Disciple Together

If you’re anything like me, you’ve realized somewhere along your discipleship journey that you are far from being like Jesus. And despite your best efforts, you continue to fail, multiple times per day.

And yet, you continue to believe God’s word that you too can “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” Matthew 5:48.

Well, if that’s not a tall order! How do we reconcile these two realities?

I have lived most of my 40-ish years in an obese body. But a few years back, I came across a book called Brightline Eating. The foundation of this book is that some people – like me – are highly susceptible to food addiction (and, importantly, some people are not). For those of us who are high on that scale, avoiding addictive foods entirely makes recovery possible. But living in the current food culture of the SAD (Standard American diet) is not conducive to this recovery; more is needed to be long-term successful.

We Christians are also living in a hostile environment.

¹⁵ Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

1 John 2:15-17

I started to realize that the tools I was using to recover from food addiction can also be used to become a better disciple, to recover from “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life”.

I started to implement those tools to transform my identity and my actions.

But we simply can’t do it alone. We weren’t meant to.

Three and a half years after my introduction to Brightline Eating, I am living in a right (for me) sized body, down 130 lbs from the highest weight I’d been, and am living without food being an obsession – I don’t have cravings or binges. I eat a very satisfying variety of real, healthy, God-created foods and am fully satisfied at each meal. But I don’t do this alone either.

I rely on a strong network of support.

These three tools – identity, actions and support – are what have transformed my physical body and what I am using to transform my spiritual life as well. I hope I can bless your spiritual walk with some of the things I’ve learned along the way.

Let us discover, disciple, and transform – together.