The Road to True Freedom

Read this today in my online study, The Lord's Table: Setting Captives Free, day 13.  It goes along with what I posted yesterday on my blog.  It is so refreshing to me to  realize that I don't have to keep on living in gluttony.  Here is the quote from today's reading:

"...many diet programs and counselors available who won't ever make us feel sinful and condemned just because we have a weakness for food! They'll tell us we're simply eating the wrong foods, or that our metabolism is just slow, or any number of other reasons why we're overweight. Ruth, if you believe this, I must tell you that you'll most likely remain overweight—for these are excuses to justify sin, rather than truth spoken in love. If we are habitual overeaters, we are sinning. And sinning requires repentance and salvation in order to be free. Freedom comes through embracing truth, and truth often wounds us."

I cannot begin to even count the number of times I have been fooled by excuses others made for my obesity.  When we don't want to face the truth, we often allow ourselves to be fooled because in the moment, it makes us feel better about ourselves.  In the end, however, we still struggle needlessly.  Yes, the truth hurts.  To say "I am sinning when let food rule my life" is hard.  But God is bigger than that.  You have to not only say it, you have to believe it.  Saying it with a mouthful of food is NOT repentance.  I used to watch the TV show The Biggest Loser while eating a package of cookies.  I was watching people work muscles that I never knew existed while I shoved cookies in my face.  It made no sense but it gave me temporary gratification.

Freedom truly comes when we humbly see ourselves as we are...sinners in need of grace.  Anything short of true repentance leaves us helpless and vulnerable to return to sinful habits.  Hang in there, my friends.  We can do this because God can help us do this. 

2 Corinthians 7:8-13 (ESV)

⁸ For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. ⁹ As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. ¹⁰ For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. ¹¹ For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. ¹² So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. ¹³ Therefore we are comforted. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all.