Most women have cried out to God in frustration or anguish while standing in one of three places: in front of the mirror, on the scale, or in front of the refrigerator.We are so quick to judge our appearance and compare it to others or, worse yet, hold it up to the unattainable and unrealistic worldly standard of beauty.We give so much weight to what the scale says, allowing it to set the tone for our day or, worse yet, allow it to measure our value is women.We tie up so much headspace with thoughts about food, struggling against what we “should” or “should not” be eating or, worse yet, shaming ourselves when we don't get it “right.”As Christian women, we know we can take our struggles to God in prayer. So many of us have prayed for losing weight. But what happens when praying for weight loss doesn't work, or those prayers go unanswered? We don’t always know the reason why. But we do know that sometimes we do not receive what we ask for because we “ask with wrong motives” (James 4:3 NIV). It can be easy to assume we are asking with the right motives because the diet culture we live in conditions us to believe weight loss is always good and something necessary for health. But those worldly beliefs are false. Moreover, for most women, our true motivation for wanting to lose weight comes from a deeper, darker place.When the Lord brought me face to face with my own true motivation for wanting to lose weight, He brought to light a dark corner of my heart where I falsely believed I needed to lose weight to be good enough. He revealed how I allowed the lies of diet culture to entangle my body with my identity and to enslave me to seek skinny as my security and satisfaction. But God loved me too much to answer prayers coming from that dark corner of my heart. Instead, in His great mercy, he illuminated my life with the light of His love and helped me surrender dieting and weight loss.I want to challenge you to try something new this year and join me on this path to follow Jesus, not diets. Instead of praying for weight loss, pray these prayers instead. You might just uncover God’s best for your true health and well-being.Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Tero Vesalainen
