I was watching the 1997 movie Hercules with my 2 children today, and I immediately noticed that Hades was depicted with 2 minions that he controlled. Their names were Pain and Panic.
Wow.
It’s amazing how God works, even in movies like this. (God is in EVERYTHING, and He is revealing himself to me in it more and more… but that’s a post for another day.)
The enemy’s minion’s are pain and panic. What causes use to act irrationally? What controls our minds in ways that makes us do things the enemy’s way instead of Gods?
Pain and Panic.
Pain over the past, physical pain, emotional pain, the pain of failure and regret,
Panic over the future and what MIGHT happen. Panic over thoughts ruminate in our mind.
Throughout the movie, I saw pain and panic morph into beautiful things, ugly things and scary things, all at the command of the enemy.
Panic and Pain.
The enemy goes on to make pain and panic personal to us with eating disorders. When we think about food, we panic. When we eat food, we sometimes feel the pain of that decision, or we feel the pain of a panic attack, or sometimes we even feel the physical pain of eating.
The enemy morphs pain and panic into what he knows we will respond to. Those with anorexia and bulimia respond to the panic of gaining weight and the pain of their past and not being in control. Those with ARFID respond to the panic of the feeling of food in their bodies,or the fear of food itself. They respond to the pain that food has caused them in their past.
Pain and Panic is the OPPOSITE of how God wants us to feel. He wants us to feel PEACE. The longer we choose to stay in our ED, the longer we are going to feel pain and panic. To get to Peace, we have to trust that the Lord will heal our ED in His way. And His way means that we have to eat. We have to do the hard thing and change our way of thinking.
There’s a video I saw recently about how we all have this internal ‘parrot’ that talks to us all day. A psychiatrist made this video and his main point was that if we moved our body a few times a week, and we choose to retrain our parrot (our thoughts) then we could heal a lot of our mental health problems. Watch the video
Your Parrot speaks Pain and Panic because that Parrot is actually the snake… the original one who told Eve to do something with food that she shouldn’t have.
Only when we decide to make our parrot speak the Peace of God by constantly and consistently retraining our thoughts can we make long lasting change. But this is a choice on our part. And what holds us back from that choice? The panic of change. The pain of the past. Until you decide to choose future you, you will remain the same. You will remain in the same thought patterns, the same holds, and the same prisons.
Do you really want that? Do you want to stay stuck in the enemy’s prison? Or do you want to run free in God’s peace and His purpose?
The metaphorical prison cell that you are sitting in right now? You have the keys. You just have to choose to open the doors inside of your mind and run towards God’s peace.
Philippians 4:6-8: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brother and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy- think about such things.”
We have specific instructions on what to think about. We have specific instructions for what to fo when we feel pain and suffering. We have specific instructions for how to train our parrot. We pray with thanksgiving, and then we think about those specific things. If the thing you are thinking about and obsessing over doesn’t fit into those categories, then it’s not from God. Plain and simple.
So our eating disorders are from thoughts created about food from the enemy. And our thoughts might seem impossible to change, but in reality they aren’t. That’s just another lie from the enemy! If we are persistent in changing our thoughts, then we can do it! It’s our choice.
I had the same thought process for over 20 years, and it’s been completely broken and reclaimed in peace from God. If I can do it, you can do it. You simply have to choose.
Want to talk more? Schedule an appointment with me to get individualized Christian Eating Disorder Life Coaching.
