When it comes to the scale, I am like the Israelites who wandered for 40 years as they waited to go into the Promised Land. For 40 years, I had a tortured relationship with the scale and my weight. I longed to go into the Promised Land of Freedom!
One time at Weight Watchers, the leader asked us what we wanted. I raised my hand and said I wanted to be free. She didn’t know how to respond to that. I longed for freedom!
There was never a time that I couldn’t tell to the tenth degree what I weighed. That number weighed on my mind constantly. I was in bondage. And the enemy used my weight to beat me down and make me feel worthless.
Without realizing it, the scale was my idol. There were days that I bowed down to the scale at least three times a day. Stripped and aching, I would look to it to make me feel better.
And the joy of the scale was my strength–not the joy of the Lord. My sense of self-worth rode the roller coaster of what the scale told me.
Until three years ago.
God led me to put away my bathroom scale for an entire year. An entire year!
Not weighing every day brought me into a place of freedom and peace. It was life to me!
“For the mind set on the flesh [the scale] is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.” Romans 8:6
God led me to be accountable to Him–not the scale.
“So that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.” Romans 3:19
This was a huge victory for me. For an entire year, I put away the scale and walked in freedom from its hold over me.
I dreaded the end of the year when I would step onto the scale again. Would I lose? Would I gain? What would happen if I gained? Would I go back to my idols of the scale and diets?
I’m not going to tell what happened. Because that wasn’t the point. The point was the idol God was calling me to put away.
The point was to stop bowing down to the god of the bathroom scale.
The point was freedom. Sweet freedom!
Leave a Reply to Tom Bump Cancel reply