In my last blog, I wrote about idolotry and the things that I set as high places in my heart in the places that only God should reign. As I've been walking and fighting through what it looks like to destroy false gods and dismantle idols in my life, God has been faithful to show me the way to navigate through what can often feel like a field of landmines.
I was reading in my quiet time the other morning in Romans 12, and got stuck on verse 2:
I began to pick apart this verse, phrase by phrase, and asking questions like, "what does it mean to conform? What does the pattern of this world look like? What is the definition of transformed and renewal?" Through the time spent deconstructing this verse, I came to the question:
God responded to me with this truth:
Transformation begins in our minds and our hearts. I can try as hard as my strength allows to throw off the sin that entangles me, but I keep failing. Until my mind is in submission, my body will not obey no matter how hard I struggle and fight.
I realized how true this was when I started to become so fixated on getting rid of my idols, that they began to take on more importance, weight, and prominance in my life. By trying so hard to rid myself of them, I was inadvertently giving them more of an influence, more energy, more power over my thoughts.
So I stopped. I stopped fixating on what I was eating. I stopped pushing myself to be perfect. I stopped letting thoughts of food have a place of importance in my head. I just had to let go and release my false beliefs and perceptions of myself. I'm still not walking in perfection, but I am walking in letting my thoughts, emotions, feelings, perceptions, and knowledge fall in line with God and His Truth instead of the pattern of this world.
And that, my friends, is a taste of freedom.
