Protein Shake

Protein Shake

For me, every morning starts out the same…a chocolate protein shake. Now before any of you tell me that that isn't so bad let me assure you…I hold my breath the whole time! I like my chocolate, but this just isn't the same. The protein part is what gets me every single day. I have been taking this for a couple of years, you would have thought that I'd be used to it by now!

So, the next question many of you might be thinking is "why?". Why would I put myself through that if I really didn't like it? The answer is simple…because of the effects it has on my body. There are, on rare occasion, a day that I might miss. It would be the day that I spend the night somewhere and forget to bring it or something like that. Never do I miss if it is in my house…NEVER! If I do, by about 10:00 I am craving carbs like crazy! Then about 2:00 I crash and can hardly go on. Give me a couple of days in a row of skipping, and I am a mess! My body needs the nutrients that that thick, chocolaty, protein, gaggy shake gives! The results are so drastic without it that I choose to make it a part of my routine, without hesitation!

Do you ever have those days, or weeks, when you just don't want to read the Bible? I ashamedly have and I fully admit that it is a struggle to open the Word of God! I hate that about myself, truly I do! Why can't I just stay on fire and crave it every single day? But instead, I find myself facing mornings when I would rather clean then sit and be still for a while! Do you know what I'm talking about here?

You know what I have found though? That just like those protein shakes, if I skip out of getting "fed" in the morning (or whenever you have your quiet time), by mid morning, I am unfocused and a little crazy. Then by mid afternoon, I am stressed and grouchy! By bed time, my kids have been yelled at, my house is a mess, and I can't relax as I finally get to bed. I fall asleep with a million different concerns running through my head. You can just imagine how I actually sleep that night! I literally wake up exhausted!

This scenario is so true I am embarrassed to admit it! After putting it down on paper, I realize even more the NEED that I have to make it a priority to seek Him daily! And for me…that is first thing in the morning!

What about you? Does this at all look familiar to anyone else but me? I have found that some days, God's Word feels like a chore for me to read! I can't believe I just said that, but in all honesty, that is what it feels like! I have to force myself to open it and read, and read, and read. At the time it seems like absolutely nothing is getting in. I feel like nothing stuck and it was a waste of time. But something crazy usually happens. Even if I have to "hold my breath and just drink it down fast", sometime during the day, what I read comes back to me. It is like it is sustaining me and getting me through. I will end my day and realize that I am not insaneJ.

The trick of doing anything that is good for you is that you have to, have to, have to commit to doing it even when you don't feel like it! So when you have those days that you feel like hitting the snooze for 15 minutes, or you pack your day so full, there "just isn't time", MAKE time! The end results will be better! The Bible is such a better filler…you will find yourself actually able to survive and thrive rather than just barely making it through.

John 6:35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty."

Small Load of Laundry

Small Load of Laundry

I hate doing things small. I hate doing things half speed. It has to be all or nothing with me. For instance, if I am cold; I put the heater on full blast. Then in about 2 minutes, I am sweating so I turn it completely off. There is no in between, it is either everything or nothing.

Laundry is the same exact way. I either do an extra large load or I don't do one at all. If I have 10 pieces of clothes, I will wait until there are enough to do the bigger load.

The other day, I had several big loads washed, dried and folded. Just when I thought that I was done for the day, I found a small pile of whites. I was so annoyed because I just didn't want to do a small load for a couple of pieces of clothes. So I didn't…I just let them sit for a while. I quickly realized how stupid that thinking was. The stains that could have easily been washed out when the clothes were freshly soiled were now set in and it took a lot more effort to make them white again.

Sin is the same way. It is like we let the pile of different sins get big before we deem it necessary to get clean. We don't take care of the daily ones until they have sat there for a while and really get set in. If we take this approach, I promise you, the effects will be way harder to get rid of. You may have dug yourself a pit where as it could have simply been a mud puddle you could have easily stepped out of.

Jesus does not ask us to wait until we have several stocked up before coming to Him. He does not turn us away because it is a waste of time to deal with one at a time. The exact opposite is actually true of Him! He knows the damage that one little white lie can do. He knows the lasting effects one sin gone unchecked can cause. The thing is…I know too…I have lived it and have had to dig myself out of PITS that were dug because I refused to just wash the mud off my boots. I would walk around until I was stuck and couldn't get out. I would cling to those things and become comfortable with them clinging to me. Finally they would become too heavy and I would surrender them to Him, but not before the damage was done.

