For God to Take Control of My Eating, I Must Relinquish Control

“You, O God, are my King” (Psalm: 74:12).

A couple of years ago, I looked in the mirror as I usually do while shaving, but this time, I saw my fat body. I mean I really saw how out of shape and fat I was. It was a revelation – an “Aha” moment.

I had to do something. I was in a crisis moment. My eating was out of control.

My crisis needed a King. It needed Someone who could restore order, to tell me to get back in sync, knew what went wrong, and how to fix it.

When we call God our King like David did, we acknowledge God’s ability to reign over us which includes reigning over our food choices.

Plus, we acknowledge His right to reign over us submitting ourselves to His authority and removing ourselves from control over what and how much we eat.

Both responses are necessary.

An easy trap for us to fall into is to get caught up in the tendency to ask God for His control over us in every aspect of our life except food.

We want Him to fix things like our circumstances, threats to our well-being, and those annoying people who cause us stress.

God will usually not work that way. In fact, he often allows our bad relationship with food and the resulting crisis to bring us to a point of willingness to cry out to Him for help.

We become willing to sacrifice our self-will and ask Him to intervene. He must break our unhealthy eating habits that arises from emotional out of control eating. Emotional eating temporarily makes us feels better in times of depression, stress, or adversity, but it’s only a temporary fix that we use like an addictive drug.

This food addiction has to be broken by God.

God breaks our food addiction when we relinquish control and let Him reign over every aspect of our eating.

God saves us from ourselves on His terms and not ours. We are often not willing until a crisis comes – like looking into a mirror and seeing, really seeing, just how fat and unhealthy we have become.

God’s grace brings us to that point of revelation, and it is His grace that brings us to change our unhealthy eating habits and sedentary lifestyle.

God is King. He will restore order. He will tell us what we need in order to get our bodies back in sync. He knows what went wrong and how to fix it. He has the ability and the right to reign over what we eat. Let us submit to His authority and His right to reign over what and how much we eat.

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Thanks for reading.

Taken in part from “”Walk with God” devotional for August 4 by Chris Tiegreen.