Do you ever eat, simply because you feel unloved or unfulfilled?  It’s not unusual for people to try to fill themselves up with food when they are emotionally empty.  But it never works.  When the food is gone and the sugar is packed tightly into the fat cells and straining the waistband, loneliness and boredom come back again in full force.  Now you fee unattractive as well as unloved and unfulfilled.

 Then answer? True love and true fulfillment come only from God.  He is the only One who will never let you down and who can truly satisfy you.

“But, I have faith,” you might say. “I believe there is a God.”

Knowing God is there is not enough.  Neither is going through a religious ritual, whether it be administered by a priest or by a Baptist pastor when you walk down an aisle.  It comes from surrender.

I tell my  Sunday School children the story of the tightrope walker over Niagra Falls to help them understand true faith. The expert daredevil easily walked across the slippery wet rope above the rushing water which crashed with killing intensity on the jagged rocks below.  The crowd held its breath, then cheered wildly as he made it safely to the other side.

“For my next feat,” he said.  “I’m going to push a wheelbarrow across the falls on this rope.”

“Yes!” screamed the crowd “Do it!”

And he did.  He safely and easily pushed that wheelbarrow on that narrow rope to the other side.

“For my final feat, I’m going to push a person across the falls in this wheelbarrow,” he announced.

“Yes!” screamed the crowd. “You can do it!”

“Who will be my first volunteer?” he asked.

Silence.  It’s one thing to believe the guy can do something amazing.  It’s quite another to believe it enough to get in the wheelbarrow.  And that’s the problem people often have with God.  They are willing to believe in an abstract sort of way, but it’s another thing entirely to get in God’s wheelbarrow — to give everything up to Him.

If you REALLY believe God, the Almighty, the maker of the universe, the one with all things under His control, you don’t try to make deals with Him.  You don’t casually call Him “J.C.” and you don’t brush Him off until it is convenient for you.  You bow before Him and give up.  You get in His wheelbarrow.

And when you are in God’s wheelbarrow, you don’t have to depend on the weak support of people, and certainly not on food. He is a real living God, a good God, and one who is faithful.  When He says, “I will never leave you or forsake you,” He comes through on His promise!

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown