I’ve always hated exercise. Water makes my hair look funny, and sweating is water. I’d rather read a book. In gym class, I always stood in the back of class cause I was so uncomfortable. When they taught us tumbling, the teacher told us we could break our necks if we did it wrong. That was it, I froze up and couldn’t do any of it right.
When I was a girl in elementary school, a doctor scolded me for being overweight. That totally caught me by surprise because no one had said a thing. Mom never complained.
Right out of high school, I studied nursing and became an RN so I understood the important of exercise and diet and exercise. But there’s also a spiritual component here. 1 Corinthians 6:19 to 20 says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” As believers, we should take care of the body God gave us. That’s where the Holy Spirit lives.
I guess you can say I grew into exercise and watching my diet. Not that it’s easy, but I try to think of it as a lifestyle.
Michelle Medlock Adams is my guest. She teaches exercise classes and wrote Love and Care for the One and Only You. A new version is coming out with recipes in the back.
2:30 What effect does TV have on how we see ourselves?
4:50 How can diet become a lifestyle?
7:40 How can we learn to drink water?
10:00 Rewarding yourself and easing into better habits
11:40 How can we avoid perfectionistic attitudes about food?
13:00 Stay on a diet at a birthday party?
15:30 Not everyone has an hour-glass shaped figure
Prepare for the New Year: Make Your Life Count For God:
Have you ever thought about the end of your life? When you look back over all you’ve done, how will you view your choices? After I married, my husband talked about that a lot. At first, it seemed grim. After all, we were in our twenties. Over time, however, I changed my mind. Psalm 92 says, “Teach us to number our days that we may have a heart of wisdom.” Such good advice!
As we enter a new year, this is a great time to consider our purpose in life. Consider Romans 12:3: “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”
This verse commands us to have sober judgment, which means to think clearly about ourselves. I find it easy to be self-centered and to feel as if life revolves around me, but that’s not true. In fact, this passage tells us to acknowledge the measure of faith God has given us. If you keep reading Romans 12, you’ll discover Paul moves into spiritual gifts. He describes the church as a body and individuals as members. When you come to Christ, He gives you a spiritual gift. That’s the measure of faith Paul speaks of. When you think correctly, you realize your value in relationship to the rest of the body of Christ. The head needs the hands to do its bidding and feet for movement and balance. The body of Christ doesn’t have useless parts. You have a special gifting for your time that no one else can fill like you can. You aren’t the whole body, but a valuable part of the whole. (What a great recipe for self-esteem: doing God’s will.)
So how do you find your purpose, your gifting? Poppy Smith is my guest. She wrote: Go For It! Make Your Life Count For God. She helps women uncover their gifts and live up to their potential.
3:00 How can we live on purpose?
5:00 How does God prepare us to be used?
7:05 His shaping.
7:40 How can we learn what we are best suited for?
So many times I resort to prayer when I’ve come to the end of my resources. Prayer becomes my attempt to convince God of my agenda. Yet I detest the disturbing thought that prayer resembles a vending machine—saying the right words obligates God to produce what I want. That raises questions: What is prayer? What does prayer accomplish?
As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized God’s agenda for prayer. He’s always loved people and interacted with them from the beginning of time. In early history, he didn’t command prayer because he was already communicating with individuals. Remember “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” (Genesis 5:24) Imagine chatting with God so often, that one day you end up walking all the way to heaven during a long conversation Jeremiah 33:3 Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.
The prophet Jeremiah recorded one of the first commands to pray. He wrote to Judah, warning of God’s impending judgment on the nation. God called him as a prophet about 627 BC. God told Jeremiah to record this: “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” (Jeremiah 33:3) From these words, we learn God longs to reveal things to us, things that will change how we live and help us to understand God’s mind.
Linda Evans Shepherd just completed a book called Called to Pray. She helps us understand God’s agenda for prayer, and she encourages us to make consistent prayer part of our New Year’s resolution. Listen and learn.
