There is this thing that I call cravings. When I am sad: I want chocolate, when I am happy: I want chocolate, when I am mad: I want chocolate! haha. I have issues! So when I found this book by author Lysa TerKeurst, Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire with God, Not Food, I got really excited! Unfortunately it sat on the shelf for quite awhile before I ever picked it up to start reading it. Made to Crave is not a diet book or new weight-loss plan; it relates with our emotional cravings and how God wants to be what we crave. The following is some tidbits of truth that I found in the book. I hope that it helps some of you!
{When I read Psalm 23, I had to get brutally honest with myself. The Lord is supposed to be: my guide, my shepherd, my comfort, my deliverer. And if I was honest when I looked at that list, I felt like I had taken food and replaced the Lord with food. When I was stressed, I didn’t hit my knees and pray. That wasn’t my first reaction. I would pray, but my first reaction was that I wanted something to make me feel better. If I was sad, I wanted food. If I was happy and celebrating something, I wanted food. And when I started connecting the realities, I discovered that I was underweight spiritually and overweight physically. I discovered that I elevated food to a very dangerous spiritual place in my life — it had become an idol.
As Christian women, we know God thinks we are beautiful just the way we are. We were created to be beautiful, but He didn’t create us all to be a size 2, 4, 6 or a size 30, for that matter. But if we are stuck in a place of defeat, He wants to take us to a new place. Not so that we will be skinny, but so that we will be healthy and so we will be at peace — physically, mentally and spiritually. God made us to consume food, but food was never supposed to consume us.
The reality is that God created us to be more than conquerors. We are more than the sum total of our issues. And when I prayed about my “tankles,” (chuncky ankles) I shared with God that although I didn’t want this to bother me— it did. I felt the Lord whispering into my heart, “Are you an active person? If you had frail, tiny ankles, and you turned them often and were slowed down, wouldn’t that frustrate you? I gave you ankles of convenience. Be happy with them and rejoice in the reality that they get you where you need to go and they do not slow you down.” That was such a sweet, practical perspective.
As a lot of people set out on this journey to get healthy, many of us make the mistake of wanting to get healthy so that we will be loved. Maybe we think God will love us more, or our husband will love us more or we will love ourselves more. And that is the wrong motive because the reality is that we are already loved. The most successful place to be is not setting out on a healthy eating journey so that we will be loved, but rather to set out on a healthy eating journey because we are loved. Because we are loved by God, he will empower us to find victory in this area that for so many women distracts us and defeats us, sometimes on a moment-by-moment basis.
While we are here on earth, [the body] is His Temple. It is the space our soul occupies and we are instructed many times to take good care of our bodies — not so that we will be skinny, but so that we can be healthy. One of my favorite verses is Romans 14:20 which says, “Do not destroy the work of the Lord for the sake of food.” I think it is crucial to understand that sometimes we can get so distracted by food issues and so wrapped up in feeling incapable that we become spiritually defeated and may not even want to serve the Lord. I like to tell people to let God’s Truth work for you and not against you. It is my intention that by quoting these verses, it will give us the spiritual motivation to make lasting changes and I hope that you will too.}
I sure hope this helps anyone on a journey to change any bad habits in your life. I already know all of this stuff but it sure helps sometimes to read other's' journey on the matter...it is very encouraging!!! You need to get the book to reference back to on occasion!
Adjust Your Crown
Jonna
