If Jesus was sitting down with you, or going for a walk with you, or…well, think of your favorite place in the entire world and imagine being there with Him–one-on-one time with the Savior–if you had that time with Him, what do you think he would say to you? What would be the number one thing on his list of things to tell you?
Would he challenge you to believe Him more? Would he encourage you with the way you have been faithful through difficulties? Would he correct you? Would he praise you for your diligence and hard work?
Close your eyes for a minute…picture his face. Hear his words…imagine being there, with him. Just the two of you. He has one thing he will say to you. Ok…what is it?
Tell me. Be honest! Ok. Don’t tell me, but tell yourself!
Do you really think he would tell you to lose weight?
When you think about it, most of us give a TRUCKLOAD of focus, attention, and heartache to our weight. We are just sure everyone around us is thinking about our weight. Those of us who are believers even make it “spiritual,” an issue with which to measure our walks with God. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we are wrong not to look at our *eating* in light of our relationship with the Lord, but do we really think that our *weight* is something that is at the top of our Savior’s list of things to “straighten out” about us? Or to “praise” us for? Or to implore us to increase or decrease?
Truly, I have to say it again:
God doesn’t call us to be THIN. He calls us to be HIS.
If I pursue thinness and ignore his voice, I am missing it. If I am thin, but ignore his voice, I miss it.
BUT…if I respond to His voice, if I answer “Yes, Lord,” to Him in the moment, if His voice, direction, guidance are sweet to me and obedience sweeter, then my eating will probably not be gluttonous, or greedy, or merely for pleasure’s sake. (Nothing is wrong with pleasure, necessarily, but if we have no boundaries for our eating and eat whenever we want pleasure, then we have crossed a line…more on this another time…)
Still, this says nothing about my weight!
I know someone(s) who are concerned … deeply … about three “extra” pounds she carries. She is convinced she must lose three pounds. What’s more, she somehow turns this into a spiritual barometer of her walk with God. Some like her are faithful to eat between hunger and satisfaction. They aren’t greedy or gluttonous. They use discernment when they are hungry to make their food choices. They respond to the Lord’s voice about their eating. WOW! They are obedient saints who have given their eating habits to God!
Their eating is not something that is a weakness in their walks with God. Much to the contrary!
BUT… they remain ensnared over their weight! Or bow to the scale.
Does Jesus really find offense at 3 pounds? Or 20 pounds for that matter?
Yes, he does want us to keep our temple as healthy as possible, but the temple isn’t just physical. It is spiritual and emotional. Many of us sell out our spiritual and emotional selves for the sake of the physical–to get to a certain weight that…get this… God may not intend for us to be!!!
This SO isn’t about your weight. It is, in a round about way, about eating…but only in a round about way. What I mean is, how we eat, why we eat…whenwe eat…all say something about our hearts.
And that is what Jesus is after.
I really think that if we each had one-on-one time with our Savior, our weight would not be on his radar screen. Our hearts would be.
So, what does your heart weigh? What does HE see when he looks at your heart?
You may be thin, thick, short, tall, lumpy, firm, round, oblong…but are you HIS?
I want to celebrate here that exercise and strength training (even!) have been kept in an appropriate place in my life…in balance…since we became members at Auburn Racquet and Fitness Club in early February. Before then, I knew that I needed to learn how NOT to fear exercise and strength training. My history is one of excessive exercise and obsession, but it has been a LONG time since I struggled with that–I have been afraid to try again with any diligence. So since becoming members of ARFC, I have toyed with strength training again. This time, though, I don’t keep a log. I don’t keep track of weights, sets, repetitions. In the old days, I did with hyper-vigilance. Now, I just want to have fun. I do what I feel like doing and I know I am getting stronger, but I don’t have a clue from time to time how much stronger. I like it that way.
I haven’t gotten the need to do cardio completely figured out yet. I play racquetball with the kids and sometimes with someone else who may come along. Sometimes that works for getting my heart rate up. It always works for fun! Which is really my main goal! 🙂
A couple of weeks ago, I joined the juniors in their racquetball agility class. They have a GREAT racquetball pro at ARFC. Richard is a gift from God that has fallen from heaven for our family! I am not kidding! Without going into all the details (like his 20-20 program that has gotten Daniel having fun AND getting stronger and fitter), let me just say that he has taken an interest in our family and been incredibly supportive of our desire to have fun and to get healthier, too.
So, that day a couple of weeks ago, for 20 minutes or so, I got one of the most fun and intensive workouts. It was a series of speed and footwork drills moving in and out amongst rope ladders stretched out on the floor. Granted, I was like an elephant compared to the two 17 year old boys and the coach (who is the most amazing 62 year old I have ever met…doesn’t look a day over 40 except for salt and pepper hair!). I was in slow motion to their quickie little steps, but it was fun and silly all at once.
