This week in Weigh Less we are cocked and loaded and ready to shoot forth in gaining back our health and wholeness. By the end of this week each participant will be eating right and moving more. Sound familiar? Who hasn't done this? It is the practical formula that covers a multitude of sins. After 17 years in the industry I have seen this formula in action and yes, it does work, but as people who live and breathe and move by the Spirit, we are called to go in a different direction for a different reason. Without the ability to see ourselves, outside of ourselves, we will easily fall into the suicide machine that is diet and exercise. When we do something for ourselves that appears to look right we can get into big trouble. The opposite of placing ourselves at the highest priority of life is humility, and in humility is where we have a chance of getting this thing called life right.
I had planned on writing this blog about balance. Because now that you are armed with a plan for diet and exercise application, without having a good sense of balance you will go off the deep end and do everything for all the wrong reasons. A good thing that was working for us can quickly become the master that we serve. Remember, we are all serving someone or something. Either we are serving ourselves, or God. Yep. It's that simple. Serving ourselves will work. Don't get me wrong. It works, but eventually it will lead to destruction and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness until we find the next object of our desires to serve, and again, that will get us through for a little while, but then that too will fail. Round and round we go. The endless treadmill. When we chose to serve God in everything (yes, even in diet and exercise) you can bet that we are going to be put up against the measuring stick that says "yep, looks right", or "nope, need to ease up a little because you are starting to lose it." That is God's righteousness. God's righteousness is what all of us our in desperate need of ALL THE TIME so that we will have the right way of thinking, feeling and acting, and here's the catch, it is the opposite of your natural way of thinking, feeling and acting. We will never get it right on our own, never, yet God is not wanting your failure, but he is wanting your humility.
"God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble". (1 peter 5:5). Living a humble life , where one thinks less of himself does not sound that appealing on the surface now does it? This is so anti "me" generation. This is where many people stop getting on the Jesus bus, because everyone wants to know what Jesus is going to do for them, instead of what they have to do for Jesus. To be humble means to never get ahead of yourself, by thinking too highly of yourself. The doorway of humility is the only passage way to you being a new creation. We must go down to get up. And then once we are up, we must never think we have arrived. The moment you think you have arrived, you have already lost it. It is a short distance to travel from humility to pride. But there is hope. Right there, squeezed between humility and pride, is grace. When we live lives that never forget the grace that has been given to us, we can be sure that we will be more resistant to taking up residence again in the prideful places. Grace is defined as good will, loving- kindness, by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps them, strengthens them, and increases them in faith, knowledge, affection, and awakens them to the exercise of the better way.
To stay fit in body and spirit, you will need to stay humble, receive grace and pitch pride.
