My entire life I have struggled with my weight.  I was overweight up until 9th grade and then I lost about 40 pounds and got to a normal size…then by graduating high school I weighed over 300.  By 2001, I weighed over 400 pounds and I was physically incapable of doing normal things.  Climbing stairs was almost impossible.  So, I began the Atkins diet.  My motives for losing weight were pretty much why any 21 year would want to:  find a girl, be more active, do things outdoors.  I was on Atkins for 18 months solid, working out 5 days a week, and lost about 180 pounds to get down to 230 pounds and a pant size 36.  The picture below (although blurry) shows me just after I met Steph in ‘03 at my lowest weight (I’m in the middle).  

Fast forward to now…having gained back up to 350, lost to 290, gained back to 373 now.  So, now we have a new year ahead of us.  But, New Year’s Resolutions are not my reason this time.  

My pastor, Ben McGraw, preached a sermon on the violent work of mortifying/slaying sin in our lives.  My entire life I have viewed the urge/passion to eat as the sin, which is incredibly defeating.  If we feel we have wronged God every time the urge/passion to sin is present, then we would be sinning UNCEASINGLY.  Romans 7:13-25 says this:

¹³Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. ¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh,^(S) sold under sin. ¹⁵For I do not understand my own actions. For^(T) I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with^(U) the law, that it is good. ¹⁷So now^(V) it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells^(W) 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. ^19(X) For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want,^(Y) it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

    ²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²²For^(Z) I delight in the law of God,^(AA) in my inner being, ²³but I see in my members^(AB) another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from^(AC) this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Passion ALWAYS lies close at hand.  The war rages ALL the time!  It’s the expression of that passion that is sin, not the existence of it.  God designed us so that his daily, hourly, minutely victory against the sin nature points to him.  So that every man that has the exact same passions can see that the Spirit is putting to DEATH the EXPRESSION of those passions.  What a freeing truth.  

So, my motivation?  The same as it should be in every area of my life:  To glorify Christ through His work in me!  My means: the Word, the Spirit, eating to glorify God (crazy thought huh?).  

Will the passion ever go away?  No!  For it lies “close at hand”.  Is Christ’s power in us sufficient?  ABSOLUTELY!  For He was tempted in EVERY way we were…and he lived sinlessly.  His passions were not sin…his absence of expression of those passions made him sinless.

Praise God!

Please pray for Steph and I as we journey through these rich, HUGE, new truths in the Word.  

All that said…here’s a kind of “starting point picture”  -  I was alarmed when I saw this.  

And a quick update.  I’m 2 weeks into the “diet” (I’m starting on Atkins) and I’ve lost 15 pounds.