Thoughts on Lent

This year for lent, I decided to give up something and to add something. The subtraction sugar, the addition memorizing the book of Romans. I want to share my journey and conclusions thus far.

I have given up sugar before and found it so helpful and so beneficial. Seeing as it is my drug of choice the decision to give it up was pretty automatic. I give a version of it almost every year (chocolate, dessert, candy, or sugar all together like this time). Normally, I have three days of torture where all I can think about is that sweet. But then around day four I find the cravings slacken and I can live normally. Around day fifteen I feel healthy and alive. Then the last three days bring a new torture, the craving, the desire to quit, and the thought that I have held out for so long, I would love to finish.

 This year totally different. Almost everyday of lent has been filled with craving, desire, longing, obsession for anything sweet. I have done okay at fending it off, but it has been a constant and persistent craving. So I read Made to Crave (I didn't really want to, for I hate reading books that are popular, however...). I read it in a weekend, zoomed through it. I was struck down. My issue is not with sugar, my issue is with control. My issue is with idolatry. Like the Israelites I have been bowing down to a craven image. My god has been my stomach. Reading that book jarred me. It shook me. It changed my thought process. I knew all of the truths it mentions. I have been down this road before. But I love how God makes it new. I was made to crave Him. I was made to worship Him. When I replace Him with any idol, I exist and don't really live.

Since reading this book, I have had real victory over my cravings and obsessions. Yesterday, I got two giant bags of mini-twix in my box at school. Twix are my favorite. I asked God what to do with them; He told me to give them away. I did and didn't eat a single one. I knew I was too weak to eat one, for it would have led to eating ten. So the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

The addition: Memorizing Romans. This has also proven to be a wonderful challenge. I am completion driven. I hate missing deadlines. Easter is a week away and I have memorized four chapters out of 16. God spoke to me yesterday and said that the knowledge I have gained, the time I have spent in silence in order to create the margin for this challenge, has been invaluable. It has been the process that He is using to transform me, not the goal. Eventually, I will memorize the whole thing, but I am and have to be okay with not meeting my goal. What freedom there is in releasing myself from the tyranny of doing things for God. Instead, I just get to be with Him and so indulge in His words pouring over me like a salve. Words like: "This righteousness is from God to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and have been justified freely through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. He did it to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."