Fearfully and Wonderfully Made!

I would like to say that I have always appreciated the way God created me to be, but that would not be true. Coming to accept myself the way God made me has taken many years. For years I tried to change who I am instead of accepting myself. I tried to be who people around me wanted me to be, or I percieved they wanted me to be. I tried to manipulate my body by starving it into a size it was never intended to be. I studied things of no interest to me to please people...I wanted to be anything but what and who I was made to be. After years of this things began to change. I began to take the Word of God literally and applied it to my life. His Word says in Psalms 139

13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;[a]
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.

He made me wonderfully! He had a plan for my life before the beginning of time. A purpose in putting me here! It became important to me to find that purpose and to work to see myself as He created me.

I wander if I hadn't starved myself to be thin, what would I look like, If I hadn't wasted time trying to please man what would I have been doing. I know I can't change the past, I have to focus on the now. Yes I do still workout, watch what I eat, but now it is in perspective to life. I try to eat natural foods at least 90% of the time. The foods that I beleive God created for us to eat. I accept that I may never be tiny, but I am me and I will take care of the body God has given me, for it is fearfully and wonderfully made.

Recently I was really struggling with the time I spend running and studying for my trainer's certification, when I felt God say...you are right where I want you doing what I created you for..you are in My plan...trust Me!

I don't know how, but my love of God and the love He has placed in me for fitness/nutrition are going to be used for His glory! When we seek Him, He will give us the desires of our heart! He is constantly thinking about me! He wants me! Amazing!

Can you trust that God made you for a purpose, the way He made you? I think most of us have no idea what we should look like, because we altered it by eating junk and over eating/ starving or otherwise manipulating our bodies to look like society says they should look or to hide behind...it is time to come out of hiding and discover the wonderfully made person God created!

National Day Of Prayer

In the United States today is a day that is set aside as the Day of Prayer for our Country. Today it is hard to believe that we are a Christian Nation. Our history is one of faith, but it doen't seem to be a priority in our country today!

As a parent what I see, is that my kids are taught tolerance for what God calls sin, the values that were instilled in my, not just in the home, but in school, at friends houses, extracurricular activities are not taught any more. The argument being that it is not the schools place to teach our kids values...yet that is where they are learning their values.

There is much on my heart on this National Day of prayer to pray for...wars, rumors of wars to come, the devestation of storms, the families that have lost loved ones, our govermental leaders, our schools, our kids and teens (they are our future you know!), our churches (it is time that church be about God and worshipping Him, not making us feel good!), our economy, our military men and women...but above all my prayer is for God to move in America in such a way that we will fall on our faces before Him and return to the foundations of our Country...Faith in God..In God we trust!!

What is your prayer for our country today?

Nine and a Half Years Later

When I think back to the attack on September 11, 2001...I remember the shock and the panic that we all felt. I also remember the sense of unity that you saw form around the world. We saw churches overflowing with people seeking God in the middle of the week! Complete strangers risking their lives to go into the towers and look for survivors. We cried over the loss of lives and the loss of security we felt. We united as a nation to bring one man to justice.

This morning I awoke to the news...that Osama Bin Laden is dead! I will be honest a part of me was excited! This was justice for what he did to us. This was justice for the soilders who have died in the last 9.5 years looking for and fighting to get to him! This brought renewed hope that this war may end and yes selfishly I thought and maybe my son will not be deployed into it!

As the day went on, I felt something else...he was a person, an evil person, but a person none the less. He had people that loved him, family that will miss him. For those people I do feel sadness.

The Bible says not rejoice in the death of the wicked, but to rejoice in the salvation of a lost one. So I will not rejoice in his death, I will rejoice in the end of the man hunt, the hope that this could lead to the end of this war...

I will pray for his family and for all that remain to fight until they are called home...

To the soilders that have served, do serve and will serve...thank you for what you do and for giving me the ability to go bed at night knowing I am protected! It is an honor to call my son a Marine!

Believe

Do you Believe in God? Yes. Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes. Do you believe that Jesus died and rose again? Yes. Do you believe that God still heals miraculously today? Yes. Do you believe that God still speaks to people today (dreams, vision, audibly, through His Word)? Yes. Do you believe that God can do anything? Yes. Do you believe that God loves you? Yes. Do you believe God has a plan for your life? Yes.

We say we believe in a lot. We believe the Bible to be the inerrant, infalliable Word of God, from cover to cover. But do we? Really? I mean it seems like we pick what we want to believe...but then what does it mean to believe? According to the Amplified Bible other words that could have been substituted for believe are to rely on, to cling to or to trust in...the Amplified Bibles puts these words in parenthesis as other words that mean the same as the greek word that we translate believe...

So if you went back to the questions that started this and ask your self do I fully rely on, cling to and trust in the fact that God is God, that Jesus is His Son, died and rose again. That God heals, speaks and moves in my life today? Would we still say yes? It is easy to mouth a Word, it is another thing to live a life that backs up what we say.

Honestly some of this I had to learn the hard way. I had to learn God is faithful to heal because I have a child that can't take most modern meds...yes we fully rely on, trust in and cling to the healing power of God.
We lived 7 months with no income at all during the 'recession', we learned to fully rely on, cling to and trust in God's Word when it said that My God will supply all my needs according to His riches in glory. We learned His Word is true!

I have known for as long as I can remember that Jesus was God's Son and He died and rose again for me. It became real for me when I was 21. At that point I took my head knowledge and it became heart and life relying on, clinging to and trusting in what He had done for me...It was years before I came to a point where I really got what He really did, but I did come to the point that I rely on cling to and trust in the completed work of the cross....

really ask yourself when you say you believe these 'basic' facts of the faith...do you rely on, cling to and trust in them...or are you giving lip service to the Jesus who you say you believe died for you???