Is overeating really sin? Is that one extra bite rebellion against the Lord?
I really struggled with those questions. It was one of the things in the Thin Within material that I had a hard time grasping. To be honest, over the years, when I would get to about Day 7 in the Thin Within book, I wouldn’t be able to push through any further. I really didn’t think I needed God’s forgiveness or grace when I took that one extra bite or overate. I would think, “Come on! It’s just food! It’s just one extra bite! What’s the big deal? Doesn’t God have other things to be concerned about? Why does this have to be so spiritual?”
And then my eyes were opened.
I had been praying about this and asking the Lord what His truth was about it in my life. Then one evening, I really wanted to make popcorn to eat during a movie my husband and I were going to watch. I knew I wasn’t hungry for the popcorn, but I just kept on thinking about it. Finally, I decided I was going to make popcorn. As I poured the freshly popped popcorn into a big wooden bowl, I heard the Holy Spirit gently ask me if I would not eat the popcorn since I wasn’t hungry. And like an annoying fly buzzing around, I flicked that request off. How could I resist now? Oh, the delicious scent of hot-buttered popcorn! And then, as I scooped some popcorn into my smaller bowl, the Holy Spirit asked me again if I would refrain from eating the popcorn. Flick! No thank you, I’m going to EAT this popcorn, thank you very much! So I sat down, began the movie, and about 2/3 of the way through my bowl of popcorn the Holy Spirit asked again, gently, if I would stop eating since I wasn’t hungry. Obediently, I put the bowl down and didn’t take one more bite.
He was so gentle. I was so rebellious. I lusted after that popcorn. I hardened my heart against the Holy Spirit’s guidance. I was like that Israelite demanding my way as I puttered around in the wilderness; just give me the leeks and onions! I didn’t want God’s manna or His provision. I wanted MY way in MY time! In essence, I wanted to go back to that slavery. Instead of deliverance and freedom, I wanted the easy way out.
Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. Hebrews 4:7b
I don’t want to harden my heart. I want to love the Lord with all of my heart, mind and soul. I don’t want to hold anything back. I have to die to myself, to my fleshly, selfish desires in order to live for Him.
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. Romans 13:14
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Matthew 22:37
And it was at that moment I realized that I am not honoring the Lord when I take that extra bite knowing I don’t need it or when I overeat. I was placing food over Him.
This has been a hard truth to swallow. I would rather not digest it. I want to be in denial, but I clearly saw my rebellion that day when I hardened my heart. I chose to fall into temptation—to sin. Temptations will come, but I had a choice to make. I chose to follow my flesh instead of following after the Spirit. God provided a way out of the temptation, but I chose to take the other path.
When we are hungry, we eat. Food is fuel for our body. So what happens when we consistently go outside of God’s bounds of eating outside of hunger? We gain weight, we feel stuffed, we don’t like the way we look or feel, etc.
Why would we need food outside of hunger? What are we truly “hungry” for when we want to eat when we aren’t physically hungry?
I could replace that “hunger” with food, alcohol, sex, drugs, or any other substance or addiction, but it will never fulfill what I’m truly hungry for. As Heidi says, only God can fill that God-size hole that needs Him in our heart.
Maybe you are reading this and you might think that this doesn’t make sense for you. Maybe you feel that it’s legalistic to say one extra bite is sin. I would encourage you to ask the Lord about this in your own life. Ask Him to show you the truth about this for you. Maybe you aren’t at that place in your journey where it’s clear. Maybe the Lord is working on other areas right now.
Another thing I do is I check the motivation of my heart. Something I think about often is something that is asked in the book Intuitive Eating: would I deny a bride and groom their bites of wedding cake after the cake cutting if they weren’t truly hungry? It’s not their motive to indulge. There have been times after a meal at a friend’s house where I’m not really hungry anymore, but I will eat a little serving of dessert. I will check in with the Lord and there are times where He says that it’s ok, that my heart is in the right place. But I really think this is something personal between you and the Lord. This isn’t an excuse to eat whenever you feel like it. It’s not to justify eating another bite when you know God is saying it’s time to stop. You will know because the Holy Spirit will show you.
