I get to be miracle of Jesus

I’m not going to go on about Whole 30 much longer, but I wanted to share what Whole 30 did to me internally. It changed me not just from the outside, but from the inside out.

I hate the term relationship with food, but I don’t have another to replace it. I’ve never had a great relationship with food. It’s been a source of love, comfort, escape, and appeasement.

Food is always there when people aren’t.
Food can fulfill a sense of longing when people let me down.
Food can become physically addicting even when you don’t realize it.

While my body was detoxing from my addictions to preservatives, sugars, and carbohydrates, I also took heed and began upping my prayers over my food/body/spirit connection. In fact, from day 1, I had been praying about a line in the sand. I wanted God to give me a line in the sand on what was okay and what wasn’t okay for me.

You see, I can do things like Whole 30 and do them well because there are rules. Firm boundaries. I like boundaries. Boundaries make me feel comfortable. Rules make me feel comfortable. I can achieve and excel within those rules.

Weight Watchers is similar. There are firm boundaries because you’re given parameters and make your own decisions within that. Weight Watchers got some weight off of me, yes, but didn’t promote positive choices for me. As I said in the prior post (here) Weight Watchers allowed me to continue to make poor choices and continue my bad eating habits because they were within the parameters. I want more than to just lose weight. I truly want to be healthy from the inside out.

Whole 30 started that process for me. You see, our outsides resemble our inside. Whether I want to think of it or not, being over weight or obese, shows something messed up with me internally. There’s a soul problem. And for me, that problem is:

Do I believe God is bigger than my current physical issues: weight, current circumstances, etc? 

I don’t believe in random happenings. I believe everything happens for a reason. Sometime I’ll never know the reasons and sometimes I get to, like in this specific instance.

Last week I was working on a bible study called The Miracles of Jesus. I was way behind so I tried to catch up on some of the days. I got to a page entitled “Christ Restores Broken Bodies.” I shut the book because I didn’t have the capacity to deal with all that was to come from those scriptures.

I saw what the first scripture was and talked about it with a friend about it. Then this past weekend, the sermon before my gorging (read the prior post) was the same story. Dr. Ajai Lall was our guest preacher for the weekend and he discussed how in Mark 2:3-13 Jesus had compassion on the paralyzed man and forgave him his sins first before giving the man physical healing.

Last year when I studied the book of Mark, I learned that out of compassion Jesus taught. It was eye opening to me because I am a teacher by nature. I love teaching people things. It doesn’t matter what it is, I love sharing new knowledge and empowering people to go forth and live better because of it. Make better decisions because of what I’ve shared. Most of my life I’ve been told I’m not a compassionate person. In fact, it wouldn’t be the first word I’d use to describe myself, nor even in my top five. But when I saw Jesus’s example and searched my heart, I am a teacher by nature because I do have compassion.

That definition was furthered when Dr. Lall said, “Compassion is doing something about the problem, not just talking about it.” I seek and educate myself in order to act on my compassion and do something about it. Now you’re probably asking, how in the world does this even connect to your Whole 30? Glad you asked.

I had forgotten about that scripture and all the back story until I opened the study again this morning. I opened and read the same account in Luke 5:18-26. The story shows where Jesus is most concerned. He forgave the man his sins first. Gave the man ultimate freedom first over his physical healing. Whoa. Jesus forgives the soul first… Why would he forgive us first? Because he wants us.

Now. In all circumstances Jesus looks at the heart first. He wants our hearts and souls forgiven and in proper standing with God. He cares more about that than our physical bodies. Why? Because if our heart and soul are right with him, that means we are his forever and the physical doesn’t matter. Why? Our physical will fall in line with his will for us. If our focus is solely on Jesus, we know without a doubt he is capable of healing us physically, but he wants our whole soul to be complete in him– because out of that, everything else will fall in line.