Untitled Revelation

For the past three weeks God has been taking me on a journey...well we've been on a journey for about 36 years, but going a little deeper.  I have been pursuing this battle that I have with food which I have found to be a constant fight throughout my life since I can remember.  From the twelve year old chubby adolescent whose body was changing and forming so rapidly, to a highschooler struggling with anorexia and bulimia, to a married woman ashamed of her imperfections, to a mom who always needed to lose that extra 10 pounds.  Now at thirty six years old I am not asking why do I struggle with a stupid thing like this..But why does it rule over me.  It's no longer all about my looks (although it plays a part) its about if God is who I believe him to be in my life, if Jesus overcame sin and death, and if the Holy Spirit lives in me to help and guide me into Truth, why do I worship, adore, and desire food so much.  This question dug me deep into my heart and soul; into my past.  This question dug me deep into God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  This question dug me deep into the word of God.  Here is what I found.  I found that I had many characteristics of a lukewarm "Christian."  Sure I believe in Jesus, I go to church, I pray, I try to do good most of the time, I read my bible, I have the hope of heaven where my tears will be wiped away and there will be not more hurt sadness, or sickness, I have fellowship with other people who believe, I give as long as it doesn't hurt or cramp my lifestyle...but what I found is that I did not have a repentant heart.  Yes I became a Christ follower and was Saved by praying to ask Jesus Christ to come in and forgive my sins on July 1, 1990 through a conversion experience.  And since that time I have grown, had ups and downs and thirteen years later I believe I began to learn the Holy Spirits role in my life and began to allow the Spirit which had been available to me since my point of conversion but had not tapped into the power of being filled with the Holy Spirit to understand Scripture etc.  The thing I am learning now is that I am still a sinner I am a wretched sinful human.  I am selfish, self protecting, untrusting, I gossip, I lust after food and other things, I hide, I have pride, I judge others, I sometimes go through the motions with God. I have the sin of perfectionism, people pleasing and pretending, I get angry and really stupid reactions come out of my mouth, I am ashamed, I forget God, I look for the praise of men.  I am a sinner.  At my core.  Even my most excellent attempts at "finding myself"  is disgusting.  Even my kindest efforts of love and giving without God is a filthy rag which in the bible relates to a used menstrual cloth.  My best efforts are like a used tampon to God.  That is my state.  Yet I believe in Jesus and he has saved me.  So now what will I do with this dilemma?  I want to be like Jesus but I can't. I am human, flawed and sinful.  I want to live out the scriptures and deny myself take up my cross and follow him but I am weak and my cross is so heavy, I want to forget my Father's house and my Mother's house and run into whatever Jesus has but my humanness attaches me to comfortable tangible relations over Christ, I want to Go and make disciples of all nations but I have a job, and a to do list and a routine, an alarm clock, I want to sell everything I have and give it to the poor but that doesn't make sense because then I will be the poor and who will give to me?  This has been a very conflicting and at points almost defeating time for me.  I am truly seeing who I am as a sinful human and at the same time seeing who God is as the Holiest of Hollies and Jesus as True Perfection who I am supposed to be like but continually miss the mark.  

