First steps

              As I said in an earlier post, my new word for this year is self control.  I am praying about areas in my life where I need the Holy Spirit to teach me self control.  The main area I have always felt most out of control is food.  I have struggled with weight my whole life.  As a teen, it was always brought to my attention.  I was bribed with a myriad of things to entice me to loose weight.  Needless to say, much of my thought life was consumed by thoughts about weight but never in a helpful way.  It was always negative.  Negative about myself, negative about my efforts, negative about my results.  I would try and fail.  Try and fail.  I seemed to be valued by others according to my weight and I percieved that value to be pretty low due to my failures to loose what was obviously making me less to others.  So clearly..... DECADES of this has not really made me too confident or secure in my abilities to get the weight off or overcome my lack of self control in this area.

           And yet, this is the area I feel called to be led in.  I joined and began going to Weight Watcher meetings in January.  I shared with my weekly ladies small group that I had joined.  I asked them to pray for me that God would help me learn to have self control with food.  I shared that what I really desired from this journey was to see that within self control, there was freedom.  I admitted that I really did not know what that looked like but I wanted to learn.  Those ladies were wonderful to me.  They listened, they encouraged, and they prayed.  When we were done, one lady said God wanted me to tell you to "Fix the relationship you have with food.  When you fix the relationship, it will be done." What a very good word to my very rebellious heart.  The thought of really thinking about my relationship with food was scary and exciting.  Scary because I knew what I would find would probably not make me very happy.  Exciting because recognizing that food was an unhealthy relationship in my life would most certainly bring good changes.  But could I look myself in the eye and really have a conversation with my head and my heart about food and what it had become to me?  Did I have hope that I could change when all other attempts have failed?

          A few weeks and a snow day later, I sat down by the fire to have that conversation.  I thought about my actions, thoughts, and feelings in relation to food.  Then  I made a list of my beliefs about food

                                              1.  Food equals pleasure.
                                              2.  Food equals celebration.
                                              3.  Food equals bonding.
                                              4.  Food equals accomplishment and creativity.
                                              5.  Food equals lavish indulgence.
                                              6.  Food equals freedom.

      I took a break, said a prayer,  and then asked myself about the realities of having these beliefs.  In acting from my belief system with food, what was really happening?  Was food really bringing me all of this or had food become an unhealthy addiction with negative results in my life?  The next list came to me


                                             1.  Food = addiction
                                             2.  Food= unhealthy habits
                                             3.  Food= unhealthy coorelations
                                             4. Food= negative self image
                                             5.  Food= rebellion
                                             6.  Food = bondage

     And that was enough soul searching for that day!  I was left with truths on the page.  Truths to help me think about my relationship.  Truths to guide my self control journey.  Truths that were both scary and exciting just like I thought.  Truths that I need to come back to and explore deeper to know and understand myself better.  Truths that have brought hope that I can truly change.


     Yesterday at my Weight Watchers meeting, I got my 25 pound charm.  I have actually lost almost 30 pounds now.  That is the most that I have ever lost in my 38 years of life!  I am going to be on this journey for a while now but, I have already found an answer to the prayer I asked those sweet small group ladies to pray.  I have found that there is freedom in self control.  There is freedom in making mindful choices, better choices, healthier choices.

       

Faith (a post from my husband)

Thought I’d share today about something I’m seeing in a new way.  I find it interesting that now and then, without me researching or reading what others say about a subject, the Holy Spirit will just guide me into a deeper understanding.  I pray and He talks back.  Ooooh scary.  Isn’t this the way the Bible was written?  What did the writers of the Bible read?  Well, the New Testament guys read the Old Testament.. but what did OT guys read?  Nothing!  Weren’t they just people too, just people with a seeking heart for God?  If God spoke to them, couldn’t we do the same thing?  It’s cool… I hope you all have those kinds of experiences too and if not, just start praying out loud and then have a time at the end or somewhere in the middle to just be quiet.  There’s something to the practice of praying out loud and then “listening.”  I used to just pray inside my head.  By praying out loud, I often find that still, small voice reach out to me and place a thought into my head which answers or leads me in the subject of which I was praying.  When I say I pray out loud, I actually whisper my prayers; I’m not saying you need to voice it to the whole house.  It works, try it.  

There’s been a couple things I’ve been hearing lately and that’s inspired me to write today.  First is faith; I’ve always associated faith with belief but it’s deeper than that.  I believe in Jesus, I believe he rose from the dead, yadda yadda.  I don’t question whether God is real and I’ve always thought that was faith… and it is, don’t get me wrong.  The faith I’m shown now is trust.  With this faith I not only have no Plan B, I don’t even have a Plan A.  I don’t know how, I don’t try to understand, and I’m not trying to figure it out; I simply pray (out loud) that I trust God to take care of it.  I put it out of my mind and don’t wait pensively to see what’s going to happen.  

It’s one thing to understand something, to get a revelation or whatever and boom, it’s in your head; it’s another thing to actually apply that next step into your life.  That’s the second thing, application. I often hear people say the right thing but don't apply that to other areas of life or relationships.  It’s like there’s a disconnect. I’m sure I do it too, it’s a blind spot.  I challenge myself to apply my learning; after all, isn’t that why we learn?  That challenge has benefited me nearly every time and I encourage you to almost make a game out of it… how can I apply this?

