doing any of those things.  And it also means changing my focus.  We were all meant to serve God and have a relationship with Him.  There is a yearning in every person’s heart for Him.  But we find things that become “functional gods” to us.  I want to serve God.  I want to give Him all of my heart, mind and soul.  I don’t want to give anymore of my time, heart, mind, or soul to “skinny”.  My focus needs to get back onto Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, my Deliverer!

So as I’ve been working on taking down this idol and demolishing it, the idol has tried to remake itself in my life using what I listed above.  And the areas this idol has served me has been tricky to pin down at times and it seems like it has 1,000 lives.  I wrote this in my journal, “I have to ask God for help if I’m going to spot them, pin them down, and kill them as fast as they appear.”

“Whenever we erect and bow down to an idol, we displace our dependency on God.  We struggle to stay at the center of it all through willpower, manipulating people, doing everything in our own strength, trying to look just right, and falsely believing that we are in charge of our life.  We think we can do anything through willpower, even control our addictions, but the blessed gift of addiction is that it fails us.  If we are honest with ourselves, we eventually reach a point where we must admit we can’t go on like this; that we are out of control.  It is God who allows us to see the futility of placing our hope and trust in the false idols of our own making.  Then he helps us discover and articulate the aching, unfulfilled emptiness at the core of our being and invites us to take the first step toward God-centered healing.”**

And that’s the thing, I was placing my dependency on this idol, not on God.  I thought if I could just control my eating, that then I would get what I wanted.  But what I truly needed was the Lord.  I’m coming to realize that if there’s an idol, an addiction, or something is just plain wrong, that’s an indication that something within me needs more of God.

The lie is that the idol will make us happy, that it will fuel us.  But the truth is that we cannot live on substitutes.  My heart will “never be satisfied apart from God in Christ Jesus.”*  Only God can satisfy.  Substitutes never satisfy.  The skinny idol just made me lust for more, more, more.  And I was left wanting more.

This is like Paul, in Philippians chapter 4, saying, I will be content whether well-fed or hungry.  It’s choosing to be content.  It’s getting to that place, that no matter what, we are satisfied in God alone and that He is enough.

Something else I wrote in my journal was this: Going to an idol instead of God is committing spiritual adultery.  Ouch!

After the Lord revealed truth to me about this idol in my heart, I realized that I needed a plan to starve this idol and to renew my mind, because there were literally days where “skinny” was on my mind consistently all throughout the day.  I didn’t know how to pinpoint the thoughts and take them captive to the obedience of Christ.  And so I figured that starting somewhere is better than doing nothing.  Part of my plan (and what I’ve been doing) is putting my focus more on Christ.  I’m reading through the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and I’ve been reading Galatians over and over again.  It’s been awesome!  I wake up and instead of thinking about “skinny”, I get so excited to be in the Word and to get to know Jesus more.  I’ve also been reading my truth cards more often.  I also picked out sets of questions from the I Deserve a Donut app by Barb Raveling to answer in my journal: which has been extremely helpful in renewing my mind (the sets of questions I’ve been using are: Discontentment, Greed & Lust, Envy, Insecurity: Feeling Inadequate, Insecurity: Living Up to Expectations, Insecurity: People Pleasing, and Insecurity: Self-Condemnation).  And when I look in the mirror and feel any sense of dissatisfaction, I thank the Lord for my body.  Through all of this, and putting my focus on Christ, I have noticed that I’m no longer focused on skinny like I once was.  Praise God!

I still have work to do.  There are times I’m tempted to go on a diet to have my “guarantee”, so I have to keep pressing on and looking to the Lord and His truth.  This is a journey.  We learn and grow every day.

How about you?  Have you made skinny an idol in your life?  Have you served the scale or the food?  Where do you turn when the going gets tough?  Are you clinging to a “functional God” or the one true living God?  Ask the Lord to search your heart and He will show you.  If you are afraid you won’t like what you see, know that He is there to forgive as we repent, and He is there to help to get us where we need to be.  He will help us follow Him, but He won’t help us chase our idols.

P.S. You can hear more about what God has revealed to me in this Sound Cloud file I recorded:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/160296439″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

*Quoted from Gospel Treason by Brad Bigney

** Quoted from Hunger Within by Arthur & Judy Halliday (chapter 6)

 

The Porch of Idols ~ Guest Post by Cathy Maher

by | Jan 31, 2014 | Accountability, Blog, Renew Mind

Image Courtesy of The Sacred Place

Image Courtesy of The Sacred Place

Recently I gained an important piece of understanding as to why I over eat at times. In our ThinWithin studies, we read about idols and sacrifices. I looked up some of the words in the verses and boy did I get an eye opener.

2 Chronicles 14 talks about the altar that was in the portico of the temple. The portico was a covered entryway outside the temple in front of the steps. Before one could go inside the temple, one would have to pass through the portico (where we get the word porch) and give a sacrifice upon the altar. It would either be to The Lord or to an idol. Those were, and still are, the only two choices.

The altar was always conspicuous and prominent, for all to see. It was a central place of celebration where others were privy to see one’s sacrifice. In fact, some even boasted for all to see the great sacrifice they made. Perhaps their idol was pride.

