3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community - My diet is a spiritual matter after all.

I used to feel the same way you did, I have been writing a Bible study for years, and I was still not convinced that overeating was that big of a sin. Then I decided ask God to help me write one of the days of my study on the subject. I asked for wisdom and he showed me some amazing things!

The following is an excerpt from the study God gave me. Sorry it's so long, and you might want to get some tissues handy, it is a real tearjerker.

Quote:

Read Hebrews 12:14-17 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: 15 looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; 16 lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of FOOD sold his birthright. 17 For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.

What is a profane person? I looked it up in the dictionary.
Profane means:
1. characterized by irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles or things; irreligious.
2. To misuse (anything that should be held in reverence or respect); defile; debase; employ basely or unworthily.
3. To treat (anything sacred) with irreverence or contempt; violate the sanctity of:

Read I Corinthians 3:17 If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple YOU are.

I could just never get it through my head that overeating was a sin, or a bad enough sin to necessitate me giving it up. It would have been easier to give up the sin of stealing, because I know for sure that’s a sin and God takes it serious because it’s against the law!, The sin of killing someone is really easy to resist, because I could go to jail forever, besides I feel empathy for the devastation it would cause a family. Stealing someone else’s spouse is not quite as bad as murder, because you won’t go to jail, but your friends at church would really look down on you.

Gluttony however, is accepted. In fact, it is a very rare occurrence when you hear a preacher even come close to broaching the subject, because they love their congregation and don’t want to hurt them, or it could be they also love their food. We are quick to label smoking and drinking too much, as sins. Many of the same arguments used for smoking and drinking, such as health and addiction apply to being overweight, but we have no qualms about overeating.

However, as stated in the scripture above, Esau was called a fornicator and profane, because he traded the things of God for food. Gluttony is not just some harmless sin, look at how many lives are devastated because of food. While writing this study, I asked God for wisdom, I asked him to show me just one instance in the Bible where it shows the devastation of gluttony, because it only mentions the word “gluttony” a few times.

Proverbs 23:20, 21 Do not mix with winebibbers,
Or with gluttonous eaters of meat;
21 For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty,
And drowsiness will clothe a man with rags.

Proverbs 23:21 For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, And drowsiness will clothe a man with rags.

Proverbs 28:7 Whoever keeps the law is a discerning son, But a companion of gluttons shames his father.

Then, as He always does when I ask Him for wisdom, He showed me more than one time. In the text above, we see how Esau gave up his birthright and the rights of the firstborn to have the blessings of God for a bowl of soup.

Look at the Israelites, who died while gorging on the meat of the quail. However, the one that most got to me, was the very first sin, Eve, who for a piece of fruit gave up Eden, and the close fellowship with her Lord! Satan used food to tempt Jesus, food was one of the three temptations mentioned by name! We need to take this sin serious, and work on it through faith.

Read and meditate on Hebrews 10:26-29 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?

After reading this passage what are some of your thoughts and feelings?

After I read this passage, I was confused, I couldn’t figure out what it meant by “there no longer remains a sacrifice.” So I looked up sacrifice in the dictionary it says: to accept the loss or destruction of for an end cause. When I read this, I was sickened. How many times had I willfully sinned against God in my heart and laughed about it, or taken it lightly, sometimes without even thinking. I had disrespected God and His precious sacrifice for a sandwich!

I came across several medical descriptions of the crucifixion while I was surfing the net, and it was sickening.

The cross was an unbelievably cruel instrument of torture it alone is a horrific enough death, but the pain He endured prior to His death was just as bad. The blows he suffered, the betrayal of his much-loved friends, the thorns being scraped over His skull, his back being ripped to raw quivering flesh. For some reason I had the Idea in the back of my mind, that, it wasn’t as hard for Him as it would have been a human, He was one hundred percent God, but He was also one hundred percent man, He had all the nerves, bones and ligaments that we do.

The whipping was particularly gruesome. They had a technique designed to make anyone confess to their crime. The lashings started out hard, then the convict, with each blow would yell out what they were guilty of, for example, the whip would strike the victims back and the murderer would yell out “MURDER”! The adulterer would yell “ADULTERY,” etc. Then the next lash would be less severe, if the prisoner would not admit guilt, the beatings would get harder and harder.

Jesus was innocent of any crime. He couldn't admit to a crime, because He hadn't committed one, so the beating kept getting harder and more brutal.

