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Posted on September 17, 2024
It’s no secret that I’ve dealt a lot with food, I’ve shared a lot about my food/weight struggles. Food has been a comfort to me in times of bad, and good. It has been something that I use knowing that I have full control on what I eat and how much I eat. Unfortunately, food is something that brings me great peace, and happiness.
Obviously food is not bad, and loving food isn’t bad. God gave us food because He knew we needed it to survive.
“Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.” –Genesis 9:3
Looking at this verse we see that God told Noah and his sons that all the animals would fear them, and that every living thing will be available for them to eat. So looking at this verse, we know that God intended for us to be able to eat, because He knows that we need it to survive. The Lord knew we needed food even after he created Adam and Eve.
“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food’.” –Genesis 1:29
From the beginning of creation, God knew that we needed food. Once Adam and Eve sinned, it became more important that we have food. Having a feeling of craving for food isn’t what’s normal.
We aren’t designed to crave food. We’re designed to crave the Lord. In my opinion, Lysa TerKeurst says it best:
“God made us capable of craving so we’d have an unquenchable desire for more of Him, and Him alone. Nothing changes until we make the choice to redirect our misguided cravings to the only one capable of satisfying them.” –Lysa TerKeurst, Made to Crave
Our desires, our cravings, should be in the Lord and not food. While food gives us the temporary good feelings, the peace and strength that we can get from the Lord is far better! We were created to desire Him, and to want Him and Him alone.
“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on Him, God the Father has placed His seal of approval” –John 6:27
“Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to Me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty'” –John 6:35
We need to crave the Lord the way we crave food. He is the only way we’re going to find that fulfillment, and acceptance. Yes, food is incredible, and definitely fills a temporary void. But that’s just it, it’s temporary. If you’re like me, when you feel bad about something you’re going to turn to food and binge eat. Then after you’re done, you’re feeling disgusting, and awful, about what you just did. Imagine if I took that desire to eat, and turned it into prayer!
“Each time I craved something I knew wasn’t part of my plan, I used that craving as a prompt to pray. I craved a lot. So, I found myself praying a lot.” –Lysa TerKeurst, Made to Crave
Can you imagine the difference that this mindset can do in our lives? To turn our focus from food, to the Lord. To take time to pray to Him whenever we’re feeling the desire to fix our problems with food, we take a temporary fix and do a permanent fix. Of course this isn’t something that can be done overnight, or even in a few months. Like anything, it’s going to take time to retrain our minds to make turning to the Lord the priority over food. But if we truly make it a habit, and work on it continually, it’s going to be something that happens without us even thinking of it! I know I still struggle doing this, but it’s something that I feel myself trying to do more of. I want the Lord to be the only thing to help me, to be the only thing I need to feel fulfilled. However, I know that we live in a fallen world where Satan is going to take any of our weaknesses and use them against us. So my friends, if this is something that you feel like you’re struggling with, I want you to know that you’re not alone, and I am praying for you! I would like to leave you with a question that Lysa TerKeurst asks in her book:
“Is it possible we love and rely on food more than we love and rely on God?” –Lysa TerKeurst, Made to Crave
Is it possible? Until next time, friends!
Posted on January 19, 2023
Recently I’ve been struggling with my identity. Who am I? Who am I outside of a wife, mom, Pastor’s wife, sister, friend, daughter. I struggle with knowing who I am, and what I am meant to do. I sometimes feel like I’m useless and I’m not contributing to our family, or really anything. I’m a stay-at-home mom. That’s it. Every day I wake up, get the kids ready for school, do work around the house, go grocery shopping, make lunch for the kid that’s home, be home with the other two get home from school, make dinner, clean the kitchen, put the kids to bed, and get ready for bed myself so I can do it all again the next day. It’s the same thing every day, and sometimes I struggle with the feeling that I don’t have a purpose, or that I’m not doing anything of importance.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that being a wife and mom is my purpose, and it’s important! But there are times when I struggle with the thought that it’s not good enough, or is it really that big of a deal? Besides, a lot of women do this wife/mom thing, and a lot of them have an identity outside of their homes. That’s something that I feel like I’ve lost, my identity.
I’m a mom, wife, Pastor’s wife, all those all part of my identity. But the most important identity that I have is that I’m a child of the Lord!
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
1 John 3:1-2 NIV
Understanding that I have an identity in the Lord means more to me than any identity that I could have inside or outside my home! Who cares if I ever make it big as a blogger? Who cares if people end up knowing my name? I’d rather have the identity as a child of God then an identity as a child of the world. Being a child of God means that I have a purpose, the Lord has a plan for me that I may not even realize!
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.
1 Peter 2:9
As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[a]No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
Romans 8:36-37
We’re more than just sheep that are being taken to be slaughtered. I love this verse because it tells us that because we are children of God, we’re conquerors!
Knowing now the identity that I have in Christ, means letting go of the desire for the earthly identity. I know what my identity is, and I know who my identity is in! Does it mean that things will suddenly get easier, or that I won’t ever struggle with my identity? No, of course not! I know I’m a sinful human who fails in many ways, and forgetting my true identity is one way that I fail. However, I’m a child of the Lord who I know will forgive me even though I may continue to forget!
My friends, if you struggle with your identity, and feel that your identity is being taken over by all the roles that you are, then I encourage you to go to the Word of God, and remember who you are in Him! Remember that He put us in the positions we’re in for a reason, and a purpose! We shouldn’t feel as though we’re losing sight of who we are, but instead we should be looking at our identity through the Lord’s eyes! His plans are so much bigger than ours! I’m so thankful to be identified as a child of the King!
