Ok…so if you have been working on living a healthy lifestyle and working out then you have probably eaten your share of good old Oatmeal. If you haven’t discovered it by now then you soon will see that it can become boring and tiresome. Rather plain tasting and bland it’s delicious but gets old. Today I tried something new and loved it!! I’ve since decided to share some of my favorite oatmeal recipes.

What I tried today:

Chocolate Oatmeal

1/2 cup quaker whole oats, water, and a little bit of UNSWEETENED chocolate or cocoa,

Microwave for 2 minutes.

Stir in 2 packets of TRUVIA brand natural sweetener and a little bit of “i Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” Spray. 

Voila! There you have it, a low calorie dessert like breakfast that is sure to aid in licking a chocolate craving!

For the past several months I’ve tried to explain to my friends and family just what The Biggest Loser does. It is only now, in reading “Got Fight?,” that I’ve found a decently worded explanation. Yes, I am gleaning wisdom from self depricating UFC fighter Forrest Griffin! Smart guy.

So here it is:
“How do you develope this kind of toughness? The answer is simple-do things that make your body and mind scream at you to quit, but don’t (dips*** psychs might call this cognitive behavioral therapy or some bull****). Personally, I use the treadmill to accomplish this….”

-Sounds a heck of a lot like Jillian doesn’t it-

“Every other day, I’ll rev that sucker up to twelve miles an hour and do three five-minute intervals. Running at that speed for that duration doesn’t come naturally to anyone-it’s hideous, absolutely horrible. But by pushing past the pain, you become progressively tougher. You prove to yourself that pain is just that, pain. You can walk away from it afterward knowing that you surpassed a barrier that makes most humans curl into the fetal position and weep for Jesus. If you’re not in good shape, you don’t have to run at twelve miles an hour. You could run at eight miles an hour, but it is imortant to set goals for yourself. If eight miles an hour becomes too easy, push it up to nine miles an hour. The most important part is setting a pace that is more than you think you can acheive. It is also important not to do exercises where the pace isn’t set. I chose the treadmill over running outside because when I’m on the track, my body naturally slows down as the pain sets in. On a treadmill, you don’t have that option.”

-Sounds like Jillian again, doesn’t it? LOL-

You see, most of us who start a massive weight loss journey, or any major life changing jouney for that matter, are broken, half-dead people. Whether we’d like to admit it or not. We’re lost in our lives, and we’ve been conditioned to feel like failures, too afraid to lose or even too afraid to succeed. We don’t feel like we’re worth the effort, or deserve the effort it takes to acheive what we want. Even if we are worth it our goals seem so impossible. So, how do you give a person self value? How do you teach yourself that you are strong and do deserve to get what you want? On the Biggest Loser we use intense exercise. Does working out 6 or more hours a day seem feasable or even make since? No, but neither does losing 200+ pounds in under a year, and both are possible. It’s not about the gym, it’s not about a treadmill sprint. But when I complete a workout or a treadmill sprint that I thought I couldn’t do, I realize that I have power and can accomplish goals. I have the power to change. It’s a metaphor for life, if I can complete this sprint what else can I do? I can lose ___ pounds, I can acheive _____, I can become _______, I can win _____. You fill in the blanks!

Jillian said something simple to me that’s incredibly profound. She gives us the knowledge we need(calories in, calories out), we learn that we have the power to change, and then we use that power to implement that knowledge to produce the desired change. In this case, become a healthy and hot looking 20 year old who can live an active life of snowboarding and outdoor sports and grow into a Godly family man who leads others (especially young kids) to follow a path of love and triumph laid by Jesus.

I hope this helps anyone out there, just some thoughts I had while reading and traveling today!

America?

I decided to go to the Mall after the gym today to look for a book. As I was getting out of my car I was given this nice gift. A Mac Donald’s bag containing a half finished assumedly Sweet Tea and a pack of cigarets. 

 

Now, I don’t intend to pass judgment on the person who left this is my awesome parking spot. I don’t intend to pass judgment on anyone who is eating Mac Donald’s and smoking while reading this. I have done both of these things numerous times. 

