Full Armor of God Diet

In motivational materials, we often see authors asking the question: What do you want to be doing 5, 10, or 15 years from today? Yesterday, I noticed the question in reverse in a book by the famous physician Ben Carson. He reminded us that the first question is important but also asked "What don't you want to be doing 5, 10, or 15 years from now?"

I know exactly what I don't want to be doing 5 years from now. I don't want to be obsessing about food! I'm ready to get over this struggle against sugar. I imagine how nice it will be to reach the point where I'm no longer tempted by sugary treats, the same as I am never tempted to eat a hamburger. I realize we'll always have temptations here on earth. But when Jesus returns to take us all to heaven, I really don't want to still be struggling with this area. I don't want to have a talk with Jesus about how I spent my entire life trying to overcome sugar addiction and how I never learned to accept His strength. Instead I want to praise Him and say thank you. I want to say remember in 2006 when you helped me finally overcome my obsession with food?

Of course, there will always be other areas of sin that I struggle with, and my whole life will be a life of overcoming through Jesus' strength more and more of the sin in my life. But I don't want to get stuck on this hurdle of sugar addiction. I want to be over it.

I used to think that these annoying cravings were destined to bother me the rest of my life, but then I found a Bible verse that gave me hope.

"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." James 4:7 (NIV)

I love the picture of Satan fleeing from me. Isn't that marvelous? When we submit ourselves to God's will and resist Satan's temptations to follow our own will, Satan flees. To flee means to run away swiftly from trouble. If we resist Satan, we're too much trouble for him. He no longer wants to bother with us. From James 4:7, I see that we can rely on Jesus strength and overcome Satan's temptations and eventually Satan will leave us alone.

So that's where I want to be, not just 5, 10 or 15 years from now, but even 1 year from now. I want to have submitted my appetite to God and resisted the devil over and over and over, so that Satan will have fled so many times, that he won't even bother coming back to tempt me in this area again.