God is bringing me to a place of wanting to honor Him more and more with eating. I want to glorify Him in all that I do. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. I don’t want to follow after the flesh. I don’t want to lust after food. I don’t want to harden my heart. I want to follow the Spirit and grow closer to Him.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. Romans 8:5
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. Titus 2:11-12
If we do choose to purposely overeat, we can ask the Lord to forgive us.
“The surest way to return to the path of God’s provision is by repentance. As we observe, we identify the truth about our behavior and agree with God that a correction is in order. We then confess the truth we observe, and identify the faulty thinking and fleshly behaviors. He further places with us a desire to make the godly correction. This is repentance, and it results in returning to the path of God’s provision where we are filled with peace, joy, and rest” (Thin Within page 248-249).
And knowing that God has forgiven us as we repent, we can continue on our journey of honoring Him. There’s no need to beat ourselves up with the club of condemnation. You don’t have to eat with the attitude of, “Well, I messed up, I guess I will just eat whatever I want, whenever I want the rest of the day.” This isn’t a diet we’ve gotten off track with or have eaten up all of our daily calories, points, fat grams, carbohydrates, etc. This is observing that we’ve overeaten, repenting, and then continuing on the path of God’s provision. And then you just wait until you are hungry again to eat. I find this so refreshing!
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1
There are times I find myself being tempted to eat when I’m not hungry. I’m learning to ask God for help during those times. And He is always willing. We can call upon Him!
I will love You, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies. Psalm 18:1-2
How about you?
Where do you find your thoughts when you think about overeating or one extra bite as sin? I want to encourage you to ask the Lord what this looks like for you. Are you eating because you are trying to fulfill a hunger only God can fill? Do you find yourself lusting after food and eating with a rebellious attitude? Ask the Lord to show you: He will! And He won’t just stop there, He will show you how you can turn your eyes from lust to fixing your eyes upon Jesus!
80% of the women who struggle with overeating and overweight have been molested or raped at some point in their life.
That is my best guess.
The reason I guess that the statistic is that high is because so very many of the women I have come to know over the past 13 years have experienced this. I have asked others who teach Thin Within classes and it seems to be a consensus that 8 out of 10 of the participants may have been sexually abused in some way.
Mandisa shares in the video below. If you see yourself as one of the 8, I hope you can be encouraged by knowing that you aren’t alone. Mandisa shares what she has done about it, too.
Do you have challenges, trials, trauma in your past that God may be calling you to bring to the cross to invite his healing? Won’t you consider getting in touch with a godly Christian therapist to help you to do so? While this is one of the most difficult things to do, it is also worth what it costs.
Wow. God just keeps blowing me away. Grace in action. He is such a gracious, loving, merciful God.
Weds. night, Julie F. and I began our new online support group at the Thin Within website. We had quite a group show up for our first chat! It was WONDERFUL!
Yesterday morning, I knew I, too, needed to open my workbook and “do” the material that I have encouraged all the group members to complete. My words to them Monday night had something to do with “Even if you have done the workbook several times before, believe that God is doing a new thing right now! Go through it with a fresh heart, believing that God will meet you in a new way! Invite Him to do so!”
I have seen God do that with me before with Thin Within material, but I guess I just wasn’t sure He would pull it off again :-/. I don’t know why…There it is again! “Oh me, of little faith!”
Even after saying that to the group, I felt a bit…well, “Ho Hum” about doing the workbook…*again* yesterday morning. It is SO familiar. What I really wanted was to work in my Beth Moore Stepping Up study. But I figured I would get to that after I hustled my way through the reading of Lesson 1 in the Thin Within workbook.
First, I spent some time journaling a prayer to God to help me see the material in a new way. Then, I began to read Lesson 1 and God gave me an “assignment.” To those of you with the Thin Within quarter one workbook, I challenge you, the readers of this blog, with the same “assignment:”
Go through Lesson 1. Read and highlight, circle or underline everything that is said about God’s character–what He is like or what He does. Write down a list of all of these character qualities or behaviors in a journal. If there are verses, write them down (look them up, too!). Then next to all of these, write down if you believe them or not–REALLY believe them! Use this list (and keep adding to it as you go through the workbook for the next 3 months) to pray in faith, “God, I thank you that you do the impossible. Thank you that you embrace me and are doing a new thing in me. Thank you that your grace is immeasurable and steadfast.” If you struggle with believing any of the things you have written down, pray a prayer of confession and ask God to help you to believe these things about Him in a new way.
