"Let us run with patience" (Heb. 12:1).

When we realise that we can bring God into our struggles over weight loss and turn this whole area of our lives over to him, the first thing that usually happens is that we are given hope. We may have tried for years, many of us, to shed the pounds and have been disappointed time and time again to see the weight creep back on, but now –for those of you who have read my book ‘How to Stop Dieting and Start Living’- it is like a ray of hope breaking in on our dark night of frustration and despair…  

When we realise that God doesn’t judge us for being fat and that He doesn’t want us to be enslaved to diets – counting calories and points and feeling guilty over every tasty thing we put into our mouths - it is like a breath of fresh air.  God loves us unconditionally and wants to help us get to the root of our disordered eating. He wants also to empower us by his Holy Spirit so that we can find the grace to overcome in His strength, not our own.  Wonderful!

So we pick ourselves up off the ground and with renewed vigour start to run towards our goal of bringing this whole area of our lives under the authorityl of Jesus Christ.  Sometimes we see immediate results and are really encouraged by that but this is a marathon, not a sprint that we are called to run.  The things in our lives which caused us to turn to food as a coping mechanism – loneliness, pain, low self-esteem, fears, stress – these things have got deep roots, some of them stretching way back into our childhood.  God is on our case the moment we cry out to him, but these things don’t get resolved overnight.  Little by little he will bring things out into the light of his love and gently minister to our inner needs, setting us free so that we lose our dependency on food for emotional support.  However, this is not like a diet and  we need to be in for the long haul.

When the road seems long we can easily become weary.  When this happens our enthusiasm wanes and we slacken our pace.  We may decide to rest for a while and then it becomes harder to get motivated to carry on.  If we are not vigilant we can find that we have dropped out of the race altogether, even to the point of looking back.

So we have to keep running; we must never think of stopping or turning back.  If we trip over and fall, then we must pick ourselves up and get back into the race. Running with patience isn’t easy.  We must keep our eyes not only on our goal of losing weight but also on Jesus, who is the author and finisher of our faith. His promises never fail and in due season He will bring us to  our destination.  Along the road there are precious lessons to be learned; there are all sorts of things that God wants to reveal to us about Himself as well as about us.  His goal is that we be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus, and He is ever patient with us to that end.

There is a verse in the book of Isaiah, the prophet, which says: ‘You were worn out by the length of your road; yet you did not say, “It is useless.” You renewed your strength and therefore you did not fail.’   (Isaiah 57:10) You can renew your strength, too, as you wait on the Lord in simple faith and trust.