Anyhow, my desire is to move my body in an utterly delightful, enjoyable, worshipful way multiple times each week and to experience a “practical fitness” that I notice when I feed or ride the horses or do other chores around the place. I also hope to bike and hike with friends and family without being miserable. One thing about working at website design (something I am phasing out) and writing (something I am “phasing in”)…you sit on your rear a LOT!
Anyhow, this is the first time I have a sense that balance is happening. I am amazed and delighted.
How about for you? Do you have ways of moving your body that are, for you, an expression of worship? Does movement give you joy? Do you, like the guy in “Chariots of Fire,” sense God’s pleasure when you run, or kick box, or spin, or…??? Tell us about it!
After the silence of the Sabbath, the angels must have been holding their breath to see what all of the inhabitants of earth would do in response to the Father’s gift…an empty tomb! Jesus had risen!
I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms… ~ Ephesians 1:18-20
1 “Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.
2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.
3 Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.”
~ Hosea 6:1-3
After the rabble and agony of the previous day, the Sabbath following the crucifixion of Jesus was penetratingly quiet. There are times when silence is louder than any cacophony. This day was one of those.
Disciples of Jesus, having stolen away into hiding to avoid being accused and punished as one of the “King of the Jews'” followers…wondered, “What now?” Hopes dashed to pieces.
If Judas’ betrayal of Jesus was at all an intention to force the hand of the Messiah, to hurry him to bring on the kingdom of God on the earth, by Saturday the answer was final.
“No.”
Despairing, Judas surrendered his neck to a rope hung from a tree, for sin without forgiveness brings death.
Loving, Jesus willingly gave his life to the nails on another tree, for a sin-debt paid brings life.
On that Saturday, there was a vast empty echoing silence for those who didn’t yet fathom the significance.
Despair, doubt…
Have you ever hoped in the Lord and wondered at his apparent delay? Like Mary and Martha, perplexed by Jesus’ seeming nonchalance about the urgency of their brother’s illness…Lazarus was in the grave, body grown cold, all hope gone. Then, and only then, Jesus came and promised the impossible, the unthinkable–that they would yet see the manifestation of Resurrection and Life.
Sometimes, the greatest redemptions of life are birthed during the agony of delay.
The disciples waited. Watched. Maybe, even, prayed.
Silence.
Did any of them remember, in those long moments that passed, that Jesus promised he would come to them? As surely as the spring rains. As surely as the sun that rises.
He promises he will come.
Practically Speaking: Do you ever feel like you have been working so hard, maybe for years, to be free from tyranny to unhealthy eating and thinking and living? Do you wonder why God delays in lifting the turmoil from your life? Prayerfully consider–is it possible that this delay is a birthing of something greater in you than you might ever dare to imagine?
A golden, polished cross with five small diamonds in it–a gift from my parents for my 21st birthday. It was significant at the time, indicating a truce of sorts. They finally laid their weapons down against me and my stand for Christ–something that had chafed them since I was 15 years old and had declared that I now knew that Jesus had paid for my sin on the cross.
That special gift, given 27 years ago, is still a treasure. Not one to wear much–if any–jewelry save a wedding ring, on Sunday mornings, I often wear this cross around my neck. I love the way the rounded, smooth cross looks, dangling against my neck. It isn’t ostentatious, but very subtle and simple in it’s beauty.
On Monday as I greeted the Lord in the quietness of a house not yet awakened, God revealed a blind spot in my life. I have a tendency to feel uncomfortable when someone I love is hurting and I feel like I can’t do anything to make it better. Whether it is my son, exasperated with failed attempts to create the perfect English class essay or my daughter’s lament that she wishes desperately she had a different nose…or something much deeper. I have an inclination to run for the hills rather than be present to the suffering of people I love. Maybe it is a need to be in control…I am not sure yet.
As my time with the Lord continued, however, I read from Contemplating the Cross by Tricia McCary Rhodes. As I prayed through what I was reading, I heard the Holy Spirit say to my heart, “You do the same with the cross of Christ…” I considered what he meant and realized that I tend to run from the discomfort of the cross, too. Of course I have turned to the Lord and embraced the gift he has given me through the act of being on the cross–becoming sin for me so that in him, I might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). But it is as though I quickly kiss it, pat it superficially, and … run. Anything but to have to come face to face with the suffering and discomfort of God in pain–especially if the pain is because of me.
I have turned the cross of Christ, that which was the instrument of suffering and grief–and the salvation of the world–into a golden, polished, icon, thus minimizing the intensity of its horror–and…its beauty, its gravity.
