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| Monday's Manna 6 For Dieters | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 17 2011, 05:47 AM (59 Views) | |
| editor | Jan 17 2011, 05:47 AM Post #1 |
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Manna Issue 6 II Chronicles 20:20 Believe in the LORD your God, so shall you be established; believe his prophets, so shall you prosper. II Chronicles 20:33 However the high places were not taken away: for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers. Doesn't this just sound like one of those good news--bad news sermons today? Well, it is not going to be, so breathe a of relief right now! Day by day, we build our knowledge about what it takes to be successful in dieting. We build it with the decisions we make at each meal or snack. We seek support from other dieters with whom we associate for encouragement. We learn how to carefully buy and prepare food now, scrapping some of our very favorite recipes in lieu of new low fat ones. We decide how much time we will devote to the care we give our body through exercise and boning up on diet and nutrition information. And most of all, we the commitment we make to God in this quest to lose weight by reading His Word, praying, and establishing a connection with Him daily to help us through the rough spots that will surely come. The beginning we make today is never insignificant or unimportant; it is the foundation of whether we will reach goal weight or not. Our absolute belief that God is bigger than any weight loss failure we have had in the past is absolutely essential. We see from our first verse today that we are not established UNTIL we believe. We all know that rich blessings, grace, mercy, unfailing kindness, and faithfulness...are things that the Lord God desires to bestow upon us. The list could go on and on forever because God's blessings to us in Jesus are beyond our scope of imagination. We now seek to discover how we can get these rich blessings and prosperity to help us to lose the weight and keep it off. How does God factor in on that? There is a children's story called, The Ant And The Grasshopper. To sum it up, the ant works very hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs, and dances, and plays the summer away. Comes winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold. The ant believed that he must do the work, just as we learned in last week's Scripture and sermon. The grasshopper in today's story didn't. And so we see again this pattern in the verse, "However the high places were not taken away." God had the provisions ready for prosperity at the invitation to only believe, and yet the people refused to take the high places away. The high places were the things of the world that caused the people to worship elsewhere than at God's altar. Modernly speaking we would call them distractions rather than sin or the devils obstacles, but obstacles they were in preventing the people from receiving God's highest will for them. So we must take inventory and determine what the high places are that are preventing us from having the perfect weigh-in, week after week, until we reach goal. Every time that I stepped up onto the scale on weigh-in day, I believed there would be a loss and not a gain. Other than two plateaus where I stayed the same for weeks, I can truthfully say I never saw a gain. And why was that? I knew I had removed the high places, the obstacles and distractions that prevented me from losing weight. Once we clear a hurdle, it doesn't seem so high. Once we actively seek to tear down what prevents us and distracts us from God's best, we are amazed that giving up the high places were not as difficult as we thought they would be. Do you have a high place that cannot be torn down? Let me admit them, one by one, that I had high places that God, over a period of time, helped me remove. The first was disbelief that I could stay focused long enough to lose 85 pounds. The second was that I could cut back my calories significantly enough to lose the weight. My goodness, I didn't want to feel a genuine hunger pain, did I? The third was that I could give up sweets--how delectable and part of my life they always were. The fourth was that I refused to drink water---I had never done it before, and I wouldn't do it now. Pop was what I liked and pop was what I was going to drink. The fifth was I just couldn't exercise, I was too obese and out of breath for that. Just as we could go on and on about the rich blessings of God, perhaps our list of high places could go on and on also . O.K., you get the picture and maybe some of these things are your high places too that need to be torn down along the way. Be assured that they are called in Scripture, high places, and not low places. God knew the difficulties that it would take to remove high places rather than low places. High places are habits and rituals that we have carried along the way so long that they have grown quite tall standing. We have incorporated them into our lives and we just feel familiar with them. We are told in our Scripture reading that the high places were not taken away because the people had not prepared their hearts before God yet. If we and ask God to help us attain success in this area, mustn't we prepare ourselves to receive it? God cannot lie; He said He would establish us. Can you will recall for a moment how long it took to establish you in a new house you moved into? Or a new community? Church? Or perhaps a new job where you had to earn respect from your fellow co-workers? You will remember that all of these times you had to be active in establishing yourself, so that you would be accepted. God is asking that we believe Him and believe His Word. And then, we take action. Do you have a high place in your dieting efforts that needs to be removed? Or have you already removed the high places and you are on a plateau? We all reach plateaus. How long it lasts is dependent upon the individual. Our body gets use to a certain exercise routine and a certain level of calories and it just settles with that. To tear down these high places we need to do something different. But one thing that we never do differently is to give up our belief that God is able to see us through this. We remove the hindrances that would prevent us from receiving the prosperity in our weight loss efforts, and there you have it---the answer to your vision of being thin again, to be healthy again, and to feel great again. It is attainable! Our history is not our destiny. Because we have failed to remove the high places before in the past, does not mean that in God's strength we may not tear them down today. II Corinthians 4:13, It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak. Tell God today that you are grateful that His strength is sufficient to safely bring you to the other side of dieting. Heavenly Father, we ask You to us with Your blessings, and to instruct us with Your wisdom. We seek Your favor, and we are determined to seek it actively. Help us to remove any high places that prevent us from receiving Your blessings. We ask this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen ©2003-2007 www.gracetoday.com |
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of relief right now! Day by day, we build our knowledge about what it takes to be successful in dieting. We build it with the decisions we make at each meal or snack. We seek support from other dieters with whom we associate for encouragement. We learn how to carefully buy and prepare food now, scrapping some of our very favorite recipes in lieu of new low fat ones. We decide how much time we will devote to the care we give our body through exercise and boning up on diet and nutrition information. And most of all, we
the commitment we make to God in this quest to lose weight by reading His Word, praying, and establishing a connection with Him daily to help us through the rough spots that will surely come.
and ask God to help us attain success in this area, mustn't we prepare ourselves to receive it? God cannot lie; He said He would establish us.
us with Your blessings, and to instruct us with Your wisdom. We seek Your favor, and we are determined to seek it actively. Help us to remove any high places that prevent us from receiving Your blessings. We ask this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen ©2003-2007 www.gracetoday.com



4:00 AM Jul 11