What You Crave (Part 1)
In 2005 after having my first daughter, Lyric, I developed an interest in health and fitness. My motivation for fitness developed because I was a teen mom when I had her. Fresh out of high school, it was my first year in college, and I was expecting a baby. I did not know how to care for myself during pregnancy. I was young, and so I did the best I could. When my daughter was born, my heart overflowed with love for her. I breastfed Lyric for thirteen months, and while my body bounced back quickly, some things were evidently not as they were pre-pregnancy. What I desired was to regain confidence in my self-image. I had this self-imposed picture of how I felt I needed to look to be happy with myself. The fitness aspect appealed to me most because I am a very active, hands-on kind of person. However, it was not long that I learned all that weight training, HIIT, cross-fit, and cardio were a complete waste of time and energy if I did not adopt healthy eating practices. I began incorporating more nutritious food options to ensure that all that hard work in the gym would yield the desired results. I stuck to the "all things in moderation" theory as my plate guide.
As I grew to love health and fitness, I understood what things contributed to a person's overall health. For example, unhealthy emotions led to unhealthy eating habits. Having a negative body-image affects your perspective and can make you frustrated and impatient with your process. If I was going to be successful, I needed to consider the whole person approach. The soul's condition was just as integral to a healthy lifestyle: clean eating and hitting the gym.
Much like the process of establishing fitness goals, our informational diet, our emotional and mental state cultivates our cravings and influence what we desire. The mind, body, soul, and spirit of a man work together in shaping the human condition. Cravings, or a powerful desire for something, are first conceived in thoughts. What I meditate on consistently will form my belief systems and create my personal and world views. In our life, what we desire is directly connected to what we meditate on and what we believe flows from the information we are digesting daily, the things that we are taking into our hearts through our eyes and ear gates. Our environment forms our cravings by associations, who and what we surround ourselves with.
What we desire is directly connected to what we meditate on
The longings of the soul are like cravings for certain foods. They are the special force working behind the scenes to influence the appetites and perpetuate your desires.
As I mentioned in my post, The Object of Your Desire, desires are not all harmful; you can train yourself to develop healthy cravings.
I want you to picture your cravings as the momentum generated to strike a pendulum to get it to swing. For example, what was driving my desire for fitness was craving for men's attention. Wanting to look good was not a bad thing, but my issue was more significant than self-image. It was self-love.
I wanted to be accepted by men because inwardly, I was rejected by me…
My craving was connected to an inward hatred; my hunger was for real love, but my perception of myself distorted my appetites. As I began to experience the love of God, my self-love grew, and my cravings shifted. I wanted to glorify God by taking care of my body. I no longer saw my body as an object of sexual attraction but as God's temple. My working out became worship to God for stewarding this body that belongs to him.
“I wanted to be accepted by men because inwardly, I was rejected by me…”
Cravings suggest an intense hunger for something. When I was pregnant, I had cravings for sugary snacks; similarly, I experience these same cravings during that particular "time of the month." Around these times, I could eat up to four cookies in one sitting! That may not sound like much, but the daily recommended amount of sugar is about twenty-six grams for women; (American Heart Association , 2021) That puts me almost four times over the limit! That amount of sugar can suppress my immune system and rapidly enter my bloodstream, striking my insulin levels and deceiving my mind that I am full after I have consumed empty calories. These seemingly subtle cravings are powerful enough to bypass logic and ignore the unhealthy effects of sugar on the body.
Tell me, what causes men to be ok with placing themselves in harmful situations for pleasure’s sake?
We know that pleasure is a powerful influence upon the soul. Paul even tells us that there is pleasure in sin, which is why many have given themselves over to it. Paul said this:
"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." Romans 7:15
Much like Paul, I want to do the right thing all the time. Yet, something is lurking in my members seeking to draw me back into doing that which I hate. He goes on to say in Romans 7: 18-20:
"For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the DESIRE to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me."
Paul is basically saying sin has power and it controls or dictates behavior. In the Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology’s excerpt on sin, it states:
“We see the tendency of sin, to begin with, a subtle appeal to something attractive and an act that is somehow plausible and directed toward some good end. Throughout the Bible, almost every sin reaches for things with intrinsic value, such as security, knowledge, peace, pleasure, or a good name. But behind the appeal to something good, sin ultimately involves a raw confrontation between obedience and rebellion. (Bible Study Tools, 2021)
Satan enticed Eve to eat from the tree of good and evil by manipulating her desire to be like God.
Dr. Shahram Heshmat defined a craving as this:
“a craving is an overwhelming emotional experience that takes over your body and produces a unique motivator of behavior… Cravings narrow attention such that current desire, thoughts, and urges would be given extra weight, whereas future goals or plans seem less consequential.” (Pschology Today , 2021)
Cravings involve an overly emotional response that causes one to defy common sense and make hasty decisions. Cravings are triggered by a prior experience that something felt, sounded, or tasted good; it is a part of the human reward system. That "feel-good response" can take a typical desire and amplify it abnormally, forming an unhealthy sense of longing and wanting. Cravings can be time and environmentally sensitive.
Anything that has power over you, even that slight sugar addiction, can control you; it can become an issue of idolatry. I am not telling you not to eat baked goods, or enjoy some of those simpler pleasures occasionally, this is not bondage; I am just illustrating that they should not control you. The only power that should have control in our lives is the power given to us by God through the Holy Spirit. Paul said he desires to do what is correct, but we do not know how to carry it out. This means that I need power more significant than the power of sin to break sin's hold in my life. This does not exclude personal responsibility, but it points to the need for Jesus, his redemptive work, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit. It means that it is impossible to not sin in our own strength and, in some cases, to even identify specific actions as sin. Therefore, Jesus cried out to the Father, "forgive them, for they KNOW NOT what they do." The Bible tells us that the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers. (2 Corinthians 4:4) This post is not to spotlight sin. It is to draw our attention to examine what is motivating our desires. My hope is that we learn to recognize when our longings have strayed from Christ's intention for our lives.
God always wants the best for us, even when we do not want the best for ourselves.
Going Deeper:
Matthew 4; Psalm 37:4; Matthew 6:21; Psalm 37:5; Proverbs 16:1-3; Proverbs 13:12; Jeremiah 17:9
References:
Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. 2009. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
American Heart Association . (2021). Retrieved from heart.org: https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/sugar/how-much-sugar-is-too-much
Bible Study Tools. (2021). Retrieved from https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/sin/
Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary . (2015). Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group.
Pschology Today . (2021). Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201501/why-cravings-occur
