Excuses Excuses

Well, its now been a week since I started my "Made to Crave" spiritual journey.  I've found that I feel very open and exposed to God now that I'm not hiding behind a donut.  Suddenly I have to experience my emotions, and I hate it.  But that's how I know its working.  Here is an excerpt from Lysa's book that I read today:

"I cried out to God and admitted it was crazy to get emotional about pants, for heaven's sake.  I wanted to rise above this vain issue and be comfortable with who I was no matter what size.  The tide of justifications would roll back in, only this time with a spiritual twist:  The world has sold us women a bill of goods that to be good we have to be skinny.  I am too concerned with my spiritual growth to be distracted by petty issues such as weight and exercise.  God loves me just the way I am.  

While the spiritual justifications sounded good, in my heart I wasn't settled.  I knew my weight issue didn't have anything to do with me being spiritual or worldly.  If I was honest with myself, my issue was plain and simple--an issue of self control.  I could sugar-coat and justify it all day long, but the truth was I didn't have a weight problem, I had a spiritual problem."

Ouch.  Am I the only one that has ever made excuses about my life, with some twist of the Bible (of course taken out of context) to make it sound like I'm making an appropriate excuse for God?  You know...those people that say things like "oh that's just not my gift so I can't help in that area" or "I just don't feel called to do that right now"--you get the idea.  Excuses, excuses, excuses.  You probably have a few that you keep on hand, and rotate every now and then to get out of things you don't want to do, or face.  Same way with food and what you eat, "oh I'll start my diet on Monday,"  "I'm too old to lose weight, who cares," "it can't be that bad for me, besides there are a lot worse things I could have a problem with..."  and on and on the cycle goes.  

The Bible says in Mark chapter 12, verse 30 "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." To me that says with all of YOU, all of your life.  So if you are successful at tithing, only because you rely on credit cards to fund the rest of your life, is that faith?  If you are a wonderful encourager to everyone but your family, does that matter?  If your life is not consistent in all areas, don't you need some work?  So why wouldn't this apply to what we eat as well?

I believe it does.

God has so opened my eyes to myself.  Every time He does that I'm not well pleased.  I'm tired of excuses.  Satan makes them so readily available.  Life is way too short.

I don't believe that God blesses us with money and blessings so we can keep them all to ourselves...in like manner I don't believe He blesses us with food so we can over-indulge ourselves.  So many people fall to starvation everyday, many of which are children...and here we sit.

Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial, not everything helps build up God's kingdom--and isn't that what we should be concerned about even in the smallest of choices?