The image simply made me laugh. It reminded me of darker times in my life where I did consume these things and knowingly harmed my body and my own life. You see, it’s just not about weight loss. It’s about self love, and self value. Eating these foods and smoking these cigarets are harmful. And we as humans knowingly consume harmful things all the time. Why? i mean really, why? When you step back and examine it, it’s not really worth it. There are so many chemicals in Mac Donald’s food that poison us and we are marketed these things at the expense of our health. Cigarets are so bad that there are national ad campaigns bring awareness to the damage they do. It’s not just tobacco that can be harmful but the ammonia and  God know what else in cigarets that is killing thousands a year. 

No matter what voices in your life have led you to believe that you are not worth loving, No matter what has led you to believe that you don’t have value, I want you to ignore them. I want you to forget about them. I want you to take a moment and think about yourself. Realize how much worth you have. Realize how valuable you are. You deserve good health, You deserve getting the things you really want, not temporary joys that only serve to mask pain. 

Lastly, if you can’t get a handle just yet on your value, I want you to look to God. You see, there are way too many people running around saying we are horrible and worthless and wretched and need to look at God’s goodness and see our badness. I say they are completely missing it by stopping a part of the way.  God thinks that we are valuable enough to purchase us with the death of his own Son. If you are worth the death of God’s only Son, then are you not worth everything?  I’d say your are, and i believe God says so too!

Matthew 22:37-40 “the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments”

1. Foremost, love God with your: heart, soul, and mind

2. Love your neighbor as yourself

Uh oh! To love your neighbor as yourself, you first have to actually LOVE YOURSELF! Would I feed my neighbor and deprive them of exercise untill they are 400lbs.?
Can I really be putting others before me if I neglect my own health to impending death? Can I love people that I won’t even be around long enough to care for?

Beyond this, let’s talk about loving God!
If I am to love God with my heart (body,emotions) soul (spiritual), and mind (intelect,imagination) but spend my time damaging those things then how can I really love God? Loving God doesn’t come from a hatred of yourself! It canes from a hatred of sin in oneself. The heart is deceitfully wicked beause of sin. That’s how we can love God with the heart because Christ has enabled our hearts to be made pure, sprinkled clean into flesh by the Holy Spirit!

Love your heart, soul, and mind so that you will take care of them to use them to love God!

I am worth loving! You are worth loving! God says so! God says we are worth the death of His only Son (John 3:16)

It’s time to really love God by learning to love ourselves so we can be our best for Him!

I love you all, I will be back soon. But untill later please think and comment on these things!

Have you ever seen God answer a prayer so unexpectedly that all you can do is cry and thank Him? Whether the answer is a yes, no, or wait the fact that God communes with those that abide in Christ is simply amazing. Today, I saw God work a heart in a way that no human influence ever could. As I was praying and worrying about the issue God had alread put His plans into motion.

I am so thankful and amazed!

“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

So….

Today I had the privaledge of accompanying Pastor Jeff Everett to Milford, Delaware. If you haven’t been there then you should definitly go. The fun thing I noticed about Delaware was what looked to be a heavy Dutch influence. This I perceived because of the long, straight, rolling feilds and farms and tall skinny homes. Every few minutes I would excitedly search for a windmill or pray for some wooden clogging shoes and pig tail braids!

It was a very pretty town with friendly people. However, the best of the town was found to be a small church called Berean Community Church where I discovered a lobby with free books from author Mark Dever. Amongst the Dever nuggets of knowledge were resources from Pastor John McAurthor, Pastor John Piper, and Prof. J.I. Packer. As well as a men’s bible study through the Five Points of Calvinism!

This church brought joy to my oddly Dutch seeking soul!! A church of God seeking people with a love for His word and understanding His truths nestled between 100′s of acres of flat rolling farms and quaint towns; I love it!

We’ll talk later,
To God be the glory!

