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Want to know one of the deep secrets to freedom from diet addiction/idolatry, scale worship, weight loss obsession, and recurring gluttony?

It’s not really a secret. It’s right there in Scripture. It’s just that we don’t fully grasp it–yet.

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Romans 12:1-2, Message)

Such plain words! Here’s the New International Version:

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1-2, NIV)

There’s so much to unpack here.

The key thing I want to focus on in this post is transformation. And isn’t that what we’ve been longing for all these years?

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind”–the Greek word for transformed is Μεταμορφουσθε. It’s the root word of metamorphosis–the very transformation that a caterpillar goes through to become a beautiful butterfly.

God is calling us to morph/change/transform. And the beautiful creation that we’ll become has nothing to do with a clothing size or number on the scale.

The beautiful creation that you are becoming is someone who has been radically, thoroughly, and universally changed–both outward and inward.

I have this dream–maybe a vision–of hundreds of thousands of women who love Jesus walking in this transformation–no longer bound by low self-esteem, out-of-control appetites, or the futile search for the “perfect” diet.

I have this dream of a mighty force of women who are so transformed spiritually because of this limp–this wound–this thorn in the flesh–that they present their bodies as a living sacrifice for God to use to transform the world!

No longer are they driven by conforming to the world’s pattern but they are so radically transformed from the inside out that they storm the gates of hell!

I have this dream that women in the world who yearn for freedom and transformation will come to faith in Jesus when they realize that it is only Jesus and the truth of God’s Word that can truly set us free.

Won’t you dream with me?