"Not by might,
not by power, but by His Spirit"
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EXAMINING OUR OWN
HISTORY
Somewhere
along the way we got lost. Maybe we grew up being told we were
worthless, maybe we did things that we can’t forgive ourselves for,
every person that struggles with compulsion has their own unique
history of getting here but the cure is the same for all of us. It’s
God. Our problem is we have either been drowning in our own misery or
we’ve been listening to the enemy accuse us with expert tactics or
both.
I want to
take a moment to expand on this though. Have you noticed that some of
the nicest people struggle with their weight? I don’t think that’s
uncommon. If the impetus that steered us to self-destruct began in
childhood, I think children respond to negative influences in one of
two ways, they either battle it outside of themselves and can quite
possibly become mean, or they can internalize it and point all swords
at themselves, rather than take it out on someone or something outside
of themselves. In other words, some of the largest people that you
know are actually heroes, who chose to fall on their own sword at a
tender young age, rather than verbally hurt those they loved around
them.
I was a child care
provider and I saw so many personality bents in young children. I
noticed that some children want with their whole hearts to please,
while others actually wait for a back to be turned to run for that one
thing they know they’re not supposed to have. All children are
precious, but our personalities show uniqueness even before we can
speak. Even at a very young age, if a child is faced with serious
external opposition such as an emotionally abusive parent, that child
will defend themselves in various ways, either by agreeing or
disagreeing with negative influences. If they disagree they will
become fighters and learn how to defend themselves quickly. But if
that child is extremely caring and wants only to love and be loved, he
or she will internalize all of the negative influences and the
internal struggle begins. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that
overweight people are often some of the nicest people you would ever
want to know. Many who were born into difficult circumstances took all
kinds of negativity and turned it on themselves rather than go to
battle with the external world. What makes it truly difficult is they
can’t even recognize many negative learned attitudes about themselves
because it’s all they’ve ever known. It’s impossible for someone with
no self-confidence to know how it feels to have overall confidence and
a healthy perception of themselves. When some try, they feel berated
as arrogant or making excuses for themselves, and an avalanche of
self-criticism falls on them, either by their own familiar habits or
helped by the enemy and his whispers of self-doubt. It’s a horrific
spiral with only one way out, and that’s God. God’s truth of who we
are and why we were created stands like a light in the darkness, and
the darkness WILL flee.
And our own perceptions of ourselves can
be so harsh. Take a test. Think of a close friend that is fairly
overweight. Would you love them any more if they were thinner? You
would probably feel happy for them if they were trying to lose weight,
but would you personally appreciate them more because they are
thinner? When I asked myself that about someone, I was offended at the
thought. I love who I love because they are such dear and amazing
people, to think that their weight would make a difference about how I
felt about them was offensive to me. So why would I think that REAL
friends would like me more or less depending on my weight? Why are we
so hard on ourselves? Why do we think that what we weigh is the
ultimate goal and the answer to our problems? What really matters is
what God says about us, and God is for us! “If God is for us, who can
be against us?" Romans 8:31
The point is to realize how very precious we all are to Him. Because
that’s the game changer, that’s the bondage breaker, the love of God
is everything. And once we start to realize the reality of what He
says about us, once we drink that in, we tend to want to know this God
that loves us so much, and the more we know Him, the more we love Him.
That’s when the love starts to reverberate and a symphony of joy
begins to sound inside of us regardless of our external circumstances.
And when we walk through storms, God comes closer still. Know who you
are in God’s eyes and learn who He is in Spirit and Truth.
We were all created for
a relationship with HIM, and it doesn’t matter how much we have failed
because we have all failed, we all fall short, but God loves us and
sent His Son. We are all weak, but while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us! It’s His unbelievable love that sets us free. So whether
we were lied to as very young children or whether we can identify
where we first sinned and have been beating ourselves up ever since,
the answer for us all is the same, Christ came for us, God reached
down and bought us back and all we need to do is receive it and learn
to walk in His ways. It’s why He sent His only begotten Son, that we
would know and truly receive and enter the holiest of holies, the
Shekinah glory, a deep love relationship with Him, that breaks any
bondage, but we have to learn how to drink it in.