As I began to do this…oh wow…I sensed His power and His presence in such a mighty way, it was like I could touch Him! Like FEEL that embrace, literally!
I continued to bask in His presence as I left to go on a trail ride with my best horse. Mercy Me was playing in my truck…This video (by someone else) plays the song that I listened to…the words really became me…or I became the words. God was so ver present it was almost overwhelming! (In a good way!)
If you can take the time to listen to the song all the way through, I hope you will do that. It is so powerful. The words to the song are here.
It struck me so powerfully…I was truly caught up in God’s beauty, just as the song says.
But then, suddenly, God gave me an amazingly powerful *contradictory* image. Yes, I was swept off my feet by Him in this moment. But He showed me what happens when I am not.
He showed me what I have often done…replacing the object of my devotion. This may sound so silly, but he showed me what it would be like if the music that was playing was sung to what I sometimes focus on, sometimes surrender to–as if the music was sung to the pizza, or the chocolate muffin, or the hot fudge sundae…Picture it with me…
I sit down, grinning ear to ear at my dining table, eyes GLUED to the food, heart fixated on the tasty morsels landing on my taste buds:
“I can feel your presence here with me…(singing to the food…)
Suddenly I’m lost within your beauty… (this breaks my heart…)
Caught up in the wonder of your touch (on my lips and the taste),
Here in this moment I surrender to your love…”
How often have I surrendered to the “love” of food?
This broke my heart…but God showed me this so tenderly. I did *NOT* feel shamed. He doesn’t use shame. It is His kindness that leads me to repentance…
I felt…well… “educated.” I felt like he “enlightened” me, pulled back the curtain, as it were, to expose (there it is again) the truth. But, again, he showed me truth with the perfect balance of grace.
And just as quickly as that vision of my sin came upon me, it left and He restored me with an awareness of HIM. HIS beauty. HIS majesty. I was caught up again by the “wonder of His touch.”
I can tell you for SURE, the two do NOT begin to compare.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
– Psalm 73:25-26
Thank you, Lord, for a vision, just a taste of your amazing presence. Oh, God, it really does make me fall down to my knees like the song says…And thank you for showing me so clearly, just what I have been doing when I allow food to have my affection…I have “surrendered” to it. Thank you that, in each moment, I have a choice. I can choose to surrender to your love. I can surrender to your grace. I can surrender to the One who took my place. Let me not forget. Oh, God…thank you. In the matchless name of Jesus, Amen.
By 9:30 a.m., I had weed whacked the entire dog yard. My shoulders and back were stiffening up. The temperature had climbed into the 90s. The last thing I wanted to do was go back out into the heat mid-day and attack the blackberry bush(es).
But what I wanted less was to go another day with them continuing to grow and spread.
When my daughter and I had a falling out, I found myself hurt and angry more than just a bit. Suddenly, I had a lot of angry energy and the adrenaline surged into my aching muscles…I didn’t feel any pain. I plugged my iPod into my ears (nothing but worshipful music wafting into my head) and began my work.
As I began on the perimeter of the briar patch, God’s Spirit went to work on my heart. It was like with each rotation of the nylon string at the end of my “weapon” slicing out against the plant infestation, God’s Spirit sliced at my resolve. I could hear the Holy One…”Child…isn’t this like what *you* allow in your life? The seduction of the ‘sweet,’ the prideful way you are enamoured and choose to believe that ‘this won’t affect’ you? You thought that the ‘little blackberry bush’ would produce sweet fruit and not demand so much of you in return…didn’t you? And now it owns your yard. It rules, doesn’t it? Who would have thought?”
