Yesterday morning I ate a cupcake. Right after I finished eating my 110 calorie bagel thin.
I didn’t need the cupcake (yes, thank you captain obvious) but I was tantalized by it’s pink frosting, chocolate cake, and sprinkles.
It wasn’t even a good cupcake from someplace like Sprinkles or Sugar Daddy’s. No, it was just a cheap, ordinary cupcake from the grocery store.
But I fell for the siren’s song that sings sweet lullaby’s to my cupcake love language.
I wish I didn’t struggle with self control.
I wish I’d only eat what I should eat and not the things that make me feel guilty and fat afterward.
Though eating may be my biggest struggle with self control, it dances in other areas. My attitude, my anger, my…well…just about everything.
I searched YouVersion for verses in the Bible that contain or relate to self control and here is what I found. 88 verses (NLT) that pepper the Old and New Testaments instructing us to be self controlled and the dangers of not being.
In short: lack of self control leads to destruction.
Whether we give in to our desires for food, sex, anger, or possessions we are allowing those things to become our saviors. We put them in front of God and allow our lives to be run by them. They become our pleasures over our pleasure for God, and in the end they destroy. They destroy our bodies, our relationships with others, and more importantly our relationship with God.
No, eating a cupcake does not create a chasm between God and I, but if I can’t be self controlled with something such as my eating what does that say about things that can create that chasm?
Oh, cupcakes. I understand the battle.
oh, self-control. i’m right there with you! and it’s a bummer it wasn’t at least an extra tasty cupcake…
I know I was thinking about it as I was typing this all out and I’m like…I even settled. I could have had an amazing cupcake. But no my lack of self control beat out all logic and went for less superior cupcake.
I have a hard time passing up a delightful cupcake calling my name too. Or chocolate. Or candy. Or buttered popcorn. Or basically anything I know I shouldn’t eat too much of.
Battling with you {as I just finished a chocolate bar… urgh},
~M
LOVE the blog! And BOY can I relate!!!
Thanks Janelle.
What I think is so interesting about the whole food battle is that folks who are moderately thin have a really bad relationship with food sometimes too… It’s like this internal wrestling that goes on with food… will I allow it to master me or will I master it? Will it defeat me, or will I defeat it? It becomes this game of control… I’ve learned and am learning so many things about my relationship to food this year – like I eat when I need control, or don’t eat; I eat when I’m stressed because I need to crunch on something; so many reasons I’m eating that have nothing to do with hunger… grrrr… I can so relate to this post friend.
ooooh you just preached to me lady! but then after reading that post, im suddenly craving for a cupcake.
Have you ever realized that SELF-control is a fruit of the Spirit? How does that work…
And it is the last one on the list. DaRonn, my husband, hypothesized once that the fruit might be progressive. As we work our way through love –> to joy –> to peace … ect. the self-control (the “hardest” in my book) will be “easier” to allow to operate.
One last thought on this all-to-frequent topic in my life. People act on emotion, not on logic. Until there is an emotional connection to the action the logic is weak and sounds like the teacher on peanuts wah-wah-wah-wah. Maybe we (this food issue is one I have been hitting on these last couple months) need to make an emotional connection, or sort out some emotional issues, when it comes to food.
Thanks for the prod to think. You are so cool, Prudence.
I agree with the progression of the fruit of the spirit. We start with one, and the others will naturally follow.