Book review - Made to Crave.

I just finished up a book called "Made to Crave: Satisfying your deepest desire with God, not food" by Lysa TerKeurst. You can see it here. The book is about how all of us are created with a deep craving or thirst for God, but how most of us try to fill it up with other things. In the author's case, her weakness was food, so the book was mostly about her struggle with food and how she found victory over her eating habits and uses what she puts in her mouth to keep her in dependence on God.

This book opened my eyes in a lot of ways. First, it made me realize how much food really is an idol in my life and how much I really do literally crave things that are not good for me. I also have come to the realization that this is one area of life that is not talked about much. Most of us would look with disdain (hopefully compassion?) on the alcoholic, the person addicted to shopping, the anorexic, the drug abuser, the porn addict. What this book talked about, and what I have come to believe, is that food can become an addiction, even an idol for some people. And if that is the case, and I am one of those people, then I am no better than any of the above mentioned souls. All of us have something with which we are trying to satisfy ourselves. If it isn't food, it's something else. Very few individuals are actually filling their void with God.  I think though, because food is essential to our survival as human beings, it's easy to cover up the fact that some of us have become gluttons.

Lysa explores her deep struggles with food, trying to lose weight, her failure in that area, and comes to the conclusion that it isn't about a number on a scale, but it's about giving that huge struggle to God and realizing she never could, in her own strength, get rid of the hold food had on her life. She chooses to see this weakness inside of herself as a way for her to keep falling at Jesus' feet.

I really, really liked this book. I cannot say enough about it and will probably recommend it to anyone who wants to listen. It really opened my eyes to a lot that is wrong in my life and gave me lots of food (no pun intended!) for thought. One thing though? The more I read, the more I craved. Maybe feeling overwhelmed makes me want to eat... I think I ate a whole bag of peanut M&M's while reading it. Thereby proving her point I guess...