Abstinent Today:
I am a gratefully recovering compulsive overeater, abstinent by the grace of God one more* day at a time. †
Today begins my fall term of school. Since I am only taking online classes this semester, my commute is easy, but I doubled up on the course load, thinking two miscellaneous classes might be as manageable as one math. Even if I bit off more than I can chew, the Lord will provide a way to manage it, even if only through dropping one.
From today’s entry in Voices of Recovery:
“In OA we share a belief that we can each recover through a spiritual relationship with a power which is greater than ourselves alone.” — The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, p. 91
I am excited about what my Higher Power, Who chose to call Himself God (Exodus 6:7), has done to put walking tread on my faith. He is making my separated, conflicted self into one integral unit, body, soul and spirit, unified for one purpose: His will. I think that’s what recovery is: recovering the unity of self and relationship with God for which we were created but had lost under the influence of our substances and behaviors. I remember what it was like to know of God and about God without knowing God through a real relationship. That relationship was blocked by my devotion to food and getting my own way! Looking back, I now understand what Jesus meant when, speaking of the Day of Judgment, He said many will claim Him, and even boast of great deeds done in His name, but He will tell them, “I never knew you. Away from me!” (Matthew 7:23, emphasis mine)
We were made for relationship. I choose to abide in that relationship today. Come, Lord Jesus! Fill me with Your Spirit and renew me for Your purpose. Grant me a knowledge of Your will for me and the power to carry it out.
From Proverbs 26, NIV:
3 A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey,
and a rod for the backs of fools!
The Heavenly Father knows what corrective tools to use on His creation. He blessed me with an eating disorder until I disgusted myself into paying attention. In the end, it took the excruciating pain of a severed knee ligament, which tore under my immense body weight, and the humiliation of being nursed to health by my precious bride, the one to whom I have done the most harm. The willingness to accept that my life had become unmanageable was right around the corner from the whip, bridle and rod.
Thank You, Papa, for loving me enough to orchestrate a Way back to You, and for never giving up on me, even during the many times when I turned my back on You.
From my reading through the Bible, currently in 1 John 4, NIV:
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
If there was ever any doubt that the Spirit presides over the Word spoken to my soul, it would have to be wiped away in the beautiful way these devotional thoughts run through one message! Knowing God comes through sacrificial love and is marked by sacrificial love. This love expressed itself to us so that we would have life. If we do not accept that love and let it pour through us then we are still dead. The spiritual truth is not that we will die, but that we are already dead.
This is the curse of Adam and the lie of Satan! In Genesis 3, God said on the day he rebels man will die, but Satan deceived man into believing the physical matters more than the spiritual when he argued that man would not physically die, and man has been biting into that lie ever since. We are spirit! The body is merely a vehicle we use to endure the testing grounds of Earth. Will we live by the Holy Spirit and so love, or will we serve ourselves, preserve what’s ours, and reserve our wills condemning ourselves to death and decay to which all things in the material realm go? I choose life! So let me love!
From “the Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous, “Another Prodigal Story”:
I have always, it seems, had a keen sense of the fact and presence of God.
That, too, like loving my wife and at the same time hurting her so dreadfully, is paradoxical, but it’s a fact. I knew that God, was there with infinite love and yet, somehow, I kept on drifting further and further away. But now I do feel that my heart an d mind are “tuned in” and by His grace there will be no more alcoholic‡ “static.”
After making this final agreement (not just another resolution) to let God to be first in my life, the whole outlook and horizon brightened up in a manner which I am unable to describe except to say that it was “glorious.”
Footnotes:
*Abstinence began for me on May 11th, 2010.
† For the sake of accountability, the details of my eating are posted in my online food log.
‡ From “Our Invitation to You” out of Overeater’s Anonymous: “The OA recovery program is patterned after that of Alcoholics Anonymous. We use AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, changing only the words ‘alcohol’ and ‘alcoholic’ to ‘food’ and ‘compulsive overeater.’”
tljax 