Unappreciated and Under Valued

I consider myself to be a healthy person. I don't know how others perceive me, a health nut maybe? I mean I drink fermented tea, make my chocolate pudding out of avocados, and I get excited about hard workouts. But even after all this I cannot tell someone with confidence the best way to be healthy and stay fit.

I know what I do and have researched here and there but have not found an answer. I have found studies saying to do cardio for 30-40 minutes three to four times a week and then I have found studies saying that heart disease is high in those doing that much cardio. I thought that guy running 10 miles every morning, bike riding to work, and then swimming in the evenings was super healthy. I suppose I was wrong.

OK so weight training it is. There are good reports on this type of workout but then I find others that say weight training hurts your joints and minimal weights is best. But you can't workout for too long because then you do more harm than good. Someone please tell me how am I suppose to find the truth!? Which one is right?

Let me tell you my conclusion: we cannot know! We can make our best guess but we simply cannot know the truth to this question. The reason is simple. There is no authority good enough to tell us the absolute truth about the best way to stay healthy and fit. Sure there are studies and there are results to those studies but is there going to be another study in the future that disproves what we all thought was the best way for living? We will not know, unless we live to find out. It was frustrating thinking I had found the right way to workout and eat right only to have someone else show me evidence against my initial research.

So this got me thinking about how much I appreciate God's word. One thing that I do not have to guess on is the bible. It is absolute truth and there is no doubt it is right, I do not have to worry that it is wrong, or someone in the future correcting what it says. God, who cannot lie, promised to preserve his word for all generations, and we have the privilege of having it in a book to read, study, and learn from. Doesn't that create a peace and joy inside you! We CAN KNOW TRUTH! Our faith is not shaken because it is in a book written by the creator of life and existence. No other authority can stand next to the God of the bible.

Out of all the things that we cannot know, we can be certain about God and his words. There is truth in them, there is power in them, comfort, and peace.

I feel for the Christian who yearns to hear from God and to have God speak to them when they are already holding the very words that God spoke in their hands! Don't under value what you have. Believe the God of the bible, believe his words he had men write so he could preserve them.

He wrote it for us to know him. How are we to know him unless we read and learn from it. I was told about a cartoon drawing of a man kneeling on the ground praying "God, I'm listening, please speak to me" and then you see a bible being thrown down from the sky thumping the man on the head.

God has already spoken and has already provided a means to communicate further with us since that time and that is with the bible. Appreciate the truth in the bible that you can trust and have steadfast faith in. It is the only important thing that we can know for sure in this life and in the next!

Body and Life Transformations

We have all been there. The point of "I'm going to do it! No, I'm serious! This time I'm going to stick to this workout and go all out even on the food plan that goes with it."

We Google 'Best, fastest, muscle, fat burning workout.' Tons of results come back and we compare the before and after pictures, the body transformation section, right? Have you seen some of those people? Those defined muscles, super-toned midsection, nice legs. But do you know how extreme their workout regiment is and their diet to get that transformation?

They had to totally transform their mind from how it use to think, they had to go against the norm of other people's lifestyles, ranging from eating habits, to lazy habits, to time priority habits. They surrounded themselves with other people with like-minds of eating healthy, people who are not lazy, They research new exercises and techniques, they obtain more knowledge of how the body works and then they acted accordingly. 

Imagine that! people can learn and study and make a change. Somehow after reading what all that processed food is doing to your health, after finding out what lack of exercise is doing to your body and the more you hear it and hear it and read it the less appealing and satisfying it becomes to stay in the condition that you are in.

I figure a lot of people can relate to the principles of trying to get fit but we all know the bible states, 'bodily exercise profiteth little...' (1 Timothy)  I would imagine that we can also relate to the second part of that verse '....but godliness with contentment is great gain.'  We try to achieve this as well, godliness with contentment. Both parts are hard, godliness and then contentment with godliness. Its like godliness is the workout and contentment is the food plan that goes with it. So even if we think the workouts aren't too hard we ALSO have to be temperate with our food decisions?...c'mon that's too much. Or is it you're not use to it.

Being godly is not very popular, it's not the top 50 searches in Google. In fact, if we studied godliness with contentment as much as we spend studying how to get fit, if we had the same zeal for godliness with contentment as we do about working out and eating healthy, if we were as obsessed with godliness with contentment as we are obsessed with our bodies we will probably be criticized for it, teased about it, people will think we have completely lost it.

You will know that you are close to the end result of godliness with contentment when things that you think are fun become different than things society thinks are fun; things that you enjoy your time doing end up being different than what society enjoys doing. The topics we choose to talk about change, what we watch on television changes, what we choose to listen to changes, perhaps our clothing style changes, and even our jokes might change.

Just like the person in that perfect "After" picture changed their lifestyle, their habits, and probably got teased about being obsessive to get the result they wanted, we also will be looked at as obsessive when our life starts reflecting the zeal for godliness with contentment.

