…is more than enough, for
all of me, for every thirst and every need. You satisfy me with Your love, and
all I have in You is more than enough.”
I
would sing the words, but I didn’t really believe them. In fact, the way I was
living said that I believed the exact opposite of what I would sing.
I
am so amazed and thankful that my God is caring enough for me that He would
bring me to face the things that I do wrong, again and again. Satan works so hard to get us to
believe lies without our realizing that we are believing lies!
I
know that I cannot be alone in this, so I encourage all of you, my sisters to
frequently ask God to show you any errors in your thoughts that have begun to
lead you to believe lies about God.
As
for me, I am ashamed to say that these lies have been a part of my thought life
for a long time. I could try to absolve myself of guilt and say that I didn’t
know that I was believing those lies, but that would only make it worse. I am a
professing Christian, my job is to know the Truth more intimately than I know
anything else.
Yet,
I believe that the lies Satan helps us to swallow are made more attractive by
the influences around us. There are millions of women around the world held in
bondage to food, I am not alone, and there are tons of advertisements for the
‘miracle diet pill’ everywhere you look. Most of them advocate for themselves
by telling us that ‘we are worth it’. These, my dear sisters are lies. We are
worth NOTHING apart from Christ! He is the only reason we can even lift
ourselves from lying in the muck of our sin and shame. His beauty is the only
beauty we should ever aspire to.
More
than anything, I long to be known as someone enamored with Christ, intoxicated
by the Word of God and wrapped up in prayer. I know I have a long way to go,
and the path will not be smooth or easy, but I embrace that. I am tired of
being the woman I was under the illusion of my own self-worth. Pampering myself
and giving my stomach and flesh free reign brought absolutely no happiness into
my life. On the contrary I struggled with feeling torn in two, swinging between
extremes of starving myself and gorging on junk food, prostrating myself before
God and silencing the cries of my spirit with YouTube videos. In the past two
days I have denied my body extra sleep, suffered attacks of headaches and
nausea when I tried to work out. Sacrificing my own personal comfort, I
recognized these as attacks and instead of pampering my flesh like before, I
surrendered to obedience to my Saviour and Lord, to find true peace.
Everywhere
we look today we are told that the only lords in our lives should be ourselves,
our own needs and wants, the problem is that we allow these influences too much
space in our lives.
My
mother is purging her house right now. There is a slight possibility that she
and my father might move in the future, but ‘just in case’ she has been getting
rid of all the excess stuff that has piled up over the years. She is making
room for moving.
Did
you ever make room for Jesus? Did you clear a space in your life for Him, or
did you just invite Him in and tell Him that He could find a spot to perch in
amongst all the other clutter you had collected? That is what I did. It was
inconvenient to change my habits and while I wanted the peace that Jesus gives,
I really didn’t want to completely rearrange for Him.
How
wrong I was! If you are at all convicted along with me, I challenge you to join
my husband and I as we put away evil influences from before us for 40 days. We
will not spend time on our computers doing anything other than blogging,
checking e-mail (there is a time limit) and work (my husband does some graphic
design work.) For the majority of the day our machines will be locked in a
chest, and we will be free to talk, read godly literature, and spend time with
God. We are using this time to reshape our habits and to focus our hearts on
God and our relationship. Priority #1 My relationship with God. Priority #2 My
relationship with my husband.
