One woman's journey walking with Jesus Christ learning to live abundantly and be balanced in mind, body, soul and spirit. ~ 1 Corinthians 6:19 – Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?…
You know the title of my blog post today is what every person says at the beginning of the year. We all have a vision for the new year and many people make resolutions that by the 15th of the month are a thing of the past. Well I am not like every one else so I am declaring my new year, new me mantra today! Well not really, I actually began the year with this idea in mind and it has already been a long 15 days. I started the year with a 21 day Daniel Fast that I am in the midst of now as this will be my 3rd week starting today. I have been vlogging over on YouTube as I feel like this is going to be the year that I am going to push through my insecurities and finally get myself to a place of consistently eating healthy and exercising. The idea is to start the year off by consecrating myself to the Lord with the Daniel Fast and then continue to allow the Lord to guide me in my food choices and my exercise routine. I invite you to come over to YouTube and follow my journey.
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God”. 1 Corinthians 10:31 ESV
When I was considering what Bible verse to share today this is the only one that makes sense to me. You see I was so excited to see my scale victory today because I knew that it was all for the glory of God. This past week I have begun a journey that I have traveled before. I began with sharing my why and my goals. Not one of my goals includes a number of pounds that I want to lose. Why? Because I know myself. I get tripped up by trying to go after the BIG PICTURE. I get caught up in reaching the number goal. I will be honest with you. I like numbers. I am a numbers girl. People who know me, know this to be true. I also like dates. I have spreadsheets on just about everything in my life and this is the organizational side of me. I think I really embraced it because of the work I do but nonetheless I am a numbers girl who loves her spreadsheets.
In the past, my spreadsheets have been helpful and a hindrance. I used to weigh myself every day and record it on my spreadsheet with all of my food and exercise for the day. I am at line 2185 on my spreadsheet as of today. However, I am not as rigid with adding my data on the spreadsheet anymore because then my focus is displaced. My focus has to stay fixed and firm and that is the fact that I have chosen to pick up the truth that my body is a sacred place, the temple of the Holy Spirit and God wants to show Himself in and through my body. My focus has to be on Jesus at all times. So that is what I have been doing this past week as I begin to walk this journey again with fresh eyes and lots of lessons behind me.
I do not feel the need to scrap the idea of weighing myself on this journey but I am only doing this once a week. I don’t feel the need to weigh myself every day. I’ve done it and it’s not a part of the journey anymore. I am learning how to pick up the things that God wants me to work on and toss the rest in the garbage and there is no junk drawer anymore for me to save those things for later. Well I have rambled long enough and now I will share with you my scale victory of all my work over the past week.
Day 1 – 10/1/2015
Day 7 – 10/7/15
That is a 9.4 pound loss and I just give all the glory and honor to Jesus! I spent most of my time learning and growing in His Word. I was intentional about getting some exercise in and moving my body at 2-3 minutes at a time throughout my day. I have not had any sweets and I am drinking my water. My food intake has changed from eating all day to eating meals and snacks. This is just the beginning of my journey and I will celebrate every victory by giving glory to Jesus. Without Him I can do nothing and I am so glad I finally learned that lesson and I don’t ever want to forget.
You ever wake up and realize that you have been doing things all wrong? It occurred to me in recent weeks that I was just focusing way too much on the wrong things. I’ve focused so much on my failures that I never really saw the successes and so I dismissed the successes and then of course I would splat. Yes splat – fall on my face and not get up. I’ve seen this pattern in my journey to health and wellness for the past 7 years. I really paid attention to it this year as I really took a hard look at myself and why I was not able to be consistent in healthy eating and exercise. Well I think I figured out the problem, I had too much healing that needed to be done on the inside before the outside of me would come into alignment. Deep inside I was afraid to lose the weight because then I would be more noticeable. I mean come on let’s face it, people are more apt to notice your weight loss efforts and say “Hey you are looking great” then when you are gaining weight. Nobody says “Hey you are looking fat today”, well at least not adults that care about you. Children on the other hand can be cruel but I digress.
Early this year I had this knowing in my gut that said this year will be a year when I get my healthy lifestyle back on track. I just knew that it was close and I could feel it. I knew that I had come to a place where significant healing was was evident in my life emotionally and spiritually and I was ready to see that spill over into the physical. So in the middle of great circumstantial stress I tried to get the ball rolling. It didn’t work. I had a lot of false starts but no significant wins. By June I was disgusted with myself and started on a downward spiral of guilt and shame. I went through a short time of depression and just a time of pressing in to God to see where He would take me next. Well He got my attention and come July I started back on the journey to getting my life in order. I started with getting my relationship with Jesus to a higher level, started working on things that I knew the Lord was calling me to do.