SO YOU WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT
I can’t guarantee that God will bless
you in this effort. I can’t give you a formula that you can beat
yourself up with when you fail. God cannot be manipulated or
controlled…but I do know that He wants what is best for you and when
you seek Him, whether it’s weight loss or not, you will find His best.
If your goal is to be healthy, to enjoy
an awesome sex life with your husband or future husband, then I can’t
imagine why God wouldn’t bless your petitions for help. But if you’re
anything like me…
I shudder at what would have happened if God blessed my efforts when I
was in my 20s. I remember trying to lose weight because members of Ski
Patrol asked me to go waterskiing and I wanted to look hot in a
bikini. I was already getting into so much trouble! Why would God help
me, knowing how much more brazen I would have become than I already
was!
But in every way, you
are not me. Your relationship with God is unique. God knows what is
motivating your heart. There are honorable and pure reasons to want to
lose weight and there are some really (cough) frightening ones. I can
deceive myself but I can’t deceive God. Or we might have the best
intentions but God knows what temptations would come and if we could
handle it before it even happened. “All things work for the good for
those who love God.” (Romans 8) So if God’s answer is no, trust Him.
Discover who HE is and who He created you to be rather than who you
think you want to be.
Search me, O God, and
know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23)
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)
FEASTING ON THE WILL OF
THE FATHER
The
will of God. So what is the will of God for us in our lives? Again, I
think it starts with the Scripture, “We love Him because He first
loved us.” So meditate on what that means. You can’t love someone that
you don’t know, so start with meditating on the love of God for YOU,
yes YOU. The way the sun shines on your hair, the sparkle in your
eyes, the joy He feels when He sees your smile. He loves you like a
loving Father, walk in it! The Bible is FULL of Scriptures that tell
you that God loves you, memorizing them is a good start, but also look
for personal ways to remind you of those truths in today’s
surroundings. Things that mean something to you. I have found a lot of
worship songs that make my heart soar, but I have also heard a few
songs of love even on secular radio that aren’t “hey baby.” God has
said that He loves you, listen to the pure ones as though God is
singing them to you BECAUSE HE IS. Find songs that communicate that
message in various ways and know that it’s true. It will resonate in
your spirit because God indwells us and there is such power in His
truth!
After a
while of glowing in the love, mercy and grace of God, you’ll be able
to see yourself through His eyes and I believe that’s what completely
destroys that compulsion to eat. You lose the desire to destroy
yourself when you see yourself as God sees you. So many of us accept
that God has washed away all of our sins, but we seem to struggle to
see ourselves in His new light. And when you get filled up with a
relationship with Him, when your needs are met in ways you never
dreamed possible, you won’t crave cheap substitutes any more. Oh you
will be able to enjoy the taste of things, but that constant nagging
NEED for a lot more will be gone.
For a while I struggled
with this, remembering how God said we are like filthy rags. I would
start to believe what God says about me and His love for me, but then
I remembered those words in the Bible of how we are like filthy rags
and felt destroyed. But I wasn’t implementing the entire message of
the cross. Our natures ARE beneath the standards of God, none of us
are perfect, but when we receive Christ as our LORD and Savior, we are
washed clean of the filthiness and God sees us as He created us. We
are unique, we are beloved, we are a pearl of great price that Jesus
gave everything He had to purchase the field that He found us in. We
matter! God pursues us, He cherishes us, He completely loves us! And
He is slowly and tenderly changing us ever more to bear good fruit!
ONE PERSONAL FAST
“My food is to do the will of Him who
sent Me, and to finish His work.” (John 4:34)
As Jentezen Franklin said, there are many different kinds of fasts.
