Episode 21: Dethroning the Idols in Our Lives
An interview with Rachael Hankins
Rachael bravely shares her 'in process' story of idolizing food & how the walls came tumbling down after surrender,prayer/fasting,and submission to our loving Heavenly Father. Rachael encourages 'Olive Us' to put our Heavenly Father back on the throne!
The Seeds
Name: Rachael Hankins
Age: 40
Where do you call home: Dixon, CA
Relationship Status: Married
Season of Work: Stay at Home Mama
Hobbies: Reading, calligraphy, skating in my leopard print skates lol, photography, writing, drooling over charcuterie boards, fueling my candle addiction at Bath & Body Works, and enjoying music (live concerts are the best)!
Interesting Facts: I can make my ears move without touching them lol. I am one of nine children (we call ourselves the divine 9 🤣) and was homeschooled by my mama back when it wasn’t cool. I saw online that you really care about people noticing that there is an “a” in your name and omg, I am the same way! Having my name spelled wrong is one of my pet peeves and having it spelled right is literally one of my love languages lol.
Jesus Journey: I was a “pew baby” and grew up in a Christian home. I accepted the Lord as my Savior at the age of 8. Growing up in church has positives but there are also challenges because you can become so familiar with being around the things of God that He doesn’t awe you. I was serving in my church and going through the motions in many ways but my relationship had become pretty surface level and religious. At 17, I went to college and had my first real boyfriend who was a thug with this really sad life story that I just knew I could make better. I am such a nurturer and was so touched by the things he told me he had been through that I thought I could be his sunshine. My relationship with him really pulled me away from the Lord and when I realized I had to get out, he started stalking me and trying to intimidate me into staying. It was a really scary and hard process for me emotionally but when I ended that relationship, I was broken before the Lord. I was so surrendered in wanting His will for my life and had this fire and deep love for Him. He had won my heart back and taught me that I could truly entrust my heart and life to Him.
The Branches
Rachael, it was such a joy to have you part of the #Recount2Remember Volume 2 Series back in December 2020. Your quick video recounting to remember God’s goodness & faithfulness while battling uncertainty & fear really resonated with people. Describe what you were experiencing.
Being thrown into the whole new world of pandemic life in 2020 felt scary and really uncertain to me. I felt isolated and deeply missed my family, church, and close friends. Racial injustices devastated my heart and made me feel anxious about the safety of my loved ones. I was trying my best to support my oldest son in distance learning, but I could see that this method of learning wasn’t working for him or our family dynamic. I had a lot of insecurity about which method to take with educating my boys and would stay up at night for hours researching and trying to figure out what to do. The routine of my life where I’d built in space for me to recharge, rest, and reconnect to “Rachael the woman” was all disrupted. There was this mourning in my heart concerning all of the change. I resisted trying to find new ways to take care of myself. In the whirlwind of all of this, there was of course no projection for when it would all end and so I was wrestling with fear and uncertainty in a way I never had before.
You mentioned in your #Recount2Remember video that the way you would cope with your uncertainty and fear was by numbing out with food. Talk to us about how you were “running to food instead of the Lord.”
High emotions (whether good or bad) are a trigger for me as an emotional eater. I can feel drawn to eat because I am really happy or I can feel drawn to eat because I am really sad, angry, or uncomfortable. All of the emotions of 2020 provided a perfect environment for my proclivity to seek comfort in eating food to grow into a full grown idol in my life. When I wanted to cry or I felt helpless about the “new normal” and the constant changes happening, I would head to the pantry to find something to eat. There was this temporary comfort I would feel after eating. When I say that I started running to the food instead of the Lord, it was because I got into this cycle where I would feel some uncomfortable emotion and immediately eat something before giving the Lord a chance to let me experience His comfort and presence with me in whatever it was I was facing. I didn’t fully realize the shift that was taking place until it was turning into an everyday thing and the amount that I was eating was becoming more and more.
What made you realize you were in a painful cycle with food?
When I stepped on the scale and saw how much weight I’d gained in such little time, it was a wake up call for me. I’d been avoiding the scale but when I finally got on the scale, I had to look at what I was doing to my physical body. Our spirit, mind and body are all interconnected and seeing the truth of where I was in my physical body, forced me to acknowledge that my emotional and spiritual health were also suffering.
