Dear TEAMS...: 2012

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The God-Shaped Vacuum -- Part 4

Dear TEAMS,

In the Fall of 2011, I was a keynote speaker at our church’s Ladies’ Retreat. I spoke about the God-Shaped hole, and how that related to addiction, and brought in my personal experience with food addiction. This and the following posts are this same talk with minimal modifications.

A attended the retreat and said it’s what she’s heard her whole life. May you find this information as familiar. And may you decide every day to allow Father to fill you when you are empty, instead of with all the earthly stuff you rely on. Because you all have addictions as well.

Click here to read the first part of this talk.
Click here to read the second part of this talk.
Click here to read the third part of this talk.

Love,

Then God really showed me a concept that brought me to my knees. Before, I had thought an “addiction” was something people who were addicted to substances had, and it usually involved alcohol, drugs, tobacco, or porn. God, in His gentle, kind way, showed me that addiction was actually when someone returns to the same sin over and over to fill the God-shaped hole they have. And I had to admit, by that definition, I am an addict. That’s a pretty humbling thing, to realize there are things that I turn to instead of God on a consistent basis.

So let’s review here:

Every person on this earth was created with a place that only God can fill. It is a large place, and its emptiness leads us to have feelings of discomfort, unsettledness, desperation, ancyness, discontentment, and unpeacefulness.
Sin is the act of putting something in our God-shaped hole that’s not God. When it first goes in, it satisfies for a short period. Anything can be a sin, depending on what our hearts are at that moment.
Addiction is simply a sin that we repeatedly turn to and put into our God shaped hole. Usually it is something that we have found that provides the longest temporary comfort, but it wears off and we eventually realize that hole is still there.

Now, given those definitions, I want to share with you my addictions. I actually turn to food (usually sweets, but it can be anything), escaping through daydreaming, and entertainment as my addictions.

I’d like to just take my food addiction and examine it a little bit based on this new definition of addiction. Remember, eating food is not sinful. Eating as a pleasurable experience is talked a lot about in the Bible! But remember that we have a new definition of addiction, and it is based on the state of my heart when I eat the food that is the problem.

How many of you have ever watched an episode of The Biggest Loser? For those of you who haven’t, it’s a show where they take people who are what is medically considered morbidly obese, which means the adipose tissue in their body (what we call body fat) is so excess that it is guaranteed to have an adverse and/or fatal effect on overall health. They have them living at a spa where they spend hours per day working out and learning how to eat better. Over the course of 8 months, there are weigh-ins and every week of the show the people who didn’t lose the largest percentage of body weight are eliminated, until it comes down to a couple people and one of them is voted the Biggest Loser.

Well, it’s quite the show, and there are all these success stories. And you’d think that after someone had taken the time, effort, and cost to lose all that weight, that after the final weigh-in, they’d be done with being overweight forever. So for the purposes of this talk, I actually got the stats of 46 people from the first 10 seasons of Biggest Loser contestants and found out some interesting facts. Of the 46 people I got the stats for:

5 have lost more weight, if even just a pound
10 have gained 1-10 pounds back
17 have gained 11-25 pounds back
10 have gained 26-45 pounds back
3 have gained 47, 75, and 92 pounds back, one of whom has gained back all the weight lost

If you do the math, 30 of the 46 people listed here had gained back 11-92 pounds from the time they went on the show, as of December 2010. And these stats reflect only the people who were willing to talk to the Today show to give their stats. It doesn’t count one other person from season 3 who regained 200 of the 300 pounds lost for that show. So it’s safe to assume that there may actually be others not reflected here.

Well, obviously, there is something more at work here than just “people eating too much.” What’s at work here is where these people’s hearts are, and what they are putting into their God shaped hole.

But here’s the kicker. Please note that I’m not overweight. In fact, on some medical charts, I am within the desired range of weight for my height, build, age, and muscle tone. But I am telling you that on a base level, there is nothing different between me and anyone on this chart, because we share the same sickness: turning to food when we should be turning to God to take care of the ache in our souls. God does not judge me by my appearance, he judges me by what’s going on “in here” at every moment. As I have been sharing this evening, the Holy Spirit may have already brought to mind things that are sin and addiction for you. Remember how I love you and consider you my sisters. I am bringing you a message of hope today, and of freedom from discontentment, restlessness and unpeaceful living.