You can fast for long periods of time or short, you can give up
everything or a specific food. Every person and every person’s needs
are different. I wanted to fast as long as I felt led and I wanted to
be wise about it, so after a lot of prayer, I chose to “liquid fast.”
As I learned through
“The Weigh Down Workshop”, God has already designed the perfect foods
for us. The more natural, the better. An excellent film called “Hungry
for Change” clued me in to all the chemical manipulation that has been
happening to our foods (I can’t believe they sneak in what makes mice
fat!) so I also wanted to avoid all processed foods.
When you liquidate
everything, it’s easy to focus on what’s healthy rather than what
tastes good. But I make amazing smoothies all the time. I chose a
blender rather than a juicer because I have a slow digestive system
and I NEED the fiber (why would anyone take the fiber out?) So after a
lot of different trials, I got into the habit of buying lots of frozen
fruits (cheap at Costco or Trader Joe’s) and every morning I would
blend a blender full of cilantro (said to clear metal out of our
bodies…aluminum, etc) frozen fruit with no added sugar, it doesn’t
take much juice and I prefer unsweetened cranberry juice which almost
always comes with lots of grapejuice to naturally sweeten it, about a
tablespoon of chia seeds which helps with digestion. Sometimes I will
add in spinach and various other vegetables. I would take this to work
and when I got hungry, I would give myself a swallow or two.
Eventually I got used to hunger and even started appreciating it as
written elsewhere. So then I would drink just, I don’t know, when I
wanted to, lol. Maybe it helps to feel you can indulge when you want.
Then at night, because
fruit will keep me up all night, I switched to a cup or two of what I
call “soup”. I am AMAZED at how creative you can be making “soup.” I
didn’t know that I can bake a yam, throw it in the blender, add water,
and start a base for “soup.” You can add cooked hamburger or chicken,
whatever cooked or raw vegetables YOU LIKE, just about anything can be
made into soup. And it’s explosively healthy. And since you’re
drinking it, again, you care more about what’s healthy than what it
tastes like because it goes down so fast you hardly taste it at all.
One of my earliest creations was what I
call “taco soup”, which is hamburger meat, refried beans a tomato,
shredded cheese, I even threw some tortilla chips in there. At first I
added taco meat seasonings but realized I was now getting into
processed foods additives, but when I gave it up I realized I didn’t
need it at all anyway! We don’t need all this junk, plain foods are
awesome!
When you first start
fasting, you might want to add parsley to your morning smoothies. When
you first start, your body will be ridding itself of a lot of toxins
for the first two or three days and your BREATH will REEK! My poor
coworker, I didn’t know what to do at first. I couldn’t stand my own
breath. I would brush and brush and brush my teeth but it just stinks.
Scope helped but I think Scope kills a lot of good germs. So I looked
up what to do and parsley REALLY HELPS. And it tastes kind of minty.
I don’t want to put any bad ideas into
your head, but one time I had a particularly tough day. I think I
would have failed at fasting but I compromised and got some um…well
decadent fattening food and blended it and drank it. It was just what
I needed and didn’t become a habit at all. I think maybe all of the
healthy foods cause you not to crave the unhealthy ones. I’m just
saying for a safety valve, if you just can’t take it any more, there
are some liquid drinks that are incredibly fattening but still a fast.
You could gain weight doing this I suppose, but, I just lost all
craving for self-destructive foods. I can eat anything I want but that
self-destructive craving…I think it’s a spirit of gluttony…it’s gone.
Praising God! o/
CELEBRATE THE VICTORIES AND GIVING ALL GLORY TO GOD
And for me, the first day was the
hardest, because by even attempting to fast, you will be embarking on
a battle against spiritual darkness that may have been riding slipshod
all over you up to this point. The accuser doesn’t want you to trust
God, the accuser wants you to stay stuck in bondage reaching for
destructive foods. The oppression, the condemning whispers, “you can’t
do it”, “oh just this much” all of the old tricks are going to flood
you on the first day more than just about any other time, just as if
you were walking up to a fully equipped army and challenging them. You
don’t have to get angry, you don’t have to shout at the enemy.
