Breaking Free: A Journey to Being Truely Satisfied

My ladies group at church decided to study a book on modern day idols.  I was not too terribly excited about the idea, but I am always blessed by the studies we do.  Time in the Word, time in fellowship and time in prayer are always good things.  What I did not expect was it to jump start a whole new life.  I say this because......

It is more than a diet.

It is more than a phase.

It more than grasping at straws to be thinner and happier.

I am tired of being trapped and held captive by food.  I hate how I feel.  I cannot believe how stressed I am some days.  I carry the "weight" of who I used to be and the childhood that I lived.  I seek comfort in food.  I celebrate with food.  I pass the time and fill the empty spaces with food.  You may be saying to yourself, "I don't have a problem with food."  But I can guess that if you ask God to reveal to you what it is that you put before HIM, he will show you.  You can insert that "thing" into my confessions above.  What God wants to reveal most to you is the very thing that gets in the way of a deeper relationship with him.

It all started with an admission.  In class that first night after watching a DVD on modern idols, I had a sudden awareness that mine is food.  What exactly is an idol anyway?  We don't use that kind of language anymore really, after all for the most part we are a Christian nation.  We live under the New Covenant.  Why would we have idols?  I am a God fearing, Jesus loving, on my knees in prayer, worship singing, rooted in faith kind of girl.  I have no statues in my home or hanging from my rear view mirror.

Kelly Minter in her bible study book No Other Gods, uses a quote from Ken Sande to clarify more, "most of us think of an idol as a statue of wood, stone or metal worshiped my pagan people...In biblical terms, it is something other than God that we set our hearts on, that motivates us, that masters and rules us, or that we trust, fear or serve."  Please see Luke 12:29, 1Cor. 4:5, Eph. 5:5, Psalm 119:133, Isa. 42:17.

 

After class I got a call from one of my friends telling me that she too had the same struggle and asked if maybe we could become like accountability partners in this battle to conquer our idols.  And that is where it started.  One confession.  One suggestion.

She thought that using the same devotion might be helpful to go along with our food journals so she found a book by Lysa TerKeurst called Made to Crave.  I had never heard of it, but was ready to try just about anything.  Online for free you can do a 21 day challenge, a set of devotions from the book, sent to us each day via email.  It was a wonderful thing and each day I wrote in my journal.  These writings will be the posts that follow.

Thank you for joining me in this.  I pray that you are blessed by what I am learning and encouraged to confront your own modern day idols.  Please leave comments.  We can partner together.  It would be my pleasure to pray for you.