What Do I Want to Crave?

~~ 1 Corinthians 6:19 (NIV84) ~~  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own

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by Carley Cooper

Photo by Carley Cooper.  All rights reserved.

We started Lisa Terkeurst's Made to Crave study at the ladies bible study group at church this week.  I had a couple of realizations that resulted.  First, that emotional eating is beginning to be a problem for me for the first time.  The other half of the issue is that I've noticed myself feeling a little disconnected from God; or maybe it's that I'm craving Him more.  I just know that my prayer life isn't as up to snuff as it used to be.

Ah-Ha!  A Light Bulb Moment

My big insight was to wonder if these two things are connected.  Is my need for more of God being materialized in the form of emotional eating?  Am I craving what I should be craving; God instead of food?  As always, God has brought the perfect bible study into my life at the exact time when I needed it.

God Never Misses a Beat

He does that with everything but it never ceases to amaze me that God doesn't miss a detail.  Everything is important to Him, no matter how small my need, He cares about it.  Thinking about this makes me think about other things in my life; like my longing for a husband... someone to love and be loved by.  It makes me more excited about the future, what 2013 has in store for me.  I really believe this will be an exciting year for me.  I know I've said this before, but it deserves repeating... being a Christian is not restrictive.  It's freeing and adventurous.  Whoever said being a Christian was boring doesn't know how to be a real Christian.

God Cares About Your Health

This study is no doubt something God wants me to do.  He wants me to focus more on my health.  So I should; after all my body is His temple.  He deserves for it to be healthy.

What is it that you’re craving?  God or food, or something else?  Are you willing do what it takes to make your body strong and healthy for Him?

Just before leaving for bible study, I got this prayer as part of a comment left on one of my blogs.  It fits perfectly, if you’re struggling and need some help from God.

“~~ Heavenly Father , please help me to uphold my commitment to gaining positive health. Transform my thinking about food at a pace that is right for me so that I make choices that are consistent with weight loss and gaining health. Clear my mind of dieting and nutrition dogma that confuses, misleads me and cause me to not be as healthy as you have desired for me when I was just a thought in your mind and before creation of me in my mother’s womb. Order my footsteps so that I avoid eating out of control and to eat only when I am actually hungry and in need of fuel. Order my steps so that I resist the urge to eat when I am not hungry. Encourage me, Lord through your grace and merciful love, when I am down, afraid, angry, or any non-positive emotion to be honest with myself when it is difficult. Help me to forgive myself and others for any past indiscretions that I absorbed that have led to my weight gain. Help me Father to feel comfortable and satisfied in the shape that I am now and the resultant shape and size that you have for me. Fill my mind with truth and guide my footsteps in the best way to gain health, lose excess weight and glorify you. Thank You for Your endless mercy and grace. Amen. "

Now It’s Your Turn 

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Workout Routines

~~ 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV84) ~~  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

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by Carley Cooper

Microsoft Office Copyright Free Images

Even for the most devoted healthy living fanatic, there are days when thought of healthy eating, or hearing the word ‘workout’ makes you feel like you’ve just been kicked in the gut.  It’s enough to make one feel like you have to climb a mountain.  Plus, if you’re new to the workout scene, there’s so much to think about.  I mean what’s the deal with cardio and strength training?  How many sets of how many reps do I do?  How healthy is healthy before it becomes obsession?  Is soy really good for you?  What’s the best between walking, running, swimming, mountain biking, aerobic videos, dancing; and the list goes on?  Should I eat potatoes or not?  And, what’s calisthenics anyway? 

Why is that taking care of ourselves seems so dreadful sometimes?  As someone who’s lost a lot of weight, and has changed my life so drastically in so many areas, I often get people asking me questions such as; what is the most important things I can do?  The disappointment that I see on their faces when I tell them that ‘the keys to success lies in motivation, education and self discipline’; is a common.  This is an unfortunate attitude, but the truth is those things are the keys to finding that place where your body is healthy.  I know this from traveling through that journey myself. 

At the present time I am somewhere in the midst of a journey about disciplines.  I know that because in the past couple months the  number of messages that I am hearing and seeing from God, about disciplines, are overwhelming me.  One of a number of specific things that I am getting messages about is taking care of my body.  Keeping our bodies physically healthy is a spiritual discipline.  By doing this we are worshiping God; and giving the Holy Spirit a nice, clean, healthy place to live.  Think about it... would you want to  live in a rickety, rundown dump of a home that’s filled with garbage and poor air circulation?  No, you wouldn’t, and neither would I.  Well, God doesn’t want that either.  Our body is His temple.  However, I did just that for many years.  I was up to way over 200 pounds once (how high, is not important for this discussion).  I didn’t eat well and I had breathing problems much of the time.  My energy was low on a good day and my mental health was... well, very bad, to say the least.  Even my hair and nails were different as an unhealthy person.  By not taking care of our bodies, and filling it with garbage fuel like processed foods, white flour, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, chemicals, preservatives, antibiotics; and the list goes on, we are giving God exactly that... a shabby shack to live in.   