They will think that we are obsessed with something that to them holds little value. If it is turning heads that we wanted by working out, we will probably get a lot more by deciding to live a life that is godly and being content with it.

The truth is, if we are not disciplined in our efforts into getting that result....we will probably not have the transformation that we want. Just like if we are not disciplined (the bible uses the word temperate) in gaining godliness with  contentment, we will probably not get the result that we are called to have.
1 Corinthians 9:25-27, Titus 2:14, Romans 12:1-2, 2 Tim 2:21, 1 Th 4:4

(Clarification: We know that there is nothing in meat or drink, or the clothes we wear, or the the jokes we tell Roman 14:17 and our salvation does not depend on works of righteousness which we do Titus 3:5 but the word of God effectually works in those that believe 1Th 2:13 and we are to live not as though we had already attained, either were already perfect: but we follow after, if that we may apprehend that for which also we are apprehended of Christ Jesus. Philippians chapter 3 discusses our efforts in transformation in this life.)

"God's Word has always been there" - Mr. J

 "God's word has always been there" that was the response to my question as a first time mother of all the 'what if's' of raising my child. For you that have had children you may be able to relate. It is so strange how the mind changes after having your own child. 

I was always told in my older years of being young, and my couple years of being a nanny, and a few more years of teaching children of how good I was with them and how I would make a wonderful mother. I totally agreed with their comments at the time and appreciated the boost in confidence in how I could raise my own child. Not to blow my own horn but, I did agree that I was going to make a pretty awesome parent. But I think pregnancy, breast feeding ,and other motherly hormones completely disregarded any type of pre-self that I had thought myself to be. (Funny how that is). 

All of a sudden I was not good enough, all of a sudden I did not know what to do, I did not know what to say. I was so confident with everyone else's child. I knew how I wanted them to behave and turn out and how they should act and I knew how to get them to do that. I knew how to answer their questions and how to discipline. Parents of these children would ask me how I got them to respond to me in that way or to behave how they ought. My thought was always "It's simple. I just...." (this is where you experienced parents laugh at the 'it's simple' remark. Because it is not simple).  When it comes to your own kids, why is it that you feel like a failure. You feel like you do not have the right answers, that you cannot teach them everything that they need to know. How can you possibly teach them everything they need to know. Until you have your own child the weight of how and who they become does not truly fall on you. But when it is your own, something changes. It is not that you necessarily care less for all of the other children in your life, but more so, the reality of your actions and choices come to life and the affect it has on others.

My daughter is 18 months now, and my father kindly and lovingly snickered at me as we met for coffee one morning and I expressed my motherly concerns of "what if I cannot answer my daughter's theological questions about life? What if my answer isn't good enough?"  Though I do not think that an age is too young to start teaching truth, stressing about my 18 month old and theological debates on life and truth is probably not something to concern myself with quite yet. 

This is when my father answered "God's word has always been there. If there is any belief in any part of the bible that you start to teach her such as In the begining God created, then there was sin at the tree,  a flood, and the tower of Bable where languages were created, Abraham, and ISaac, John the Baptist, Jesus at the cross, Peter, Paul, God's grace, and so one and so forth... Then you must believe that God's word has always been there."

Such a simple answer. 

He was so calm in his answer, so confident. After his years of experience in raising his own children and what that looked like and meant; there was such a peace, confidence, and comfort in him to know, that GOd's word has always been there. Life can be hard, and it will most likely hurt, but God's word has been, is, and will be forever there.

I know that this will not be an "ah ha!" moment for all that read this, but I hope that one day your "ah-ha!" moment will come. I have confidently been saved for 25 years and have known God's word rightly divided for 17 years and still have 'ah-ha!' moments.

I am thankful for those that hold fast to God's word and provide strength for those who are not as strong. Thank you for the grace that you show. Peace and love and hope in seeing you soon.

What's the point

Once you have had the taste of truth, of true joy, true purpose, and of true reality, you cannot convince yourself of another type of joy to take its place. You cannot fully convince yourself that what you do matters. Because the truth is, this life is vanity....unless it is used for God's purpose. The mundane to-do's of everyday life has no meaning in the end. Life does seem pointless.

There is always this knowledge of truth in your head that you cannot ignore. Without this knowledge of truth, without understanding comes bitterness, rudeness, frustration, tiredness, stress, lack of direction.

You can be the best at your trade, you can work up in your career, you can reach the next stage of the "American Dream" but there will still be an emptiness that you'll feel. You'll try and fill it with friends, with hobbies, other things that take up more of your time so that you don't have time to think about the emptiness.

The greatest trait about God's word is that it stays true, and for those that believe His word to be that truth it will never leave you.

"If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself." 2 Timothy 2:13

There is not greater reward than doing the will of God, there is no greater satisfaction than working towards the high mark which he has set, and there is no greater peace that this life can give you than living by Galations 2:20 

"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

Praise God for being constant in who He is when we are not.
Praise God for his Grace by which we are saved.

'For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God' 
-Ephesians 2:8