How did running to food over God play out in your life?
Depression made me feel overwhelmed by my everyday life. Keeping order in my home felt like a huge task. Dishes were piling up in the sink, laundry was growing...I didn’t have it in me to show up like I normally would. As I kept giving myself over to being out of control in my physical appetite, there was this loss of dignity that I felt about myself. I felt like I was being controlled and almost taunted by bags of chips and boxes of donuts and that started chipping away at my confidence. I really saw a shift taking place in my spiritual confidence. I know that the Lord has called me to leadership and that starts with me being a good leader of myself first, through His power and submission to Him. Every time I ignored the Holy Spirit’s nudge to be moderate in my eating, I was bending the knee to food and treating it as if it were my Lord. Little by little it made me start doubting that I could carry out what God had put in my heart because after all, if I was this terrible of a leader of myself how could God use my life, right? These were the kind of lies the enemy was whispering to me and I had stopped fighting back. I started to listen to him and insecurity started to get a hold of me. I noticed that when I would try to do simple things like pray or read scripture at church, the fear kept growing and I started shrinking back. It was truly like a door had been opened in my life and a spiritual attack was flooding in.
Did others see this playing out and say something? What’s your advice to “Olive Us” who see a loved one struggling...or we recognize changes in mood, health, or other behaviors?
My husband Charles said something. He could see that I was struggling and told me that he wanted to come beside me and help me fight through this battle I was in. He doesn’t have any issues with food, so it isn’t something that he fully understands but it meant the world that he took what I was struggling with personally. He is my best friend and you know how best friend’s share things… he was essentially letting me know that I could borrow his faith and strength for this fight and didn’t have to try to get through it by myself. I truly thank God for him because I would wake up from my sleep some nights and he would have his hand on me and would be praying for me. He helped out more around the house and didn’t say one thing about what I wasn’t doing. When you’re the type that is bent towards being hard on yourself, it’s a gift to have a spouse that gives grace in hard times.
My advice is to let your loved one know that you see them and that you are there to come alongside them. Remind them of who they are in Christ and help them identify the lie from the enemy they are believing. So much of the spiritual attacks that get launched against us are really about getting us to lose our grip on our identity in Christ so that we don’t fulfill the callings on our lives. It means the world to have someone lend their strength and their faith while you are catching your breath. I believe that restoration can happen in such a beautiful way within the space of coming alongside one another with grace and letting them know that they aren’t alone in the battle.
What was your “come to Jesus moment” when you knew you needed to dethrone the idol of food?
My come to Jesus moment was after I had a really bad food binge. I realized that I had to dethrone this idol of food so I got up early that morning for prayer and asked God for help.
What did God reveal to you during (and after) the completion of your 7 days of Fasting & Prayer?
Coming to the Father as a child was so key for me. I am the type that wants to come up with my own ideas, plans and preconceived notions for how to fix things. I had finally come to a place where all of my attempts had failed and I was ready to just listen. That is such a child-like and beautiful place to be before the Father. As I sat there listening, He told me that He would ultimately lead me to resources and support to help me in this area, but first dedicate 7 days of fasting & prayer to Him.
It was like He wanted to show me what He could do in me without anyone or anything to come to my rescue during those 7 days. I believe it was so I could know where my true source of deliverance and healing came from. I knew that He was my source, but it’s amazing how we can forget what we know. He wanted time to remind me and move that truth out of my intellect and give me a fresh revelation of that truth in my area of weakness.
After about 3 days of the fast, I could feel something lift off of me. I kept going and it was like this heavy cloak of sadness went away and I could feel clarity in my mind starting to come back. When I finished the fast, I felt so different than I had when I began. I was in a posture of submission to my Heavenly Father again. I felt like He had carried me to His altar and His love and power had been there to help me take that idol of food off the throne so He could take His rightful place.
Because we are all “in process” what does your relationship with health, wellness, and God look like today? How are you “showing up” to your life?