The portico is not the temple. It’s not where the Lord resides. It’s the gateway to the Lord, who is in the temple. He chose to save us and reside in our bodies and make his dwelling place within us. He knew how magnificent it would be. He chose to live in a manner that we might have intimate communion with Him at all times.

The altar is the place of sacrifice and celebration that stands erect to guard the entrance of our lives. The scriptures continue by instructing us to repair this altar. It is in disarray. How do we repair it? We start by mourning for our sin. We have worshipped idols in place of the true God. We turn from that practice and honestly admit our wrongs, asking for Gods help. This isn’t a one time event, but rather a daily occurance.

We begin to determine what it is that we have sacrificed so we can over eat? Was it our health, energy, body image, confidence, peace, joy, fellowship, intimacy, growth, trust or …

Here are my idols, Lord; comfort and fear, ease and shame, condemnation fear of rejection. All these I have bowed to and sacrificed to. Forgive me and cleanse me. I want to bow only to You and bring a worthy sacrifice to You, which is my own body.

It reads on to say that the next step is to tear down the idols, with courage. How does that work? How do we tear down comfort? We stop trusting in our own ways to find comfort. We stop looking to those ways to help us. We refuse to go back to our old ways and we turn to God. We bow only to Him from now on. When we falter, we begin again, returning to the altar to presesnt our body as a living sacrifice to God.

When we desire to go into our inner life, that secret place where God dwells with us, first we go into the portico and we make a sacrifice of our own ways, our own strength, our fears, shame and condemnation. We lay all of self on the altar. We celebrate and rejoice for all his mighty deeds and transformation. THEN we enter into the depths of our life in Christ. THEN we receive all God has for us. THEN He communes with us. Because all the idol worship and barriers have been torn down. Worship in spirit and truth has been rebuilt in its place. THEN we overcome. THEN we are changed by grace.

Each of us must go through our own portico to build an altar. It’s the way God made for us.

Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name.”

Perhaps you don’t have the same idols I once did. Perhaps you bring your sacrifice of food to some inner pain, or unfilled dreams, depression, impatience, pride, rejection, hopelessness.. . I suppose the list is endless. Sacrificing food to our idols keeps us in bondage because we aren’t able to reach the Lord. He’s waiting for us just inside the Temple.

We are all learning so much from ThinWithin about communing with God and being transformed. He is available to each of us. But it is imperative that we tear down the idols and enter the secret place in the temple to begin our rebuilding journey with God. He has a perfect plan.

How about you?

Can you identify with any of the idols Cathy mentioned? If yes, did that surprise you? Are you ready and willing to present your body as a sacrifice to God? Have you been able to get beyond the front porch of your own life? Do you have a sincere desire to experience real victory from your disordered eating?

cathyprofileCathy lives in Lakemoor, IL, a suburb of Chicago, IL. She and her husband, Joe are empty nesters, not counting the three cats they adopted. They have a total of six children and nine grandchildren. She enjoys prayer walks and great fellowship. Reading and writing are still her favorite subjects.

Idolatry in the Life of the Believer – Dr. Charles Stanley

by | Jul 19, 2013 | Blog

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Direct my footsteps according to your word; let no sin rule over me.

– Psalm 119:133 (NIV)

The definition I have been using of an idol is anything or anyone that I give the right or privilege to direct my steps–to impact my decisions. This may be somewhat vague–too vague to be helpful.

So, I have turned to an expert! Charles Stanley has a great podcast about Idols in the Life of the Believer. I found it on YouTube. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVg8RU92SMs&w=640&h=480

Some highlights for me as I went through this for the third time:

God wants to reign supreme in my life. He will accept no challenges and no competitors for  His Lordship. The only way to keep idols out of my life is to keep up to date with what influences are present in my life is. Is it really  and only Christ? Is it pure obedience to him?

Or are there other things that influence me, challenge me, that I have to say, “God, well, yes, but…”

God says NO competition, no challengers, no competitors to your devotion and love to me.” We have to lay it down.

The only way to know how to deal with idols in our life is to ask ourselves the question of if I am willing to lay it down. With no anticipation and no promise of the future return, but am I willing to give it, no matter what. That’s hard. It depends on our value of that thing or person, relationship or whatever it may be, as to whether we are able to say, “Yes, Lord. Yes, whatever you want in my life, you are welcome to it.” It’s easy to say that, but it’s difficult to give it up.

God says he must reign supreme, absolutely in our lives. No competition in my life.

Questions posed by Dr. Stanley:

1. Are you walking in God’s plan for your life?

2. Is there anything that moves you in such a fashion that you would choose it over God? Is it more influential than God in certain situations.

3. Are you willing to lay it down and to trust him for his very best?

Don’t rationalize that “surely God wouldn’t want that…” If he puts his finger on it, we want to give it up. We will be richer by far for laying it down.

How does this connect with eating, overeating, “thinness,” and other issues that you struggle with? What is God calling you to lay down so that he may have supreme rulership in your life?

