Lead from Your Own Revival

So today’s church service was just what I needed to hear. It was about inner revival and how that is how great earthly revivals start. Any revival on earth started with one person choosing to pursue God no matter what.

Well God has called me to a revival of sort in my work with people with ED…and that means I must commit myself to recovery from ED. It means I need to ask the Lord and submit to a great moving within my heart to release me from this ED. This means no matter how hard it gets, how much I am asked to eat, how fast weight gain happens, how scary a fear food seems, I push through relying on the Lord and His Strength. Pursuing Him knowing He is doing a revival within me so I can help free others through Him and His work in me.

It just spoke again to me that my recovery journey can be a source of healing for others. Not to make myself seem mighty at all, but it just helps motivate me to stay the track. If I give into temptation…that’s no motivation for others to push through when they are in the same circumstance..in fact it gives others the excuse they need to lapse too. But if I push through and continue to be obedient to my team who are divinely put in my life…continue to listen to the Spirit within me…then it will motivate others to do the same..or so I hope.

Something the pastor said that really stuck with me is that we can’t tell the Spirit what to do other…we just need to submit to the movement of the Spirit and respond to the Spirit’s calling. Let me tackle the first one first. So submitting to the Spirit means you can’t tell the Spirit what path you want to take or how it all needs to happen…you just have to submit to the movement of the Spirit. For me that comes with not trying to figure out or anticipate or calculate the rate of my weight gain, but to submit to and trust God that He is in control. That even when it seems to fast it will slow down and He won’t let it happen too fast. He showed me that this week with this new plan only causing 1 lb of gain, but still my mind said it was too fast and went into trying to figure it out. Instead I just need to trust in the Lord and instead of praying for x amount of weight gain, I need to tell Him my desires and ask for the strength and the courage to submit to His plan if it is different.

This also means submitting to the Spirit in obedience to my plan. However my nutritionist is “inspired” to change my plan or challenge me I need to trust even if it doesn’t make sense. Instead of getting trapped in trying to figure it all out or manipulate my team, I need to submit to their guidance, trusting God has His Hand in it. I need to submit to this path of recovery God has me on. This revival of recovery in my life. I need to stop trying to figure it out, to plan, to manipulate, and just submit to it. By experiencing the path and the fears that come with it, I can better help others going through it. If I keep trying to forge my own path not only will I end up miserable or possibly dead, but it will be harder for me to help others…to spark the revival of recovery I so hope to be a part of for others.

Now onto responding to the Spirit’s calling. For me this means when that voice inside of me wants me to face a certain fear food, pull back reigns on exercising, not use certain ritual..or whatever recovery goal it calls me to accomplish, I need to follow in obedience. Instead of trying to figure out if the voice is the Spirit when it clearly is and then asking for permission from my team to follow the call when I know they will want me to, I need to respond to the calling and ask my team for support in it. I need to stop trying to stall the move of the Spirit in me and just submit to it even when it gets scary.

After the sermon I got prayer and (thank God) got paired with my pastor’s wife and it was an amazing session. One big thing that came out of it is I need to cling to God and to the verse from Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord your God with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.” This means when weight gain seems too fast, when I hit a certain weight and want to turn back, when meal plan seems to big, when ED is screaming about a certain nutrient, when a fear food seems to big to overcome I need to whisper or shout this to my soul. I need to realize my understanding is full of lies about food and my body and that instead of clinging to my understanding I need to trust the Lord, knowing His plans are good and He has and deserves all control. Knowing He is loving and merciful and won’t let anything too scary happen. Knowing He presents me with only the challenges He knows will make me stronger and that I will overcome. I don’t need to understand all the time, I just need to know and believe Him. And pray to Him when I am scared that He gives me the strength to trust Him and not my own understanding. And that He start to heal my mind so truth replaces the lies.

All of this hit even deeper for me because I was informed today that two people from the treatment center I was at in 2011 died this week. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! These were two young souls that had hopes and dreams. Two lives God had marked for greatness. But the enemy got in with this powerful addiction of an eating disorder. The enemy came in and took their lives and its not fair. I don’t want more souls to be lost to this disorder and I want to be a part of stopping it. That means allowing this revival in my own heart. 

I also got scared by the news of their death because I got scared with this lapse I am in and how weak I am feeling..I don’t want to be the next soul lost because of this disorder. I don’t want to die from this when I feel in my heart God is calling me to be a part of bringing sufferers to Him so they can be healed. In combating the enemy so he can’t steal more precious lives. I don’t want to die because I have a unique story and I know my life has been exactly as it should have been for me to be set up to reach these lost souls in a specific way. That there are people I have not yet met that I am supposed to cross paths with to help them and support them in healing from this horrible disease. If I am dead…what if that means they die too. And I don’t want to die because of a number. My life and my calling are more important than a number on a scale as were the two precious lives lost this week. I want to stand firm against this disease and the enemies use of it to claim innocent lives. It’s not okay and it needs to end NOW! That starts with allowing for revival in me so I can be made strong enough to help others.