Jesus is the forgiver, the healer, the Grace giver. There is nothing in Him or about Him that says "wait until there are a lot to confess, I don't have time to take care of each one individually." He calls us daily to Him! He offers to take the burden right off of our shoulders! His Blood flowed to wash you clean right now…not every 3 days or so!

Do not fall into the pattern that I have found myself in. Don't think that you have to wait for a big pile of stuff to confess before you do! Take care of it right away so that your heart doesn't get stained. The pits that we fall into are because we have unchecked sin that has been sitting in a pile just waiting to be confessed. Don't make life harder than it is! Just throw those sins at His Feet…even if there is only 1!

Gas Station

Gas Station

The other day as I was driving past a gas station, l looked to see if I needed to stop. I was at half a tank so I drove right on by. I don't know why I am like that, because inevitably, I will be scrambling the next day to make it to the pump before running out. Almost every single time I stop for gas, the light on my gauge is on. I barely make it sometimes, and embarrassingly, I have run completely out before!

Do you know how many opportunities that I had to fill up before getting to the frantic point? Most of the times, I have at least 20. I drive through town a lot and do not even think about stopping until the needle is pointing to E. As I type this out, I am realizing just how stupid that mindset probably is!

How many of you get "filled up" at church? I know some days, for me, it is like water to a thirsty soul. I just crave to get inside those doors to fellowship and worship! It is refreshing. I walk out ready to hit the week!

Now another question: how many of you only get filled at church?

How many of us find ourselves sitting faithfully every single Sunday inside those church doors, yet during the week, not doing anything to grow closer to Jesus? It is like we are filling our tanks on Sunday, then slowly watching the needle reach empty, and as we putt into the church parking lot, we realize that we are running on fumes? Sound familiar to anyone?

I have learned along the way that I have to keep topping off my tank as often as I can! But do you know how many opportunities to get filled that I pass on? How often do I turn off Christian radio, or how often do I substitute time with HIM for TV, or how often do I skip out on a spiritual conversation to keep cleaning? These are all examples of times when I am running on half a tank, and think I can easily make it another day without a big fill up! Once again, I am realizing just how stupid this thinking is!

Jesus says to follow Him, put your armor on and seek His Face. He never once said to do that only on Sundays! In fact, He never specified a day, which in my eyes means TODAY! Today seek Him, follow Him, and fight for all you're worth! Then by the time Sunday gets here, you might actually pour out what you are already overflowing with! Instead of just sitting in the pews and being a sponge, you will give back to God. You will lift your voices with praise; you'll be able to fellowship, encourage and lead others to a life that is filled with the Spirit, not just running on empty most days!

God is just waiting to pour more into you…stop running long enough each day to receive the portion that will keep your "tank empty" light from ever coming on! Don't run out of gas when there are so many gas stations just waiting to fill you up!

Deformed Cinnamon Rolls

Deformed Cinnamon Rolls

The other day, the most amazing thing happened. An Amish bakery opened up in the little town close to where I live! If you have no idea why this is amazing, then go Google Amish and see what it says about their cooking! I just can't describe it! So you can guess my excitement when I saw several shelves full of homemade cinnamon rolls (with icing!!!!). You would have thought it was Christmas! I have gone in there 4 more times since then…they are like nothing you have ever tasted.

Many of you may be rolling your eyes and wondering what the big deal is. Wal-mart sells cinnamon rolls with icing too! Honestly, if you were going for looks alone, Wal-mart would win every time. Every one of their rolls are perfectly shaped and evenly frosted. You would have a hard time picking out which was the bigger or better roll if you had to choose just one. But let me tell you, the Amish make theirs all different shapes. Some are a little bigger, some more oval, some pop more out the top and some have frosting dripping down all sides and around the bottom. They all look completely different. But without a doubt, when compared to perfection, the deformed ones are the best!

I had to laugh, as I was stuffing my face. It would figure that God would give me a comparison to us and our body image right as I am packing in a couple hundred calories! HA!

In reality it is probably the best comparison He has ever given me! If you haven't already listened to my testimony you may not know this, but I have a huge issue with the way that I view myself. It started years ago, and it is one of those stupid little pits that just won't go away! Right now at this exact moment, I am doing really great with not focusing on it, but that doesn't mean that I won't get slammed next week and feel like I need to lose a million pounds.

