Deceived into Doubting

Thursday was not a fun day for me.  I didn't feel that great physically, but I felt even worse emotionally.  I didn't feel like talking to anyone, I felt vulnerable, irritable, insecure and definitely out of sorts.  I tried to figure out what was wrong with me, but it wasn't really clear.  It is very rare for me to feel this way, so when I do, it really freaks me out.

I woke up Friday morning in a much better frame of mind.  I have a friend who is hurting and I really want to encourage her.  I was praying about her, asking God to give me some scripture to share with her.  And He did.  And as I was thinking on the scripture, I realized it was also the key to the problem I had the day before.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:10-12 NIV)

I don't think Satan wants me to encourage my friend.  Satan wants me to believe that my words of encouragement will not be helpful.  He wants me to believe that my own problems are big enough that I have no business trying to help someone else.  He also doesn't want my friend to be encouraged.  He wants her to fail.  And Satan wants the person she could help to fail...

We as Christians have to be aware of this Spiritual Warfare!  It is always a good idea to watch out for your enemies.  Satan caught me off guard.  It happens frequently when God has a good work for us to do, Satan will interfere.  He wants to render us useless.

There are a couple things I use to combat this doubting.

The first is to remember that my struggle is NOT against flesh and blood.  I had a pastor who shared something with me that I always think of in these circumstances.  He shared that whenever he would witness to somebody and they would pray to receive Christ, he would throw up that night.  To me that was a tangible example of spiritual warfare.  I always think of that when my doubts come!

The second thing I have to remind myself of came from that same pastor.  That pastor not only helped me to recognize my spiritual gift of encouragement, he gave me a rare and precious insight of how God was using my gift in other people's lives.  I led a Bible Study and that pastor shared with me some things that those women learned from me that stuck with them.  It was so tangible and so powerful that it helped me to trust my gift.

This morning I was sharing my struggle with a Christian friend and she also confirmed for me that I do have the gift of encouragement and that God is using it.  It really helped me getting that feedback from somebody I trust.

There are two things I want to remember from this experience.
 I need to be aware of when Satan is causing me to doubt and to fight against it.
 I need to encourage my sisters in Christ like my former pastor encouraged me so that they also can fight against Satan.


I want you to remember that when you doubt your abilities or your worth or your message to ask God if you are being deceived.  Find a Christian friend you trust to encourage you.  Don't let Satan render you useless.

Beet Breakfast Smoothie

Soul-filling Satisfaction

For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things” (Psalm 107:9). How do you respond to this promise? If you could ask God for one good thing that would help you to feel a deep and soul-filling satisfaction, what would it be? (Ch. 13, RQ 6)

I had a rough weekend.  I knew it was going to be hard.  Unfortunately, I forgot what I'm supposed to do when things get hard.  I knew what not to do... I didn't blow my eating plan.  Instead of talking to God about it though, I went shopping with my husband.  We came so close to spending $3000 on TV equipment.  Luckily, there were a few things we needed to check on before we could finalize our decision.  I started thinking about how I am now praying over small food decisions and realized that God cares about my shopping decisions too.  I don't know if we will get the TV equipment, but it was very clear to me that this weekend, I was doing it for all the wrong reasons.  Replacing God with shopping is just as bad as replacing Him with food.  The next day was rough too.  And again, I looked to solve it my own way through shopping.  This time my shopping craving was focused on a $3 set of colored markers.  Hmmm... Although the prices of my prospective purchases were vastly different, the issue was the same.  Where do I go when I need comfort?  I actually had to say no to the markers two times.  The second time I cried.  I remembered Lysa describing herself sitting in her closet and crying.  Now I get it.  I wasn't crying over markers.  I was crying because I finally had to face up to my pain and get real with God.  Resisting the temptation to eat or shop forced me to actually feel my pain instead of running from it.

How does this relate to Psalm 107?  God wants to satisfy me when I am hungry and thirsty.  I need to let myself feel my hunger and thirst and then wait on Him to meet my needs.  God didn't want me to try to meet my own needs this weekend.  He wanted me to trust Him.

