Ice Cream . . . Ice Cream . . . Ice Cream

Good morning, Lord. . . . I need to brush my teeth. Can I have ice cream for breakfast? No, that’s ridiculous. . . . Oatmeal for breakfast, that’s a healthy start to the day. . . . What kind of ice cream do we have? Oh, yeah. Bunny Tracks. . . . Father, help me teach my children well, today. . . . Lunch was good. Is it too early for dessert? I better wait til the children go to bed. Otherwise, they will want some and they ate ice cream yesterday. I’ll eat an apple. . . . Is it 8:00 yet? That ice cream was so good last night. I can’t wait. . . . I need to finish the laundry. Oh, I can taste the creaminess of the vanilla ice cream with the crunch of chocolate chunks. . . . I made it. It’s eight and the children are upstairs. I can sit down and enjoy my much deserved bowl of ice cream while relaxing. This is heaven.

Too many days transpire this way. My mind meanders toward the very thing I should run from. I dwell on what I should not have.

Let me pause for a moment. I am not telling you what to or not to eat. Anything can be inserted for ice cream (including other foods, fasting, shopping, running, sex, etc.) I believe several food substances are physically addictive. But, I cannot say how your body will react to different food items. Rather, it’s the thought pattern I want to examine.

Anything that takes the place of God is sin. Notice in the first paragraph how my thoughts keep cycling back to food. It is a focal point, an idol. Has food become your god? I must admit it is mine at times. And even though I recognize it, I haven’t wiped my hands of it and walked away. I find myself in a sin, confess, sin, confess, sin, confess pattern too often. Why? Because I believe lies (see list of lies in previous post).

To have victory, I must recognize the lies, confess them as sin, break down the lies, and replace them with truth. “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Cor. 10:5

       . . a stronghold is anything we hold onto that ends up holding us. . . . The word demolish implies a kind of destruction requiring tremendous power; to be exact, divine power. Much of the reason believers have remained in a yoke of slavery is because we swat at our strongholds like they are mosquitoes. Strongholds are like concrete fortresses we’ve constructed around our lives block by block, ordinarily over the course of years. We created them, whether or not we were aware, for protection and comfort. Inevitably, however, these fortresses become prisons. At some point we realize we no longer control them. They control us.*

Let me repeat. It is not just a matter of recognizing there are lies (that is the first step) and confessing. We, then, must break down the lies and replace them with truth. It is this last part which benefits us in the long run.

Housekeeping:
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*Moore, Beth. "The Steadfast Mind." Breaking Free: Making Liberty In Christ A Reality In Life. Workbook ed. Nashville, Tennessee: Lifeway Christian Resources, 1999. 184. Print.