Welcome back to the line of fire. So ending the year, starting the new year, we're doing it a little differently. This time with a message that I preached in 2017 on breaking the stronghold of food. It was just three years into my journey of new living then. It's now 10 plus years in. It keeps getting better. So we conclude the message today from 2017 on breaking the stronghold of food.
I pray it will be a blessing to you. And you just go to a restaurant and the portions are massive. I mean in desserts it takes three people to bring it out. You know death by chocolate.
Sir would you like to try our chocolate suicide cake? This is part of our culture. So it's challenging. It's hard.
That's why I said the last thing you'll get from me is any type of condemnation or criticism. This is challenging and it's lifelong habits. But I want to tell you that God's grace can help us overcome the stronghold of food just like everything else. If we can talk about God's grace to overcome pornography, God's grace to overcome depression, God's grace to overcome fear, God's grace to overcome alcoholism, then we can have God's grace to overcome gluttony. We can have God's grace to overcome food addictions. We can have God's grace to help us live a disciplined self-controlled life. And once you do it for a while, wow!
The rewards that kick in are wonderful and massive. And then you don't have the old cravings anymore. You don't have the old desires anymore. When we do our typical dieting, the reason we fail is because we cut back on the addiction rather than cut it out. So you always feel deprived because you're always not having what you want to have and you're still feeding the addiction.
When you cut it out entirely, get free from it and then feed yourself with healthy stuff. That's all you want. That's what you desire. And then you have the benefits of it.
You think, why would they go back to the old way? Every time I see people eating the foods they used to eat, which is all the time because I'm invited to restaurants all the time and I'm on the road all the time and all kinds of settings, I think, hey, it may work for you, but it didn't work for me. I was there. I did that.
Didn't work for me. And I wouldn't trade the way I feel and what I'm experiencing now for anything. Let me tell you about something happened to me early on.
And then I want to give you some practical tips and we'll even do a quick little analysis to see if you qualify as being a food addict. So it was about two and a half weeks into my new lifestyle. I was enjoying life. I wasn't feeling deprived. I was starting to see some of the benefits. The weight was starting to come off. I was immediately starting to feel some things were different.
Many take months before you feel the full benefit and reap the full benefit. But I was positive. I was good.
I'd come home from doing radio. I took a short nap and then I was going to teach a night class. And somehow when I woke up from the nap just two and a half weeks into this, I really wanted something sweet. And I thought, okay, I've read about this and this is good. A sweet tooth is good when you satisfy it with fruits and healthy things like that.
Good. Just natural fruits of the things that God gave. Well, somehow we didn't have any fruit in the house for whatever reason. We had no fruit in the house. And I had to get to a class. I didn't have time to go to a grocery store and things like that.
I said, you know what? On the way there, there's a gas station, this convenience store. And the other day in the convenience store, I saw cut up pieces of watermelon.
Maybe they have that. And I have to tell you, this is the first time in my life I ever went to a convenience store looking for cut up pieces of watermelon. Otherwise it would be scouring the candy aisle and then mixing it with this or that, or what do I want to get? And it was daily.
Again, I was an addict with this stuff. So I looked and there's no cut up watermelon. There's no fruit of any kind.
There's no apples, nothing. It's like, oh man, what am I going to do? I need to get something in my system. It was this weird thing. I had to have something.
What am I going to do? So I looked at the juices and Nancy had said, you know what? You want to avoid certain juices. You know, most of the juices have sugars and things like that and other junk in them. So I'm looking, is there any healthy juice? And I see these juices, you know, naked juices and I'm okay.
Maybe that looks like the most healthy. So I got one of those and I drank half of it. And now I'm pulling up to the parking lot to teach my class on Jesus revolution.
And as I'm driving up to the parking lot, I get completely overwhelmed. I thought like, I can't do, I can't live the rest of my life like this. What you're never going to have. You're never going to have another slice of pizza the rest of your life. You're never going to have another piece of chocolate the rest of your life. You're never going to eat this the rest of your life. And I have a little meat, you know, once a week, a little grilled meat. And again, I'm thriving. I don't feel deprived at all, but I'm just telling you, this is what I was going through at that moment. I hit a wall.
I had a complete meltdown and I'm sitting there in my car, literally two minutes before the class in the parking lot, literally two minutes. And it's all in the book. I tell the story. And by the way, when you get breaking the stronghold of food far and away, the best part of the book is Nancy keeps chiming in with her viewpoint, with her wisdom along the way.
