Getting Ready...

I know I haven't posted recently on my weight loss efforts, but I am doing pretty good. I have been working out everyday! I was beginning to think though how I really want to cultivate self-discipline in my life but I wasn't including the Lord in on it. I was seeking Him in other areas of my life but I wasn't handing over to Him the issue of my weight. The reason I should be cultivating self-discipline is because that is what the Lord wants of me, not just for me to be thin. In cultivating self-discipline in the area of my eating and health then it will help me to cultivate self-discipline in other areas as well. I am reading A Woman's High Calling by Elizabeth George right now. (Can you tell I like books by Elizabeth George?) In two chapters that I just read she talks about having self-control and self-discipline. "Personal discipline can be as simple as the two-letter word NO! Christ didn't say, 'Indulge yourself.' Instead He said, 'Deny yourself.' (Matthew 16:24) So just say NO!" Matthew 16:24 says "Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself...'" I shouldn't just try to lose weight to be thin, but lose weight because Christ wants me to have discipline. He doesn't want me to be self-indulgent. When this was my focus yesterday I did so much better in regard to food. If I went to reach for one more cookie I thought about the fact that to eat it would be self-indulgent and Christ says that self-indulgence is sin. Wow, that was pretty motivating not to eat that extra cookie. He doesn't say I can't enjoy a cookie, but when I go back for seconds when I know I shouldn't then that is what makes it wrong.
And cultivating the self-discipline in this area can have far reaching effects on the rest of my life.
"...we can greatly minister to those younger than ourselves if we are temperate and disciplined and restrained. As women with even-keeled temperaments and self-control, we provide excellent models to our children and to our younger sisters in the faith." I know that this won't happen overnight in my life, but if I continue to give it to the Lord and ask that He change my heart, then I know He will do that.

"It has been well said that the future is with the disciplined, and that quality has to be placed first... for without it the other gifts, however great, will never realize their maximun potential. Only the disciplined person will rise to his highest powers." J. Oswald Chambers