Please pardon my language...I'm on a (shhh) DIET...again

Update:

So far I've lost about eleven pounds. My scale isn't the most reliable so that's why I say about eleven pounds. :) For the last three weeks I've maintained my weight and wondered why since I have been being a pretty good girl post-fudge.

Sunday I was noticing my sister playing with her new phone a lot so, being the nosey person that I am, I looked to see what she was playing. Lo and behold, it was Myfitnesspal! This is an app that will allow you to put in your food and water intake, exercize regimen, and your goals and calculate how many calories you need in a day and how many you eat, etc.! I LOVE it. It was eye-opening to see just how many calories I do consume. !!

I make every (well, almost) effort to consume nutritious calories. I don't eat the processed food or the white stuff (flour, sugar, rice) and since I've been on my diet I have cut out all dairy except yogurt with active cultures and eggs. I have been eating fruit, vegetables, and whole grains.

All this dieting (again) got me to thinking about the reason I have to diet so often. Our pastor said something the other night that really stuck in my head. He said that as a Christian, we are not called to an easy walk with Christ. It is more like we are a fish swimming against the current, or a football player facing a defensive line and that D-line's goal is to make us lose so much yardage that we end up in their endzone.

If I may now take all my lose ends and wind them together for you, my problem is this: I can lose weight (but only if the Lord is giving me strength because I AM addicted to food), but I don't keep working on good habits: eating nutritious foods, shunning empty foods and exercize. Once I have reached the goal I am happy with, I quit working. I go back to swimming with the crowd--or maybe I should say, floating with the current.

ANYTHING worth having or doing in life takes hard work. It takes work to lose weight, but it doesn't take work for ME to gain weight. It takes work to raise children to fear the Lord, it doesn't take much work to just let a child grow up. It takes WORK to stand on scriptural principles and walk with Christ. It doesn't take much work to go with the flow and float down the "Mainstream" Christian River...but just stop and stand on a principle and see what happens. Before you know it, all the other floaters are trying to knock you off your Rock and back into the water because you're in the way of progress. After all, we can't get people to heaven if we are constantly standing of principles...we have to DO something...some kind of WORK.

Wow! How'd I get from white flour to the "Mainstream" Christian River? Oh, I know, they're both empty--not empty in that there IS something there, it's just void of any nutrition.

Staying on a diet that adds to my health means that I must choose healthy foods to put into my mouth, use my body for something besides a pillow for my couch, sleep at night and drink water. If I want to (and I do) add to my spiritual health then I have to drink in the Living Water of truth and walk in righteousness, pleasing to Christ. And I must, when I've done all else, STAND and keep standing. (All in Christ, for without Him we can do nothing worthwhile.)

However, I can add to my emotional health by floating idly down Mainstream Christian River because I can be in the most abominable sin mentioned in the bible, but as long as "I just LOVE Jesus" I'm at peace and all is good in the world.

I don't want to just be emotionally and physically healthy, and I don't want JUST that for my loved ones or even my enemies. I desire spiritual health for these and myself.

Take up your cross daily, He said. What else can we do? It takes work.

NOT SO I CAN BE SAVED, BUT BECAUSE I AM SAVED.