Food, Beauty And Control! Women's Desires Becoming Their Enemy.

This one hurts, big time. It goes past all my confidences, it opens up the sores I try to hide. All three of the points Bob Lepine makes here (article below), are ones I sadly see take part in my life the majority of the time. My close friends even call me a "control freak", though we joke of it, sadly I think it's something that we should by the strength of God, strive to rid ourselves of. Let's not stop fighting! We end the fight often, with the excuse of every woman battles it, if that were so, I dare to say that many women would be conquering it through Christ. No, every woman has the tendencies, not every woman battles it. Ladies, Sisters in Christ, FIGHT THIS, it's something that can bog us down, tear our time and affections and confidence in Christ away. Fight this battle and never give up, fight this battle, always knowing who you are in Christ. Seek to be serving Him and glorifying Him, not your own self-esteem. Let's wield our Swords and take every thought captive.


In a breakout session Friday afternoon, Bob Lepine of the daily radio program FamilyLife Today unpacked from Genesis 3:6 three areas that tend to trap and even enslave women: food, beauty and control.

Here are some of Bob’s insights:

· Food. Women are more likely than men to suffer from eating disorders, to do emotional “binge” eating and to be obsessed with healthy eating. Even an obsession with healthy eating can become an idol in their lives when it takes on proportions it was never meant to have in their lives.

· Beauty. Many women struggle with the cultural notion that beauty is primarily an external reality, while Scripture views a woman’s true beauty as lying in the heart. The culture presses on women an external view of beauty and idolizes outer beauty and leads women to live sad, broken lives in pursuit of temporal beauty. “No amount of physical attractiveness can compensate for a lack of godly character,” Lepine said. “A beautiful shrew is still a shrew. A plain-looking woman who radiates the goodness of God from her face is beautiful.”

· Control. This was the great enticement for Eve in the Garden of Eden, an enticement that led her to throw off God’s Word and God’s control of her life. Women desire safety and security, Lepine said, so a woman often desires control of the things in her life, including her husband, to gain safety and security. Eve replaced God’s definition of what is good with her own view of it.

So, how can a woman tell if she is being controlled by one or more of these tendencies? Using a set of questions proposed by biblical counselor David Powlison, Lepine exhorted women to ask themselves what they organize their lives around and what they automatically drift toward. “What is the one thing, if you lost it, would cause you to lose the desire to live?” he said. “What things give you pleasure or delight?” If the answer is food, physical beauty or control, then these things have taken the heart captive, he said. “What influences your thinking on these three issues?” he asked. “Is it TV, the media, your own desires or what others think about you? Are you thinking culturally, carnally or biblically about these issues?”

The blogger team from Revive Our Hearts ministries are live blogging the conference. Their posts may be accessed here: http://www.truewoman.com/?id=15