This is the fourth in a series of posts where I will share my story and journey with eating, the issues I’ve had over the years and how God is so patient and good.
Click here to read the first post in the series.
Click here to read the second post in the series.
Click here to read the third post in the series.
So, we left off where I had asked God to help me share my struggles with others – to bring this sin and my issues with overeating into the light. This was during a period of my journey where I didn’t really hear much from God. That thought to bring my issues into the light was the only real direction I had heard from Him in a while. After I felt God nudging my heart to tell others about my struggles, I waited quite a while for God to answer my prayer to find the right group to share with. I’ve noticed with God, He sometimes allows for long expanses of time to pass without much word from Him. He’s done this at other points in my life with other things as well.
Our small group we had been a part of through church disbanded and Marcus and I were left without a group for a short time. Our church hosts a Group Connect night about twice a year to get people not already engaged in small group life into a group. Marcus and I attended and ended up joining an awesome small group led by a recently married couple. There were five couples in this new group. I was excited about this opportunity to get to know these people from our church and share our lives with each other.
After being in the group for a few months, we started splitting up for prayer time – men and women. This way, we were able to have more authentic prayer time with each other after the lesson. I wanted to share my struggles but always felt uncomfortable opening up and sharing that much of my heart with other women’s husbands. Splitting up for prayer requests was the perfect solution. I felt like this was my opportunity to finally bring my struggles into the light.
I worked up the courage to tell my very new friends about this very real struggle. I was nervous at first, but I knew this is part of recovering and healing. I told them my whole story up to that point. Most of the other girls in the group had similar issues with body image and were able to share that, which made me feel more comfortable. We prayed that night and I continued asking for prayers and the other girls continued praying for me over the next months and even years.
It is amazing to watch God work through the power of prayer. Telling others that kind of intimate detail about my issues was very humbling and made me feel very vulnerable. But, it was such an important first step to my healing.
During this time, nothing changed with my eating habits. I didn’t yet feel ready to start making a change to my eating. It’s as if my heart needed to be softened and healed first, then the other steps would follow.
After praying and being prayed for, I began having a desire to start a quiet time in the morning with God. I didn’t know how to approach it. What did I do – did I just read out of the Bible? Did I say a bunch of prayers? How would this work? I had never done a morning quiet time, consistently, before.
I had been a big fan of Beth Moore since my sister had introduced me to her in college and I did her Breaking Free Bible study. I had done more Bible studies from her since then and she often highlighted the effectiveness of praying God’s word. In other words, turning Bible verses into prayers.
I was praying one morning and God impressed on my heart how powerful it was to pray His word. We often pray for things with selfish, prideful or vain motives. However, when we pray God’s word, we know we’re praying His will because they are the very words He uses to guide our lives. We simply rewording them slightly to make them into prayers. We then pray them to God. It’s so awesome!
My issues with finding out I had been praying with selfish motives (I wrote about this in the second installment of the Food Journey series) were solved by praying God’s word. That way, I knew for sure I was praying exactly what God wanted. Even if it wasn’t my heart’s prayer yet, it was God’s heart. I had made it clear to God what my heart desired. Now, it was God’s turn to tell me about His heart.
I decided to start praying from the New Testament, starting with Romans. I wanted to learn about what the apostle Paul and others said about Christian living. I read Romans through Jude. I read everything very slowly covering only a few verses each day.
When I felt a particular verse speaking to my struggles, I would write the verse down, changing the pronouns and making into a personal prayer. I wrote everything in a notebook.
My first scripture/prayer was from Romans 3:22. Here is what I wrote in my notebook: ”God, righteousness from You comes through faith in Your Son Jesus Christ for all who believe. Lord God, help me to believe You and therefore, be lead to righteousness” (Romans 3:22)
Here is another example of a scripture/prayer from I Corinthians 10:23: “God, Your perfect word says that everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible but not everything is constructive. Lord, please give me strength to participate in only behaviors that are beneficial and that glorify You.” (I Corinthians 10:23)
I went on and on for pages in my notebook with similar scripture/prayers. This is the first time in my life that I had really taken time to read the Bible slowly, verse by verse, and really drink in what was being said. My spirit was so thirsty for God’s word. My heart was ripe for hearing what He had to say.
I had tried overcoming my battles in my own strength for years. I had demanded that recovery from these issues come my way and in my terms.
Now, I was finally turning to face God. To see what He said about the matter. Turns out, He had quite a lot to say. And His way was pretty much the exact opposite of mine. Human logic makes so much sense at the time, but there is something missing from it.
It comes from humans. Therefore, it is limited and flawed.
I thought my issues with food were purely physical. Therefore, I assumed the way to solve them was physical as well – stop eating so much! Exercise! Lose weight!
Something amazing happened during this season of my journey. I started listening for God’s voice. The scripture and the truth of what I was reading in the word changed me. From the inside out.
This wasn’t just a physical issue. In fact, it wasn’t really physical at all. It was first and foremost a spiritual issue. God had some work to do on my soul. My heart had to be turned back towards God. I had to start seeing things from His perspective.
By praying these scripture/prayers and reading God’s word consistently, my heart started to change. It wasn’t because of some grand thing I was doing or because I was so strong or great. It was all completely God’s work through His Holy Spirit changing me little by little. One day at a time. One scripture/prayer at a time.