Why is it that we have such a hard time accepting who God made us? There were times when I tried endlessly to lose 20 more pounds so that I could wear a size 4 again. Guess what…I am not a size 4 body! I never will be! But yet there have been times when I desperately wanted to look like someone else.

Isn't it funny that we all will see someone that looks "just like" what we want to be and we will do almost anything to get their image. But when it comes down to it, we realize that after working 10 weeks on it, we still haven't accomplished it.

Do you believe that God does not make mistakes? If you believed it yesterday, then believe it today too, because you are not a mistake! You are beautiful to the God of the universe! Nothing satan says to you can take away the fact that God made you just the way you are!

We have got to realize that perfect little Barbie dolls or muscle men are never going to compare to the amazing things people can do who just happened to be different shapes and different sizes. When God looks down on you, He does not see you against the backdrop of what America's standards are; He sees you against the backdrop of a cross. He sees someone that He wants to use to bring others to Him! He sees someone that He loves enough to sacrifice His Son for! He sees the REAL you!

Let's stop running after something that will just die with these bodies. The real you is what draws people to Christ! Not the perfect little, everyone looks the same, everything is in place you! It's time to find a new store and pick out the rolls that are slightly imperfect. It's time for a head and heart change! Stop believing the lies that satan wants you to believe and start claiming with authority the truth that you are God's child and He did NOT make a mistake on you! You are You for a purpose and NOTHING is going to change that! The quicker we accept it…the quicker we claim freedom over yet one more area that satan is trying to distract us with! Fight it, fight Him and love Jesus!

P.S. …. God's crazy about YOU! (Just so you know! J )

Imitators

Imitators    

 

If we took a poll of all the little boys in our church, I would venture to guess that most if not all have some sort of super hero underwear or p.j.'s at home. The same for little girls, they have dress up clothes and princess shoes. They run around the house dancing and twirling or jumping off couches. Their dreams of being superman are constantly on their little minds….one day prince charming will rescue me is the dream of every little girl. We use to dream pretty big didn't we? We use to think that our dads were the strongest and our moms the prettiest. We would put our dads' boots on and play with our moms' jewelry or makeup. All the while dreaming of who we wanted to be when we grew up. Who did you use to imitate? There has to be someone. Everyone had someone that they used to look up to and strive to be more like.

More importantly though, who do you choose to imitate now?

What I have begun to realize is that the older we get, the more warped our "hero's" are. Let me explain. Most little kids will automatically say their mom or dad. Where does it change so drastically that when we hit oh say 13ish, our parents are now complete idiots and know absolutely nothing? Superman and our favorite princess are no longer cool and revered, rather, we look at the pretty cheerleader or popular quarterback and wish that we could be like them (o.k. so I never wanted to be a cheerleader….but you get my drift) we want to stand out. We want to be popular. We want everyone to notice us and think we are cool. So we strive to impress. We go to great measures to look "good", and go into meltdown if we have any sort of blemish on our faces. We think we will be forever remembered as the zit faced kid or the girl who didn't have Guess jeans or Nike shoes. Disaster is spelled out like this: "I don't have a date".

That same warped mine, shifts a bit, but never entirely goes away. We begin to want to impress different people as we grow. The situation may change, but our motives hardly ever do. We need approval. We seek to be like the popular people.

At what length have you gone to get the approval you desired? Have you compromised your moral standards? Decided to look cool and go out drinking with your buddies? Starved yourself to lose a few pounds, to look skinnier than the next girl? Ignored someone beside you because she just didn't fit your idea of what a friend would look like? How can we as adults really fall into the "I want to be cool" category…..aren't we suppose to be passed that?

Let me throw a verse at you and have you think on it a bit….

 

Galatians 1:10

"Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please, men, I would not be a servant of Christ."

Pretty convicting huh???

Take a quick look at your life. Can you say that you are spending your life trying to win the approval of God? Think about the lengths we go to fit in. Think about the lengths we go to so that people will like us more. Think of the lengths we go to so that people will be impressed with us. Now think about how amazing it would be if we tried that hard to impress God. If we did all things for His Glory. How amazing would that be? From experience I can testify that God's approval fills you in a way that makes others approval unnecessary. God would not only fill you, but would keep you filled to a point that nothing else mattered.

Paul, Silas & Timothy wrote to the church of the Thessalonians and said this:

1 Thessalonians 1:5-8

"You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere."