Last week an interesting situation came up as I am thinking about my wretchedness, my greed, my obsession with food, and my lack of giving to the poor, the hungry, the least of these...A little boy comes into my restaurant and we begin having conversation.  I can tell as we are visiting that he is a mischievous guy and full of great imagination so I take a lot of his words with a grain of salt.  Somehow our conversation leads to him saying I am having Doritos for dinner tonight!  I say what else are you having with your Doritos?  He  says nothing we never eat dinner.  What? I say are you telling me the truth? He says yes .  My boys are intently watching me and are in unbelief that someone would not have food at their house.  I don't know if this little boy was telling the truth or not but at that point I had an opportunity to help, to give...so I gave and sent him out the door with a sackful of food.  My boys began to ask me questions about the situation.  I finally said whether he was telling the truth or not does not matter but I do not want to go to bed tonight knowing there could be a hungry boy out there that I could have helped.  And as those words came out of my mouth and began to process through my mind I felt true disgust at myself.  I wasn't giving that boy food to be Jesus and share the love of God I was giving that boy food so I could sleep tonight! Yuck, just typing those words makes it more real and I have just about had it up to here with me!  But then that true and Perfect Love, my Jesus, who is such a gentleman steps in as I am about to beat myself up for the countless numbered time.  And it is revealed, my motives.  My motives are wrong and I am incapable of doing any good,even on a minuscule level.  The missing link is the repenting my sin and allowing the Holy Spirit to give me a desire for Jesus.  I cannot love without God, I cannot love God without God!  WOW!  Maybe to someone who is reading this it's like duh how come it took you this long?  But, I for the first time, began to truly get it. Even though I have been a saved Christian for 20 years cannot do one good thing with out my Savior Jesus Christ spilling his love into me.  How is this done?  By loving Jesus.  Like being crazy in love with what he did on the Cross and the awesomeness of who he is. I really have no adequate words for the power of touching on getting this.  It changes everything.  All my continual attempts to be changing into being like Jesus that have always failed are now quite understandable.  How can I be like Jesus without Jesus.  In the book Crazy Love, by Francis Chan (an incredible MUST READ!!!!!!) he drives the reader to this very thing.  He asks as a "Christian"  are we ok with the "gifts" of hope, peace, joy, and the promise of heaven and living our "Christian " lifestyle where we are ok compared to the rest of the secular world? Are those "gifts that we "get" with being saved enough, or do we have a unending deep desire to continually press into and fall into deep love with Jesus for who he is.  He poses the question would we be ok to know that we will go to heaven and have all of our tears wiped away, complete and sheer joy, happiness, pleasure, be made perfect, while being with all those we love who are also perfect, no more night, sickness, grief, no more problems but without Jesus?  Or are we anticipating and craving heaven so much because we will be with Jesus?  Think about it! Where is your heart?  Is it on food (whatever your weakness, stronghold, adiction may be), your to do list, the next thing, worshipping your children, money, or is it just on Jesus.  I know as a lover of Jesus I need to swim deep into the power of the Holy Spirit and allow His Living Water to fill me with Love, His love that is perfect, that doesn't adore food like I do, that doesn't compare me to everyone else, that does unconditionally love everyone from my favorite people to the unlovable, that does love me and views me as the perfected bride of Christ and as this love is poured in the serving is natural, the giving comes, my Food Idle shrinks, and it spills. Naturally I deny myself ,take up my cross and follow, this act of allowing the spirit to fill- allowing a deep love for Jesus to grow in me allows me to follow him without hesitation of turning back.  There must be a continual filling I must spend time with my soul lover Jesus in order to be able to love others give, and see the least of these as important and worth pursuing, I must remember that apart from Him I Can do Nothing and with Him all things are possible.  When we spend time still before our God and spilling our hearts deepest cry to him we find that His love is soooo Good!!!  We want more, not more food but more love, the love that keeps giving as we see his creative show each night while the sunsets behind the harvested fields, the complete miracle of our child's voice, the sheer beauty of his love as our soul connects with another soul that loves him and we say Yes he is so good, the sweet love that we can savor when a heart turns from death to life in confessing Christ as Savior for the first time, we find that the life we tried to make for ourselves was not life at all and the life that he gives is more that we could ever imagine.  We learn to trust his love and know that the enemy came to seek, and kill, and destroy, but Jesus came -in love- to give us life to the fullest.  We learn to give without questioning and with great Joy because He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and if I who am in my humanness evil know whow to give good gifts to my children how much more will my Father in Heaven give to me.  We learn to savor, trust, commune, yearn, and ache for his love. His love only produces more love. Its never ending - the greatest thing is love and love is God and to love God I need God so that he, through me can create a love relationship which will allow me to love others....LOVE< LOVE< LOVE< LOVE< LOVE=It's all about Love!