I hit over 400 pounds. Last weighin I did I weighed about 415 pounds... I've been praying nonstop for a solution to this and I just keep eating instead. I'm so addicted to food now that I eat over 4,000 calories in a day. What I wouldn't give to eat 3,000 calories again. But it is so hard to stop eating. The temptation to eat is greater than I care bare. The cravings are massive. Aside from the prayers of others I don't know what can help me. I need God and God isn't removing this sin from me. It's impossible, help.
You know, every time we are tempted to do what we know we ought not to do, we are encountering a choice to follow our own will and way rather than God's. Every temptation to sin is a temptation to rebellion toward God, to put my will above and before His. Whether it's over-eating, or looking at porn, or temper, or slothfulness, or whatever, all these sins are just expressions of the same thing: Putting myself before God.
So, what, then, should my response to these temptations be? What is God's "way of escape" from any and all sin? Not fighting with myself. Not greater self-discipline. Not accountability groups.
Submission. To God.
Romans 6:13 (NASB)
13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
Romans 6:17-18 (NASB)
17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
Romans 8:14 (NASB)
14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
Romans 12:1 (NASB)
1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Colossians 3:23-24 (NASB)
23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,
24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.
James 4:6-10 (NASB)
6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE."
7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
1 Peter 5:6 (NASB)
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,
Since every temptation to sin, in whatever form it takes in your life, is a temptation, at bottom, to rebel against God, to follow your own will and way over His, your first response to temptation should
always be to
surrender yourself anew to God. And
so often as the temptation confronts you to yield yourself to yourself in whatever way is sinful,
surrender again. This is the real battle you face: Whose will is going to be done? Yours or God's? The fundamental struggle is to remain submitted to God in the face of temptation to submit to yourself, instead.
At every crossroads of choice between your will and God's, the Spirit waits upon you to choose whose will you are going to serve. And when you choose
God's will over your own, THEN
the Spirit moves in response to transform you and take you beyond the point of choice into God's will. Your submission, you see, is your agreement to the Spirit's alteration of you. He is never going to force you into God's way, over-riding your will and compelling you, puppet-like, in God's direction. Instead, He will wait 'til you have yielded to God as His bond-servant, and in so doing have agreed to being transformed, and
then He will move to make you a holy, Christ-centered, addictions-free man.
Too often, though, Christians are pleading with God to change them, to just take away their struggles with the sin they've indulged, to simply, instantly, remove the consequences of their choosing themselves over and over again. They want to have been able to make evil, rebellious, selfish choices toward God and then have God remove the awful results - results He has promised in His word all sin will produce, sooner or later - in an instant. (
Romans 6:23; Galatians 6:7-8; James 1:14-15)
When God refuses to answer such a request, which He will always refuse to do, believers stagger back in surprise and wonder why.
Surely, God wants me to be free of sin, they think. Well, He doesn't just want you to be free of sin but
to be under His authority, to be yielded to His control throughout every day. But the believer pleading with God for freedom from the sin they've freely chosen wants often only t
o be free of the consequences of their choice to serve themselves over God; they don't want God in charge; they don't want God's will and way over all of their life all of the time. And so, they keep futilely pleading in prayer for freedom from sin and wondering why God doesn't do anything to help.
God's freedom from Self and Sin, however, is only obtained in daily submission to God, in being a "living sacrifice" to Him all the time. This is the route to freedom from all sin.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 (NASB)
15 "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity;
16 in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the LORD your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it.
17 "But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them,
18 I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it.
19 "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,
20 by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them."
How, exactly, do you submit to God? See the link below.
Christ in Gethsemane: The Ultimate Lesson in Submission
