The Book • The Course • The Church Resource
About The Book
What's
in a
Name?
WEIGHT: Isn’t that the whole reason you’ve found your way to this website? You may think it’s a word that simply relates to a number on a scale, but it is so much more. In the Bible, weight symbolises struggles, responsibilities, spiritual challenges and even glory! Each of these contexts provides insight into how God wants to help us on our weight loss journey. Let’s explore these ideas…
Invitation to Rest: In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry.” In this passage, Jesus addresses the heaviness of carrying emotional burdens. Although the presenting need may be your struggle with the burden of personal weight gain, many people carry heavy and oftentimes deep-seated emotional baggage as well. Dieting, too, may inflict on us the burden of guilt and shame, because repeated failure, despite all our efforts, weighs heavily on our hearts. Jesus invites us to bring that burden to him so that He can bring us into a place of rest and peace. He wants to teach us His way of tackling this issue, which is far more effective than ‘going on a diet,’ and will, indeed, bring lightness to your soul.
Taking personal responsibility: In Galatians 6:5, we read that each one of us must carry our own load. This means that we are personally accountable. Even though there may be historical reasons why we began to eat inappropriately and put on weight, blaming others for our present response gets us nowhere. Once we accept responsibility, we can begin to move forward, not in our own strength, but in God’s, as He works mightily within us through the power of His Holy Spirit.
Community Support: Galatians 6:2 exhorts us to bear one another’s burdens, so although we must take personal responsibility, we can nevertheless look to our brothers and sisters for empathy and encouragement. The Weighting on God course, when studied in a group, is an ideal way of experiencing this mutual support.
Glory yet to be revealed: The phrase ‘weight of glory’ is found in 2 Corinthians 4:17, where we read: ‘For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.’ Some of you will have heard the saying: ‘After the pain, the beauty remains.’ The process of bringing our eating behaviour under the control of the Holy Spirit can be painful to our Adamic flesh nature! But God is working in us to transform us into His likeness. Yes, we really can exchange our ‘weight of shame’ for a ‘weight of glory’ as we fully yield to Him.
A Play On Words
Waiting
and
Weighting
What's in a Name?
When I was still a young Christian, I would often hear fellow believers talking about ‘waiting on God,’ and I hadn’t a clue what it meant!
The beauty of a play on words is its ability to communicate more than one idea simultaneously. When God gave me the name, ‘Weighting on God’ for this ministry, the deep significance of this play on words (technically called a ‘homophone’) suddenly made complete sense. Let’s delve into the conventional meaning of the phrase, and I’ll show you just how appropriate this is.
The moment we decide to commit our lives to God, the Holy Spirit begins to work within us, aligning us with His plans and purposes. It is so exciting to recognise that God has His hand on us, and that He wants to transform us and use us for His glory.
For this to happen, we must first submit to His Lordship, allowing Him to work in our lives however He chooses. This requires trust, obedience and patience. And it’s the need for patience (is it not?) that most of us find so difficult. One reason for this is that we live in a fast-paced culture that constantly pursues instant gratification. No one wants to have to wait for anything. We want things to happen in our time and according to our plans. We want it all, and we want it NOW!
Most diets play right into this desire for a quick fix. ‘Lose 20 lbs in two weeks’ is the extravagant claim we so often read, and wouldn’t we love that to be the case! It doesn’t matter how gruelling or restrictive the diet plan is, for two weeks we can grit our teeth and bear it. Of course, the reality barely matches up with the claim, and we find that although we do lose a few pounds, we quickly put them back on as soon as we return to normality.
If you want a quick fix, then Weighting on God is probably not for you! But if you want God to do a deep and lasting work, to bring about a paradigm shift in the way you use food, so that old, destructive habits die, and you develop a Spirit-controlled appetite, then this is most definitely the way to go.
God’s timetable is different from ours, and in due season we will see the results we so long for – not just by the numbers on the scales, but evidenced by the joy and freedom this Christ-centred and faith-filled approach brings. If you haven’t done so already, give it a try!