Rejecting God’s Love

by | Jul 18, 2013 | Uncategorized

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Image Source: iStockPhoto

“Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.

– Jonah 2:8 NIV

This week has been challenging for me. No small wonder. Any time I decide to teach something, God wants to be sure I learn it. Often, I seem to insist on learning it the hard way.

So join me in my introspection. Is there any way that you cling to greed?

We are told in Colossians 3:5 that greed is idolatry. So, if I am clinging to the excessive quantities of food that I want to be able to enjoy, I am in essence clinging to a worthless idol.

So, here comes the kicker…

If I cling to an idol, I am at some level turning away from God’s love for me, according to Jonah 2:8.

So I am spending time right now evaluating this. “Lord, how is this true? In what way am I turning away from your love for me?”

– When I turn to my idol – food in excess – to comfort me, I miss out on the comfort that God might give me out of his love for me.

– When I turn to my idol – food in excess – I fail to experience the joy and celebration that God intends as I praise Him for good news!

– When I cling to my idol, he can’t put in my arms the gifts he intends…so, again, I turn away from his love.

The examples go on and on.

What are the things I turn to food outside of hunger and satisfaction to do for me? To comfort me. To celebrate with me. To keep me from being bored. To center me. That is the short list.

How About You?

1.) What are you looking to the “worthless idol” of food outside of hunger and satisfaction to do for you?

2.) In what ways are you likely to be missing out on experiencing God’s love by turning to food instead of to him?

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Don’t forget our online class today, Thursday, July 18 at 4pm Pacific, 5pm Mountain, 6pm Central, 7pm Eastern. You have to register in order to attend and come a bit early if you haven’t come before as there is software to download for your computer (or you can use your phone if you prefer). Here is the information:

Please register for Idolatry and Our Eating – OUCH!!!! on Jul 18, 2013 4:00 PM PDT at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6073684991219825664

You knew we would have to deal with this sooner or later, right? We will be glad we have. Is idolatry something that only people in 3rd world countries struggle with? What IS an idol and what on EARTH does it have to do with our Thin Within eating program and healthy non-dieting boundaries? What does it have to do with our renewing of the mind goals for this summer? BUNCHES! Come on along and see!

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

I hope to see you today at 4pm Pacific!

Do You Have an Idol? Guest Post

by | May 24, 2013 | Blog

My friend, Barb Raveling, wrote this blog post for her own blog and it appeared on Tuesday at her website. I asked her if I could share it with you. She modified the 2nd day in the Idolatry chapter in her printed workbook, Freedom From Emotional Eating.

HEAL Group Session 3 will be shared tomorrow here at the blog.

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shape of thin woman

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

I still remember the words of a successful agent at a writer’s conference: “Money changes people. I’ve only met a couple of Christian writers who haven’t been negatively affected by success.”

That’s a little scary.

Everyone tells us to pursue our dreams, but no one tells us to make sure we keep God first while pursuing them.

I’ve only been blogging for a little over a year this time around, but it didn’t take long to see how easy it would be to make writing an idol.

Living the American Dream

If you’re pursuing a goal, you know what I mean. It’s easy to become consumed by it.

And while the goal itself might be wonderful–a way to love God and others–it still has the potential to mess us up. If we’re not careful, it will lead us away from God.

God has convicted me that this is something I need to work on in my own life once again, so I thought I might as well blog about it! Future posts will deal with how to break free from idolatry. But before we can break free, we need to know what our idols are.

I’ve been talking about the idolatry of a goal, but there are a million different potential idols out there: recreation, exercise, work, the Internet, relationships, approval of others, excitement, television, food, and avoiding conflict, just to name a few.

Here are a few questions to help you determine whether or not you have any idols:

Do You Have an Idol? – Quiz

1. What do you feel like you have to have to be happy?

2. What do you think about in the middle of the night or when you first wake up in the morning?

3. What do you spend a lot of time on each day?

4.  What do you worry about?

5. What would you have a hard time giving up for a month?

6. What do you do when you’re depressed or stressed out?

7. What do you do to avoid doing the things you don’t want to do?

8.  In what areas of your life, do you experience your greatest struggles?

9. Where do your feelings of self worth come from?

10. What do you escape to when you’re having a hard time in life?

11. What do people tell you that you spend too much time on?

12. What do you hide from others?

13. What do you talk about too much?

14. What could you not live without?

When you finish answering the questions, glance back over your answers. Do you see anything popping up more than once on the list? The more often you see it on your list, the more likely it’s an idol.

If you’d like to work on getting rid of that idol, join me for future blog posts.

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I love how practical Barb is. She does a great job at tackling bad habits, ways of thinking, and doing something about them to bring them under Christ’s submission. She is extremely effective at teaching us how to do this, too. I hope you will put her website in your favorites.

Now, let’s bring her questions home to where we are here at this blog, shall we? 🙂 Ask God to give you courage.

Is there any chance that “getting thin” has become an idol in your life? If you were going to help Barb 🙂 write her next blog post about this subject, what would you do to address the possibility that the goal of being thin might be an idol?

I am eager to hear from you. 🙂