Day 33 – Fit For Life Challenge

Wow! It’s Day 33! It’s been a great journey! We’ve talked a lot about living a life of freedom. Freedom from fear, worry, our past failures, taking chances, as well as our own pride. Today I want to talk about something God has laid on my heart to share, and that is freedom from an unhealthy relationship with food…. which is really freedom from bondage. Bondage to something that can get a grip on you and control you…it can become an addiction or an obsession. I certainly don’t have all the answers but I do know what God has taught me along the way in this journey I’ve been on to a healthy mind, body and spirit. It’s a sensitive subject, but I feel it’s important and it needs to be addressed.

Having a healthy body cannot be just about our own will power. It has to be about God’s power! We have to look at this differently. First and foremost I have learned that to truly be healthy, it has to be the whole person..MIND, BODY and SPIRIT! They are all connected. We can have all the nutritional knowledge in the world about healthy eating or exercise, but to make life-long change in our relationship with food, and to truly overcome, it’s going to have to come from deep within…. and that change can only come from God!
We’ve read this before, but we need to look at this again. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says,”Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are Gods.”
This isn’t just about WHAT your body looks like… this is about WHO your body contains! If you are a Christian you are not your own! You were bought with the precious blood of Christ! What we do with our body matters to God! He put His Spirit in you when you became a Christian. Taking care of this TEMPLE is showing honor and respect to the one who created it. Your body is a gift. It is your home while on the Earth. This whole entire journey to wellness isn’t about condemnation of what you’ve done in the past! This is about restoration. It’s about giving God’s temple back to Him!

In our SELF we have the flesh (our own human ways of thinking ) and we have the Spirit. They both can’t be in charge. One has to be. In our flesh, we have our old mindset, our own destructive patterns, our old habits. These can be so unhealthy and we know they are.. but they are familiar. They are what we know. Living a life controlled by His Spirit means freedom! Many times we choose familiar over FREEDOM! God wants you to live a life of freedom from all those old ways of thinking and doing, and to allow him to take control. Again, this isn’t about our will power.. it’s about HIS POWER! We can muster up change for a while, but we will inevitably hit a roadblock at some point. That’s when our own will power gives up and we run back to what is familiar. GET THIS….we can’t get new results from the same old mindset!
I want to talk about two points that I hope will help someone.

1. We give food a job that it was never designed to do.

Our lives are full of demands and stress. They can make us feel like the weight of the world is on us. When we don’t deal with stress properly, it will come out in our physical health. We can end up turning to food to cope with our emotions. But instead of feeling good and satisfied after we overeat, we end up feeling worse about ourselves. We get weak and turn to food again for comfort, and then we realize again and again that it didn’t work! It becomes a vicious cycle of self condemnation, shame and guilt. WE GIVE FOOD THE POWER TO DO SOMETHING THAT IT WAS NEVER DESIGNED TO DO! Sure, God gave us food to enjoy. But food is to nourish our body in a healthy way and give us energy to live our life! We have to put food in its proper place! We need to give that power to the Holy Spirit to help us manage our emotions and to comfort and guide us! When we give that power to food, we find that it can never do the job. Addiction to anything leaves us empty, like a vacuum in our life that can never be filled.

2.This is not about a diet or a set of rules. Rules equal bondage.

I don’t know about you , but I want freedom! In order to find the freedom our hearts cry out for, we have to find our worth in God. He loves us right where we are and just as we are! We don’t have to look or be a certain way for Him to love us!Nothing can separate us from His love! Period! Since He loves us, He wants us to live a life free from the bondage of addiction of any kind! True freedom ONLY comes from Him! Anything else out there demands a price for a fake, fleeting moment of satisfaction and ends us laughing at us because we end up in bondage to it! But the Bible says that if the Son has set you free, you are FREE INDEED!! He paid the price! You are free! Claim it!
We think losing a certain amount of weight or looking a certain way will bring us the self-worth we’ve been looking for. We think if we can just attain a certain level, then we can finally love ourselves. Think about the shallowness of that! If we could just see ourselves the way God sees us! He wants to produce those fruits in our life that are LASTING! Only He can produce all the things we truly are looking for! Love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control! Only He can produce these in our life! He does this when we give HIM control! We can’t expect long-term, sustained fruit in our life that satisfy and fulfill us on our own! He says the fruits that come from a spirit-controlled life will remain! We look for all these satisfying fruits in the wrong places! Real, lasting deep-rooted change can only come from Him! Surrender this to God. Let Him take His temple (your body) and help you honor Him by honoring this amazing gift He’s given us.. LIFE! He is the only one who can make us free indeed!

Action Step 33👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼
Surrender your journey to better health to God. I know there’s someone out there TIRED of the struggle! Give His temple back to Him! We know it’s His anyway! Invite Him to help you and produce in you all the lasting fruits our hearts desire! Pray for a new mindset! Pray for a new vision for your health! Claim the freedom that you have in Christ!