Now that I’m on track, I’m realizing how much my relationship with food has changed. Food was able to stifle any feelings I had, and it did so quickly by numbing the pain.
God doesn’t work that way, so that has taken some getting used to. It’s very different. I’m learning how to be patient.
I’m no longer spacing out every day, nor running to food for comfort anymore. Therefore my emotions are rising up. I’m running to God, knowing that He is not an instant god, like food.
Keeping food in its proper place in my life is different too. Food was never designed for what I put it in my life for.
I am letting God do what only He can do; He can handle it and is a better God to me than food could EVER be.
By exchanging my food idol for God, after I’ve had food on the throne of my heart, I’m learning to have a much better relationship with God, my Creator, who knew me in my mother’s womb.
I was listening to TD Jakes and he was talking about “having misery with the miracle.” The miracle for me is to have food in its proper place; the misery is the feelings that are now creeping up.
When it feels like something is missing, I have to exchange the false comfort that I felt with food for the real Comforter.
Satan offers us a counterfeit comfort, which was food for me. God offers the realcomfort of peace and joy and gives us the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, which is totally real!
So now I’m asking God to fill me up!
Job 23:12 says,
“I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.”
We cannot have one without the other. The miracle is releasing weight; the misery is eating less and waiting for zero. But I can honor God doing it. And being that living sacrifice and living a fasted lifestyle are what makes it worthwhile.
It’s incredible to have an unclogged mind… to not have to think about food 24/7… to leave room enough to hear the voice of God.
It’s a joy to fulfill His purpose for my life and I am grateful for it!
Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.
– Jeremiah 17:14
In Mark chapter 5, Jesus is surrounded by a mob of people. In the midst of the crowd is a woman “who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years” (verse 25). She had tried just about everything and everyone.
In Mark 5:26 we see “She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.”
In her ailment, she had looked for healing everywhere that she could think of. She had spent all of her money and yet, ironically, she had suffered more and actually gotten worse.
Have you ever felt this way? The more you sought help and freedom from overweight and overeating, the more diets you experienced, and the more you knew, maybe even the more doctors you went to about this, the more found yourself actually in bondage to food, the thoughts of food, the lust for food and the inhaling of food when you weren’t hungry?
I have. After a year in the 1990s with a popular weight loss program, losing 100 pounds with a very strict diet and obsessive exercise, training for three marathons, studying to become a certified personal exercise trainer, I found myself with a worsened “heart condition.” Like the bleeding woman, I had looked to anyone and everything for healing *other* than the One who could truly offer it. My heart was attached to—obsessed with—food.
The incredible thing is, God can take these “failures” and our desperation and actually use it all. This bleeding woman had become so convinced that the only source for healing left for her was Jesus, that she knew that if she just *touched* his clothing, she could be healed! Now that is faith! Jesus sought her out. He wanted to see this woman face to face—not because he didn’t know who she was. He knew. He was God, after all. But he wanted to speak to her personally. In Mark 5:34, we are told what he says to this woman after she was healed: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
What marvelous words. These words He longs to speak to us! This very healing he longs to impart to us. Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! – Isaiah 30:18
But who are we looking to for our healing from this tendency to eat more than we need to sustain our bodies? Are we looking to Him? Truly? Are we seeking His healing? Or are we seeking the healing through any number of other methods? Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. – Ps. 107:19-20
If He heals us, it isn’t at the expense of our souls. When the Lord saves us, we truly are saved. Let us turn to Him, focus on Him, praise Him with our lives. In that place we, too, will experience the rush of power into our lives that sets us free from our suffering!
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. – Hebrews 12:2
Lord, I choose to come to you today for the healing I need. I need to be healed of my tendency to turn to food to process my emotions. Conversely, I know sometimes I replace overeating with restricting and I turn to dieting to “save” me—as a functional Messiah of sorts. I choose to reject this tendency, Lord. Instead of either unhealthy approach, I want to view food as fuel and be set free from extra weight and over-eating. I want to be set free from needless restricting. I know you alone can work these changes in me. I come to you, Jesus. Amen.
How you folks doing with Halloween Candy? We didn’t buy any this year, but if we had, I would have inhaled it all last night, I think. Throw it in the trash! Or, if you are like me, throw it in the toilet and HURRY!!! FLUSH!!!!! Then just don’t answer the door when the Trick Or Treaters come! (Aren’t I just awful?) True confession…if I were to throw something in the trash that I knew was causing me to struggle…and then change my mind later about “wanting it anyhow”…I would actually FISH IT OUT OF THE TRASH can!!!! Ok…that is extreme sickness…that is why I said above…maybe don’t just put it in the trash, but put it in the toilet and flush! Is no one else like me? If we had had candy here in the house last night I think I would have eaten it….just because “dangit!” The question someone posted at the TW forums is a good one.. “Lord, what am I feeling right now that I want to feed with food?” I have been praying and been in the Word this morning. I do have a lot of emotions I am feeling. One of my horses, Doc……I am just heart broken. Winters are so hard for him. He is only 9 and he has been like this the entire time I have had him (just before he turned 5), but some times things are worse than others…we live in a mild climate…but he is in such pain even with our 40 degree nights. I wonder when is it selfish to keep him alive and when is it selfish to put him down? And my son has really been establishing himself as a major liar…he is 15 and he is just too old to be a liar…and to blow it off. It is breaking my heart….I fear for his future. An Aspergers man has a tough row to hoe as it is, without intentionally being a liar…how is it that someone who categorizes things into two groups: “all or nothing” “good or bad” “evil and good” can choose YUCK so much??????? (Unless someone ELSE is speaking, then by golly, you better not come near to doing something he interprets as a lie!!!!) There are so many other things…and I realize…these are all the churning feelings that I have that I would be tempted to stuff with food. How on *earth* will stuffing them with food help??? It won’t!!! The enemy loves it when I believe that lie. I learned something about my Heavenly Father today…He is busy working…He does things…and one of them is seen in this verse: 2 Corinthians 1: 3-4a: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles…
How can my Heavenly Father comfort me, if I am so busy stuffing my face? Or running from Him? Or busying myself with some distraction intended to numb? (Like computer junk…)
Hoping all of us feed the toilet some candy (or whatever) today and invite God the Father to comfort us in what is *truly* ailing our hearts.
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