Persistence and Deception

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.

This journey I’m on didn’t start because one day I decided I wanted to lose a bunch of weight. It didn’t start because I asked God to help me lose weight. I think if it had been up to me, I would probably have complained a bit, went on another crash diet then gave up a few weeks into it with a shrug. Luckily this time it wasn’t up to me.  I literally felt like God was telling me that He’d had enough; that He had a better plan for me. It was a process over weeks of God preparing my heart and mind to see food differently and then to seek HIM in this trial.

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.

I weighed myself this morning… and I’m happy to say the scales showed 207.  Next time I’ll talk about how that happened, but for now I’d like to leave you with a question: what’s your biggest craving and why?