The whips were horrible instruments or torture. They had pieces of bone and sharp objects that would dig into the back and tear out pieces of flesh as they were yanked cruelly back.

Many people who were tortured with these horrible instruments were disemboweled and killed during the scourging because the whip would wrap around their bodies tearing the flesh from the soft stomach area.

The Bible says Jesus was so beaten he was unrecognizable as a man, some of His organs where probably visible.

The prisoner was then held down while an executioner hammered five to seven inch spikes through the wrists.

When I saw the show “The Passion of the Christ” the part that killed me the most was when the actor playing Jesus drug his pain-wracked body on to the cross willingly. I could just see Jesus doing that.

The spikes were deliberately driven in between bones, so they could support the victim's body for hours and even days.

Can you imagine how it must have felt after enduring the first spike going between your bones bending them out of the way while it was tearing an inch or so at a time though your wrist and knowing you had two more spikes coming?

The left foot was pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a spike is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees bent.

Then the cross was hoisted up and the all of the person’s body weight hanging from the nails causes the victims bones to come out of joint and tear the victim's ligaments, searing their nerves with burning agony.

As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain, the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching anguish, he places the full weight on the nail through his feet. Again, he feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of his feet.

As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them with deep, relentless, and throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled. He fights though the pain to raise himself struggling to get even one small breath, because the compulsion to breath overwhelms all else. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided. Spasmodically, He is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen.

Hours of pain, cycles of twisting joint-wrenching cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing hot pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back, as He moves up and down against rough timber. Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain, deep in the chest as the pericardium, the sac enclosing the heart, slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.

This Bible study day was a pivotal point for me. When I read this scripture passage and realized how flippantly I had been taking what Jesus did for me on the cross, I couldn’t stop the flow of tears and shame. I had been demonstrating to God, with my actions that His sacrifice didn’t mean much, and just like verse twenty-nine says, I had trampled the Son of Gods sacrifice underfoot.

But I was still upset I felt powerless! How could I quit this addiction? I prayed, cried, and begged for wisdom and, as always, God showed me His ways are easy and His burden light.

Read Romans 8: 1-11 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

All we have to do is take it serious, admit our guilt, run to God, humble ourselves, realize you can’t do it on your own, ask for help, and believe He will help you. That’s all God asks.

Isaiah 53:5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.

I Peter 2:24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.

What does that mean to you when the Bible says our sins are healed by His stripes, or whip marks? Why do we need to be healed of our transgression when Jesus was already going to die on the cross to take our sins away?

The Bible says, the cross was for our redemption, but He endured the whip to heal us, of our sins. Notice it says, “by whose stripes you were healed, past tense. You have already been healed. If you think you are sick, you will live as if you are sick, even if you are well. You have to believe that Jesus took those stripes for your freedom from addiction. He was whipped beyond recognition to heal our addictions! However, you can only receive it, if you believe that.

As I said before, for years, I had a fantasy that because gluttony was rarely mentioned in the Bible, and you rarely hear a sermon about it, that overeating, wasn’t really a sin. I would go in and out of my indulgence, as if it were a benign sin that didn’t hurt anyone. I just didn’t take it seriously.

Then when I finally prayed and asked God to open my eyes. He showed me many instances in the Bible where gluttony leads to tragic consequences in the life of God’s people. Let's go back and revisit one we have already looked at.

Read Genesis 3:4-6 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

What was the first thing Satan used to tempt man?

Read Luke 4: 1-4 Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.
3 And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”

4 But Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’”

What was the first thing Satan used to tempt Jesus?

Genesis 25:23-34 And the LORD said to her: “Two nations are in your womb, Two peoples shall be separated from your body; One people shall be stronger than the other, And the older shall serve the younger.”24 So when her days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb. 25 And the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over; so they called his name Esau. 26 Afterward his brother came out, and his hand took hold of Esau’s heel; so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.

27 So the boys grew. And Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field; but Jacob was a mild man, dwelling in tents. 28 And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

29 Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.” Therefore his name was called Edom.

31 But Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright as of this day.”

32 And Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?”

33 Then Jacob said, “Swear to me as of this day.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

Why did Esau give up the blessing of the firstborns birthright?

When you are tempted, push past the emotional barrier, remember what Jesus did for you and run to God for help. He will give it, trust Him.

Genesis 4:5 So the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it."

Love, Kelli