God showed me that I had made little compromises–even when it came to the anger I was allowing in my life right then. But so often, something appears (like the ‘little blackberry plant’) to offer promise of a reward of some kind. Maybe instant gratification. Maybe yet in the future. With this promise there is a minimization as to the consequences or cost. Who would have thought that the “harmless” little desire for sweet fruit (no less!) would result in a bramble that would take over the yard!
The Spirit revealed to me that occasionally I would even assault these little compromises in my life–conviction that things were getting “out of control” would cause me to come at it with my spiritual “weed whacker.”
Without really rooting it out, without digging down deeply, like with the blackberries, all I was really doing was a temporary fix. If I leave my blackberry mess down there on my hillside without a follow up…without more done to prevent its regrowth, chances are all I have really done is provide MORE of what is needed for MORE proliferation of the plant in my yard. Last November (for instance) during a retreat for 3 days where time alone with God showed me things I needed to root out of my life with an overly full schedule, I didn’t apply follow up treatments. I provided, in essence, “short-term canopy reduction.” Yes, the appearance is that of “Well, that has been taken care of!” But the truth is, for blackberries and sin, assaulting it this way…”In many cases…stimulates the formation of suckers from lateral roots and induces branching.” The result is, in time, MORE of the same!
This reminds me of Hebrews 12:15:
See to it that no one misses the grace of God
and that no bitter root grows up
to cause trouble and defile many.
My plan now for the blackberry brambles is NOT to rest on my so-called laurels and assume that I have taken care of it. In fact, I assume that I have only provided the way for it to thrive! I will *follow* UP the work done yesterday. I will rake the pieces, I will spray (ugh) anything that yet remains in the ground…and, hopefully, when we have a California Department of Forestry declared day for burning, have my burn permit in place and burn whatever is left.
If this bramble wasn’t on our leech field I *would* rototill as well…but I can’t do that. This blackberry bush (if it had a brain) was very clever about where it settled…I can’t rototill it without affecting the leech field which also probably gives this blackberry the moisture it needs to thrive. It is protected there in some ways. Just like sin sets up residence in subtle ways…insidious yes, but sometimes protected or even cherished and nurtured in a corner of our lives. From that place of protection it appears harmless enough…and before you know it, it has taken over the entire life.
The lessons in the brambles showed me that I need to approach sin in my life with a same aggressivemulti-facted approach. I must not just assault it head on, but I must follow up…like saturating any remnant with herbicide, I must saturate my life with God’s Word. With the blackberries NOTHING will be given sympathy and allowed to remain. Likewise, I must not allow one single solitary shred of sin to remain. It must be destroyed.
A part of me feels badly for the quail who have nested under the protection of the brambles in the past. Their thicket is gone. But I must not allow this “false compassion” to lure me to compromise. It MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO GO ON.
Like the blackberry bush(es) took over the yard intended for something else, so too will sin not “behave” and stay in the place I hope it will…it will also send out shooter roots and suckers and branches…and it will take over if I allow it.
Song of Solomon 2:15 says:
Catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes that ruin the vineyards,
our vineyards that are in bloom.
It is the little foxes, the little compromises that spoil the garden of God in our lives. Let us refuse to allow these “little compromises.” No matter what they promise…sweet fruit that is “good for you,” or even something more, I will choose to be mindful that I must remain wholly devoted to God and His purposes in my lives.
This is the title of a book that really challenged me when I was stuck. The book was ok, but the TITLE of the book…the question…now that is what I really think the Lord used to UNSTICK me!
So I ask you…
“What’s REALLY holding you back?”
How about if you right now, in this moment, today…toss it aside? Bring down the walls? Blow a hole in the barricades?
Hebrews 12:1-4 says: Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
A short bible study for you…
1.) What are some things that could hold you back according to this passage above?
2.) What can you do about it according to this passage?
3.) What will that look like for YOU practically?
4.) What practices are you told to take part in according to this passage?
5.) To what degree did Jesus go in removing obstacles and hindrances?
6.) Take a moment and pray in response to these things!
If this is encouraging or helpful, please let me know! (I want the blog to be inspirational, but also offer practical suggestions, tools, insights to help foster change!)
