95 days till Easter~~~~~~~~~~~~~Committment

December 26, 2012

On my journey to be free from my slavery to food it is now 95 days till Easter. On this day I make a commitment to stop dieting. It's time to stop trying to make food behave and place the responsibility on myself. Wow! That is so opposite of what the world starts on January 1st, the commitment or resolution to diet.

I need instead to do it God's way and stop doing anything that makes me talk about, focus on, lust after food, or allow it to control me. Eating by the clock, savoring the smell of food, lusting over a mere picture of food, or falling for the power of suggestion to eat what I don't need all have to go.

In my commitment the battery on the clock needs to be removed. There is no more eating in the morning because that's what we are supposed to do or eating at noon or six o'clock because they are the appointed times to be hungry. I need to allow my stomach to tell me what the appointed time is not the clock.

My desire to keep my commitment to myself and God needs to be stronger than my desire to eat what I want when I want it. A good scripture to think of here as I begin is, Philippians 4:13 "I can do everything through Him who gives me strength."

Growing Beyond ~~~~The master of food

The purpose for Christmas is the fact that Jesus is the reason for the season. Praise the Lord for that. Soon Easter will be upon us and the purpose for that occasion is the fact that we are the reason for the season. Christmas we celebrate the birth of Christ, on Easter we celebrate the birth of ourselves in Christ through accepting the gift of His love and forgiveness.

However, what about the time in between the two seasons of the coming of Christ and His death and resurrection for our salvation. One year I had an elder at the church challenge his Bible study group to find something to be thankful for each day between the two seasons. It was a really interesting assignment as I made sure I went beyond naming simple things like "I'm thankful for my toes" one day and "I'm thankful for my ears" the next day and so on. Also a challenge was making sure I had something new each day.

This season I have chosen something different to pre-occupy my time in between the two seasons. I will be taking a journey "out of Egypt." Not Egypt the country but Egypt as the symbol of a place of slavery as the Israelites were in, in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Years ago I went through a program called Weighdown or "Exodus out of Egypt by Gwen Shamblin when I did I lost 60 pounds. The focus of her program was to stop trying to make our food behave and take on the responsibility of self-control ourselves. The object of the program was to eat like God designed our bodies to eat, to do so when we are truly hungry and to stop when we are satisfied.  

 
As successful as the program was for me since then I have found myself back in that imaginary place that is real, that place of slavery once again. The idol of food that I vowed to never bow down to again slowly returned and I have only myself to blame for the self-inflicted chains I bound myself into once again in extra pounds and bad eating habits. Indeed the minute I was diagnosed with cancer I gave up caring about my weight. I had bigger fish to fry, problems to solve, battles to fight. I didn't need to concentrate on my weight.

Wrong! There is no excuse good enough to justify purposely doing damage to my body simply because I love food and don't want to exercise self-control. When I went to the Cancer Treatment Center in Arizona they told me that body fat in a woman produces hormones, the very thing my cancer is made from. For every extra fat cell I have I'm feeding my cancer. How nuts is that!

It's time to break that chain of slavery I have wrapped myself in and get back to what God wants for me in my life. He wants my undivided love, no sharing it half and half with food. My total worship, no dividing it up between the donut I'd love to eat or the extra serving I think I need and God. He wants me in control of me instead of allowing Satan to control me with his temptations and lies.

Instead of growing beyond my current pant size I need to grow beyond my slavery to food and other things in my life. Therefore journey with me to Easter starting the day after Christmas. Your bondage may not be to food, it can be to alcohol, gambling, tobacco, sex, money, drugs or other things but its still a form of slavery. As Galatians 5:1 says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

The time is now, to stand firm, gain control of ourselves, and walk as Christ designed us to walk. Time to grow beyond our slavery and set ourselves free as Christ's death and resurrection intended for us. Let the journey begin.

Prepare for rain

As a part of my journey to prepare for rain or for God's answer I have sayings I have picked up to help on the subject.

"The situation is what you make of it, sometimes we need to pick up the slack from others and work harder." Too often when we are in difficult situations awaiting our own answers to prayer we don't think we need to be doing anything it that. Waiting for answers.



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Thorn in our flesh

In the Bible we find the old familiar story of Paul and how he was given a "thorn in flesh as a messenger of Satan to buffet him lest he be exalted above measure." Several times he pleaded with God to remove this so called thorn. I don't know if God answered Him each of the three times he pleaded with Him but what He did finally answer put an end to the pleading.

 

God told him in 2 Corinthians 12:9 "My grace is sufficent for you. For My strength is made perfect in weakness." It was an answer that was good enough for Paul and it needs to be good enough for us. It doesn't matter what Paul's thorn was nor does it matter what we would consider our thorn in flesh. Big or small, been there the longest or the shortest amount of time doesn't matter. What matters is the fact that God's grace is sufficent for us.

