James 5:16 Confess
your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
If you've read my Christian Overeater Past and Present blog before, you may wonder why I share all my shortcomings. It would be easy enough to not tell you how I ate three fried egg sandwiches and the third one fell face down with the mayonnaise sticking to the floor. I'm not proud that I picked it up, put it back together and ate it, but I did. Part of this post is showing that being honest with our vices while turning them over to Christ is healing. It helps us realize how that particular vice has taken hold of us and has worked a wedge in our relationship with Christ, our family and ourselves.
Another part of this post is not as easy to explain. I was surprised when I first felt led to share my many shortcomings on the blog. It's kind of humiliating, in a good way. You might think that it's strange that I say that. The reason that it's in a good way, is that if readers can see that if God healed me of this all encompassing vice as sinful as I am, He can also heal you!
If you can read that I didn't have to do tons of exercises, eat only clear broth for months, and pay lots of money to some weight loss company, you know that it truly is a miracle from God. If He led me to write this blog to share how He changed my life around, He wanted you to read this to know He can change your life around, as well, if you let Him. All I had to do is tell God that I give up! I had tried bajillions of diets and gone to a wide variety of weight loss groups, but I only lost a little weight and gained that back and more. Instead, I was left with more self-hatred. That morning I told God that I give up, I told Him that if He ever wanted me to be thin, He'd have to do it, because I couldn't.
After having the vast majority of the 80+ pounds that were lost staying off for over 30 years, I found it vitally important to turn my food, body, eating, and stress over to Christ's capable hands prior to every time I ate anything and first thing in the morning and the evening. Christ replaced my self-loathing with a sense of calm that's difficult to explain. When ever I feel myself back-sliding, I find it important to turn to Christ, who immediately refocuses me. My fear of losing that sense of calm that Christ gives is worse than even the fear of gaining the weight back. If Christ can do all of this for me even though I have many faults, He can do it for you, too, if you only ask Him.
Because
these posts are examples of how I've applied these Bible verses to my
life, they don't necessarily reflect the whole meaning of the Bible
verse. Debbie
