(spiritual) Devotion #9

Hi, Everyone.
I am thankful that "[God's] mercies are new every morning." Thank you for all the wonderful comments yesterday.
Today's devotion is from my personal journal dated April 17, 2007.

     I went before the Lord with a heavy heart today, not only in grief for the 33 victims of the Virginia Tech shooting yesterday and for their families but for my younger daughter and how life is for her right now. I needed to choose the "garment of praise" for the "spirit of heaviness." I recognized that the enemy wants me to despair and, if nothing else, to eat in response to the churning inside me.
     The Lord led me to John 4:7-30, which is the story of the Samaritan woman at the well and Jesus' conversation with her about "living water." At first I was perplexed. This didn't seem to apply to my situation, as I've always looked at this passage as being about salvation. It is, of course, but today it opened up to me in a "new" way.
     My focus became the verse where Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."
     I have been "thirsty" in so many ways. I've had a soul hunger, and while I tried to allow God to meet my needs in the area of emotional healing, I did not see, until now, that I have experienced a hunger and a thirst that I tried to fill and quench with food more than with my relationship with the Lord and with God's Word.
     While overeating has definitely been a habit with me, I see that I, indeed, ate to fill a need to be loved, to fill an empty space in my heart, to soothe a sense of inadequacy, to comfort my grief, to be my friend when I was lonely, to be "something to do" when I was bored, to be a stress-reliever when I was stressed, and more. If someone had asked me if that is what I was trying to do with food, I would have said "No!" and that would have been an honest answer, because my eyes were "veiled."
     I see clearly today, that I have attempted to use food in a way for which it is not designed. Food cannot meet emotional needs. Food cannot quench the thirsty heart. Food cannot fill the hungry soul. Only Jesus, the Living Water and Bread of Life, can do that. In prayer and through the Word, I come to the Well of Living Water, and if I choose to drink my fill of Him, I will be full and satisfied. I will be cleansed and refreshed, and I will no longer use food or abuse food. Truly I see that "the righteous has enough to satisfy [her] appetite" (Proverbs 13:25), in every way.

Today, think about what emotional needs you try to meet with food. How can you get those needs met, without overeating?

Blessings,
Mary