By

Nancy Arant Williams

The feeding room is a place the Lord brought me, because I need to learn to eat. Maybe you’re like me and have had difficulty with food for one reason or another. Come with me on a tour of The Feeding Room. 

After years of struggle over this subject, I’ve recently been asking the Lord to teach me to eat. Though there are other diet plans out there, some of them quite src
iptural and anointed, they haven’t worked for me, and here’s why.

They haven’t addressed the root cause in me. The root cause became clear when I read the creation story in Genesis chapters 1-4.

You know the story. In the beginning, God created a wonderful garden, full of delicious things to eat, and He set Adam and Eve in it and told them they could have whatever they wanted, as long as they didn’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

It goes on to explain that the serpent was the craftiest of all the created beings, and he told Eve that God had lied about eating of that tree, that He knew she would be as wise as God if she ate its beautiful fruit. He encouraged her to do her own thing.

Even after reading that scripture repeatedly over the years, I had never seen this story quite this way before. It was an epiphany for me.

Now I saw myself in this story. First of all, I saw that with all the wonderful options they had to eat, they only wanted what was forbidden. Like they did, I want chocolate and junk when I have the option of everything else available that’s healthy and life-giving.

Gen. 2:9-11 says this-- “Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” (Because God is omniscient, He knew exactly where Adam and Eve were. But because He wanted to reestablish communication, He called out to them, asking where they were.) Because He loves us, God always wants closeness with us. He woos us in a million different ways, always hoping to get us to come to Him.

V. 10—And he said, “I heard the sound of Thee in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.”

And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat?” From this verse, it’s clear that their lack of trust in God’s word broke the fellowship between them. It’s also clear from this passage that I must learn to trust God, to listen to His voice, to follow Him and learn to let Him feed me.

When I’m feeling vulnerable, the devil picks up the thread, whispering into my ear, “YOU MUST NOT BE WORTH MUCH IF HE WON’T FEED YOU. And when I hear that, I feel like I can’t have ANYTHING to eat, which is simply one more lie of the devil.

This is the root of my eating problem. I have believed I was not worthy to be fed. And when I feel that way, I panic, believing I have to feed myself—that if I don’t do it, I won’t be fed at all. And what do I want to eat when I feel that way? Foods that make me feel better, like chocolate and fatty foods that have the greatest satiety value. Unfortunately, they also cause weight gain and all manner of other problems.

At this point, the Lord is saying to us, “Have I not promised that I will feed you, and not only that, but I will fill you up, give you strength and best of all, satisfy you?”

After reading the verses in Genesis, I see that my problem is exactly like that of Adam and Eve. I have been lied to, and didn’t even know it. I see that the enemy has not only lied to me, but undermined my trust in God in regard to eating.

And make no mistake about it--eating is IMPORTANT. It’s basic to survival. It’s essential to our life, health and well being. I believe, from what I’ve just seen, that if you and I can’t come to grips with this important issue, that of trusting God for this, our most basic need, the enemy will keep us from being triumphant in other important areas of our lives.

 What comes to mind when you think of food? Love, nurturing, sustenance, intimacy; all these things are involved. Think of a mother, nursing her child. She takes that child in her arms and cuddles it, offering her breast. She fixes her gaze on him and communicates with a look of love that she is committed to him. She spends all the time he needs, making sure he is satisfied. And she does this every few hours, every day until the child can feed himself. But even after that, she still oversees the process until he is fully grown.

That’s what a mother does. SO DOES GOD, and He does it forever. When it comes to you and me, scripture says in Isaiah 66:10-14—“Be joyful with Jerusalem (remember, everything scripture says about Jerusalem applies to us), and rejoice for her, all you who love her; be exceedingly glad with her all you who mourn over her, that you may nurse and be satisfied with her comforting breasts, that you may suck and be delighted with her bountiful bosom. For thus says the Lord, “Behold, I extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream. And you shall be nursed, you shall be carried on the hip and fondled on the knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. Then you shall see this, and your heart shall be glad. And your bones shall flourish like the new grass and the hand of the Lord shall be made known to His servants.”

It isn’t hard to see that if the devil can cause distrust regarding such a basic need as food, he has shaken the foundations of our faith. If we can’t trust God to feed us, how can we truly trust Him for anything else?

Because God has proven Himself to me in so many areas of my life, I simply couldn’t understand why I had no victory in the area of food. Like many of you, I tried everything, always hoping for the key to the problem. Well, this, my dear friends, is the key.

Do you know that the descriptive name of God, El Shaddai means ‘the all sufficient one’, the breasted one? I was studying the names of God, and this one covered it all. It means more than all the other names of God combined. Each of the other names describes one small aspect of His character, as in peace, victory, righteousness, and healer. But El Shaddai, according to Strong’s Concordance, means  “The all-sufficient one, who supplies our deepest longings.”

I can’t tell you how much that revelation blessed me. Particularly the words--‘the breasted one’. The only reason He would call Himself that is if He cared for us enough to FEED US. He named himself basically, ‘your feeder’. As elementary as that may sound, to people like me, who have never felt worthy to be fed, who have feared that they might go hungry, this is a HUGE revelation, one that will change our lives.

Because I knew, from His Word, that nothing was too hard for God, I told Him I was waiting for Him to take care of this eating problem. In the meantime, of course, I fed myself all manner of unwise things, meeting my own needs as I saw them.

Well, as of today, things are changing. Just as I’ve taken Him at His Word in regard to the other areas in my life, now I will believe Him for my feeding. And so can you.

When I asked Him what to call this place He’d taken me, He said, “The Feeding Room”. I thought it an odd name, but as I think about it now, it’s the perfect name. It’s the room where He

can cuddle us His lap, offer us His ‘breast’, look tenderly into our eyes and say, ”I’m taking care of your needs, EVERY SINGLE ONE.”

The scripture has much to say about food, nourishment and a mother tending her young, and every single one applies to the heart of God in regard to His beloved children.

According to scripture, we are His people and the sheep of His pastures.

A shepherd, in Old Testament times, moved his flock from place to place to insure that they had enough to eat. Would our Divine Shepherd do any less for His beloved?

Of course not.

Here’s what scripture says in Is. 49:15-16—“Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold I have insrc
ibed you on the palms of My hands; you… are continually before me.”

Is. 40:11 says this—“Like a shepherd, He will tend (King James says ‘feed’) His flock. In His arms He will gather the lambs and carry them in His bosom. He will gently lead the nursing ewes.”

So here’s the key. Now that we have His Word, His PROMISE on the subject, and He has revealed the root problem--that we have believed a lie of the devil, we can turn this whole thing around in faith.

You and I can now choose to use our warfare and tell the devil to get lost in Jesus’ name, because his lie has been exposed. It won’t work on us anymore. God says we ARE worth feeding, and He will go to any lengths to sustain us.

Now that I know the truth on the subject, I can choose to stake my life on the Word of God and His promise to touch this deep need inside me and feed me. If I can believe God on this issue, I will no longer feel unworthy to be fed, no longer feel panicky and restless, unsure of His provision. And when I’m able to relegate food to its rightful, but rather lowly place, He has so much more for me to accomplish for Him.

Here’s the crux of the issue. If the enemy can keep our focus on food or the lack of it, he will distract us from being the useful tools the Lord intends us to be. And in these last days, we dare not be distracted from the Father’s plan.

 It’s clear--the devil uses distraction as his primary tool on God’s children, but let’s press toward the mark of the high calling of God, no longer weighed down by unbelief. You and I can trust God to feed us, just as we trust Him for everything else.  He Is Faithful.