|
WEIGH DOWN: WHAT IS THIS COMPULSION CALLED "DESIRE EATING?"
There is an explanation and a way out of compulsive and addictive behaviors. When Jesus said to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, that basically sums up all of Scripture. Do you realize how amazing that is? We can take thousands of words and phrases in the Old and New Testament and sum them up in this passage in Mark that Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy:
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' "
We are going to take that scripture and break it down into its components. In this chapter we will start with the mind because it is one of the keys to rising above the magnetic pull of food.
Think about all the times over the years when an overwhelming urge came over you and you seemingly could not stop yourself from going to the refrigerator. Where in the world did that desire eating come from? And why does the thin eater not have it? What is the force or compulsion we were dealing with?
Most of the world does not give this question a whole lot of thought. The world has conveniently renamed this whole scene as simply an old habit. Is that not a nice, proper, non-convicting, sanitizing name for something that should really sound off an alarm bell in our hearts and in our heads?
This magnetic force toward food is a lot like the gravitational force that we have toward the earth. If you lose your footing, you will fall to the ground, right? That will never change. Gravity was a hard concept to learn; yet bumps, knocks, and bruises pounded the fact of gravity into your brain early in life. Now you understand that fact; you accept it and you work around it on a daily basis. You have long forgotten the pain of falling down the steps. Now, without having to think about it, you do what is necessary to avoid any problems with gravity. The force of gravity remains, but you have conquered it, so to speak.
The gravitational force toward the things of this world is also out there. It has been around for a long, long time. Whether you have paid any attention to it does not change the reality of its presence. You can call it a habit and ignore it if you want to. However, you must think this through to be able to rise above the force of any of the world's allures.
*38\237\2*
| 