What are some practical things we can do when we realize we are caught in this web?

Realize that the only person judging you about this is you. God neither condemns nor judges you right now that you do this.
Understand that God might deliver you immediately from this addiction, but more likely He will have you do the hard work necessary to undo the addiction, and it will take time.

When the urge to sin strikes:

Identify the feeling you are having. Are you lonely? Sad? Angry? Frustrated? Disappointed? Verbally speak out, “I am _____________________ right now, God! I feel this way because __________________________________________.”
Search the Scriptures to discover what He has already said to you to comfort you. No cheating--this needs to be work you do with a concordance and Bible memorization!
Pray. Use your prayer language if you wish. Just tell Him everything!
Listen to what He responds. Wait for it.
If you find yourself daily turning to this sin, just as with Alcoholics Anonymous and other addiction groups, confess your sins to others for accountability. It can be a mentor, a friend, or other Christian.
If your sin is affecting the quality of your life or the lives of your inner circle of friends and family, consider counseling or other programs.
If your sin is illegal, seek professional help.
If the sin is something you can live without, consider a fast WITH COUNSELING to teach you how to have that thing in your life and have it not have power over you.

Here’s the good news about me walking in this concept: I am happier and healthier (physically, spiritually, and emotionally) than I’ve ever been. I am able to cope with difficult circumstances better than I ever have. I have lots more friends, and I have found a greater joy in my blessings and greater capacity to forgive and offer others grace.

And as my sisters, I would like to tell you something. This is not the talk that I would generally prepare for a Ladies’ Retreat. However, it is the talk that I feel our Father would like you to hear. Not because He wants to condemn you—no way! Because you have accepted what Jesus did for you and want to live your life for God, God sees that. So He knows you are willing to go places others who don’t love Him yet are not! He wants to take you into greener pastures, places of deeper health emotionally, physically, and spiritually, and places of greater contentment that others who are of the world simply cannot go. Understanding and embracing the concepts I’ve talked about will take you deeper than you ever dreamed was possible in your daily life. It will open you up to deeper understanding of Scriptural concepts that will continue to bring you even greater life—abundant life. As your sister, I want to encourage you to let God show you what you are putting into your God-shaped hole day-to-day, hour-by-hour, and moment-by-moment. Doing this will allow you to live in greater intimacy with God every day.

Isaiah 55

¹WAIT and listen, everyone who is thirsty! Come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Yes, come, buy [priceless, spiritual] wine and milk without money and without price [simply for the self-surrender that accepts the blessing].

²Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your earnings for what does not satisfy? Hearken diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness [the profuseness of spiritual joy].

³Incline your ear [submit and consent to the divine will] and come to Me; hear, and your soul will revive; and I will make an everlasting covenant or league with you, even the sure mercy (kindness, goodwill, and compassion) promised to David. (Amplified)

To this end, I have prepared a worksheet.

Friday, November 2, 2012

The God-Shaped Vacuum -- Part 3

Dear TEAMS,

Love,

It was when I hit my 30s that I had a really big revelation. I grew to understand that my reason—everyone’s reason--for living was because God created me to be intimate with Him. Period. God created all of us to be intimate with Him—it is our main purpose for being here. If we were paralyzed on our bed for all of our lives and couldn’t do a thing for Him, but we chose to commune with Him and relate with Him all our days, we would actually fulfill the purpose we were created for. Everything else—even the good stuff like evangelism, missions work, reading our Bibles—is secondary to that purpose.

But then I asked myself why it was, if I was created for this purpose, why I didn’t do this? That’s when God led me to different verses and writings that showed me the answer.

What is the God-Shaped Vacuum?

Lord, you have made us
for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.
Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1

There exists in each of us a God-shaped vacuum. Think of yourself with a puzzle piece in the middle of you at your core. The only piece that will fit perfectly is the piece that is shaped just like God. The problem is that we put other things into that God-shaped hole. Some of them almost fit, but none of them fits perfectly the way the God shaped puzzle piece does. Only when that piece is fitted in there perfectly do we find relief from that nagging emptiness.

