GLUTTONY

Food is NOT the answer. I don't want to sound "religious" b/c I'm not, but I have learned that if I go to my Maker and cry and say, "this is what hurts me", I find that more therapeutic than a donut. Donuts only talk back on your hips or belly. God speaks back with love and comfort. Not everyone believes this, but I have lost 3 pounds this week just by getting honest with God about how I feel deep down inside. Sure, I'm learning to eat less junk, but I still have it now and then in moderation, but the thing is I don't even want that stuff as much b/c I'm finding real..REAL..satisfaction giving my feelings to the Lord. You can laugh if you want, but this is where it's at.

I am learning to "lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets me, and to run with patience the race that is set before me, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of my faith..."

Laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us. Wow! I've read that thousands of times, but just had a light bulb come on. The book of Hebrews is an awesome book. Chapter 12 starts out telling us that we have people who watch us. It doesn't say who or where, but can we dare say that people on the "other side" watch us? A cloud of witnesses. Are they in the clouds? The word "Cloud" here is Greek, nephos. It's a primary word meaning "a cloud". It's literal. The word Witnesses in Greek is "martus" meaning a witness (literally judicially or figuratively, a martyr. It seems to me this is saying the martyrs watch us. If that's so, maybe what Paul is saying is b/c we are being watched, we should be more careful about how we live? If they are judicial witnesses, it would seem there will be a time when they will testify in a court. My first thought is at the Great White Throne judgment. Does anyone else see this? "Seeing we also are compassed (encircled) with so great a cloud of witnesses..."

Gluttony is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. "Why on earth is gluttony a sin? Most of us can see that pride is not very attractive...but surely gluttony harms no one but yourself", writes Graham Tomlin in The Seven Deadly Sins. He continues to explain, "When we think of gluttony we normally think of very large people stuffing food into their mouths with no thought of tomorrow...Yet the sin of gluttony has always been seen as covering a wider area than that, including that fastidiousness about food that obsesses over what we can and cannot eat…Obsessive dieting can be just as much a sign of gluttony as overeating. Gluttony then is an inordinate obsession with food, drink, or plain consumption. It is getting food out of proportion, just as lust is getting sex out of proportion...Gluttony makes us fat, and that is the cardinal crime.... But overeating is not the only way of abusing food.... Compulsive eaters are typically needy for affection, people or stimulation. Suffering from this condition IS NOT sin as such, but they are an indicator that something is deeply wrong."

It is when we stop eating for fuel and look for comfort, a way out, a way against the deep hurts that this can become a problem and eventually a stronghold that we feel we have no power over; that it comes to control us. We come to get food out of proportion and lose control over the amount we eat. Eventually one comes to believe they can't help it, they can't control it. They lose their identity, self-esteem, which was weak to begin with. We lose sight of the emptiness that drove us to the plate and develop a destructive pattern of self-hatred, self-rejection and self-anger.

Jesus said that anyone who would follow Him must pick up their cross and follow Him and deny themselves. Gluttony is the opposite of denial. I'm not saying we have to say no to food, but no to when it becomes a way of filling an emotional emptiness.

I believe we are all born with an empty part of us. Life is to be lived seeking things to fill it. But because "all we like sheep have gone astray and have turned to our own way", we tend to forget God is a very present help in time of trouble. And the sad thing is, most of us are not taught that God is there to help us feel full. No one taught me this very valuable lesson but God. I got to a point in my life where I didn't want to live because of the emptiness, the pain, the abuse, the this, the that. Everyone has this; some have more, some have less, but it's there. When I reached out to God for help, He was there and still is there and will always be there to help.

This is the way to lay aside every weight--something so very close to us that it entangles us, burdens us, overloads us or hinders us. Hebrews 12:2 tells us how: "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." He went through what He went through so He'd be able to help us. Sometimes we become so ensnared we don't have that freedom to let go.

Sometimes we use food to somehow define who we are or cover that definition. Handing over control is not an easy thing to do, let alone admit it needs to be done. But once you recognize this, it's easier to do. Giving your problem and your life to the God Who created you is much easier than you think. He is able to break the chain of addiction to food (or anything else). He just waits for the chance to prove Himself to you.