Then Jesus was led up by
the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He
had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now
when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God,
command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said,
“It is written, ‘Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from
the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:1-4)
Then Jesus said to him, “Away with
you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and Him only you shall serve.’” (Matthew 4:10)
So listen carefully,
this is important. Especially on your first day or hour of fasting,
when you get the tiniest victory, you need to validate what the Bible
says:
“Likewise, I say to
you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner
who repents.” (Luke 15:10)
Visually imagine this.
If you are sitting at your desk, you have God’s word that it’s true.
So visualize the clouds parting, the sun breaking through, the angels
rejoicing and a very great victory dance happening in heaven over you.
Because I tell you the truth, that small victory, that resistance to a
fleeting thought to eat something and your success in saying no, even
if it’s only a temporary victory and within half an hour you fall to
something else…it does NOT diminish the success you had a little while
earlier and you need to hear the applause of heaven every time you
have victory! God said it, it’s true, heaven IS applauding and the
ugly whispers either from the enemy or your own learned behavior of
shooting yourself down…those have got to go right now. DO NOT
entertain them. Basque in the success however short lived and give God
the glory. And if and when you fall, see yourself as a child learning
to walk. No good parent chastises a child for taking a first step and
falling. They applaud and encourage them to try again. I fell down for
40 years on my own power but all things are possible with God, and
with every victory, especially over lifelong strongholds, you can be
certain that all of heaven is applauding. We tend to trivialize our
success, we even feel silly congratulating ourselves for resisting
something that might seem like nothing to someone else, but recognize
that this has been the battleground of your life! And when you have
victory, it IS a VERY BIG DEAL. Learn to rejoice in that! Because
heaven is!
FASTING AND THE VALUE OF
HUNGER
So if you
believe your motives to lose weight are pure and have prayed about it,
if you’re ruled out that you’re hoping to create lust or wanting to
lord it over everyone in the “Great Competition with Other Women”
games, (you know, the “who looks better at this party” mentality)… If
you think you’re safe and secure from all of those pitfalls and who
knows how many others, read on.
How many of us have lost
weight only to gain it back again? Or have steeled up our will to
diet, only to fail miserably time after time. “I’m hopeless, therefore
I need comfort, therefore I reach for food, therefore I am overweight
and need to diet, therefore I fail and am hopeless…”
I had gotten off that rollercoaster
years ago after seeing the wisdom of Weigh Down Workshops by Gail
Shamblin. It is an excellent program designed to teach us to rely on
what God gave us, to eat when we are hungry and stop when we are full,
to listen to our cravings and trust that the body that God gave us is
programmed to desire what we are lacking. If not for that program, I’m
fairly certain I would have topped 300 lbs long ago, riding the
see-saw of diets, but instead I loosely followed Weigh Down and
learned to be content with an oversize body that didn’t really gain or
lose. I felt safe. I felt loved by God. It wasn’t fun to shop for new
clothes and there were some sad moments in being overweight when
relating to the world, but my relationship with God was growing and I
was happier being overweight than I was when I was young, thin and
insecure.
But I couldn’t wholly
follow the “Weigh Down” plan because I noticed that when I was finally
really hungry which signaled me to eat, I felt like I was giving up
something incredibly precious with the first bite. So many times I had
the strong sense that my first bite wasn’t worth it…but it wasn’t
worth what?
Then one day I started
reading about fasting and learned that when we choose to fast, we are
choosing God over food. We choose to walk in the Spirit and not in the
flesh.