Here are a few verses from the Bible that speak of this, void that can only be satisfied by God. I know before God really showed me this concept, I thought David was speaking about being in a mood for God. After learning this concept, I realized it was a perpetual state we are in. David wasn’t discussing an emotion, but a constant state of being.

Psalm 42: AS THE hart pants and longs for the water brooks, so I pant and long for You, O God. 2My inner self thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

Psalm 63: 1O GOD, You are my God, earnestly will I seek You; my inner self thirsts for You, my flesh longs and is faint for You, in a dry and weary land where no water is.

Ecclesiastes 3:
11 He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. (NASV)

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men's hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Amplified)

The great thing is that now you have a name for that feeling of emptiness, dissatisfaction with life, discontentment, restlessness, despair, depression you may experience. When you know this is the source of those feelings, you can set things aright fairly easily, though sometimes it will take time and all the time it will take work.

Once I got ahold of this concept, and how it was the source of my frustration and discontentment of life, God redefined things for me. I actually didn’t believe it at first, because it seemed too simple, much like in Psalm 119:130 which says, The unfolding of Your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple. But more and more, He showed me that really, accepting this Truth could solve a lot of my life issues, if I was willing to do the work associated with it. Once I accepted this Truth, Scripture took on new dimensions for me. One big way it did was in how I defined “Sin.” You see, I used to define sin as the things in the Bible I shouldn’t do, or disobeying God. But once I got the concept of what the God shaped hole was, I had to redefine sin. Sin became for me anything I put in the God-shaped hole that wasn’t Him.

That really blew me away! I no longer had a checklist of things I could and couldn’t do—I actually was now stuck with having to evaluate in each moment, “Am I using this thing to fill the place only God can fill to meet this emptiness I have?” So all of a sudden, I had to evaluate my heart attitude, not my actions. For instance, nowhere in the Bible does God speak about chocolate being evil. However, for me, dark chocolate holds a special place in my heart and it was something I turned to for comfort. But now, I needed to evaluate, “Am I eating this chocolate to meet a need only God can fill, or am I eating it because I like the taste of chocolate and it is pleasurable?” And if I was, I needed to decide whether or not I was going to eat that chocolate. If I ate that chocolate when my heart was not right, I needed to accept the fact that I had sinned. It really put a whole new light on what matters in life.

So, as I was preparing for this talk, I thought it would help to give you all examples of a typical day of sinning in my life. So I got out my pen and paper, and I would like to show you a list of things I put in my God shaped hole instead of God to satisfy a yearning I had at any given moment in the day. Remember, these things were technically sin because of what my heart attitude was, not because they are inherently bad things. It was thinking that these things were God shaped:

Prideful thoughts
Comparing my body to someone else’s
Food
Perfectionism
Lust
Religiosity
Self-improvement
Envy
Anger
Dwelling on something wrong that was done to me in the past
Accomplishing my to-do list
Sarcasm
Cynicism
Fantasy
Facebook
Television
Pursuing gaining a thing
Fiction reading
sweets

I got so tired of recording this all, that I stopped at lunch!

When I got this new definition of sin, I noticed a pattern emerging, and that there were certain things in life that I repeatedly turned to in my life when I would have that empty feeling.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The God-Shaped Vacuum -- Part 2

Dear TEAMS,

Love,

We have been sharing a lot about stories this weekend, and what I would like to do is share with you as my sisters some of my story, and a key concept I learned that radically changed my life and has practically made my life easier. In fact, my understanding this concept has become key to my physical, mental, social, and emotional health. Could I please see the hands of the women in this room who would like to be healthy physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally. Great! Then we are all on the same page. And if you didn’t raise your hand, thanks for being honest. I hope you will still stay with me to see what I have learned for later in life when you are at a place you’d like to get there.

