Lord's Table Testimony: Marilyn

Greetings friend,

At Setting Captives Free, we do not give advice or recommendations about medical and surgical procedures. However, we do know that God is able to fully help us to honor Him in the area of weight loss. If you are considering lap-band surgery (or any other medical procedure) for weight loss, we would encourage you to first read Marilyn's testimony, and then pray about what God would have you do.

God bless you as you seek Him first.

Sincerely,
Mike Cleveland

Marilyn's Testimony

At the age of 32, as a believer, I learned that a fruit of the Spirit is self-control. But I was 62 years old before I began to find out how to get it from my head into my heart. Nevertheless, for the entire 30 years, I knew in my heart of hearts that gluttony was a sin, not a disease. I lost and regained more than 100 pounds three different times in my life before age 60.

Finally, I had knee surgery because I had no cartilage left in my knee. The last of it had torn and had to be cleaned out. That doctor told me to either get stomach surgery or I would be in a wheel chair for the rest of my life. But I knew Jesus could heal me without surgery. I knew the surgery was drastic, as I had read of the failures and, frankly, it scared me to death. I decided I would rather die than live the rest of my life the way some of those people had to live.

Also, I knew that people heavier than I had lost hundreds of pounds without surgery of any kind. I knew they did not do it through gut-level will power, or they would never have gotten that big in the first place. So, I knew there had to be an answer other than surgery and that Jesus had that answer. I just did not know how to tap into it.

It was in a 12-step group that I almost succumbed to the lie that overeating is a disease. Oh, how the Lord protected me there. If I had ever believed it was a disease, my situation would have become hopeless. Many diseases have no cure or not one that I was capable of maintaining. I also knew, in my heart of hearts, that Jesus was interested in far more than just my refraining from compulsive overeating for the rest of my life and that He wanted to give me so much more than a thin, healthy body. He also wanted to free me from willing myself, body and soul, going to secular meetings where God was not honored in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, based on the lie that gluttony is a disease.

Praise God! Gluttony is not a disease; it is sin, and Jesus is the ONLY answer for sin. He got through to me, and I left the deadly influence of 12-step groups once and for all.

In addition, my family doctor had said stomach surgery was my only hope. I was in despair and angry when I realized he had given up the hope that I might gain some self-control on my own. I had not given up on myself. I knew that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. I just knew that surgery should not be necessary because Jesus can deliver from sin. He sometimes heals disease, but HE ALWAYS delivers from sin for those who repent, fully and completely.

I had heard of someone who almost died from the anesthetic for simple plastic surgery. I determined I would never go under anesthesia for ANYTHING that was not a matter of life or death.

Finally, at age 62, the Lord brought me to The Lord's Table course at Setting Captives Free. Here I learned that self-control is not that I control myself to stop eating. It is that I control myself to feast on my Lord Jesus Christ. I yield to Him body, soul, mind, and will. I throw myself on His mercy. I confess my sin of gluttony as the horrendous, abominable evil it is. I stop drinking from the broken cistern of gluttony and begin drinking purposely from Jesus Christ, deeper and deeper. He brings me under the control of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit controls my eating - something I could NEVER do. Self-control is not control BY self. It is control OF self, BY the Holy Spirit. It is Spirit-controlled eating. When I surrendered myself to the Lord, I cried out to Him that I cannot control my eating. I cannot choose my own food items. I cannot choose the amounts. Maybe I should be able to; maybe others can. It makes no difference; I knew my Lord understood that I CANNOT. Therefore, He has agreed to do it for me. Since I yielded all the choices to Him, I no longer need to even think about food. He has radically changed my whole attitude toward food. He has changed what I like to eat and what I don't. I did not do it myself.

Once I acknowledged gluttony as evil, born of an evil heart that loves sin and self-indulgence and God gave me His gift of genuine repentance and I quit making any excuses for myself, I began to lose weight. And this time, it was different. I was eating differently in spite of myself. My hunger for Jesus and for His Word grew and grew and, as it did, and I fed it and fed it, my super desire, my desperation for food literally melted away. I came into The Lord's Table course weighing 283 pounds. It was only by the grace of God that I did not weigh 583. He had kept His hand on me all through those years when I knew it was sin, and did it anyway.

Oh beloved friend, I am so grateful to God I did not have the surgery. I would never have known what Jesus could do in my entire life, not just my eating. Once I saw what He could do with my eating, I knew there was nothing He could not fix. If I had had surgery I would never have known that God could do it ALL. I would always have had to share the glory of God with the surgeon. God will not share His glory with any person. He says: "My glory will I not share with another." If I had chosen surgery, I would have had to do it all on my own because God would not have been involved in something that would have involved sharing His glory.

Today, I weigh 125.5 and the Lord is keeping that weight off because He still chooses my food and my food portions for me. I can never rely on myself or think that I can make those decisions without Him

No weight loss is worth anything compared to knowing that God, and God alone, did it. God, and God alone, receives the glory. God, and God alone, maintains my healthy weight. And, I will have the overwhelming peace and joy of waking up to this knowledge every morning for the rest of my life

HOW GRATEFUL I AM TO THE LIVING GOD THAT I DID NOT FALL FOR THE LIE THAT IT WAS A DISEASE, AND THAT I DID NOT HAVE SURGERY. Only the Lord knows my thankfulness. And only by experience can one know whereof I speak. If you can identify with my story, please pray and pray and pray and wait and wait on the Lord. I prayed and waited 30 years. And He has answered superabundantly above all I could ask or think. My prayers are with you, Marilyn