“Walk in the Spirit,
and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” (Gal 5:16)
“His disciples asked Him privately,
“Why could we not cast it out?” So He said to them, “This kind can
come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.” (Mark 9:29)
I don’t pretend to
understand it, but there is power in fasting. Few will talk about it
because we are told not to boast or try to show off about it. We risk
losing any benefit from it if we gain acclaim from the world for
fasting. It’s ironic, because in today’s world, people are not praised
for it. In fact you have to brave the risk of ridicule, of being
considered a religious nut, if people know you are fasting. What is
tragic is how many Christians don’t realize how important it is to
fast. Jesus said, “When you fast…” not “If.” He expects us to fast. At
times, people called for public fasting. Esther called for the people
to fast before she risked her life by approaching the king. Joel
called for a fast for repentance. Daniel and King David both fasted.
It is an important part of our faith and I really disliked doing it at
first, especially since food was my weakness. But once you get through
the first day, it gets easier. And the more you do it, the freer you
become. In fact I have no doubt that I have been freed from a spirit
of gluttony. That is such an ugly word, and I never really knew
exactly what it was, but when you don’t have it oppressing you any
more, you certainly can feel the difference. It really is true, with
God, all things are possible. (Mt 19:26)
FASTING
It began when my Marine son had been
home on leave and I knew something was really wrong, though he
wouldn’t tell me. He was happy being a Marine, boot camp had been “too
easy” and he talked of making a career out of it. However almost two
years later, he came home on leave and I knew that something was
terribly wrong. If I asked him about it, a warning look came over his
eyes and I knew he was facing one of the biggest battles of his
life…but it was not for me to know what it was. So when he left with
carefully hidden signs of complete dread, I did the only thing I could
do. I appealed to the Master, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning
and the End. I got on my face and I prayed, and everyone told me he
was fine, don’t worry about it. But I knew he wasn’t fine. And though
I know God hears our prayers, I wanted to be like that persistent
widow who got her way by bugging the judge. (Luke 18:1-7) The only way
I knew how to do that was to pray and fast.
For me, the spiritual
battle couldn’t be any tougher. I ate for comfort and like the layers
of an onion, my reasons to self-destruct were many. For those of us
who battle weight, they usually are. But take heart! Because to the
exact degree that it’s difficult for you, it is worthy! In other
words, if you give a sacrifice to God that doesn’t cost you anything,
is it even a sacrifice? But if it is the hardest thing for you to give
up, know that the cost felt is HUGE and God knows it and with even a
small victory, heaven applauds! Recognize that it is what it is, a
battle for your very life because if you’re like me, food was the
biggest pitfall, the biggest defeat, the biggest MOUNTAIN of
frustration and despair blocking my way. Do NOT allow the enemy to
trivialize it!
It
took at least three cycles of fast to fail, fast to fail. If I was
fasting for any other reason, I would have given up. But my son was
still out there, my concern consumed me, so I kept trying. I confessed
my weakness but reminded God that He is strong and that I could do all
things through Him…and this time, I was like a kite being pulled by a
running but weak child only this time a mighty Wind took hold of me,
picked me up and carried me high into the sky. Fasting was so much
easier. God was clearly carrying me. You won’t understand until you
experience it yourself, and others have now testified that they know
EXACTLY what I’m talking about and describe it themselves.
Oh I knew I was hungry,
but it felt so distant. Have you ever ignored your thirst? I often
wondered why it was so easy to ignore thirst, but the sensation of
hunger seemed to have a preconditioned panic button installed in my
brain. Until now. And the more I fasted, the more I started thinking
of hunger as a nuisance to be put off from choice. This was a
completely new mindset for me! It took a long time, but since I wasn’t
looking for it to happen, I wasn’t anxious for it to happen. Just
wildly surprised and blessed when I noticed the weight was dropping
off at an incredible rate. In fact, losing weight can become a
hindrance to prayer because it’s so distracting. Two months later and
many pounds lighter, there was a knock on the door and my son’s crisis
was over, yes he is safe and sound and much blessed! Praise God!
