If we choose to try to meet our needs ourselves through dieting, overly controlling our food, trying to earn food or worth through what we look like or how much we exercise or get compliments from others, we will find ourselves in a space of trying to orient, not to God’s love, but to reliance on ourselves, to get our needs met for love, security, worth, and significance.
“If we trust God to meet our needs for love, security, worth, and significance, our reliance on Him will increase and our alliance on ourselves will decrease. We as Christians rely on God, actually trust God, to meet our needs and our faith will grow and continually increase. As our faith continues to grow, we will be filled with confidence that God loves us unconditionally. We must remember that we are worthwhile in spite of our performance and what people think of us. If we evaluate ourselves from this perspective of God’s grace, we’ll be set free from the rat race of life. We will no longer be driven to perform to please others and to prove ourselves with our bodies or other means, since we will rely on God more and more for our direction and needs.
When we exit this rat race of sin as worth and significance to true freedom, we enter the rest of God described in Hebrews 4:8-11 of being set free. Life then has an interesting result since we no longer have to perform to please God or people with our bodies in order to get our needs met. We can now choose to do what is right, because we want to do the right thing out of love and appreciation for what God has done for us. We no longer have a vested interest to do anything other than please God and do what is just and right in every case. We now have moved through the developmental phases described in 2 Peter 1: 3-5 and are able to express love for others and God with no strings attached. That is true unconditional love. When we give unconditional love, we eventually receive unconditional love back. And our basic needs are really met because we are now more interested in meeting the needs of others. We experientially die to ourselves. In other words, we are no longer as concerned about our own needs. When we get our eyes off ourselves and love others, this leads to real satisfaction. We start to experience increased love and desire to meet the needs of others. Eventually our entire life is motivated by love and a desire to serve the one who set us free. God.” Dr. Troy Reiner, Faith Therapy
This is all incredibly powerful. And maybe it feels daunting. Don’t let the enemy convince you or tweak those soul wounds that you can’t recover if you must gain weight, or you can’t be healthy unless you diet. Just because diet culture is everywhere, even in Church, don’t believe that God will leave you hanging without an escape route from the fears of judgement from the “hurt people who hurt people”.
Instead, right now, let us focus on getting started with what Philippians 4:8 encourages “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Who decides what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy?
Let’s look at what diet culture says we need to do to earn love, security, worth and significance and how GOD is actually those things for us.
We know that the powers of this world have been conditioning us for generations to believe that our worth and success lies in money, power, looks, ‘being somebody, and yes, even our health.
But what does God say?
Romans 5:6-8 says, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – perhaps for a good person one would even dare to die – but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Did you hear this?
God was willing to sacrifice Jesus for us to be reconciled with Him because He loves us. PERIOD.
No striving, earning, weight loss, degree-getting, green-juice-drinking, church-7-days-a-week-going, perfect organization and child-rearing…nothing.
So my question to you is, what would you yield if you knew going it wouldn’t earn you the love you truly want (the unconditional kind)?
I know I would yield people who don’t want to know God. People who don’t want recovery and I would stop believing that if I was good enough, I could help them. This is earning to get love, not receiving the love that is given in Christ.
Again, what about you? What beliefs, behaviors, etc. from the rat race do you want to hand back to the Cross today?
Much love in Christ,
Tracy
P.S. to work on this personally with someone or for more help with physical restoration from chronic dieting, please connect at www.healbytheword.com/contact