It reminded me of this passage in Revelations 3:
You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

If I could ask God for one good thing to help me feel a deep and soul-filling satisfaction I would ask Him to give me a closer relationship with Him.  One where I will naturally turn to Him first and stop chasing after these other foreign gods.  In fact I CAN ask God for that and I am asking for that right now.  I want to buy God's refined gold, His white clothes and His eye salve.  I want to crave God and not chase after TVs and magic markers and chocolate pudding.

My weekend was rough because it was the one year anniversary of an event that was so horrible I never even thought to worry about it before.  As I was thinking through what God taught me over the weekend, I realized I have a whole house full of items I bought this year to help me deal with (or rather ignore) this issue.

God took me to Jeremiah 2 where I read about how the Israelites did the same thing I was doing.  Now that I can see myself as one of those Israelites, I don't want to be that way anymore:

Do not run until your feet are bare and your throat is dry. But you said, ‘It’s no use! I love foreign gods, and I must go after them.’

There is only one God who can satisfy my deepest longings and I want more of Him!

My Personal Trainer's Daily Breakfast

1 beet
1/3 cup blueberries
1/3 cup blackberries
1/3 cup grapes
1 celery stalk
1/2 apple
2 handfuls of spinach
8-12 oz coconut water
option:  add 1tbsp chia seeds, 1 blood orange

Freeze everything except the beet and the coconut water.
When ready to prepare, put cut up beet, frozen ingredients (i partial thaw in microwave), and coconut water in blender.

My trainer has this almost every morning for breakfast.  Besides being healthy, she says it helps with her food cravings and gives her a lot of energy.

I have tried it 2 times so far.

Truth and Lies: Capture that thought!

As I have been reading the Made To Crave Book, I have realized how out of touch I am with myself.  I frequently eat without ever considering why I think I should eat or whether eating is a good idea.

Being a computer programmer, I am very analytical and am very apt to overthink things.  Not so with my thoughts about eating.  I am learning to treat my decisions regarding what I eat prayerfully.

As I was considering this new way of thinking, this passage came to mind from 2 Cor 10.
4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

There are several things to note from this verse.
1.  We have heavenly weapons
2.  They have power to demolish strongholds... Anybody have any strongholds they want torn down?
3.  We need to capture our thoughts and make them obedient to Christ

Here are a couple examples of truth that I have been thinking to replace my lies this week.

1.  It's cold and snowy and wouldn't it be great if I stopped by Starbucks on the way home for a hot (high calorie) drink?
Capture that thought:  Why do I want a drink?  Because I'm cold?  Really?  Not hungry, cold!  OK.  How about if I go home and turn on the space heater instead?

2.  I don't usually eat after dinner, but I would really like something for dessert tonight.  Why do I want dessert?  I AM a little hungry and I haven't indulged my sweet tooth for awhile.
Capture that thought:  of course I'm hungry.  That probably means I'm losing weight.  In fact, if I skip that dessert, I bet I will find tomorrow that I weigh less.  I have been working hard to get to this point.  Do I want to sabotage my effort now?  I don't think so!

I love having these conversations with God.  They help me understand myself better as well as drawing me closer to Him.

Making Peace With My Body

I was talking to a friend who recently lost a lot of weight.  She looks great now.  She said one thing she desired was for her husband to love her unconditionally despite her outward appearance.   So, even though she had lost the weight and looked great, it wasn't enough.  She knew there was always a chance she could gain it back.

I thought about it and I believe the way we feel about our bodies is directly related to our desire to be loved and accepted.  My friend's husband may never be able to love her completely in that unconditional way, but we all have access to someone who does love us that way.
The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. (Jeremiah 31:3 NIV)

For me, making peace with my body happens because of two truths.
God loves me unconditionally
God made me and what he makes is good.  
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1:31 NIV)

So making peace with my body is strongly related to my relationship to God.  Now, I know what I'm going to say next is very familiar to a lot of you... after all this is a Bible study.  But since there are over 43,000 of us, I am going to go out on a limb and say that there may be some of you in this group who have either never heard this or if you did, it never sunk in before.  If you are in this category, you may be struggling with this Bible Study.

A lot of what we have been reading has been promises that God makes to His children.  We have been talking about crying out to God to help us in this quest to become healthier.  But what if you don't have that kind of a relationship with God?  What if He doesn't talk to you or you don't feel his presence?  If that is true, this weight loss/ Bible study journey might be getting pretty discouraging.  You may be reading comments from people who say they prayed and God immediately answered their prayer, or God told them to do such and such a thing.

