Why You Need More Than a Diet to ‘Fix’ You by TERESA SHIELDS PARKER for Charisma News
I love the show Extreme Weight Loss. That’s where the host chooses one extremely large person to lose half their weight in a year. He surprises them at in public and says. “I choose you for the transformation of your life!”
I feel like I’ve been on that show, only it was God who surprised me by saying, “The invitation for the transformation of your life has always been there. It’s always been your choice as to whether or not you are ready to surrender to the process.”
Losing nearly two-thirds of my body weight didn’t take me a year. It’s taken me years to get that weight off. Even though I’ve lost 250 pounds, I have still not fully arrived at where I want to be. There’s always more to work on. We will never get it perfect. I will continually be arriving until the day I reach heaven.
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When I started my weight-loss journey, losing weight was all I wanted. At 430 pounds, I thought if I lost weight all my problems would be solved. Far from it. Weight loss was the outward sign of many faulty ways of thinking that stemmed from emotional issues, which led to spiritual disconnects.
Entire Remodel
What I began to understand was a diet or changing my eating alone would not fix me. I had to have an entire remodel. I had to allow God to tear my house down and start over beginning with restoring my very foundation.
I knew transformation was possible because God says we can be transformed by renewing our minds. “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:1-2).
Those verses mean several things to me. First, transformation is just a thought away. It begins with allowing God to renew my mind. Then, transformation begins by me learning how to fix my attention completely on God and what He wants.
Transformation Begins With Surrender
This last thing, though, is the toughest. Transformation begins with surrender. What does it mean to offer my body to God as a living sacrifice? It means I have to surrender everything I am to all that God is.
