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Over the course of the pandemic, I added about 26lbs (ice cream and chocolate chip cookies do add up!! - who knew?) Anyways, sometime in March I decided that the pandemic was finally over and so were my excuses - I love going on prayer/worship/praise walks and the extra 26 pounds were making it VERY difficult. It was like my body had reached a threshold where it started refusing to do the things I asked of it!
I don't know about anyone else but changing my diet was very hard for me to do - very extremely hard. I failed a couple of times before I finally took off. There were days where I felt like I was dying - a lot of days at the beginning actually. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it made no sense.
Science shows that most people can survive one to two months without food, but here I am, I just had lunch less than 3 hours ago and I feel like I 'm about to die of hunger. Other times, I felt like if I didn't satisfy my cravings my world would fall apart - PS, it didn't.
What does any of this have to do with living by faith and not by feelings?
You see, feelings are very intense, and very loud, and very real. But they lie.
These feeling of "near death" and "world falling apart", I felt when I changed my eating habits were real - anyone that says otherwise has never had the misfortune of basically crying themselves to sleep from hunger even after eating. But no matter how real they were, they were not the truth - I was not dying, neither was my world falling apart.
And this applies not just to "bad" feelings but also to "good" feelings. When I think about the times I "failed" and simply reached for the chocolate, (minus the guilt) I felt good after, like I had given myself a "treat". But is sugar really a treat? Sugar is generally bad for the body, but it definitely doesn't feel like it - in fact the opposite is the case, you feel really really good after consuming sugar in copious amounts!
That "good" feeling is also a lie.
Feelings ≠ Truth
So, I asked myself, if my body goes to these lengths to lie to me about food, what else is it lying to me about? Food is great, but it's not that big of a deal. Why would my body deploy all these ammunitions to get me to keep eating? I don't know, but thankfully I knew the truth. The truth that I wasn't actually going to die, the truth that I was doing the right thing, the truth that I was nourishing my body with the right food.
And that truth set me free from the tyranny of my feelings.
You see, because I knew the truth, because I believed in the truth AKA had faith in the truth. I was able to live above my feelings.
Did I want to be delivered from this feeling, YES! And I prayed for it over and over again. My God can do all things, and since He created the body, He can definitely adjust mine. But I learnt that God's grace is sufficient for me. Everyday I draw strength from Him to say no to my feelings, and with time my feelings have largely adjusted to the new reality that there's a new sheriff in town. It was no longer the boss of me, and would not be the major factor in my decisions.
We live by faith and not by feelings first by knowing and believing the truth, and then by understanding that our feelings lie, a lot. Think about all the times people thought you slighted them and were hurt, but you didn't actually do anything! Or the times you were hurt because you thought someone slighted you, but then it turns out that they actually didn't.
Also, we must believe that the truth applies to us specifically, not just to others. Because if we believe that our situation somehow exempts us from reaping the befits of the truth, we won't be able to keep going when the enemy comes at us, and he will come.
I know that I desperately wanted to believe that my case was different (PCOS), and that it required something more than the Word God gave me - which was that and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations - could handle. But then I realized that I had made it into something bigger than the Word of God. Guys, it's so easy for a diagnosis to go from being a help to being a clutch, it's such a slippery slope.
We live by faith by believing the Truth - Jesus Christ. But how can we believe What we don't know? The only way to know the Truth is by reading the Bible. I pray for you, that you pick up a bible today, and that when you do, you hear the hearing of faith.