If you are in that category, here is a short description of how you can have a personal relationship with God.
1.  God loves you and wants to have a personal relationship with you.

2.  We have all sinned:  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (Romans 3:23 NIV)

3.  Since we all have sinned, we cannot attain eternal life on our own:  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NIV

4.  Jesus died to pay for our sins:  For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, (1 Corinthians 15:3, 4 NIV)

5.  Becoming a Christian (being saved, being born again, having a personal relationship with Christ) takes an act of our will.  We must repent of our sin, accept Jesus death on the cross as payment for our sin, and ask him to become Lord of our life.  You can do this right now by praying... Telling God of your decision.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16-18 NIV)

6.  Once we ask Jesus into our life, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside us:  Do you not know that your bodies are temples 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 bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20 NIV)

If you have never done this, I pray that you will seriously consider doing it.  God is real, God personally loves each one of us unconditionally and He is the only way for us to find peace.

Empowered versus Determined

Last week, I didn't feel empowered until the very end of the week.  But when I saw that this week's word was determined, I saw an interesting connection.

I have read a lot of comments from this study on blogs and on Facebook.  Some of you don't think you can take this journey and are somewhat discouraged.  All last week I struggled with the question of whether or not I really wanted to put in the work to put God above my cravings for food.  Because of that, I didn't feel empowered.  

Here's what the dictionary says:

Empowered:  to give power or authority to; 

So basically last week' s word lets us know that any of us who are living in defeat because we are overweight have a choice as to whether we want to continue living in defeat or if we want God to help us break that cycle.  Being empowered means we have a choice.  There is hope for us.  I suspect to a lot of us, knowing we aren't destined to stay in the condition we are in was very good news.

I was so caught up in making the decision that I didn't fully appreciate the hope God was offering.  I did well on my eating and started to enjoy feeling better because of it.  I became more aware of how I was a slave to food.  I think some of you struggle because you have so much weight to lose that it looks daunting.  For me, I was rationalizing that I'm not that big, so I don't really need this.  But I do need this because I have been gaining weight and turning to food instead of to God.  I needed to stop that cycle.  I could choose to face my problem now or wait until it would become even harder to lose. 

I knew I needed to get off the fence, but it was hard.  These verses kept coming to mind:

James 1 And if, in the process, any of you does not know how to meet any particular problem he has only to ask God—who gives generously to all men without making them feel foolish or guilty—and he may be quite sure that the necessary wisdom will be given him. But he must ask in sincere faith without secret doubts as to whether he really wants God’s help or not. The man who trusts God, but with inward reservations, is like a wave of the sea, carried forward by the wind one moment and driven back the next. That sort of man cannot hope to receive anything from God, and the life of a man of divided loyalty will reveal instability at every turn.

Sometime near the end of the week, I made the commitment... I'm REALLY in now!  I want to please God with my eating.  I want His help and I'm willing to set goals, get friends to hold me accountable, flee from temptation, pray for help prior to situations, make a plan, etc.  I don't have secret doubts and I don't have inward reservations  and I don't want to be like a wave.  I don't want to have divided loyalty or instability.

So determination for me represents my decision to take advantage of God's empowering me to put Him in first place in my life above food.

Praying Through My Cravings

We learned this week to pray about our cravings.  What does that look like?  My initial picture of it was something like this:
O Lord, thou art all powerful.  Please remove my cravings.  In Jesus name.  Amen

As I was reading through the Proverbs31 blog about people doing that, my first thought to myself was: you dummy, you forgot to pray.

But then I realized that wasn't what happened at all today.  God and I had a running conversation all afternoon.  It went something like this:

Me:  God, I've eaten well for a week now.  Don't you think it's time for me to reward myself?  I don't need to lose that much weight.

God:  You have sisters in Christ who really need to do this and you have to stand strong for them.

Me:  I would really like to get Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner tonight.

God:  Does that mean with mashed potatoes and biscuits!

Me:  Oh yeah.  All of it sounds delicious.

God:  That's an awful lot of calories and would be a pretty big cheat.