My relationship with health and wellness is very much in process. The dethroning of food wasn’t a one time deal. It’s literally like the thorn in my flesh that Paul talked about and I have periods of time of victory and periods of time where I stumble my way through learning how to eat in a God honoring way. The beautiful thing is that I have identified the lie that the enemy tried so hard to get me to believe back in 2020 and whether I am walking in victory or struggling, I have been refusing to let my spiritual identity and confidence be stolen from me based on performance.
I am learning to give myself grace and enjoy the process. I am now homeschooling my two boys and I don’t always have a traditional time to workout in the morning. Often my exercise is rollerskating up and down the street with my boys during our PE time or instead of a run, choosing to go on a sunrise walk that somehow slows the pace of my mind and heart back to God’s rhythm. I have been trying to be sensitive to what my spirit needs for that day and being open to different ways health and self care can be welcomed into my day versus being rigid in this process.
These days the Father has really been revealing Himself to me as Jehovah Shammah - which means, God is there. He is there when I am doing well, when I am struggling, or when I am feeling anxious and overwhelmed. He doesn’t back away from me or change His mind when things get messy. That is such good news for a recovering perfectionist. I think His nearness to me is something that I am becoming better at recognizing because I am becoming more willing to pause. So much of what is happening in our relationship is about pacing. He wants me to hear and obey His nudges to slow down, speed up, pause, etc...and as I do this, there is this confidence that comes. Even if I am in pain or feeling uncomfortable, I know that He’s with me and I am in His will.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” Why do we often forget that our bodies are a temple where the Holy Spirit resides? How do we as women honor the temple God has given us?
I think it has to do with how we don’t really want to embrace the discipline that He calls us to. To live in a way that treats our body as the sacred place of the One who is holy, requires us to be in a deep level of submission and so I am not sure we are really forgetting that we are God’s temple, it may be more that we choose to ignore the gravity when we read it in scripture in hopes that we can get away with a spiritually lazy or spiritually immature life.
What are some practical steps you can share that will help our audience recognize & dethrone the idols in their life and keep them on mission?
a.) Identify your idols: Ask the Holy Spirit to remove the blinders and be willing to see the truth that it has become an idol in your life.
b.) Dethrone them: Put your pride aside and come to the Father as a child. Make it a point to listen more during your quiet time and when He speaks, do what He says. Fasting and prayer is such a powerful way to dethrone idols in our lives.
c.) Be restored (knowing that we are all “in process”): Flood your environment with faith and grace. Open up to a trusted person of faith that can walk alongside you on this journey. That trusted person could be a spouse, friend, parent or pastor. If you can’t find anyone, listen to sermons and read books that teach God’s truth and grace to help give you ammunition to fight lies. Focus on applying God’s Word to your spiritual identity and letting the Lord reveal to You who He longs to be to you as you are walking through this season. Little by little, day by day, the posture of submission allows the Lord to guide us to do the next right thing and restoration can begin.
The Olive Tree
Finish these statements:
God is…longing to reveal Himself in a new way through what we are going through.
Dethroning idols in our life is necessary because…idols only provide temporary relief and ultimately steals our worship and communion with our Heavenly Father.
"Olive Us" are better when…We drop the masks of perfection and judgement and come alongside one another in faith and grace.
Olives to Go
Olive Us was created for women to share their in process experiences and their "Only God" moments so that we can remember we are connected through Christ and that we're not alone. Why is this important?
This is deeply important because we learn so much more from a process than we learn from a finished product. I mean, it’s amazing to see where someone begins and then reaches their goal but if we don’t get any glimpses of the messy middle, we panic when we find ourselves stumbling. It creates such a temptation to give up when we aren’t able to do things perfectly if no one has the courage to say, “Hey, I am in this with you trusting God one day at a time. Watch out for that pit on the trail and let's keep climbing together.”
Any scriptures or worship songs you want to reference that have sustained and strengthened you?
John 4:31-34 means so much to me these days:
“Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”
Final thoughts:
When we are in a spiritual attack, it’s so important to ask, “what is the lie that I am believing?” Getting us to trade the truth of God for a lie is one of the enemy’s most effective tactics in rendering us ineffective. It is so important that we vigilantly guard the truth of God in our lives and the calling He has given us to complete.
Having consistent accountability partners who are also embracing a healthy lifestyle and really embracing self care has also been huge for me!