I started out by walking to work one day and it took me 12 minutes. I had stopped 4 times and I was so out of breath that I thought I would die and I couldn’t speak when I did get to work. It was miserable. My brother told me to do it again. So I did. I kept doing it until now I can walk to work in 8 min 13 seconds and not stop or be out of breath. That turnaround in me was in July and since then I have been taking it one day at a time. Sometimes one hour at a time. I have accountability and measurable goals every week. Some weeks are better than others but each week I celebrate my victories. Even if it’s just one victory in the whole week. My thinking is different now and that makes a huge difference. It doesn’t matter how fast or how slow I go anymore, it’s just that I keep moving forward and don’t look back.
This is a tough blog to write. I’ve been procrastinating over it for almost a week now. I think I have come to the end of myself once again (and hopefully for all time). My journey began in 2008 and for 3 years I was actively working on losing weight. It was so necessary because of health issues and primarily because I wanted to please God. In February 2011 I started this blog because I truly felt the Lord impressed the name Losing4Christ on me and I had 7 things that I wanted to lose for Christ:
Weight
Sin
Bondage
Damaged Emotions
Lack of discipline
Fear
Control
Well, to be very honest I was stuck on #1 and worked very hard at losing weight in 2011 and I lost 84.5 lbs total by the end of the year. Today I am sad to say that of that total I have gained back 77.3 lbs since January 2012. Ouch! That hurts in more ways than one.
The good news…yes there is good news Praise God! The good news is I have lost some damaged emotions, some fear and lots of bondage. Not 100% though as I am still a work in progress but over the course of the past 9 months I have actually seen growth in my life. Hallelujah! I am very excited that I can see the growth because a few weeks ago I didn’t see it. It has been a very difficult year for me spiritually. I have struggled with so many mind wars that I thought I was defeated for sure. Ah but our awesome Jesus has people around me who are able to tell me the truth as they see all the things I don’t see through the fog of lies the enemy tries to keep me focused on. Well today I am happy to say that the fog is gone and I am seeing very clearly once again. So now it is time to get back to the vision for getting healthy and losing weight. I don’t exactly have a plan yet but I am going to start out with a few simple goals that I feel the Lord wants me to start with. I hope to share my progress along the way.
Now, would you allow me to share with you what I wrote back in 2008 that started this whole journey? Thank you so much! I hope this will help someone else or maybe it will just re-ignite my own passion. Here we go….
Subject: Confessions of an Addict (originally posted on MySpace – does anyone use that site anymore??)
Category: Religion/philosophy
11/10/2008
Mood: Optimistic
I am an addict. There I said it. I am an addict. No I am not addicted to drugs or sex or anything like that. I am not even addicted to the Internet…anymore…wow this is going to be a painful blog. Sigh…Ok so here I am making confession today on this blog before God and man…I am a food addict.
Why am I sharing this with you today? Well on Saturday October 4, 2008, I was working (as usual) and I was listening to a song over and over because it hit me like a ton of bricks and just brought me to a wonderful place of worship. So there I was at work just singing and sobbing and working all at the same time. What song? Thank you for asking.
The song is:
I Give You my Heart…By Hillsong and here are the lyrics…
This is my desire, to honour You,
Lord with all my heart,
I worship You,
All I have within me, I give You praise,
All that I adore, is in You,
Lord I give You my heart,
I give You my soul,
I live for You alone,
Every breath that I take,
Every moment I’m awake,
Lord have Your way in me.
So now you may be sitting there thinking to yourself…what does this song have to do with being an addict? Probably nothing but God can use anything He wants to get a message across if we just incline our ears to listen…I was listening that Saturday.
I was supposed to write this blog that night when I got home but I didn’t and the next morning I know God spoke to me and said that I needed to write this blog as an act of worship. So I pray that He is glorified because I am finally being obedient…albeit over a month late. I shared this message with a group of women at church on Saturday November 8th as well and one of the women said I need to get this posted on my blog now that I’ve shared it.
The song really speaks of exactly what is in my heart. I desire to worship God with all my heart and soul. I desire to live for Him alone with every breath I take for every moment of every day that He allows me to be here and then for eternity. So in order for me to do that, I need to know Him intimately…I need to feast on the Word of God daily, memorize it (Hide the Word in my heart), speak it, pray it, listen to it so that I know everything possible about the Almighty Father in Heaven and My Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. But there’s a problem…its called sin. We all know that sin separates us from God before we accept Jesus as Savior and once we receive Him our sins are forgiven because afterall that is why He went to the cross. Colossians 2:13-15 “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”
We know this but I’m talking about the sin that snares the believer. See I am a believer; I have been a believer for a long time. Most of you who are reading this blog are believers. Now I confess that I have been a prodigal more times than I care to mention as well but I know that today I am a follower of Christ. So what does all of this have to do with my confession of being an addict, you ask? Well I am learning that this addiction of mine is really sin. I found this definition of sin that really applies here: “Doing something wrong that separates you from God.” Eating food is not wrong but when it consumes your time and keeps your focus off God then it is truly a problem.