So I'll be speaking. And then she weighs in far and away the best part of the book. And then she tells her whole story at the end of it.
So here's what happens. I'm sitting there in the car and I completely melt down and I start crying like a baby in my car. And I'm tears streaming down my cheeks. I said, I got, I can't, I can't. Think of what babies we are when it comes to food.
Here I am, man of God, Dr. Brown, about to teach on Jesus revolution. I'm sitting there, I can't, I can't eat like this the rest of my life. And two things were happening simultaneously. On the one hand, I really hit bottom. I had my crisis. I hit the wall. On the other hand, I was watching myself from the outside, laughing at myself, literally thinking this is the best thing that could happen to you. Cause when you hit bottom, when you come to the end of yourself, you discover the grace of God.
How many times have we had that happen? And I wiped the tears from my eyes. I was about to teach on one thing and I just felt the spirit say, no, go in this direction.
I walked in, you know, taught my class like normal. And that's, that was the one and only crisis. That was it. I hit bottom. I hit that breaking point. God's grace kicked in. And maybe literally in two and a half years, maybe I've had one or two minor struggles where I just felt a little bothered that, Hey, it's a little hard. I'm at this airport 12 hours and there's nothing I can eat.
And so on. I'm talking about minor, otherwise I thrive day and night. I don't feel deprived. I don't feel I'm sacrificing because that's something that bothered me through the years. So when I diet, I feel deprived.
And I thought I'm under enough pressure in life and there's enough burdens to carry in ministry. I don't need this extra burden of feeling deprived anymore. But when my whole lifestyle changed, Whoa, instead of feeling deprived, I thrive. So I hit bottom. I hit breaking point, but by God's grace, that's when everything changed. And a good place to start is just say, God, I'm weak. I have a real issue when it comes to food.
Be honest, start there. In fact, let me give you a quick little quiz here. Let's just go through this.
Let's look at 10 ways to know if you're a food addict, because we all know that we shouldn't have addictions. We all know that this is not in the best interest. So can we take a look at those? Do we have those ready?
Yes, there we are. All right. Number one, you can check yourself on this. The thought of giving up your favorite unhealthy food or foods for an extended period of time, like a week or a month is almost terrifying to you.
Hmm. Number two, you have a negative emotional reaction when you go without your favorite unhealthy food or foods. Number three, if you don't have your daily coffee or sweets or other habitual foods, you get headaches and even experience withdrawal symptoms. Before you know that if you ate differently, you'd be healthier and would likely live longer, but you're not willing to change. Number five, you've lost weight in the past, perhaps many times, only to gain it all back again. Number six, you're embarrassed about being overweight, but find yourself unable to change your diet for any length of time. Number seven, number seven, you deceive others about your food choices, keeping a hidden stash of your favorite forbidden foods or eating them when no one is watching. Number eight, you make excuses for your bad eating habits in ways you'd never do for other areas of your life that are undisciplined. Number nine, you have physical cravings for certain foods and you need to eat them to satisfy those cravings. Number 10, you live in denial concerning your bad eating habits, blaming others or minimizing your problems or claiming that God is fine with your unhealthy diet. Now, if any one of those 10 applied, I'd say you're a food addict. For me, I was 10 out of 10 in the past.
Every one of those applied to me in the past. In fact, you know about having stashes and stuff? So as our daughters were growing up, some friends had given us as a holiday gift, some special chocolates. And we said, you know, we're going to put them in the pantry and we're going to save them until we have guests over. So we told the kids that's off limits. You can't eat that. So I wasn't going to have it. Nancy wasn't going to have it.
The kids weren't going to have it. So after a few days went by, Nancy said to me, you've been eating the chocolates. I said, not me. I haven't touched them. We agreed no one's touching them.
I said, I thought you were eating the chocolate. She said, no, no, we agreed no one's touching them. So we knew immediately it was our older daughter. We knew it wasn't our younger. We knew it was our older daughter.
She was the only one getting in trouble. So we said, all right, we're going to have to call her because we said explicitly, no one touches those. So, you know, she broke the rules.
We're going to have to talk to her about it. And I said to Nancy, before we talk to Jen, can I, I got to show you something. So we walked into my study and I opened the desk drawer and there I had Oreos stashed. I had my secret stash. I wasn't touching the chocolate there because we agreed no sweets in the house, but I had a secret stash because after all I could drive in the car and Jen couldn't.