My health routine to take care of my body involves a daily workout.  My standard workout routine has three parts to it.  I know what you’re thinking.  You know this already; right?  It’s cardio, strength, and cool-down with stretches.  Well, yes and no.  You’re right about those things; but no, those are not the three parts I am referring to.  My morning workout includes a spiritual workout, a mental workout, and a physical workout.  Our bodies are made up of three parts; the physical body, our mind and our spirit. 

First, when I wake up I spend some quiet time with God.  I talk to Him, then I do a devotional time; which involves reading the bible and a message from a devotional book.  Then I finish it off by listening to some worship music for at least 30 minutes.  I do this routine first thing in the morning because I believe that from the time we wake up our minds should be on God.  I have found that if I don’t start my day with Him, the day just does not go right.  Granted that’s not to say we’ll never have a bad day if we start it with prayer; but, I mean, that I’ve noticed that if I don’t start out my day with God, I’m guaranteed to have a rotten day. 

The next part of my routine is my mental workout.  I think this is fundamental for anyone, but for me and others with mental illness I think it is absolutely vital.  For me, this element is made up from meditation, reading and positive thinking.  I have a 30 minute mediation program that I listen to on my MP3 player.  It claims to help change brain chemistry.  There are no words.  It’s just sounds.  After I listen to it I do feel better, and I have more energy.  Because of my Bipolar Disorder, racing thoughts are a constant problem, and first thing in the morning is my worst time.  For me to sit and listen to anything without distraction for very long is impossible; let alone a whole 30 minutes.  As such, to keep my mind from racing too fast while I’m listening to my meditation program, I read a book.  It forces me to have something to focus on.  Even then it’s sometimes very difficult.  There are times that in those 30 minutes I will read only a couple of pages, because I cannot force myself to focus.  It’s common problem for Bipolar sufferers.  Other times, I can read 10 - 15 pages.   

The last part of my mental workout is training my thinking patterns.  For some people, this may not be much of an issue.  All my life my thinking was negative in every aspect of my life.  I wasn’t necessarily aware that it was negative.  It was just the way the world was; I thought.  This was how my mind was trained to think from the beginning.   After I lost the weight, I knew the next step toward mental healthiness was to change my thinking patterns.  This venture was, by far, the hardest part of my lifestyle change; and it continues to be.  To alter what is, essentially, one’s brain chemistry is no small feat, but for those of us with mental illness, who know that our brain chemistry is already off course, as compared to others; it is an even bigger undertaking.  For this, I read positive affirmations.  I have a stack of index cards with positive affirmations written on them.  I also have some books filled with positive quotations and mantras; and, of course, God’s Word.  Plus, as often as I can, I journal, but this can be done anytime of the day.

The final part of my workout practice is my physical workout.  I get my cardio by doing power-walking in the park; when the weather is nice.  On not-so-nice days, I workout with videos.  Then there’s a strength training routine, and stretches. 

Granted, I’m not perfect in my workout or healthy eating routines.  There are days when I just don’t have the mind for it; but I do pray about it.  My standard practice has been to allow myself one day per week to have some treats, so that I don’t feel deprived or left out, if I’m at a public or family function.  Sometimes when I’m not feeling well in the morning or if I have to rush off somewhere and I’m short on time; the first thing that gets cut from the program is the worship music.  Then, if I’m still short on time, the mental health element is the next thing to get slashed.  And my strength-training routine is the hardest part for me to keep on track with.  Plus, sometimes there are days when I over eat, or when I don’t eat at all.  I never cut prayer time, and almost never cut devotional time though.     

What I do know for sure is that to be truly healthy and to reap the benefits, I have to discipline myself better.  I know God wants me to do that.  He has blessings in my future that depend on it.  My motivation is Jesus and spending eternity with Him.  My education comes from God’s Word and a continuous need to know more about healthy living through reading.  My strength for my self-discipline comes from the Holy Spirit.  So, what’s your routine made up of?  Go ahead, climb the mountain; it’s a great workout!

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~~ Dear God ~~  Thank You for teaching me how to do a complete workout.  Please give me the passion, willingness and the strength I need to develop the discipline to do it daily.  Help me climb the mountain, so I can reach the summit and be with Jesus.  In Jesus name, AMEN.