In my last post I wrote about the truth that many of us Christians are living with sin that we have yet to repent of.  I was not talking about a reconversion or getting saved again when I said “repent of”. When we are born, we are born under sin. We have a nature that loves to do the things God hates. This sin is what separates us from God and condemns us to His judgment. At the point of salvation, when a person meets Jesus and puts their faith and hope in Him, they die to their old nature. That person’s sinful self is crucified on the cross with Christ and they are born a new person with a new nature.  This happens spiritually of course because that person is still in their body and the last time I checked I didn’t see a ton of empty bodies lying around a church.  Jesus took the plunge of physical death for the believer so that the believer does not have to.  Jesus’ resurrection is what gives the believer this new life and new nature. This is called “being born again” because at this point the believer is filled with the Holy Spirit of God and sealed as an adopted child of God. This is the Gospel.

Any questions about the above discussion please contact me.

Once salvation takes place the Christian is free, redeemed from the sin he was born into. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1) However, remember the empty bodies thing? A Christian, like everybody else, is still in his body.  The body has it’s sinful desires and sin still dwells in it. This is why, although Christians are free from God’s condemnation and welcomed into His love and family, they still sin. Ta-da!! Here we have unrepentant sin if the Christian continues habitually in this sin.

This brings me to what I have been experiencing in my personal life lately. Through the recomendation of some influential men I picked up three works by an old dead guy named John Owen. John Owen was a Puritan Pastor who lived in the 1600′s. Don’t jump at the word Puritan, not all were self-righteous legalists as Hawthorne and Miller might have lead you to believe. Owen published his work as a means to combat legalism. He wrote that:

“This was seconded by an observation of some men’s dangerous mistakes, who of late days have taken upon them to give directions for the mortification of sin, who, being unacquainted with the mystery of the gospel and the efficacy of the death of Christ, have anew imposed the yoke of a self-wrought-out mortification on the necks of their disciples, which neither they nor their forefathers were ever able to bear. A mortification they cry up and press, suitable to that of the gospel neither in respect of nature, subject, causes, means, nor effects; which constantly produces the deplorable issues of superstition, self-righteousness, and anxiety of conscience in them who take up the burden which is so bound for them.

This is in the introduction to “Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers.” I’ve been in this work for a few days and I’ve managed to plod through 10 whole pages.  What I learn from my readings in this work is what I want to share and what I will be sharing over the next several posts.

Mortifying (killing) our indwelling sin daily by the power of the Holy Spirit alone is what I’m going to be discussing. Why do this? How is this accomplished?

Until later, think on these things:

“For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Romans 8:13

So, occasionally while I’m getting ready to go somewhere I’ll turn the T.V. on. The other day I do this as usual but I find my T.V. set to Showtime with the title of the program being “We’re All Angels.” It is the documentary film you see pictured above. The title catches my attention at first so I press “Info” to see what it is about. This is what I discover: “WE’RE ALL ANGELS (TV14 – L) (2007) This documentary from filmmaker Robert Nunez charts the improbable, inspiring rise of pop music stars Jason & deMarco, gay Christians who struggle to be accepted by either the evangelical or gay communities.“

Now If your reaction is shock and disbelief followed by anger then you are connecting with my experience. But God quickly corrected my anger, let me explain. Have you been in a youth group where the guys in the praise band were sleeping around with different girls, or girls were sleeping around with guys? Have you preached or lead worship or sang in front of your church with unrepentant sin in your heart and life? Are you as angry and shocked with that as you are with the gay Christian pop singers? If you are like me, you were not.

Jason & deMarco are no worse then we are. Yet 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” Our heterosexual immorality is as sinful as their homosexuality. Yet we have the nerve to judge and deem these sins more despicable then our own? Even to the point of hating gay people with no one with the nerve to reach out to them. AND SUCH WERE SOME OF YOU- we used to be lost too. We’ve been redeemed and how will thy ever know of redemption unless someone goes to them and shares the gospel of Jesus Christ? P.S.- STANDING OUTSIDE GAY EVENTS WITH PICKET SIGNS IS NOT CORRECT. IT IS WRONG, JESUS DID NOT SAY “THEY WILL KNOW YOU BY YOUR PICKET SIGNS.” PERHAPS IF YOU WOULD GROW SOME INTESTINAL FORTITUDE AND LOVE THESE PEOPLE IN DEMONSTRATION OF CHRIST’S LOVE WE MIGHT SEE SOME GENUINE BELIEVERS DEVELOP.

