Can God Really Help You?

If you have received even a small amount of Christian teaching, you will be familiar with the concept of forgiveness. In a nutshell, Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins, so that we are forgiven. In return, we must forgive others, including ourselves and God. Even non Christians are familiar with the Lord’s Prayer; forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgiveness is an essential part of Christianity.

The Bible tells us that if we don’t forgive we will be handed over to the torturers. One of the places that the torturers live is inside us. If we do not forgive we will be full of anger, bitterness and resentment. We will be miserable and we will make others around us miserable. If you carry around un-forgiveness inside you, it can actually make you physically ill. We have to forgive so that we can live in peace.

Today I want to deal with forgiveness in relation to food. It is highly likely that if you have a problem with food and your weight, that someone, somewhere needs to be forgiven. It may be other people, yourself or even God.

When we face a problem in life, we usually try to blame someone. Unfortunately the world that we live in encourages this, particularly the news media, who are always pointing out what someone has done wrong. We get used to living in a blame culture. We look for someone to blame, if we can’t find someone else then we blame ourselves or God.

Okay, the next bit is going to hurt, but stay with me because this is going to help you enormously. Please be completely honest.

Take a moment to think about why you are overweight. Yes, you are overweight because you ate too much, but why was this? What events in your life or circumstances led to this? Do any of the following sound familiar?
• I was overfed as a child
• I wasn’t active enough as a child
• I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until I had eaten everything.
• I ate to comfort myself because I was so miserable
• I was really hurt by someone
• My friends ate a lot so I did too
• My social life involves eating out and drinking
• I have to eat out to entertain customers at work
• My spouse eats a lot and I started doing the same
• I put on weight while I was pregnant
• I was so tired when the children were young that I ate for energy
• I’m bored
• I am so busy looking after the family, working, helping at church that I don’t have time to plan proper meals
• I played a lot of sport and could eat what I liked, but then I was injured and stopped playing.
• I played a lot of sport, but once the children came along I had to stop
• I don’t have time to exercise
• My job is really sedentary and boring, so I eat
• I sit on the sofa at night watching television and find myself eating things I don’t even want
• I try to diet, and then I give in and eat too much.
• I don’t have a huge problem with overeating. I’ve just gradually put on weight over a number of years and now I can’t lose it.
• Etc

Who do you blame for this? If you are not sure who you blame, think about whom you resent. Is it any of the following?
• Your parents.
• Other carers or guardians
• A sibling
• Your school
• Your friends
• Your work colleagues or boss
• Your spouse
• Your children
• The person that hurt you
• The diet club
• Yourself
• God.

You have to make a conscious decision to forgive the person whom you resent, whoever it is and whatever they did, including yourself and God.

Why is it so hard to forgive? The reason is that we think that there must be punishment and consequences. If people have hurt us, we think that they should be punished. If we have done something, deep down we expect to have to suffer the consequences.

God revealed to me that one of my biggest problems in relation to weight loss was failing to forgive myself for all the times I had overeaten. Firstly the Bible tells us that greed is a sin. Secondly I felt guilty that I hadn’t had the willpower to resist temptation. I managed to keep so many balls in the air, juggling family life with running a business, why couldn’t I resist food? Deep down I felt that I had to suffer the consequences for what I had done and try harder.

Read the last two words of the previous paragraph again. Are they familiar? This brings us back to grace. Grace says “Yes, you messed up, but I am going to put it right for you. Not because you have earned it, or because you deserve it. I’m going to put it right for you because of what Jesus did. I’m going to put it right because I love you”.

I would now like to introduce you to a very dear close friend of grace. She’s called mercy. Mercy is a word used to describe compassion; it is often a request for leniency or unwarranted compassion in respect of a crime or wrong doing. Jesus said “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”. Mercy changes the rules. Mercy says “It doesn’t matter what you have done, I’m going to forget the bad and bring forth the good. Don’t worry about punishment and consequences, I’ve got it covered”.

I thought that I had to pay the price for my sin. I understood that I had to forgive myself, because the Bible is clear that we must forgive everybody. The problem is I didn’t feel different. Then God said to me “You don’t have to suffer the consequences, because my mercy covers it”.

You can’t change the past, but you can change your future. It’s time to move on. Stop blaming and start forgiving. Accept God’s mercy.

God will help you lose weight because he is a good, loving and merciful God. He will do it because of who he is, not because of who you are.

Today

Sit down quietly and think about the above list. Think about all the people who you resent and blame, including yourself and God, for your weight. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you.

Decide today that you are going to forgive everybody and do it! Say the words I forgive and then list all the people that you are forgiving.

If you are having trouble with this, ask someone you trust to pray with you.

From now on, focus on God’s grace and mercy. Start to believe that God really does want to help you lose weight.

God is merciful. It doesn’t matter what you or anyone else has done, God can and will help.