I raised the white flag on my binge eating disorder and started taking Ozempic. It is a great tool but not a magic wand. However, I was ready for the tool because I had already developed a sustained exercise routine and healthier eating. The medication was the last puzzle piece to help me put everything together. I’m on my way to a healthier me.
This has got me thinking because my prayers to control my weight and health go back years. Many, many years. And over the years, I have been steadily trending upward, but trending upward didn’t feel like an answer to prayer. It felt like frustration and failure. I wanted to be shazamed into instant success.
But could it be that my weight loss and health prayers were answered way back? What if my spirit, the core part of me that is united with Christ, was first touched with the miracle, and now what is true of my inside is working its way to the outside? Maybe that’s what Paul meant when he said we work “out” our salvation with fear and trembling.
This resonates with me. And it’s consistent with what I see daily with my clients and friends. We pray big prayers, then look for some zapping to happen from the outside that will work its way in. All the while, little, tiny changes occur inside them that end up transforming the person. Like me, they slowly trend upwards, more toward who Christ has made them to be.
I’ve got a friend who has balance issues. We’ve prayed for a miracle healing and felt disappointed each time she fell. But all the while, her faith has grown, and now, she is steadier on her feet, and her gait is much improved. I’ve got other friends who have children who are perpetually in crisis. We asked Jesus for an immediate intervention. But instead of the zapping, we’ve noticed a slow and steady improvement, peppered with dramatic relapses. If you didn’t know better, you could think these upward trends were coincidental. But I don’t think they are.
The Bible says all our prayers are answered with a “yes and amen in Christ.” That always puzzled me, as did the part where Jesus said that the Father will deliver if we ask anything in His name. My weight loss struggle has felt like a sharp contrast to those promises, so I have told myself my desire was frivolous in a world full of real problems. I watered down the promises and changed my expectations. I looked at the puzzle pieces I was gaining as further evidence of failure instead of answered prayers.
I’m now noticing where the verse says the answers to our prayers are yes and amen IN CHRIST. And I’m learning, because of my union with Christ, that the core part of me is pure and healthy and canoodling with Jesus. We are fused together, and nothing can separate us. That is the real me. And when the real me looks into my Savior’s eyes and says, “Hey Jesus, I need help with my eating,” He says, “Okay!” The core me gets shazamed, and the transformation process begins from the inside out, rather than the outside in.
We are not our struggles. We are not our issues. We are not our drama, circumstances, or pain. We all know instinctively that our issues go into the grave and do not follow us into heaven when we die. That means they are not us! So, what will be true about us in glory must already be true in our spirit now. That’s the part of us untainted by sin and failure and alive with Christ.
I know I’ve been guilty of always, and I mean always, looking for my prayers to be answered out here, in what seems like the “real world.” And they often are. But the actual, lasting changes have happened inside me long before it manifests on the outside. That’s why I’m convinced that the real me is inside, with all my answered prayers, and the more I have faith for that, the more I will be privy to see the miraculous!
A couple of years ago, I started saying, “I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I know who!” Today, I celebrate a deeper understanding of that saying! Let’s get some renewed faith, start cooperating with the true us, and work out our salvation with fear and trembling!
One response
I am practicing what Jason said; our every-day talk must be positive toward answered prayer, whether it manifests itself now or in the future. So I am in the process of being healed, if I understand correctly.