Me:  Well, maybe I could eat a healthy dinner and then have pudding for dessert.

God:  Shouldn't you hold off on dessert until the weekend when your husband is home and can enjoy it with you?  In fact, what if you went to the grocery store and bought one of those precooked chicken piece packages?  Then you could get healthier sides.

Me:  That's a good idea.  We still need to negotiate on the dessert.

At the grocery store:
God:  OK.  Take a look at the pudding you want.  You usually eat what...half a package?  How many carbs is that?

Me:  Hmmm 22 times 2 servings =44.  OMG.  I had no idea it was so many.  That is way too many for me to eat.  I'll have to find something more reasonable.

God:  Good idea.  You have done well tonight.

Psalm 84:2

My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. (Psalm 84:2 NIV)
I desperately want to be in the courts of the Lord ’s temple. My heart and my entire being shout for joy to the living God. (Psalms 84:2 NET)

Soul:  the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part.
Yearn:  to have an earnest or strong desire;
Faint:  feeling weak, dizzy, or exhausted; about to lose consciousness: faint with hunger.
Court:  the residence of a sovereign or other high dignitary; palace.
Heart:  
1.  the center of the total personality, especially with reference to intuition, feeling, or emotion: In your heart you know I'm an honest man.
2.  the center of emotion, especially as contrasted to the head as the center of the intellect: His head told him not to fall in love, but his heart had the final say.
3.  capacity for sympathy; feeling; affection: His heart moved him to help the needy.
4.  spirit, courage, or enthusiasm: His heart sank when he walked into the room and saw their gloomy faces.
5.  the innermost or central part of anything: Notre Dame stands in the very heart of Paris.
6.  the vital or essential part; core: the heart of the matter.
Cry:  to utter or pronounce loudly; call out. Or to beg or plead for; implore: to cry mercy.

Here is my paraphrase of the verse:
My desire for The Lord is so strong and focused even to the point of feeling weak physically just for His dwelling place.  My heart, the inner part of me and my flesh, the outer part of me plead for the living God.

In my life, this is a hard concept to grasp.  My physical needs are met when they are just wants, way before they become needs.  This Made to Crave study is helping me understand this concept in a very real way by changing my eating habits.  Yesterday even though I knew that I wasn't hungry, all day my mind kept going back to food.  I would find myself gravitating towards the refrigerator and then resisting.  I guess you could call the refrigerator the dwelling place or court of food!  In this verse, it says my longing for God should be strong like my desire for food was yesterday, and even stronger.  More like my desire was yesterday and being hungry at the same time, since the verse talks about the desire being so strong that I have physical symptoms.  I think the journey we are embarking on is like a modern version of monks in a monestary where they deprive themselves to get closer to God.

I looked at two translations because to me they convey different ideas: cry out for the living God versus shout for joy to the living God.  One seems in desperation and the other seems in triumph.  I think both are valid....maybe one represents us at the beginning of the study and one at the end.

Sometimes it is hard for me in doing a Bible Study with a group to keep my focus on God and not get distracted by the group,  I need to keep reminding myself that God wants my undivided attention and love.  I pray that I will get closer and closer to God so that I can make this verse my personal prayer.

Made to Crave -- Let's get started

I was minding my own business scanning through Facebook when I saw a link to this Made to Crave online Bible study.  I usually ignore anything that isn't about my grandchildren, but this caught my eye.  It sounded like an answer to prayer to me.

Yes, it is kind of about losing weight, yes I have gained too much weight this past year and need to lose some, but no that isn't what I had been praying about and no that isn't what appealed to me at first.

I was praying about how to get closer to God and about finding some Christian friends I could get close to.  I could go to a real Bible Study, but I'm tired after work and never seem to have the motivation to go out.  I can't explain exactly how I knew this was an answer to my prayers or even how an online study would help me have more social contacts, but I had no doubt this is what God wanted me to do so I signed up.

I also had no intention of creating a blog.  I read about the blogging, but figured I would just listen.  I am a computer programmer by profession, so I'm comfortable with technology, but a blog?  Isn't that a bit much.

Then I got the email about the study starting in 2 days and I had some opinions about what it said.  So here I am.  I now have a blog.  So welcome to my blog. Only time will tell if I end up using it or not.