She was too little. I could drive in the car, buy something secretly and hide it in the house so I could have my stash. I said, hun, I feel a little funny punishing Jen for doing this one. I got my secret stash. She said, come here.
I got to show you something. And we went upstairs to the bedroom and she opened up her hutch and there she had Reese's Pieces hidden there. That's what addicts do.
And then we make our excuses. We were talking to a pastor once, a dear brother who had type two diabetes. This is a pastor. And Nancy said to him, you know, if you went totally vegan, that can be completely reversed. He said, I know, but I hate veggies.
I think that you're playing with your health. I talked to another Christian leader, a man about my age, a cancer survivor. He said, the doctor told me the particular type of cancer I have that if I'll go vegan, if I'll avoid meats and eat healthily, he said, guaranteed this cancer will never come back. He said, but if you go back to eating meats and things like that, only 70% chance it'll never come back. He said, yeah, I know, but I like meat. We're supposed to be Christians.
We're supposed to be men and women of the spirit, men, women of discipline. And yet we say, yeah, I know I could be healthier. I know I could live longer. I know I could have more energy. I know I could serve others more. I know I could be here for my family for years to come. If I changed my diet, but I like my food.
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We need to be honest. And the place where you start is to say, okay, I have a problem with food, whether it's gluttony, whether it's food addiction of a different kind, whether it's all kinds of emotional eating. If you know it's unhealthy, if you know it's hurting you long time, if you're embarrassed by it, if you have sicknesses and other problems because of it, no condemnation.
But say, okay, I need help. Remember Jesus said he didn't come for the healthy but for the sick. So let's start here. It's a stronghold all through America and especially a stronghold in the church.
Why? Because everything we do is around food. Our fellowship dinners, our potluck dinners, our hangout times, it's all around food. You know, we don't live the party scene in the world he's seen in that way, but we just replace it with food. One brother from Ghana was visiting a friend of mine in the States and he was here for about a week and he went to every meeting that this brother went to.
Church meetings, fellowship meetings, different things. And he said, no wonder God's not moving in your country. He said, all we do is fast, all you do is feast.
It's part of our culture. We need to renew our minds in terms of our relationship with food. We need to think of serving God with life and vigor and joy and vitality. And think of that as the great reward. And then food is the fuel. You know, I turned 62 a couple of weeks ago and my trainer that will put me through rigorous routines when he's in town and I'm in town, he gave me an exercise to do of 1400 reps, seven different exercises, including 200, so it's 200 reps of everything, seven different exercises and included in the midst of it is 200 push-ups and 200 jump squats.
So for those who know what those are, pretty rigorous stuff. So I did it when I turned 62. I timed it. I'm sure my form was lousy, but I was going to keep moving through it. And then I did it when I was 62 and I improved on my time. So I did this thing with 1400 reps, including 200 push-ups, 200 jump squats.
I did it under 20 minutes. I am thriving. Obviously our lives are in God's hands and we can be taken out of here tomorrow, but to the extent we can cooperate, we ought to do it before the Lord. So here's where we start. God, I have a problem. I acknowledge I have an issue when it comes to food. Confess it. Lord, I'm addicted to this. If you say, I don't know if I'm addicted or not, just go without whatever that food is or that coffee or whatever for a week or for a month and you'll find out pretty quick if you're addicted or not.
God, I have a problem here. I need your help. And then the second thing you want to do is determine to make a change and get a plan of attack. Have a plan of attack and realize, okay, all these things are unhealthy. As you read our book, as you go to other websites and read other things, they'll give you an idea of things that are healthy and things that are unhealthy. Some stuff we've lived with all our lives. We just think this is the only way to do it.
And it's the worst thing to do. I was so food ignorant. I remember years back I decided one day to take a break from pizza and to get something healthy. So I got a steak burger and fries at Burger King.
Probably a chocolate shake as well. Here's what you want to do then. By God's grace, you want to get rid of the old stuff. If you need to wean yourself off of it, or if you can do it cold turkey the way I did, you want to get rid of the bad and you want to replace it with good. And what's amazing is that God has put things in the body that are incredibly healthy. He's put things in this world that are incredibly healthy.
And when we feed ourselves those things, our body begins to respond. One woman sent us a video testimony. She just wanted to know that she's had emotional disorders and been on meds. And now that she's eating healthily, she's off her medication. Others have written to us, the book just came out in January. Within a month they were off their diabetes medication.
Others have lost 30 pounds already and they say I haven't felt like this since I was in my 20s. So you want to get rid of the bad and then you want to replace it with that which is good and healthy. And again, it's the stuff that God's put in the earth.