But through this I discovered something
huge. If I try to fast because I’m unhappy with myself, or I want to
be somebody else, that whole precept is NEGATIVE. I had been becoming
aware of how destructive all “toxic thoughts” are, even anger at
people that cut you off on your way to work. Somehow that anger
bounces back on us and for me, I think I feel a need to destroy
whatever it is that is causing that internal anger. So all anger,
guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, dislike… they seem to equate to
self-destruction. I think that’s why there are so many various vices
in the world. And that’s why I love that Scripture,
“Whatever is lovely,
whatever is pure, whatever is worthy of good report, meditate on these
things.” (Phil 4:8) That is a huge scripture for me!
I haven’t even “arrived”
there yet, I mean, I still tend to think way too negatively, but I’m
growing. I’m better than I was but not yet where I’m going to be,
because it’s God who strengthens me. It’s the growing of fruit, the
evidence of faith, it’s a process, glory to glory, and we can reap the
benefits even before we have mastered it through Christ.
Jentezen Franklin (you can google him on
youtube) has a ton of great information about fasting and the benefits
are huge for so many reasons, but God really seems to come closer when
we fast. It’s like we are choosing Him over food. In the early days
when it was hard, I remember reminding myself when I felt intense
hunger, “Walk in the Spirit, not the flesh.” It was hard at first but
it gets easier. And if you have a huge prayer request like I did, it
makes it so much easier. Because all I had to do was picture my son’s
face in front of me as I walked by whatever was tempting me. I
wouldn’t have lasted a moment if I was denying myself because of
superficial reasons like, well, wanting to BE somebody else because
I’m too fat.. That only made me want to eat MORE. But to deny myself
for a godly request, be it for a son in trouble, or (tremble) for
God’s mercy and patience and to pursue those in my family that have
utterly rejected Him, that Jesus be the Good Shepherd and leave the 99
for the one lost sheep…for THAT reason I could easily fast! (though it
didn’t seem easy at the time) But it got easier. And after time and
quite a few pounds, hunger has been reduced to a nuisance. I mean with
Weigh Down, you were so excited when you finally felt hunger that you
got very picky and savored every bite. But now I can go most of the
day and not notice that I haven’t eaten anything. That might be common
for some but for me, someone who once depended on comfort food to
unwind and cope, this is UNHEARD of.
By now you might be
thinking your situation is different than mine, you don’t have a
Marine son or crisis to catapult you into a fast, but keep reading,
because you have someone just as precious and important and in a much
bigger battle. A huge spiritual battle. A battle against a monster
stronghold that has been causing much pain for a precious child of
God. You. If you’re reading this, then you’ve been struggling in a
physical and spiritual battle for your life. Your great grandmother
Eve fell for it, and she even got to walk in the garden and know God
before she did. I trip out when I think of how many times I have been
shot down by the enemy with his first and favorite ploy, “oh it won’t
hurt you, it’s just this one bite, it’s not really off your diet…it’s
not really forbidden…good grief it’s the exact same lies and I fell
for it how many times? It’s more than just a ploy to destroy us, it’s
satan’s ploy to separate us from God.
Be sober, be
vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring
lion, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
Fasting. It’s a life
changing phenomena because God draws near! Your spiritual life will
explode and strongholds of the enemy are broken with prayer and
fasting. As my son is so important to me, so are you important to God
and so much more. When God is in it, HE takes the burden, HE plows
through with HIS power. Jesus said,
“Come to Me, all you
who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke
upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and
you will find rest for your souls.” (Mt 11:27)
I had read that before
but I never knew how to apply it. All of my adult life, if I ever
stopped eating long enough to feel hunger, panic came with it to find
and eat food. I didn’t know where that came from. I thought it curious
that I can easily ignore thirst for hours which is just as
uncomfortable as hunger; yet hunger seemed to come with a five star
screaming alarm.
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