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” 1 Corinthians 10:31
I confess that I was not eating in a manner that was giving glory to God. I was actually eating so much that I had made food an idol. As I was preparing for my speaking engagement at church I was studying the fruit of the spirit and through that God fine tuned my message and showed me the area of fruit that He was pruning in my life and that is self control. So I just want to share a little bit of what I am learning about self control. You see the term itself can fool us if we are not thinking about it in a spiritual sense. Let’s see what the world’s definition of self control is:
The control of oneself; the ability to master one’s desires and impulses
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/self control
Self control to me in the context of being part of the fruit of the Sprit means that we give up self control to the Spirits control so that He helps us control ourselves. That is what the Lord wants from me; He wants me to give up control so He can help me control myself. God has placed people in my life to help me with this addiction and I have been working on these issues for several weeks now but I was only talking about my issues and exploring the reasons why I have this food addiction.
Well on October 31st I was challenged to take action and see how God would help me move beyond talking about my food addiction to actually conquering it.
My employer has a challenge twice a year as part of our wellness initiative and for 10 weeks we are challenged to eat healthy, exercise and record our efforts three times a week and then at the end of the challenge we all share in a prize pot if we maintain or lose weight. It costs 25.00 at the beginning of the challenge and then 20.00 of that becomes part of the prize pot at the end of the challenge. I have joined this challenge at least 3 or 4 times now and in the first challenge I did really well and lost weight but the next couple times I basically helped fatten the prize pot because I didn’t lose, maintain or even follow any of it. So I was determined that I would NOT join this time.
On October 31st during a benefit fair the table was set up for people to join the challenge and weigh in and get all your materials. So I got there and proceeded to tell the woman that I wasn’t going to do it this time and she of course started showing me the new tools and motivation materials. While she was talking another employee (who has also become a good friend) walks up and asks me if I am going to join and I said no. She said yes you are and proceeded to tell me that my excuses were not good enough and that I can do it. She then said she would be my accountability partner. So I changed my mind and decided to go ahead and join the challenge. So she comes and puts her arm around me and whispers in my ear “Now you know who sent me here to encourage you to do this challenge, don’t you?” and I smiled and replied “God” and she hugged me and said that we would do this together with His help and strength.
Well that day I didn’t really put much effort into the challenge and the weekend passed and I still had not even tried to eat healthier or eat any less. So on Monday morning I get to my office and find a piece of paper on my desk that had this scripture:
“Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.” Philippians 3:19
My friend had written me a note with this scripture stating she read this and God shouted at her and she wanted Him to shout at me too. Well I know this scripture and in context it is not talking about a food addiction but I heard the shout of the Lord in this verse just as my friend heard it and from that moment I started making some changes. Today will be 9 days since I started that challenge and 6 days since making changes in my eating habits and today I am 9.1 pounds lighter. Praise God! The timing of all of this was absolutely perfect and verified to me that this was all in God’s planning not my own. I want to clarify one thing though, you see God was never off the throne in my life but the idol of food was blocking my view of God just like if you are looking out at the ocean and see how big it is and you can see for miles but if you place a dime before your eye you will not see that ocean anymore. My addiction to food was blocking my view of God and hindering my walk with Him. I confess that I have a long way to go in this journey but I praise God for showing me that it only takes yielding to His control will allow me to have self control. Yesterday I shared this message with a group of women at my church but there is so much more to this story and maybe I will share more with you in the future as the Lord leads me.
Right now to wrap up this blog I just want to share some scripture that helped me in this journey of mine. Learning about the fruit of the spirit was a journey to learning so much about myself and how we as Christians are to live our lives…
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Galatians 5:22-23
The key to this verse is that we have to depend on the Holy Spirit so let’s read on a little further:
“And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” Galatians 5:24-2
Let’s do some further reading…
“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:4-5
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” John 15:16
“So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.” Romans 7:4
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.” Ephesians 5:8-10
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.” Philippians 1:9-12
Don’t you just love how the Word of God teaches us and guides us into all truth. God is awesome and He loves us so much. My prayer is that all those who read this blog will be blessed and encouraged. I also pray that you will be challenged to take inventory of your life to see if there is any fruit that needs pruning in your life. Allow the Lord to prune you as He has pruned me because ultimately we want to please Him and bring glory, praise and honor to God. The pruning process is part of God’s purpose of conforming us to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Hallelujah!
“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Romans 8:29
Lord I give You my heart,
I give You my soul,
I live for You alone,
Every breath that I take,
Every moment I’m awake,
Lord have Your way in me.
Let this be our prayer today. God bless you all!
All scripture references are from the NIV Bible.
Thank you for taking the time to read this long-winded blog. God bless you all!!
I hope you will walk with me as I Revisit the Vision….“1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ~ Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
losing4Christ 