As I pondered what the real cross would look like, feel like, smell like, I was aghast at the images that came to mind compared to this polished iconic symbol that I seem to prefer. I imagined seeing the roughly hewn cross, reaching my hand forward and touching it…looking closely. The blood stains–and there…bits of flesh from the scourged back…the splinters against his wounded back must have been as skewers, ripping and tearing tissue, already tender and open, spilling his blood even further as he agonized. His pain wasn’t merely physical, too…it was beyond intense as the triune God, in some way beyond my ability to fathom, was torn apart, the Father turning his back on the Son who had become sin…
I have often said that if I had to sacrifice animals in order to atone for my sin like the Israelites of old, I might have a different view of sin and be less callused to it.
The truth is, it is this image of the cross–the rough, hewn, splintered, jagged wood, blending with the mixture of blood and flesh against the precious Son of God’s back–that should be before me each Sunday and each day, rather than the tiny, polished, gold and diamonds icon. To think that I have worn my necklace with an air of pride, even while keeping Jesus at a “comfortable distance,” breaks my heart.
I am thankful that he did become sin for me. In this, I become the righteousness of God.
Did you know that God doesn’t call us to be thin? He doesn’t even call us to be fit!
He *does* call us to be HIS!
I think I am finally coming to a place of accepting what God ordains (well, maybe). What a novel approach! LOL! Instead of striving, I am beginning to lay down my tendency to chafe against his plan.
You see, before, even when releasing 100 pounds using the Thin Within approach, I wanted BODY BEAUTIFUL. I mean, if you stripped away what I was really thinking–even at my thinnest–that was what I was after. Sure, I wrote about loving the Lord with my heart, soul, mind and strength and not elevating self above Him. And I was sincere.
But I think I had this sense that “Yes, yes, I want a godly heart, AS LONG AS I GET THE PERFECT BODY, TOO!”
Well, hello? Since when has gravity NOT had an impact on any 48 year old woman who has had two babies? I mean, even if you are fit and trim, you have to fight with the force pushing downward on…er…certain things, if you get me! 🙂
Not only that, but when your less-than-youthfully-elastic skin has stre-e-e-etched around 100 more pounds…well…again…hello? LOL! Once the 100 pounds are gone, there will be wrinkles that weren’t there when the skin was stretched taught around it. Does that make sense? Things change!
And here is a new one no one ever told me about. Did you know that when a woman’s body goes through “the change”…well…it does some OTHER different things? I have never had so many dimples on my thighs! Even when I was a size 24, my legs didn’t look like golf balls, pockmarked with dimples like they do now. And here comes summer. Well, SO WHAT! 🙂 I refuse to fry by hiding behind long pants. THINGS change! Mine are strong legs and they do a lot! I will wear every dimply bit of skin proudly! I am past the age of child-bearing now (I guess) and my dimply legs are a badge of honor declaring that fact! LOL! (Sorry if this is too much information….) It is so easy to say this now. I am fickle. Resolved one day and panicked the next.
But all the time, it seems so odd the way I have a tendency to pursue something that is *elusive*…and even in the name of “obedience”…in the name of bible verses like 1 Corinthians 6:19,20. (My body is the temple of God. I am not my own, I was bought at a price…) I could manage to twist even this bible verse and make it justification for obsession with an image that the WORLD purveys! A non-dimply-skinned-thighed, perkey you-know-whatted, thin super woman! HA! It ain’t gonna happen cuz THINGS CHANGE! 🙂
Here is a news flash for me: My body IS the temple of God, but the temple was the *container* for the glory of GOD. It is physical, spiritual AND emotional. God doesn’t want me to pander after PHYSICAL FITNESS and sacrifice emotional and spiritual fitness!
And, even better: YOUR (the reader of this blog post!) body IS the temple of God…the *container* for the glory of God–no matter what you think the container *looks* like! Your container is physical, emotional *and* spiritual. Please don’t sacrifice emotional and spiritual for the sake of the world’s (and even much of the Christian Church’s) view of FITNESS!
I have to say it again!
God doesn’t call us to be THIN. He calls us to be HIS!
When I am HIS, the rest falls into place! (No pun intended!)
I am so thankful that God is leading me on this path…it is the first time EVER that I have begun to feel ok in my skin. Even when I was thin, I didn’t have that precious gift.
Things change…bodies give in to gravity. 😉 But my heart has begun to soar, defying the push toward the world…finally, I think. At least today!
Yes, he does want us to keep our temple as healthy as possible, but the temple isn’t just physical. It is spiritual and emotional. Many of us sell out our spiritual and emotional selves for the sake of the physical–to get to a certain weight that…get this… God may not intend for us to be!!! 
