S3. E21. 1 John Series Part 1
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too many of us are holding onto that type of fear when it comes to our relationship with food. We're afraid of gaining weight. Afraid of aging. Afraid of rejection, people's opinions. Afraid of losing control. We're afraid of disappointing God. Disappointing ourselves.
We always wanna be asking ourselves, what is driving actions? Is it love for the Lord? Or am I operating out of fear?
Welcome to Your Daily Bread podcast. I'm your host, Abbie Stasior, a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor. My prayer is that these bite-sized episodes will help you heal your relationship with food, improve body image, and ultimately help you grow closer to God. Now, I can't personally heal you, but I'm gonna be directing you to the one that can, and that is Jesus. Also disclaimer, I'm not a pastor, but a sister in Christ that's offering you some food for thought that you can take into your quiet time with the Lord as your daily bread. Let's dig in.
Hello, hello. Welcome back to your [00:01:00] Daily Bread Podcast. I am so excited because this is the start of a new series that we're doing. So in season three of the show, we have not yet done a Bible book series. We have done a few in season one. We did one or two in season two. I know we went through Romans 14 in season two of the podcast.
Uh, but the Lord has called me to do a podcast series on 1 John. I'm really excited. There ha- have been so many scriptures that have jumped out to me that relate to the stewardship of our bodies and our relationship with food. And we're gonna be kinda skipping around the book because I'm just going where, where the Spirit's leading me, and I don't know exactly how long we're going to be in this series.
But I'm really, really, really excited about this because 1 John is a book about remaining in God. It is about abiding. It is about remembrance of the gospel and what that really means and how we walk [00:02:00] that out. Like, when you remember the gospel, when you really know that you know that you know it and you've received it into your heart, how does that change your life and your actions and how you treat others, how you treat yourself?
And we're gonna be talking about how does that change how you eat, how you exercise, what's the motivation behind why you do things? So I'm really excited to dive into this book because I think it will give you a fresh revelation of the gospel, or at least I hope it does. I pray that it does and helps you with your abiding and helping you to remain in Christ, because that's where you're going to see so much fruit.
So I will pray us in, and then we're gonna be diving into 1 John 4:17-19. So
father God, thank you so much for this day.
Lord, thank you for this word. Lord, we are just so excited to be entering a new series, a fresh wind. Lord, we are just praying for divine wisdom and revelation as we go through this series, and I just pray that you have your way, Lord. We are just so surrendered to what you want to do [00:03:00] with this show, with this podcast, Lord.
And we are just so grateful that you are in charge. You know what listeners need. You know what your sons and daughters need, Lord, and I am just so grateful to be a vessel to provide that to your people. So Lord, thank you for depositing your word and having things, and having it be the living word where things just are leaping off the page.
And I pray that everything that's said in this episode is not what I want to say, but is what you want to say through me. And I pray that this really resonates, in the hearts of every single listener so that it changes us from the inside out from a heart level. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray.
Amen. So we're gonna be diving into 1 John 4:17-19 It says, "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment. [00:04:00] In this world, we are like Jesus." There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us." And y'all, that is the word of the Lord.
when I was reading this I was like, "Oh, we love because He loved us first," and I really wanted to focus on that, and then the Lord was like, "No, no, no, we have to go up a little bit," where He says that perfect love casts out all fear.
And when we are operating from fear, that has to do with punishment. And the Lord said to me that too many people are still punishing their bodies and punishing themselves for a price that I have already paid. It has, it is finished, and it was finished on the cross, and we are still trying to punish ourselves in all different ways, whether that's through over-exercising or restricting [00:05:00] our eating, body checking, feeling guilt and shame after eating something.
Even if, you know, we're just coming off of the 4th of July eating pleasurable food and celebrating with friends, but we feel so much guilt and shame after that, and we feel a need to over-exercise and undo how we ate. This is us trying to atone for something that has already been atoned for. We're trying to tone up, atone, for something that w- has already been atoned for and has already been taken care of by Jesus on the cross.
He took the full brunt of the punishment, and by His wounds we are healed. And so we really have to have deeper revelations of Isaiah 53 and what Jesus did for us on the cross. And a way to gauge in what John is talking about in this verse, is that this is our gauge. Are we operating in love?
Are we operating in a Christ-like way, or are we not? And it depends on what our motivation is. Are we operating from a place of [00:06:00] fear where we are afraid of something, or are we operating from a holy reverence where we are now fearing the Lord? There's a difference between holy reverence and holy fear of the Lord than being afraid, being scared, being worried about something, and distressed, and operating from that place.
And too many of us are holding onto that type of fear when it comes to our relationship with food. We're probably afraid of gaining weight. We're afraid of aging. We are afraid of rejection, people's opinions. We are afraid of losing control. We're afraid of disappointing God. We're afraid of disappointing ourselves.
There's so many different things that, that we can be afraid of, and that tends to drive our actions. So we always wanna be asking ourselves, what is driving actions? Is it love for the Lord? Is it from a place of gratitude? Is it, am I doing things out of, from a [00:07:00] place of worship, or am I operating out of fear?
I was just talking to a client last week, and she's been navigating hunger and fullness, she's really trying to get in touch with her body because she has relied on tracking macros and calories for so long, she doesn't know how to eat intuitively, even though God has designed us in a way where he has given us these built-in mechanisms for hunger and fullness.
And she has found herself stopping eating early when she is still hungry. We peeled back some layers and we found out that she saw fullness as a failure And it was like, oh, wow.
That just cracked everything open. Perfect love casts out all fear. So when we invite Jesus into this, who is love, who is perfect love, he will cast out that fear, and we don't need to fear fullness because nourishment is obedience. And it's okay sometimes if we overshoot our fullness because she's in a place where she's figuring this out.