Until next time!
Posted on August 29, 2022
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”
Does that quote sound familiar? We all know that this is a quote from the Disney movie Snow White. The Evil Queen has a magic mirror and asks it every day who is the fairest of them all. Every day the mirror says that she is, except one day when it told her that it was no longer her, but it was Snow White. That sent the Evil Queen into a hissy fit, and she conspired a plan to have Snow White killed. All because she was no longer considered the prettiest anymore.
Although the mirror was magic, the Evil Queen still wanted to feel like she was the most beautiful. She was upset when she didn’t meet the mirror’s expectations. I’m sure it wasn’t the mirror that she was trying to impress, but more of the people in her kingdom. If the mirror said she wasn’t the fairest anymore, then would everyone in her kingdom also believe that she wasn’t the most beautiful? The Evil Queen was focused on what she looked like and what others thought of her.
I feel bad for the Evil Queen. Crazy that I would say that, right? Well, I do. I feel bad for her because she obviously wasn’t happy with herself, and how she looked. She needed that improvement from an object to feel like she was good enough.
I realize mirrors can’t really talk, but somehow they do. Whenever I look into a mirror, I cringe. I find I critique myself based on what I see in the mirror. If I was to ask my mirror who the fairest of them all is, I would bet it would laugh and say “Definitely not you”! There’s a song that came to my mind as I started working on this post. This is the first verse of the song.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall
Mirror by BarlowGirl
Have I got it?
Cuz, Mirror you’ve always told me
Who I am.
I’m finding its not easy
To be perfect
Kind of hits home, doesn’t it? I know for me; I find myself asking that question so often, and I realize it isn’t healthy at all. We focus so much on what we look like, because the world tells us to! We listen to our magic mirrors instead of listening to the One who created us!
For you created my inmost being;
Psalms 139:13-16 NIV
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
The Lord created me; He created you! We were knit together in our mother’s wombs by him. He made us, and He made us perfectly and wonderfully! Why then do we find it so easy to doubt what He has made? Why is it we critique ourselves, and say that every little thing that we hate is a mistake? It’s easy to think that the Lord “messed up” when He made me. I think about that quite a bit. I’m overweight, and it’s so easy for me to look at myself and think how much the Lord screwed up in making me. So, if I say that He messed up in the way He created me, then am I saying that He isn’t an Omnipotent (ALL powerful) God? Basically, yes. That is what I’m saying. Do I mean that? No, but when we think that way, that is what our hearts truly feel.
So God created mankind in His own image,
Genesis 1:27 NIV
in the image of God He created them;
male and female He created them.
He created us in HIS image. HIS IMAGE! Wow! He knows He didn’t make a mistake. He is just waiting for us to realize that.
This was something that was difficult for me to write, because I don’t like thinking that I’m damaging others with the way I look at myself. How can that be? After all, it’s my body I’m talking about. No one else! It took me a while to realize that the way I view and talk about myself will affect the way my kids’ view and talk about themselves. They watch everything that we parents do and say, including the ways we critique ourselves. My oldest comes to me in tears because she doesn’t like this small little belly that she has. I tell her she looks beautiful, and she says “I don’t feel like it”. That felt like a punch in the gut, because there have been many times I’ve told my husband that I didn’t feel pretty even when he tells me that I’m beautiful. They really learn from us, and they will start to act the same way that we do. And yes, I believe this goes for both girls and boys! Boys can have self-image problems too. I want my girls, and my boy, to know that they are wonderfully made and are perfect! No matter what they may look like! They were made in the image of Christ, and that’s the most important part!
When we talk like this about ourselves, we are allowing the devil to get a foot into our heart. We’re allowing him to use this struggle to hate the Lord because of how He made us. We can’t let him win! We can’t let him use these little things to bring so much hate in our hearts. The devil works in so many ways. Satan uses things like social media, magazines, reality tv, books, and so much more to make us question how we look. He constantly reminds us of what the world believes is beauty, and how we don’t even come close to being accepted as beautiful, to the world. There may be things you don’t even think he is using to control our thoughts, but trust me, they are all around. Satan knows what our biggest weaknesses are and he will take that and run with it. Anything to make us doubt the Lord!
Remember that song from earlier? There’s more to it!
Mirror I am seeing a new reflection
I am looking into the eyes of who made me.
And to Him, I am beauty beyond compare
I know, He defines me.
Yeah,Who are you to tell me that I’m less than what I should be?
Mirror by BarlowGirl
Who are you? Who are you? Yeah yeah.
I don’t need to listen to the list of things I should do.
I won’t try. No-oh I won’t try.
I don’t care anymore what you think of me, or what the world may think of me. I know that I am perfectly and wonderfully made, and that I was made in the image of the Lord! God doesn’t make mistakes, and I know He didn’t make any mistakes when He formed me! Does that mean that I can just eat whatever and not worry about exercising or staying healthy? Absolutely not!
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
This verse reminds me that our bodies are the Lord’s temple. We have to take care of ourselves, because that is important! I believe that this verse is not only talking about taking care of ourselves physically, but also spiritually. It’s important that although we are not defined by the world’s view on beautiful, we also need to take care of this body because the Lord made it, He created it for us! We need to honor the Lord by taking care of what He perfectly and wonderfully designed!
My friends, never forget how truly beautiful you are!
Faith and Coffee 