I picked up the dog-eared old book from the pile I was sorting.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t read it in years, but I remembered it well. It made me feel miserable. It was all about how fat was a spiritual problem and if you were right with God, you would be set free from its clutches.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 So then I was not only fat, but a bad Christian.<\/p>\n
Wonder what that author, who had lost a huge amount of weight, is doing now?\u00a0 I looked her up. She had gained back the weight plus more and wrote a new book about how God loves us as we are.<\/p>\n
The point of that story?\u00a0 It is easy to spiritualize our weight loss.\u00a0 There is a danger in saying, \u201cThis activity equals good Christian and that activity equals bad Christian.\u201d\u00a0 None of us are good enough for God, anyway.\u00a0 We all have failings and hidden sins.\u00a0 Our dependence on food is just an obvious one.<\/p>\n
My pastor\/husband Paul often uses the illustration of\u00a0 a broad jump across the Grand Canyon. If we all lined up and took off running and leaped over that immense expanse, some of us would get much farther than others.\u00a0 Some might soar for ten feet — and others of us would trip over the edge.\u00a0 In the end it wouldn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 All of us would land at the bottom because none of us have anything like the ability to land on the other side.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how it is with us spiritually.\u00a0 Some might be able to live a better life than others,\u00a0 but reaching perfection — which is what a holy God requires — is as impossible as landing on the other side of the Grand Canyon.\u00a0 That\u2019s why Christ came. He didn\u2019t come\u00a0 just to be a good example or to teach us about God, although He did that, too.\u00a0 He came to do what we couldn\u2019t do. He lived a perfect life without sin.\u00a0 Then He paid for the sins of His people, so they didn\u2019t have to.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the cross is all about.<\/p>\n
So we aren\u2019t made right with God by our good works or good life, but by depending on what He did for us.\u00a0 And that\u2019s how we are to live.\u00a0 Our focus is to be on Him, and we obey Him because we love Him.\u00a0 He\u2019s our reason for living. We don\u2019t have to work to be acceptable to Him, but live in freedom because He made us acceptable.<\/p>\n
Thin people are not closer to heaven than the rest of us. \u00a0 God loves us for who we are inside these bodies — not how we appear on the outside.<\/p>\n
I wanted to say that up front — because there is a possibility that there could be a spiritual addiction problem going on as well as a physical and emotional one.\u00a0 We\u2019ll look at that tomorrow. But, first things first.\u00a0 The numbers on the scale do NOT indicate your distance from God.\u00a0 Your success or failure at reaching an ideal weight doesn\u2019t change your relationship with Him.\u00a0 Don\u2019t fall in that trap!<\/p>\n
Eating to live and living for Christ,<\/em><\/p>\n Susan Jordan Brown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I picked up the dog-eared old book from the pile I was sorting.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t read it in years, but I remembered it well. It made me feel miserable. It was all about how fat was a spiritual problem and if you were right with God, you would be set free from its clutches.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[147,30,77,148,15],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eating-plan","tag-christ","tag-god","tag-scale","tag-spiritual","tag-weight-loss"],"yoast_head":"\n