It's like [00:08:00] she's a child learning how to walk. We don't shame a child for falling down. We are cheering them on, when we mess up, we are beating ourselves up 'cause we just are focusing on us falling down, but God is cheering us on. Like, "No, no, no, you're getting it. You're taking a few steps. You're learning how to do this, and you're getting it.
Even though you're falling down, you keep getting back up and you're taking steps." That's how it is with navigating our hunger and fullness cues and trying to learn intuitive eating is a learned skill, and it takes time, and it takes time to unlearn the previous way of doing things. So it's okay if we overshoot our fullness sometimes.
It's bound to happen, and you learn from that. And perfect love casts out all fear. We don't have to fear fullness.
Especially when we no longer see fullness as a failure, we want to see it as feedback. "Okay, maybe I did eat too fast. Okay, maybe I did wait too long to eat. Maybe I was distracted while I was eating. Maybe I was coping emotionally." And so [00:09:00] overshooting your fullness can actually give you a lot of feedback as to what was going on so that it can happen less often, and less, and less, and less.
And so we want to invite perfect love into that situation so that the Lord can renew your mind around that and show you grace, and mercy, and compassion where you are just automatically going into condemnation. And that's exactly what was going on with my client. She was automatically condemning herself for fullness, and she didn't want to fail.
She saw fullness as a failure, and she so badly didn't want to fail that now she was stopping eating out of fear, not out of obedience or out of awareness of, "Okay, my body's comfortably full. I've eaten enough. I'm good." She was stopping herself early. This is her taking the reins and gripping for control versus surrendering to the process of learning how to intuitively eat, and get in touch with her body, and inviting Jesus into that.
And you'll find that when [00:10:00] you're walking by the Spirit, when you're walking with Jesus in that area, you will experience self-control because self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. It's a byproduct of walking with the Lord. Now, on the other side of that, I've also talked with clients, too, that fear being hungry and actually see hunger as a triggering experience from previous restriction.
People that have dieted so long, when they're that hungry again, their body is now in a state of stress. They remember what it was like when they were restricted and they were starving, and they don't wanna go back there. So they now overcompensate, and they're always eating.
They always have a snack on them, and they're anxiously , always eating, always aware of their blood sugar. Is it dipping? Okay, I wanna make sure that I eat. Then they may be overeating because they are operating out of fear of feeling hungry because of being triggered from their past experiences with dieting and starvation.
When our body is hungry, we are under a state of stress, and I understand how it can be triggering, but that [00:11:00] is an invitation to bring that to the Lord and work that out because you are still now, operating from a place of fear, and now it's just a fear of hunger.
This passage begs the question, who has our greatest reverence? Is it the number on the scale? Is it our pant size? Is it hitting, all of our exercise rings and closing those out? Is it hitting all of our workouts for the week? Keeping up with other people in comparison?
What has our greatest reverence, or is it really trusting in the Lord's plan and the Lord's timing of things for the healing of your relationship with food, the timing of things with your weight? , What has our greatest reverence? Are we operating from a place of fear, or is it out of holy reverence for God?
In this series, at the end of each episode, I wanna give y'all some reflection questions to think about so that we're really wringing the towel out of this experience and Each week you're taking this scripture as your daily bread to the Lord, and that's the whole point of the podcast is to have these scriptures [00:12:00] each week be your daily bread to meditate on with the Lord so that he can speak to you specifically about your situation.
So reflection question number one, what fear has been driving my health decisions lately? What fear has been driving my health decisions lately? Is it a fear of weight gain? Is it a fear of aging? Is it a fear of judgment? What is that? Am I trying to avoid punishment that Jesus already carried? Am I trying to avoid punishment that Jesus already carried?
And with that, w- going back to the client that was stopping eating early before she experienced fullness, she saw fullness as failure, and she would punish herself every time she failed, and show herself a lot of shame and guilt and condemnation. So by stopping eating too early when she was still hungry and still could eat more, she stopped herself from getting full because she was [00:13:00] trying to avoid the punishment that she was gonna give herself if she had actually reached fullness or overshot fullness, where now she's stuffed.
So she was trying to a- avoid that punishment. That's an example of that. But Jesus already carried that. So if we're afraid of shame and condemnation, something in there is not from the Lord, because there is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. Shame is not from the Lord, and Jesus has already bore the full weight of our punishment, so we don't need to be punishing ourselves And I think about clients too that are still in the habit of excessive exercise, and they're punishing their bodies and not really letting themselves rest.
And if they skip a workout, then they're going to punish themselves, so they do everything that they can to be perfect with their workouts and not skip, even if their body is injured or their body is just so tired or really sore, and it's crying out for rest. They will override their biology to avoid the punishment that they're going to give themselves, and that's something that [00:14:00] God never put on you.
So we always have to ask ourselves, " am I trying to avoid punishment that Jesus has already carried and has already atoned for?" And last reflection question would be, what would change if God's opinion mattered most? What would change if God's opinion mattered most? More than your opinion, more than your parents' opinion, more than your friends' opinion,
what would change if God's opinion mattered most? So I hope that y'all have some good time with the Lord reflecting on these questions, and I will see y'all next week, and we're gonna dive into 1 John Chapter 3. See you next week thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Your Daily Bread Podcast. Now, if anything about this episode resonated with you, I wanna encourage you to send it to three sisters in Christ who may also wanna steward their bodies better.
I read every comment, every review of the show, and I love hearing your testimonies and how the Holy Spirit is meeting you through these episodes. And if you haven't left a review yet, I wanna encourage you to do so 'cause it truly does help the show grow [00:15:00] and it. Ultimately benefits the kingdom. And if you need any personalized support with your nutrition and your relationship with food or your body image, head to the show notes and you'll see all the different ways to work with me.
See you next week.
