When God spoke to my heart about confronting and overcoming
my addiction to food I weighed 216 lbs. It was the tail end of November and I wasn’t
quite ready to give up the delicious holiday foods this year.
First, I tried to dismiss
it, no way was it that serious. Addiction? IT’S JUST FOOD! So I like a good ice cream every so often,
surely that’s not that bad… But the “every so often” became once a week, then
once a day, and then sometimes more often. Over the next few weeks God showed
me just how serious my problem was. I
ate when I wasn’t hungry, once I was full I kept eating, and even the thought
of food consumed me. I would crave food (when
not hungry) as badly as I had craved nicotine as a previous smoker. Ahh, I was beginning to see it, and it was
serious.
Somewhere along the road, I had made food important, not
necessary. I gave food more of a place
in my life than it deserved; it was an idol.
I felt guilty when I would eat during a craving because I knew that it
wasn’t about fueling my body so much as about giving in to the desire, whenever
it was, and whatever for. I had no
ability to say ‘no’ to food.
I think it all started with a casual conversation between
friends. My girlfriend Jilian told me
that she’s been having terrible cravings for weeks, so she did a bible study on
cravings and what she learned helped her put her food cravings into
perspective.
That conversation stuck with me over the past few years and I
thought that I would really like to do a bible study on food and eating. I’ve
loved my studies since becoming a Christian, and the Word is so much more rich,
alive and applicable than I would have ever believed. So, for the last few years, I’ve been searching
for such a study. It never occurred to me that I could just make my own until I
read Lysa TerKeurst’s book “Made to Crave”.
She mentioned reading the bible from food perspective, so that’s just
what I started doing.
Can I just say, WOW!!!
I’m blown away by what it says about eating and food, even in just the
first three chapters! I’m not going to go into as much detail about that here as
I would like because I think that each
person should read it for themselves but I do have to mention one of the things
that was so striking to me that I couldn’t even believe it said it so plainly.
Gen 3:13 ‘..The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate”. ‘The text could have said, “The serpent in the garden
deceived me about the fruit being good for wisdom and that I wouldn’t die so I
ate the fruit because I wanted wisdom” or something even more exact and
specific but it doesn’t. If it did, it
wouldn’t be quite so helpful in today’s world because that only speaks to its
specific situation. I doubt that I’m
ever going to be in a garden talking to a snake so I can just gloss over that
part… But that’s not what it says.
“The serpent deceived
me and I ate.”
Watching TV tonight with this verse in mind has opened me up
to a whole new way of seeing things. There were about a dozen food commercials,
and in each one of them, instead of saying that the food would nourish your
body and sate your hunger, they conveyed their marketing message with emotion
instead. Picture it: cream cheese would knit your family closer together as you
bake together, chocolate would make you mysterious and desirable, chicken
strips would make you more sociable, and on and on. Just eat this and your life will be better…Indeed, “the serpent deceived me and I ate.”
We’ve been lied to about food from the beginning! But
I’ve got a secret weapon: now, I know that it’s happening. My eye’s have been opened and I’ve got a God that is not just a ‘set it and forget it” kind
of God. He did not speak the universe
into existence to just leave it. He’s still here, caring about the smallest
details. Yes, even the food we eat.
