Biggest Loser in me

Another season of Biggest Loser has begun. They say it’s the biggest, heaviest group ever. And this year trainers Bob and Jillian joke that they feel like they say that every year, but seriously it’s true and the heaviest guy came in at 526 pounds at his first weigh in. I don’t love everything about the show and much prefer to watch it in the slowest fast forward setting since they drag it out so long, but last season something very unlikely happened in me as I was watching the finale.

I swear the Lord comes to me in the strangest times. Toilet. Stoplight. Head on the pillow. Brushing teeth. Browsing pantry. And, apparently, watching Biggest Loser.

To show everyone what had been accomplished on the final episode, the finalists came bursting through a paper image of their old selves, as if in a victory lap, and with hands raised and audience wildly cheering as they rejoiced in their new bodies. It was literally a miracle seeing who they were before and who they had become. They were clearly not the same people. They had accomplished something that literally felt completely impossible to them. But there they were, changed in a drastic and wonderful way and my heart was so happy that they had physically found freedom from their old bodies. I actually found myself in tears as the Lord gave me a word from him for my life.

You see, I have been on about a three year journey through a sin tendency in my life that has clung to me like static. I have tried to shake it and peel it off and shoo it away and fight it and wrestle it and relinquish it and defeat it with small victories but mainly a lot of frustration that it’s still around. I have seen my sin vaguely on a “oh, who are you?” level and then more familiarly on a “oh, you’re still around?” level and then a couple years into it, it was more like a, “are you kidding me? GO AWAY!” level.

If I could display it in a physical sense I guess it wouldn’t look much different than an overweight person dealing with gluttony. They eat well for a meal and then have got to have that package of oreos and then they work out a couple days and then find themselves doing other things. Back and forth. Back and forth. Ups and downs. Blah blahh blahhhhhh.

Romans puts it perfectly. “For I DO NOT UNDERSTAND MY OWN ACTIONS. (I know!!! Seriously!!!) For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. (I know!!!!) For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man am I! Who will deliver me from this body of death? THANKS BE TO GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD!”

I do not understand my actions. True. True. True. This is craziness at times. It is true I literally have in my head who I want to be in certain circumstances. I even pray just before the rocky circumstances or conversations happen, as I usually anticipate them. Then in that terrible moment of testing, I just BAIL on what I really really want! I go for the bait, as my pastor said during Sunday’s sermon. I go for the tempting thing. For the shallow desires in my heart that linger and lay out their tasty bait for me because they know I always go for it.

For me, that would be expectations (what I set as a standard for another), self-justification (really wanting justice for myself and to be treated with absolute fairness) and self-preservation (all about reputation and being right and being on top) and being understood (though it is never promised to us that we will be perfectly understood). Those are my likely baits and they are so alluring. They are certainly something I want, but as the Romans verses say, my heart DOES want to obey God IN MY INNER BEING. Pastor Mark has talked about this before, that my deepest desires are from the Spirit as a Christian. That is what I really really want to do, want to obey, want to carry out. But I just cannot, cannot, cannot seem to carry it out.

The Lord has revealed so much to me over three years about these sin patterns in my life. I have been learning, growing, changing at a turtles pace but thankfully changing non-the-less. Losing my two pounds a week of my “flesh”. Though like a 526 pound human being, the two pounds a week is so torturous and frustrating.

I remember a testimony from a couple of years ago at a women’s retreat. She was telling her dark story and as God would enter the story she would say, “But God.” This part of my testimony has felt dark and grim and low for some time. But lately I feel a turning. And I am sensing that my story is seeing the corner where I will be able to say “But God…” Ephesians 2 has a passage like this. Read this:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…”

I am sensing a BUT GOD in my story. I am sensing that I am going to be made able to carry out what I actually want to be and do. You can’t possible imagine how many exclamation points I want to put behind that because I’ve hated who I have been!!!!!! I am so thankful for this turning.

But it’s not like it’s God’s fault and I’ve just been waiting for him to show up. I think he’s just speaking up lately about what this change will take. What kind of obedience it will require. What I will have to lay on the alter. Namely, my baits I mentioned above.

And as my pastor talked about in Sunday’s sermon, God is faithful to provide a way out of our temptation. I can take the door or take the bait. And many times I just have not chosen to go with the Spirit. And even now, it’s only been a week since I have felt all of this changing in me, but I am going with it. And going with it tangibly looks like really really rough, abandoned, scary, selfless obedience in each moment. And I don’t want to do it! But I do want to do it! The me that doesn’t want to do it is the one that would rather preserve self and be treated fairly and given justice and experience perfect understanding and basically sacrifice everything else, especially humility in order to achieve those pleasures. The me that wants to do it is the NEW CREATION in me. The me that God created me to be. She’s the girl that I take joy in being because she’s God’s daughter who delights in Him and in Him being enough for her. When I let her come out, I am free.

I am reading Sacred Marriage, which is all about what I am writing about, but now in addition I am also reading Pursuit of Holiness. I got stuck on like page four and I’m frozen there because God showed me something very important about HIS PRESENCE in my sinful cycles. I know this but I didn’t knooooooow this in my heart in each moment of temptation. The author says about those having trouble defeating sin, “Our first problem is that our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We are more concerned about our own ‘victory’ over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success-oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God…God wants us to walk in obedience, not victory. Obedience is oriented toward God; victory is oriented toward self. This may seem to be merely splitting hairs over semantics, but there is a subtle, self-centered attitude at the root of many of our difficulties with sin. Until we face this attitude and deal with it we will not consistently walk in holiness. This is not to say God doesn’t want us to experience victory, but rather to emphasize that victory is a by-product of obedience.”

So. How this theology becomes practical is that in my moment of temptation, I need to see that me treating this other person (namely my spouse) the way that I am called to love them is OBEDIENCE to God. If I can see God present in the scenario I am in and find obeying him my highest joy, then I find myself in a whole different ball park. I am less likely to be run by my emotions, led by my instincts, reacting to my spouse’s behaviors and tempted by my baits. I need to see real life in light of what is going on spiritually, with Jesus present in that very room, believing that my obedience or disobedience is something I am doing to him.

So all of this to say that I’m sitting there watching Biggest Loser’s finale from last season and I’m on the couch crying because the Lord is piercing my heart that what happened to those people physically is what He will accomplish in me IN THE SPIRIT. He is going to tear away my flesh, enable me to carry out my deepest desires of the Spirit so that I become unrecognizable from who I was before. And all I could see was my sweet husband sitting in the front row, looking at me like – Who is this wife of mine? Who has she become? And he will rejoice over the new creation in me! Lord let it be as you have shown me. Make me new. Let me come forth in 2010 as someone I would not recognize from last year. I can see her in my mind and I want to see her in the mirror. Can this change come? Yes! “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ my Lord!”