The Thessalonians chose to imitate men of God. The men of God chose to live among them and be models to imitate. The result? The Thessalonians became models to other Christians and their faith was known everywhere! There is one part of the verse though that I don't want you to overlook…..they imitated men of God in spite of SEVERE suffering! Can we do that? We imitate people so that we are more popular and have more "fun". Can we model people of God even if we know that there may be suffering involved? Can we step out of our comfortable living to say to God, "even if it means suffering, I will follow you completely"? Is it worth to you?

He wants our praise. He wants our devotion. He wants to be #1 in our lives. Are we going to let Him? Are we going to love Him so much that we want to only impress Him? Living like the models He desires us to be? The result will be a ripple effect. You will affect others, who will affect others, etc……

One final thought: it may be surprising to see how many people want to be like you. If you are imitating God, then you are a person worth imitating. Whether you want it or not, there will be someone somewhere that is a follower.

Are you living a life worth imitating?     

The Pretender

The Pretender

 

Have you ever stood in front of the apple display at the store and searched for the perfect ones? I brought home a bag of the shiniest, reddest, biggest apples the other day. I am pretty picky when I am choosing. If there is even a slight cut or bruise I won't get it. They have to be near perfection!

 

One of my kids wanted one of the apples that I had brought home, so I started peeling it and got such a surprise that my perfect apple had brown streaks all throughout the middle! I thought that I could just trim it off and it would be o.k., but the further that I cut, the more brown that I saw. It went all the way through to the core! There was nothing that I could do but throw it away. I was super annoyed!

 

It was like that amazing little apple was just pretending to be amazing…the reality was that as soon as you peeled back the layers, the meat was no good at all.

 

Isn't it just crazy how we can compare ourselves to so many different things? Many of you know the exact comparison that is coming…

are you like that apple?

 

It is sooo easy to claim that you are a Christian in this day and age! But did you catch that 6^th word in that sentence: claim! So many people (I mean soooo many) say that they are Christians, yet refuse to walk in the light of Christ!

It says clearly in 1 John 1:6

"If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth."

 

What exactly would you define darkness to be? My definition is that it is the absence of light. Who is Light? Jesus! So anything that we do that is not what Jesus would do, would it be safe to say that He is not going to be shining His light on it? And if He isn't shining His light on it…then we are in darkness.

 

I want to challenge you with this question:

Do you claim that you love Jesus but live like you don't need Him around?

Here is a really easy test if you are questioning yourself at all!

John 14:15

"If you love ME, you will obey My commands."

 

What would we find if we started looking into your life? I mean really digging into the heart of who you are and what you think, feel and do! I would never guess what some of you are really like by just looking. I see people go to church, sing, pray, and give. Is there anyone out there right now that does all of those things, but goes home at night and feels like a fake? Are you pretending because you want others to accept you? Do you put on a front because people's expectations of you are something that you aren't even close to? If you can say yes to these…then aren't you exhausted with playing this game? I will tell you plain and simple without hesitation…you CAN NOT pretend with God! Nothing that you did while trying to look good on this earth is going to amount to anything when you are standing before the Lord if you don't have Jesus!!! He is going to look you in the eye and either say "welcome my child", or "I never knew you, away from me you evildoers"…Matthew 7:23

 

Please take these words to heart! Don't get caught up trying to be someone that you aren't! If you need to find Jesus…go find Him! But don't sit on that shelf rotting, hoping that because you look good, you will get picked! I promise you that you will one day have the peeling ripped back, and your heart will be the only thing exposed!

 

What is God gonna find?

Just Jump

Just Jump

Remember the feeling of standing on the edge of a dock, contemplating whether or not you wanted to jump into the water? How many times did you hear from the others that were already swimming: "just jump, it'll feels like bathwater!" Countless times I hesitated, but was finally convinced to take the plunge. I don't know what kind of bath those kids were taking, but the water was always about 20 degrees off of my kind of bath water! The shock of sun kissed skin meeting cold water, at times, took my breath away! But I soon realized as I joined the fun, that indeed, the longer I swam, the warmer it got. We would end up trying to convince the next person to jump and then swimming until our fingers were little raisins.

Are any of you faced right now with a situation that has you standing on the dock hesitating to jump in? Why is it that in one breathe we breath how great God is and how much we trust Him, then in the very next one, hesitate to do what He asks us to do?

We are commanded in Psalm 34:8 to

"Taste and see that the LORD is good."

If you truly believe God is good…

If you truly believe that God is good…

If you truly! Believe that God is good!....

Then take it from someone who has been swimming for a while…

Just Jump!...He will catch you every time!