Real Life Blessings // The Best of the Best, Part 5

A while back, we received a prayer request from Peter, who’s been struggling with his weight – it’s affecting his health, his family. It’s ruining his life. Is Jesus in that place with Peter – and if He is, can He make a difference?

Good day! Great that we can get together again. Well, it's Friday, and on Friday we always do something different. We look at somebody's prayer request that we have received.

This week we received a request from Peter. He said, "I've been overweight for a long time now and have trouble with eating too much. I'm pretty lazy; I don't have any motivation. I'm on anti-depressants which doesn't help either. Please pray that I will have the will to stop myself from overeating and get off my backside and go for a walk. I have a lot of health issues surrounding my weight problem, and I'm sick of it. I want to be a fit dad and a good husband, and to do God's work to extend His kingdom. Thanks for the very powerful prayer ministry that you have in Jesus' name.”

There's a fine line, isn't there, between bad habits and addictions? Let's have a look whether God is in the middle of this weight-loss problem of Peter's.

I've got another confession to make today. I love food. I always have and I always will. I grew up in a European household, and my mother cooked all these beautiful goulash dishes with cream and butter. I can't help it. I love food, and I love cooking shows on television. I love to watch Kylie Quan and Jamie Oliver, and they cook up these beautiful meals. But what always strikes me about friend Jamie and Kylie and others like them is the amount of olive oil and butter and sugar and cream that they pour into their cooking. And I've said once before on radio, and I'll say it again, if I ate that much fattening, sweet stuff, I would be the size of a house.

The underlying kind of ethos that is behind that is that you can have it all and there are no consequences. Now we'd like to believe that, but it ain't true. My father was a diabetic. He died of diabetic complications, and it was one of the most horrible and ugly deaths I have ever seen. So if I follow wrong behavior in the area of eating, as obviously Peter is, there are consequences for me. And I am very likely to get diabetes and follow my father's footsteps and die an ugly death.

The same is true, not just with food, but when we do stupid things or when we do wrong things or when we're addicted to bad things, it can ruin our life. The same is true, for instance, of work. If we work too hard, we don't have any balance in our lives, we become exhausted; people burn out. If we don't work enough, we don't have enough money to live. If we don't sleep enough, we end up being really tired. If we're lazy, if we're unreliable - all of those things follow the same life principle, as unpopular as it is, bad behavior leads to bad consequences. Let me say that again, bad behavior leads to bad consequences.

To Peter, the consequences are health issues; there are emotional issues. He is on anti-depressants. He is sick of himself. Doubtless, his self-esteem is really low, because people look at him when he goes out. It's an impact on his marriage, on his family, on his health, and on his ability to do God's work all because, put very plainly and simply, Peter is putting too much food into his mouth and not exercising enough. It sounds simple, but Peter is addicted to eating.

I relate to that. I've always struggled with weight all my life and had to go through a process of losing over 20 kilos because I was eating too much. And even now, if I have a really heavy dinner, I feel lethargic at night. I end up not sleeping well at night. And if I keep doing it, I will probably end up with diabetes.

What to do? Peter is a man, who by his own testimony there believes in Jesus Christ. So if he dies tomorrow he has eternal life. All of these problems will go away and for eternity he'll live with Jesus. The question is, "Does he want to live the way he's living now between now and when he goes to be with the Lord?" And the answer from his email is absolutely no, and yet he lacks motivation.

There's an old Chinese proverb, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." And it's that first step that is mostly the hardest. How to get motivated? Well there are some extreme ways to get motivated. I gave up cigarette smoking 24 years ago now, because I was with someone when they died of cancer. And though I was smoking three packets a day, I threw the packet of cigarettes into the bin at the hospital. And since that day I have never had a single cigarette.

I guess it's extreme because it takes you to the end of your life. And you look at the consequences of your behavior and you say, "Do I want to end up like that"? That's a powerful thing to do. Do I want to end up like that?

But what about the spiritual dimension? The apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Philippian church in chapter 2, verse 13, "God is at work in us, enabling us both to will and to work for His good pleasure." God is at work in us. The same God, the same Holy Spirit who rose Jesus from the dead is at work in our bodies, bringing life, bringing freedom from addiction to us.

I believe if we try to do this on our own, we are prone to fail. How many of us here and now have been through diet after diet after diet - probably a lot of people because we ultimately end up failing. But listen to what God is saying. God has a good plan for your life, for Peter, for you and for me.

His plan is an abundant life. His plan for Peter is not that he feels so lethargic that he can't go and kick a ball around with his kids in the backyard. The plan for Peter is not that he feels so overweight that he and his wife don't have a good sex life. The plan for Peter is not that his health should be ruined because of his weight. That is not God's plan.

But whenever we need to change, whenever we need to make a huge step that somehow seems beyond us, the promise of God is that He is at work in us both enabling us to work and to will for His good pleasure. In other words, the promise is that His Holy Spirit together with us will give us the motivation.

You know what a great prayer for Peter is? And for you and for me? Father, I can't do this on my own. I don't know where to begin. I don't know how to take the first step. And I'm not sure I can take the second, third or fourth steps either. Father, I need Your help.

What a fantastic prayer! What a prayer of invitation for the God of the whole universe to step in. And He always gives us the wherewithal to do what we need to do.

So, yes, it makes sense to take stock. It makes sense to look at our lives, look at the consequences, look at what ultimately will happen to us when we're addicted to something like food, work, sex is a major addiction, drugs, alcohol.

Take stock. Do I really want this? And if the answer is no, we can paint a picture of what we want our lives to be like and go to God and say, "God, I would like to dream about what I could be with You."

We can paint on a canvas with fear. We can paint on a canvas with doubt. And we will paint an ugly picture. Or we can paint on the canvas of our imagination, on the canvas of our hope with the love, the grace and the peace of the Holy Spirit.

We can paint a picture that together, God and us, can fulfil. God, You can do this. You can help me. You promised. Your Word says that You promised. You can help me through this problem.

Peter, I believe that God will be there, that He is there and that He can make a difference. All we have to do is lay our hands on that promise, believe it with all that we are and watch what God will do.

Do we still have to do stuff? Absolutely, I can't pray my way out of a problem I behaved my way into. But God is there in that problem.