Am I pursuing my “ideal weight” because of my own vanity, or because overcoming this stumbling block helps me draw near to God?
This was an exciting morning in my Bible reading, because I read through two climactic sections of Psalms: the crescendo of God’s songbook, Psalms 146-150, and also Psalm 134. Psalm 134 is the final Song of Ascents (Psalms 120-134), the climax where the pilgrim stands in the temple of God, blessing God and praising Him. It is shorter than the other ascents songs, perhaps because once they arrived there in the Temple, I imagine it just defied words, and they were boiled down to the simplest of statements: “Come bless the Lord, all you servants of the LORD.”
What you don’t read here is a lot of back-slapping and “Hey, look at me! I made it! All the way to Jerusalem!” I can be a lot like that when I complete a journey or a goal in my life. Last year, my husband and I hiked Mt. Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine. I don’t want to exaggerate this, because the fact is little kids were blowing past us the whole time — it’s not the hardest thing in the world, but it was by far the hardest physical challenge I’ve ever faced. So for me, it was a big deal and we congratulated ourselves upon summitting and upon safely making it back down. Our self-congratulations was appropriate — after all, we had made the trip just to see if we could (we also thanked God, because please believe me when I say I wouldn’t have made it apart from Him). Our goal, our vision, was to summit that mountain. We did, and it felt great.
That is not why people made the pilgrimage to the Temple. The Songs of Ascent were written to accompany pilgrims on the journey for annual feast days when they would journey from wherever their home was to the Temple to worship God, sacrifice to Him, and fellowship with other Jews. Their goal was not at all about personal achievement. It was entirely about drawing close to God and going to the place where He would meet them. They were spread out geographically, and many were sojourners in lands that were unfriendly to them. They left an unwelcome environment and gradually drew nearer and nearer the Temple, to God, who was their salvation, their hope, their Refuge, their God. You can read in the text their mounting excitement as they draw nearer and nearer.
And then, there they are: “Come bless the Lord, all you servants of the LORD.” They recognized they were servants of God and they take joy in their arrival and in their purpose of worshiping Him in that place.
This is the time of year when I’m contemplating my goals for the new year, and as always, my weight is on the list. By the grace of God, I’ve made a lot of progress in my journey to a healthy weight and victory over my food and eating struggles, but I haven’t finished the journey yet. In fact, the last couple months of 2018 revealed to me that I probably have further to go than I’d hoped in fully overcoming tendencies to use food as emotional consolation.
So reading this today, I am challenged to consider the reason behind my goals. Am I pursuing my “ideal weight” because of my own vanity, or because overcoming this stumbling block helps me draw near to God? Am I serving myself or am I acting as a servant of the LORD? Do my goals make me who I want to be, or who God wants me to be? Do they advance my cause or Christ’s cause? When I achieve them, will I praise my God or congratulate myself?
Are these things really mutually exclusive? I do believe God designed us to be physically fit and healthy, stewarding well the body He has given us. But probably not because He wants us to look awesome in a little black dress. It’s our mindset, the real desire of our heart, that makes the difference. It is not so much WHAT we do, but WHY we do it, because our WHY reveals the intentions of our heart.
As children of God, our motive must be God, because He is our center. One of the most tragic errors we make as human beings in this culture is ascribing to the illusion that God revolves around man — that He is some sort of cosmic Easy button. That is the fallacy cultivated by the existence of man-made religions and relative spirituality. The problem with my truth and my religion and my identity is that they are all defined by me and thus shaped entirely by my goals and perceptions, utterly ungrounded in any absolute.
God’s Word tells us that is not the truth. There is ONE GOD, and neither you nor I are it. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 says “The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” He is the Creator God. He is the Redeemer, the Provider, the Author and Finisher of our faith, and we were created by Him and not the other way around. We do not define Him, He defines us. As such, we revolve around Him. We are to move into His orbit. We act according to His purposes, we are judged according to His right, we live and die at His good pleasure, and our salvation is only by His grace.
If I only want to lose weight to feed my own vanity, I’m not serving the purposes of the LORD. In fact, that’s probably a big indicator that my priorities are pretty messed up. This vanity motive propels us to quick fixes, diet plans that promise results without real change, and usually to quickly regaining whatever weight we lose. That has been my past experience with a couple decades of dieting and weight loss in my own strength. Another one of the Songs of Ascent says it this way: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps 127:1).
But if we invite God into this weight struggle with us, we become open to His purposes and all He can teach us in this journey. I don’t know what He has for you in it. I don’t really know what He has for me in it. Maybe He wants to free us from what weighs us down not just physically but also spiritually. Maybe He will reveal a besetting sin that’s behind the weight struggle. Maybe He will teach us endurance and strength we couldn’t learn any other way. Maybe He will give us compassion for the struggles of others. Maybe He will enable us for some future task we’re not even aware He’s going to give us. Or maybe He wants to use your story to move someone else to saving knowledge of Him. Who knows the purposes of God? But we do know that He has a purpose for each of us, and it is to prosper us and not to harm us (Jer 29:11). And although we fail again and again to create lasting change in our own strength, serving our own selfish motives, the Lord will fulfill his purpose for us (Psalm 138:8).
In his farewell speech to the people of Israel, Joshua challenges Israel to “choose this day whom you will serve” – Who will you serve this year? Will you serve your own vanity or the cultural standards of the world? Will you serve an arbitrary diet plan? Will you serve the desires of your flesh?
I have spent way too much of my life serving the desires of my flesh, and I know that it is only with God’s help that I can change. So my prayer for me and for you is that we can answer that question as Joshua did, setting aside all those things and saying with conviction, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”