Jason & deMarco claim to be Christians, but so do we. Keep pointing the finger at them but remember the three pointing back at you because until we realize that their SIN and our SIN is the problem we will never reclaim the North American church from the sin we have gotten into. You see, the problem with us as the North American church is that we have grown increasingly cold to the severity of sin. We have little concern for it. Obviously one problem is doctrine, where churches have forgotten even which sins are sins. But the bigger issue still remains, we continue in unrepentant sin. It will never be possible to rightly practice church discipline in the universal way it is needed until we have grabbed a hold of and ripped the plank of sin out of our own eye. We as a whole have climbed back into the darkness that we were set free from. In the time of Jonathon Edwards, during the Great Revivals, there are accounts of Christians PASSING OUT in realization of the weight of their sin. Hundreds of years later and here we are sining in the open to the point where we just don’t care.

The only way we will ever see revival in North America or be ready for the return of Jesus Christ is if we will SATURATE ourselves with Him. Why did Jesus have to die? Answer that for yourself. You know the answer is “Our Sin.” We need a HATRED for sin. And that righteous hatred for sin comes only from a RIGHTEOUS LOVE OF GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST. As dorky as he sounds saying it, John Piper is right: “America should be on its face!”

It’s funny. Those that know me well understand that I often think and dream of revival. I have always wanted to know, and have always wondered what it is that keeps us from it. Well, after years of delicate research in my theological laboratory I am emerging (not to be confused with the emergent church) with the answer. Sin. The problem that has been in front of my face the whole time and has been the problem of the world since the beginning of time. Sin. Sin is what keeps us from revival. The only solution to sin that leads us to revival is Jesus Christ.

Great is Your faithfulness oh God
You wrestle with the sinner’s heart
You lead us by still waters and to mercy
And nothing can keep us apart

So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise
Oh God

Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough for me

Great is Your love and justice God
You use the weak to lead the strong
You lead us in the song of Your salvation
And all Your people sing along

So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise
Oh God

Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough for me (x2)

–Your Grace Is Enough, Christ Tomlin

2 Corinthians 12:7-10–”So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Imagine this, Jesus Christ is everything.

I struggle with this song and living out the practical implications of understanding that no matter what ever happens to me: whether I lose everything and never receive another thing for the rest of my life or if I die early or never marry…..it doesn’t matter. I have already received, so undeserving, the grace and salvation of God. This is all I should ever need. This is what I find so hard to sing about light heartedly. Perhaps the song is simply a call to attempt this way of life and therefore a reminder of the sufficiency of God’s grace in Christ. For myself, I find it too burdensome to let myself go. I believe that I hinder myself from laying hold on this life that finds its sustenance from God’s grace alone because I consider my own inability as what to rely on. If I give up this fight between my inability and Christ’s power then I believe I will find the place where Christ’s power is what does the sustaining and keeps me grounded in God’s grace, which is enough.

“If our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?–as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.”

How can God charge me or judge me for doing evil if He receives glory from it? This is something hard to wrestle with and yet we find that even the Apostle Paul wondered. Thankfully, God gave us an answer and it begins like this:

“What then? Are we Jews an better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:”

They have the law but does that make them any better off? We are told NO, because we are all, both Jews and everyone else, under sin. All of us, everybody, anyone, period.

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understand; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

Here’s why God can punish anyone He pleases. No one is right, all have sinned. Just one sin, one wrong action is enough to sentence us as human beings to death. God by very definition is the greatest being which can be conceived. He is the ultimate good, He is holiness, He is Perfection. But where is justice in God if he receives glory through my sin? The final solution is this:

“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it–the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show this righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law works? No, but by the law of faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one. He will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.”

The problem, the build up to the answer, the answer, and then the final solution. Romans 3:5-31