It's the stuff that He's given us and it's amazing how He's designed it for life. And then I want to encourage you to have a mentality of being all in. I want to encourage you, if you want to have long-term success, to be all in. You renew your mind in relationship to food. You ask God for help and grace. You meditate on His word and pray in communion with Him.
Read other stories and other testimonies that will encourage you, just like you do in any other area. But here's the deal. I was talking to my doctor when I was having an annual physical. He's a Christian man as well and he said to me, he said, Mike, you've been blessed with the gift of being all in. And I thought that is kind of my mentality. When I was in sin in the world, I was all in sin in the destructive way, in the Lord, all in.
When I give myself to something, it's all in. And Nancy and I talked about this because she had her own radical life transformation. And then she thought, OK, I can have like one splurge day, maybe once a month or once a quarter and measure out what I'm going to have on that and then go back. And she did.
It was fine. And then she did another time and it was fine. But then the third or the fourth time, wherever it was, I forget the exact number, instead of one day it was two, then it was three, then it was four. And before she knew it, she was trapped again. And she started to put weight back on.
And it was much harder for her to break out the second time than the first time. So I live as if I'm a recovering food addict. When Jesus set me free from drugs, I couldn't relate to people who said I'm a recovering drug addict. In fact, I judged them negatively.
I said, well, you're weak. That's how I look at them. What do you mean you're a recovering drug addict? You're set free.
That's how I looked at people. I couldn't relate to the mentality, but I live as if I'm a recovering food addict. No, I'm not tempted. No, I don't struggle.
No, I'm thriving by God's grace. I can be in a hotel room and maybe there's a gift basket that is wrongly in there with all kinds of junk food and unhealthy stuff. It doesn't even dawn on me to touch it. But I live as if I'm a recovering food addict, meaning I don't know what would happen if I ate unhealthy food. Maybe I'd get sick. Fine. But maybe I'd like it.
And maybe that would open the door of temptation. And Nancy would be on these forums with others who were looking to transform their relationship to food and read the same story over and over again. I was doing great for months. I was doing great for years.
I was just in Israel. And a woman told me that she avoided certain foods for six years, six years. And then someone convinced her just one taste, one time won't hurt you. And she's not been able to get free since then.
And it's years have gone by. So when God helps you, when you see his grace at work in your life, don't play games with it. When he gives you freedom, if the sun sets you free, Jesus says, John 8, you're free indeed. Be free in this regard too. Be free from the stronghold of food. When you experience that freedom, don't play games with it. And when you're tempted, Nancy gave me this counsel, say to yourself, you can eat whatever you want, just not today.
And that would lift the pressure off in those early days. Great. I can eat whatever I want, just not today.
And then you get through that crisis and then you're fine. You're fine. You're fine. But I have no desire to find out, well, what would happen if I had chocolate ice cream now? Or what would happen if I had a slice of pizza? I'm pretty sure I'd get sick because my body's only used to healthy stuff. But what if I liked it?
I was like, oh, you're missing this. You can have this again. And what if it opens up a door to temptation? So once you're free, stay free. Once you're free, enjoy the grace that's given to you.
And if you do that, you'll find a path to lasting freedom. Obviously, I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a medical doctor.
I'm not here as a health expert. I'm here to testify. I'm here to encourage. And more than any book I've written, this, the first Nancy and I wrote together, it's about 30 books now. The stories we're hearing from people are the most gut wrenching, amazing stories.
The most incredible testimonies we've heard. This is a universal problem in our culture, a universal problem in the church, in America, in the West. And by God's grace, it's time for change to come. And perhaps God sent me at this time to encourage you to take those steps to a transformation in your own life. So we're gonna pray, and then I'll stick around to answer some questions. But let's pray first. Father, I pray these words would be words of life and encouragement and help. I pray, God, that faith would rise. I pray that there would be a fresh resolution. I pray that something would ignite within us that says enough is enough, being a slave to foods.
My stomach is not my God. Jesus alone is Lord. May that be real in our lives. May there be encouragement. May there be faith. May there be conviction. May there be motivation. May there be lasting change that comes.
We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening, friends. We do appreciate it. As we end the year, start the new year, maybe this is the time for transformation in your own life. And thank you in advance for your gifts that help us end the year and start the new year strong. Thelineoffire.org is the place to go to support the ministry.
This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener-supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the Word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and click donate.
