Day 97: Pride?

What causes me to want to lose weight? Is it really that my body is a temple, or is it my pride? After doing my Bible study this morning and studying the pride of OT kings...I must admit it is pride. I want to look good! I want to be skinny and look good more so than look like I have life of self-control and healthy living. It has been more pride than pleasing my Lord because I am His temple.

Father, forgive me of my pride. Help me to know when that is an issue in my eating. Walk near and close to me so that I can become the servant you desire... physically as well as spiritually. Amen

Day 96: 194 Pounds

Don't you know that you are God's temple...and God's Spirit lives in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16

Well....

• I was an alternate so didn't get to deliberate.
• My first reaction was disappointment.
• My thought was, seriously God? You put me here and then scoot me off?
• I was relieved when the press reported the jury was hung, mistrial declared, and new trial scheduled.
• I thanked the Lord for not wasting two of my days.

• Healthy I am not...gallbladder attack and lingering symptons
• I weigh 194 pounds! There it is out on the web...Debbie Warren weights way too much!
• God is convicting me and I'm sensing - yet again - that this is a spiritual battle. I am a home ec major for Pete Sakes and I know how to eat healthy!
• I've paid Weight Watchers a lot of money in the past to loose 30 pounds...only to return to unhealthy eating and be right back where I am now. Money wasted.
• The money I would pay to weight watchers - primarily for accountability - I could contribute to an intern.
• God won't give me a piece about going back to WW.
• I am lazy and don't excercise...not even an evening walk with the dog. Pitaful!

I am doing Breaking Free by Beth Moore. This is my bondage...unhealthy eating...which produces excess weight and possibly gall bladder problems. I must depend on God to help me fight this and not man. I must be accountable to a God I can't physically see and not person I can.

For me, and only me, Weight Watchers is not what God wants me to do right now. I must depend on him.

I will sign into my blog weekly with my weight...that will be my accountability...I will see it.

Lord, help me to hold fast to you. Thank you for showing me this is a spiritual battle that I can't fight on my own. I need you to walk alongside me. For this season you are saying "No" to outside help. Be my helper. Be my supporter. Be my ultimate accountability. I am your servant and desire to serve you well with my whole body. Amen

Day 95: God of Tomorrow

El Roi ~ The God who sees me.

How easy it is to forget that God is a personal God and knows us personally. Recently I was reminded of how personally God knows my life and my tomorrows.

I was disappointed that I wasn't assigned an additional class to teach for LU. It would have meant an overlap of 4 weeks in terms which equals teaching 40 students at one time - on top of my ministry.

I realized the importance of God saying "no" to the additional assignment when I was selected to serve on a Federal case as a juror! From 240 people taking the questionnaire...72 called back...20 some dismissed on jury selection day...names in a tumble barrel...my name pulled out...both sides agreeing to me...I'm in the jury box for the next three weeks.

I know it is God that placed me on this jury and I desire to serve him well.

Thank you Father for not giving me what I initially asked for. I know ask for now and the finances to make up the difference.

I worship you, El Roi

Day 94: I Can Love ... even when it's hard

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."
Galatians 5:6

Recently I heard from a couple that they had agreed not to quickly say the words, "I love you" but to wait and let their actions demonstrate what love is. I know that our son and his wife during their courtship made a covenant not to say "I love you" until they had dated one year. Sounded odd to me at first...but I began to enjoy the last comments of a phone conversation, "Good night, I like you ... I like you allot!" Precious. And then on a silly movie yesterday it was said, "Love is friendship on fire!"

Love is an expression....of friendship...through acts of kindness...liking someone.

But love isn't always easy. It does take time and effort. 1 Corinthians 13:4-13 lists all the things love is and isn't. As Beth Moore points out it is by God's filling of us through the Holy Spirit that we have the capability to love. People in our lives don't always love us in return the way we want to be loved and appreciated. But that's not the point is it? Christ loved us and died for us in spite of our sin and rejection of Him. 1 Corinthians 13:8 says love never fails. Love is never without an effect. It has an effect and a power whether we see it and realize it or not.

The challenge is allowing the Holy Spirit to help me love those I, in my human self, have a difficult time loving.

Lord, guide me and Holy Spirit show me how to actively and faithfully love those that "tweak my nerves."