Happy Wednesday, Faithful Weigher's! Well, we made it through another week of our April in Action! What a blessing to hear from our gal's that are serious about taking ACTION! God truly worked in our hearts and brought His truths into the tools we chose to take action on. WOW!
If you are of the thinking that to lose weight you just need to eat less, you must not be aware of our sin nature of "self" that takes over our determinations. Too frequently, we allow "self" to sabotage our efforts of "eating less to lose weight". The fact is, God created our bodies to function perfectly by giving internal signals to let us know what we need to do or not do. Most often, we are not aware of what they are or we ignore them to gratify "self". Most of this gratifying "self" comes from our emotions, which many times lead us to think we NEED to eat or that we NEED certain foods to make us feel better. The truth is, our body will actually tell us what we need to sustain itself and to function. For those that understand this truth, they understand that weight loss is much more a condition of the heart rather than just putting less food in our mouths. Proverbs 23:7 tells us, "As he (man) thinks in his heart, so is he." If your heart is not desiring to follow God's truths in this area of how you eat and live, than where else can your desires come from? The answer is not hard to figure out. The lies of the world, that "feeds" us ways to gratify self! They appeal to our emotions and what we "deserve"! I, for one, am so very grateful that God has shown me the error of my ways that I followed for so many years. Years of yo-yo dieting, continually condemning myself for not sticking to them and falling back into old patterns. Why was I so surprised that God desires to be in this area of my life, just as much as my walk with Him in other areas? What a difference from my "self" efforts to be healthy, to lose weight, it has been to learning more of God's truths about my eating habits. Relying fully on Him to change my heart first. I know now, that without the heart-change, the thinking will continue to gratify "self". This is why I am so encouraged to see God work in our hearts, week by week.
My Action Tool was to "Not have something sweet with my morning coffee." I recently realized that this was a habit that I had acquired over the years. It was seemingly setting me up for a sweet craving a couple hours later, which set me up for another one a couple hours past that. Continually gratifying myself with a "sweet treat". Certainly not what my body needed at those 2 hour increments. I chose to "stop and think" and to remind myself that "Jesus is the sweetest name I know", a hymn I have loved since I was young. I would sing it as I walked away from the kitchen. I went through this whole last week with nothing sweet with my morning coffee because I was filling my heart with Jesus sweet name! It was after a few days of this that God showed me Romans 8:6 that says, "The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace." God's truth! I know this to be true as I had peace in my heart as I enjoyed my coffee and my time with Him each morning. I wasn't beating myself up after I had taken my last swallow of a cookie, brownie or whatever else I could grab on my way to read His Word and pray.
What a blessed week it was for all of us on this April in Action journey with God! I am excited to see what He is doing in our hearts in this coming week.
Have you joined with us? What is your Action Tool for this week? Do you have an Action Plan written down? Are you looking for God's truth in your life this week? I pray that you, too, will invite God into your desire to take care of His temple this week and know His peace and live!
Blessings, my sweet Faithful Weigh Friends.
Mary Ann