Well, the application of my [trust] faith, is that in dealing with, uhh… every man’s battle… hint, hint, wink, wink, say no more, say no more.  Each morning, when I pray, I invite the Holy Spirit into my day and say that I need His help.  I admit that I have no power to fight a battle I’m made to want.  For you, this could be a battle with food, could be guilt, could be wanting to control people, could be forgiveness of someone who deeply hurt you; it can be applied to anything.  Anyway, I admit that no power to fight evil is going to come from me because I’m a man living in flesh.  Side note… I believe no good is ever going to come from me; I am no source of any good, ever!  Any good in life comes from God; whether that is in my life or I see elsewhere, it comes from God.  He is the source, not us.  

That said, I do have a spirit that is inside my flesh that has been merged with Christ… with God.  Nothing can separate me from God because a bit of him and all of what I was got mixed together and behold I’m a new creation.  The old me is gone, never to return again and I am made into something completely new.  If God is all-powerful and all dominion is given to Christ, whose I am, then I have the ability to let go.  

With my belief faith, I thought of myself like a Jesus battery.  When I was fully charged, I could move mountains (according to the Bible); but when life drained me, I was weak and would fall.  See the problem with that is the i-factor.  I had to be fully charged.  I was the one who initiated and maintained the charge.  I fought.  I lost charge.  I failed.  I either did good or I did bad.  Belief faith totally depended on me.  Ha!  There actually IS an “i” in the word belief.  

Trust faith is totally different (and there’s no i either).  Trust faith is like being no more than an extension cord.  The power does not originate from me, it only flows through me.  The power is not dependent on me; in fact, it exists without me.  All I do is plug into it and let it do it’s job.  By praying in the morning and admitting that no power for good or fighting evil comes from me, I’m admitting that I’m just a vessel.  As a vessel I ask for God to fight the battles that day.  My exact words are: “It’s your fight, your victory and for your glory… not mine, so you do it and I trust you.” 

Nice words, right?  So what happens when I fail anyway?  Simple, I let go again.  I failed because I fought.  Every single time I loose because I revert back to belief faith again.  I forget to pray.  Not that praying is anything more than me reminding myself of my place; God knows all of this.  He sees me trying and that makes him happy (belief); it makes him even more happy when I don’t try and just let Him take care of it (trust).  Either way, He smiles on me.  I’m not saying that I’m endorsing living however you want, fail as often as you want, live life according to the belief faith.  At the same time, I had to understand belief faith before I could understand trust faith.  It took religion to break out of religion.  I don’t have religion, I am discovering relationship.  My point is, either way, I was reaching towards and that will always make God happy.  The difference is now, with trust, it’s deeper.  

It’s scary, I will admit but it’s also freeing.  Isn’t that what Christ said, my yoke is easy and my burden light.  In comparison, belief is so much harder, so much heavier than trust.  Didn’t Christ come to fulfill the law (religion - a.k.a. belief)?  He literally was showing us to just trust.  That was every disciples first test; hey, stop what you’re doing and follow me.  The rich, young ruler couldn’t do it; he was attached to material goods.  Others couldn’t do it; they asked if they could say goodbye or let people know what was going on.  That’s not trust, that’s belief.  

My weakness for his strength

       In January I participated in a New Year fast with my church.  There were many kinds of fasts I could have chosen to do but, I chose to fast my lunch meal everyday for the given time frame.  The church was open during lunch so that people in the congregation could come and pray. So everyday for two weeks, I would leave work, go to the church, and pray for lunch instead of eating.  During that time of prayer, I really felt impressed to pray about self control.  Self control is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  A few years ago at the beginning of a new year, the word love settled on me and daily I prayed for the Holy Spirit to grow in me the fruit of love.  My desire was that I would really understand God's love for me and my role to love others.  Since then, I have also prayed that I would grow in other fruits like goodness, kindness, peace, and joy.  In fact I prayed for most every other area to grow but the area of self control.  After some soul searching since January and some small "aha" moments since then I see why.
        Short and sweet, self control scares me.  See I fully expect the Holy Spirit to be right and ready to school me in all the fruits I see as "good."  I feel confident that I can grow in the "good" fruits.    However, I keep my distance from self control.  I see the word "self" listed there and I impose that this one fruit is one that I should work on and overcome on my own.  I feel like a HUGE failure at self control!  When I look at what I consider my big or reoccurring failures- I know their cause is from lack of self control.

• I am an unorganized mess because I have no self control to be organized and on schedule. 
•  I fail at mothering a teenager because I can't control my tongue or my temper. 
•  Lack of self control with my tongue has made me a gossip, a hurtful friend, a mean wife, etc, etc. 
• My spiritual growth fails because I can't be self controlled to have a regular quiet time with God.  
• I am overweight because I lack self control with food.   

       So suffice it to say, I didn't want to be impressed to pray for self control because I stink at it!  I don't have it.  I cannot muster it. I have failed God time and time again at my attempts to be better at it.  And yet in that revelation, that I cannot master self control on my own, I am finally on a path to growing in the fruit of self control.  I am no longer trying to do it alone or on my own.  A friend of mine who knew that I had joined Weight Watchers to grow in my struggle with self control and weight, came to me and said God wanted me to know that he wanted me to pray to him and tell him about my food struggles.  My friend said That God wanted to help me and all I needed to do was talk to him about it.  I was relieved at that word.  God does not expect me to fix this on my own!  The Bible does not say that the Holy Spirit will produce only love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness but NOT self control.  No it says, "But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, AND self control.  

      Now self control does not seem so scary.   I am letting Jesus change me, reveal to me, speak to me through others and their journey in this area.  I am not afraid of failing because he won't let me fail.  If I mess up, his grace covers me.  He reminds me that I am called to freedom not failure.  In my weakness is his strength.

       "Each time he said, "My grace is still all you need.  My power works best in weakness." So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me."  (2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT)