Growing up as a Catholic girl, I always felt a sense of judgment and condemnation. We grew up in a strict home where the belt was sometimes used to enforce discipline, morality, and justice.
At church, we were taught about God’s wrath and his judgment. We had a confession box where we told our sins, but I remember as a youth thinking that I could not possibly tell the entire truth. After all, I know what happens when you tell the truth.
When I got pregnant (and unwed), I was told to make a public apology to my church congregation for sinning. Needless to say, I refused. But I remember the guilt, shame, and judgment I felt. I had failed God again.
It’s no wonder I took the same fears, guilt, shame, and condemnation with me into most areas of my life … including my health. During my 20s and 30s, I can’t ever remember feeling great about my body (even though I have been blessed with great genetics). I can’t ever remember not feeling guilty when I ate and I was always counting calories and doing the next crazy diet to keep my weight down (the Master Cleanse was the worst). I felt like the biggest failure and fraud because I was supposed to be the one teaching others about healthy living, but the voices in my head that kept telling me how bad I was would never shut up.
A series of intimate encounters with God began to change my thinking about how I saw myself and how God saw me. The process of telling myself the truth started. Eradicating the lies we tell ourselves and learning the truth about who we are in Christ is one of the tenants of the Weight Loss, God’s Way Program.
Here are some of the lies I believed. See if any of them apply to you too.
Lie #1. God only helps those who help themselves.
I bet you thought that was in the Bible … I sure did. So I charted my life in the course of helping myself so God could help me. I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I failed, and I failed, and I failed.
I could not stop myself from bingeing or the laundry list of other sins that I was committing on a regular basis. I came to believe that weak people like me were of no use to God.
I’m slowly coming to learn that in the Kingdom of God, the illogical becomes logic. The weakest are the strongest and the last are first. The truth is, God helps those who come to Him for help, submitting to His will and way. It’s God who incites us to take action. In our own strength, we often end up doing more harm than good.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me “(2 Cor. 12:9).
Lie #2. God is mad at me because of my sins.
I believed that every time I binged or had long bouts of laziness that I was letting God down and I was a disappointment to Him. I was not being a good representative to Him and I was not worthy of being called a child of God. My church reinforced the notion by only teaching us about God’s wrath (or at least that’s all my 7-year-old mind heard).
Truth is, God is not counting my calories or tracking my daily steps. He loves me fat, thin, muscular, apple or pear-shaped. My physical appearance only matters to God in the context of how I feel about myself and how it may keep me from doing the things He has called me to do.
When I’m broken physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, God cares and even weeps for me, but by no means is he mad at me.
God is not mad at you or me, He loves us and will never stop loving us, Romans 8:38-39 says, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Lie #3. If I loved God enough, then I would stop sinning.
Similar to Lie #1, I also believed that if only I were more holy then I wouldn’t struggle as much with eating, finances, relationships, or pretty much everything. I believed that my life would be easier.
So in addition to trying to fix my personal life, I also tried to fix my spiritual life. I read through the entire Bible; I went to church every Sunday; I said ‘praise the Lord’ and ‘if it’s God’s will’ after every sentence and I ‘did’ church. Yet I still could not stop myself from eating 3-4 chocolate bars in a row while counseling clients about healthy eating.
Then I remember hearing Joyce Meyers quote someone by saying: “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.” I started to learn that …
1. God does not serve me, I serve Him.
2. I can’t earn God’s favor no matter how hard I try.
3. God’s love is unconditional.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (NIV).
If you’re anything like me, believing that your overeating eating or other proclivities are making God angry, then it’s time to stop believing the lies and to accept that God is not mad at you no matter how many times you mess up. In fact, he is waiting patiently for you and me to come to Him. He says in Matthew 11:23, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Take Him at his word today and watch Him work in your life. Will you join me?
Jeremiah 31:3 says: “The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
Share your comments below. Have you believed any of these lies too? Are you ready to replace these lies with God’s truth?
P.S. if you are tired of circling the same mountain over and over and want a Christ-centered approach to lasting weight loss without feeling guilty, deprived, or overwhelmed, be sure to sign up for our video course program right away at cathymorenzie.com
6 Comments
What a powerful post. As I read it, I realized that I know all those are lies intellectually, but I still live as if one or two of them are true. Thank you!
Amen–Nothing can separate us from the love of God!
Thank you so much for this article. I too believed these lies for years. GOD bless you.
When can truly get this out of our heads and into our hearts, it truly frees us. Thank you so much for this. I continue to struggle, some days more so than others. However, each time I fall down, God picks me back up.
What a testimony, God is able to do anything! Thank you for sharing…and teaching. Very powerful! I will incorporate these Truths into my devotional time.
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