 

In preparing for rain (an answer to my prayer) as I've been talking about one of the best way I can do that is to work on my relationship with God. To live my faith and act it out in my attitude. I need to stay strong in the Lord, not in myself. Believe it or not the thorn in our flesh is there for God's use and our benefit. It's used to get our attention, to humble us, to teach us how to trust, follow, and have faith in God.  Too often we thank God for the roses (good things, blessings, etc) but we don't thank Him for the thorns when we really should. It's the thorns not the roses that do so much for us in spite of the pain they can cause and the struggles they create.

The thorns create storms in our lives and we need to use these moments for the betterment of our person instead of for an opportunity to grumble. Storms show us where the lose shutters are, the missing shingles, and the other things needed to be corrected before the next big storm hits.

We need to make God enough in our lives. We need to know and accept the fact that He is sufficent. In order to do so we need to come to the end of ourselves and surrender all we have to Him. Surrender our pain, our loneliness, our attitude, our time, efforts, and whatever else that has our fingerprints all over it.

God is sufficent. We need to believe that and live it out daily. In preparation for my rain (answer to my prayer) I need to keep my focus on God and know that He will come through for me. It may not be the answer I'm seeking but it will be sufficent to what God wants in my life and in the life of the individuals around me.

 Praise the Lord the thorn God has inflicted in our flesh is not there for our torture but for our teaching. Self-inflicted thorns are a totally different story, a totally different outcome.

Prayer for deliverance Continued

In reading the scriptures I came across these scriptures in Psalm 119 that just seemed to go along with my prayer for deliverance. Frequently praying the scripture helps to form the words in prayers where we have no idea what we want to say.

"Lord God I open my mouth panting expectantly, longing for Your commands. Come and show me Your mercy as You do for all who love Your name. Guide my steps by Your word, so I will not be overcome by any evil. Rescue me from the oppression of evil people then I can obey Your commandments. Look down on me with love. Teach me all your principals." Ps 119:131-135

I don't know about you but often when I open my mouth I do so to stick my foot in it, however, with this scripture they talk about panting expectantly and longing for God's commands. Good advice wouldn't you say? I think so.

The next part is asking the Lord to guide our steps and rescue us that we may not be overcome by evil. The part about this that we fail to see is the fact that in order to have God guide us properly we need to follow. We would like to leave off the part about "so I can obey Your commandments." No, no, no not that! Not the "O" word, obedience.

We like the thought of being delivered from the hands of the evil people out there but we don't want to have to do our part in the process. We get ourselves into all sorts of trouble and expect instant deliverance with no effort on our part at all.

Our desire needs to more on the obeying of God's commands and panting expectantly for them and if we do this we already have overcome a great deal of the evil that is around us. What a blessing it is to know that God is looking down upon us with love, our return to Him for that love is to be the student we need to be as we state, "Teach me ALL your principals."

ALL God's principals, not just the ones we like and agree with, we need to be taught all of them and again deliverance is ours. Praise the Lord.

Prepare for Rain

In the movie Facing Giants a mentor to the coach one day told him a story about two people praying for rain. One person prepared for the rain he was asking while the other did nothing but wait to see if his prayer was going to be answered. The mentor then asked the coach, " so who had more faith?"

The one who prepared for God to answer had the most faith. I want to prepare as well for my prayer of deliverance to be answered. This morning I thought about how I could do this preparation. In thinking about deliverance I thought about what I would act like if I had received the deliverance I had requested.

I must say I would be really excited, I would have a tremendous feeling of hope and anticipation. I would have a renewed strength to be able to go on. I would feel a great peace as if a burden had been removed from my shoulders.

In my preparation for "my rain" which would be deliverance from the affects of something that speaks negative harsh words, lives off bitterness, anger, and breeds a lot of insecurities and loneliness. Instead of fearing what is around every corner I'm going to be excited  that deliverance is coming. Instead of feeling an anger, hurt, and pain inside I'm going to feel the joy and peace that is to come knowing God's cares and He will deliver me.

His deliverance may take time but that is okay. Everything will work out according His glory and will and for the benefit of all involved. Praise the Lord we have a God who cares.

Get out your umbrella and prepare for rain!

Deliverance

In the Lord's prayer one of the lines Jesus taught us to pray is, "deliver us from evil." it is said that we don't pray this often enough and specific enough. We need to literally ask the Lord to deliver us from various situations in our lives.

In Psalm 18:17 it states that God delivered them from their strong enemy. An enemy too strong for them.

As we think about things we would like deliverance from they are often things we consider our enemy. An enemy too strong for us.

The situation I would like deliverance from fits the strong enemy description to the tee. For over thirty years it has been what I have had to fight against but no more I am asking for deliverance.

Merely asking is not where our part ends as that is only the beginning. We need to believe that our prayers will be answered. We have to have faith, trust, and patience in God. Deliverance to God may not look the same as the deliverance picture we have painted in our heads.

To us delivery should come now not later but to God it may take some time. In the meantime we need to properly wait in line and look for something to do. Such as being a proper witness for Christ showing the world how to wait for the Lord. Also we need to be looking for things we can learn while we wait for our deliverance.