I am the product of many circumstances growing up. My parents married in 1955 and my father was going to seminary to study to be a pastor and my mother was preparing to be a pastor’s wife the way most women in that time period were in conventional churches. Her wedding gifts included linens for entertaining, those little glass plates with a circle in them for cookie and punch receptions, and good silver. But after the first year of marriage, my father began to make choices that took him away from the relationship he had with the Lord, and my mother began to make choices because of my father’s choices that took her further away as well. When I came along as the last of 4 surviving children 12 years into their marriage, my father was not honoring his marriage covenant and my mother was caught in a web that included self-pity, anger, and bitterness. I would like to stop here and be sure to honor my parents, because as shocking and sad as these facts are, I will say that they earnestly tried to do the best with what they had. All of us kids always had food on the table, and it does appear that my parents understood that life was bigger than them at that point. This fact is not lost on me, and I want to publicly compliment even though they are not here for the sacrifices they made for our wellbeing, based on what they felt was best at the time.

I entered adult life after a childhood that involved my parents divorcing, the embarrassment of my father’s indiscretions, molestation by a relative, and being raised by a feminist mother. But God is the Hound of Heaven, isn’t He? Because included in that childhood was hearing about Jesus Christ and the need to accept Him into my heart, and also having many people in the church I was attending take me under their wing to show me how to read the Bible, and how to be sure that I related to God as my friend as well as my Savior.

After college, I worked for a year and got married to Darryl, and of course, we had our children. Darryl and I have had our hard times as well, as we have been through counseling on three different occasions, and I have had two different depressive episodes, plus all of the challenges that come from having children.

The thing is, with all of life’s ups and downs, I kept trying to be a good Christian, follow the Bible, worship God. However, I kept having desperate times where I asked questions such as:

Why am I even here?
Isn’t there more to life than this?
I thought I was made for greater things
If I do all of the right things, why do I still feel empty?
If I’m a mature Christian, why do I have ups and downs?
How do I keep all of these plates spinning without letting them fall?

And I still wrestled with these bouts of feeling like I was going to jump out of my skin, or feeling anxious, or just having no motivation to do anything, because I didn’t see the purpose of working so hard or striving so hard. Has anyone ever felt these things? Or better, who is willing to admit they have felt this way?

Friday, October 26, 2012

The God-Shaped Vacuum -- Part 1

Dear TEAMS,

Love,

It is wonderful to be up here talking to you tonight. I need to tell you that I am humbled to be up here, because I have been at [our church] for over 17 years now, and I know there are people in this room who have lived the concept I am going to share a lot longer than I have. I have learned so much from all of you here, even if I haven’t told you. I stand in the back a lot during worship, and I wish you all could see the things I see spiritually over you—ALL of you! Be assured, Ladies, that God is raising you up to even greater things that you can imagine, and that He is seeing all of the little things you do in secret.

Usually most speakers start out with a funny story, and I wanted to share one relating to my humanness. Nancy wrote me this wonderful note this week—I bet all of you know her handwriting and look forward to those little rectangles in the mail—and I opened it and was reading it to [Daddy]. At the end of it, she wrote, “I am so looking forward to God’s ministry through you this weekend. Love, Nancy” I sighed and rolled my eyes and said, “Whew! No pressure!” Darryl looked at me lovingly, walked over with his encouraging eyes, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “You’re right, Honey. The whole success of the entire weekend sits squarely on your shoulders.”

Well, thankfully, that opened my eyes a little bit to letting God work instead of me. I am blessed that I can share with you because I really do view you all as my sisters. You see, I live my life to be more intimate with God every day. It is the sole thing that drives me, over and above my commitment to my husband or raising successful, godly adults with my children—even though those are significant driving forces in my life. But there is no one in my extended blood family who shares that passion or motivation, and in fact, I am subject to ridicule, judgment, disrespect, and speculation by certain members of my “blood” family. Some of you in this room are in the same boat as I am.

But if you are not, imagine what it is like for me that on any given Sunday, the fellowship I have with you during coffee break is significantly deeper than anything I have with my own blood family. Knowing what goes on during coffee break sometimes, I imagine that might make you laugh. Still, I hope that helps you understand the bond I have with you, in that no matter what our backgrounds, life experiences, or even certain interpretations of Bible passages, I know that we share a common bond and appreciation for the only thing that matters in life. I am truly comforted by that, and count it as one of my main blessings in life.