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A Total Transformation

~~ Romans 12:2 (ESV) ~~  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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by Carley Cooper

Microsoft Office Copyright Free Images

They say that hindsight is 20 / 20.  Looking back on the timeline of my life I can see so many places where God was obviously intervening on my behalf to guide my path.  This is something that I am overwhelmingly grateful for.  One of the bible studies that I took part in a couple years ago taught us how to create a timeline of our own lives.  On this timeline we learned to plot the important events in our lives; then we marked the points where we could see that God had obviously stepped in to have some input, even during times before we were Christians.  It was a fascinating exercise that taught me a lot.  I was amazed at how many times God took care of me when I didn’t know it at the time.  I was also stunned that as I looked at each event, and considered the options had I not taken on the path I did, that there wasn’t one event that I wished would have been different.  Even the painful ones, eventually ended up leading me to a place that I wouldn’t want to go back and undo.  God’s ways, timing, methods are all perfect. 

One of these events where God inserted Himself into my life started in 2006 when I began a quest to ‘fix’ my head (that is, to improve my mental health)!  Romans 12:2 (ESV) tells us to renew our minds so that we can get to know God’s perfect will.  I didn’t have a real relationship with God at the time, so I didn’t approach this goal with a biblical reference in mind.  My decision to make this goal and pursue it came strictly out of fear.  It was fear that I would end up in the hospital if I continued on the path I was on.  My health and my life were very rapidly declining.  I was at a point where I felt I had no other option but to make some big changes now!  Pastor Henry at church has told me many times that “God does not waste anything.”   Romans 8:28 (NIV84) says that "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."  As I look back I can see this was certainly the case with my fear.  2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV) tells us “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”  God used the fear that the enemy had been controlling me with to help me make the first steps toward having real relationship with Him.  It was my fear that pushed me, but God used it to show me that I do indeed have a sound mind that is filled with His power and love.

Even if I would have thought more deeply about my goals, I  still would never have considered the idea that to renew my mind (to improve my mental state) would also require changes in my physical body, emotions, and spiritual health.  Each area is important to  creating a renewed, sound mind.  God led me into this realization step by step.  My own personal goal was simply to rid myself of Chronic Depression so that I could get my life back and become a fully functioning human being again.  It never occurred to me to even think beyond that.

After reading a book about improving health issues, I decided that my first order of business was to lose weight.  I felt that I couldn’t possibly have a healthy mind without a healthy body.  I had become very much overweight over the previous decade due, mainly, to medications.  I found a wonderful program, called Spark People, that taught me to change my lifestyle to one of healthy living; not a dieting approach.  Slowly, I not only learned to change my eating and exercise habits, but how to do it in a healthy way and to make them stick!  I lost a lot of weight.  In addition I learned how to incorporate new healthy habits and to set goals in other areas of my life.  I also learned that food can affect one’s mental health much more than I could have ever imagined.  Through much reading and research I found that there were foods I needed to completely eliminate from my diet; and others that help with depression and should be included on a regular basis.  It worked!  I can’t begin to tell you how drastically my mind changed as well as my body just by changing my diet.  I went from not being able to care for myself at times, to a living an independent life. 

Once, I reached my goal weight I realized that the real work was about to begin.  I knew that the basic ‘operating system’ in my brain  contained mostly negative programming.  This came from a lifetime of experiences.  The bottom line here is that from very early in my life, my mind was programmed with depressing and harmful information.  I don’t blame anyone.  I see it as “that’s just the way it was.”  Whatever the case, I knew I needed to change my natural thinking patterns.  But how to do that?  It seemed like an impossible task; especially for someone who was single and alone, didn’t have much support or knowledge on how to do this.  So, I started reading everything I could get my hands on.  I spent my days eating healthy, working out, and educating myself on how to change my mind. 

As I began to research this subject one of the first things to cross my desktop was the concept of ‘Positive Affirmations’.  I had never heard of it before, but the more I read about it the more fascinated I became.  I read that this idea first began with Norman Vincent Peale, and his book The Power of Positive Thinking.  I also read about some controversy, but I didn’t let that hinder me.  I was on a quest for health and life and nothing was going to stop me.  I started very simply by writing positive statements on index cards.  I would begin my days by reading through my stack of cards.  Later I was given a book of positive quotations as a gift; and I made it a point to read a few pages from that book daily as well.  Then I added a meditation program, which is a daily 30 minute audio program that claims to help change brainwaves in a healthy way.  There are no voices, just sounds, but it helped me.  More and more my mind was changing.  I found myself starting to naturally think in a positive way.  I still have to work at it obviously.  I have been diagnosed as Bipolar since then which adds to the compilations.  I have to be aware that if I don’t make it a continuous quest that negative thinking could slowly creep in and completely take over again.      

Later, I had help from a medical standpoint by participating in a mental health outpatient program at my local hospital.  This program helped me learn how my relationships were faulty, how to cope with my past, and how to deal with my emotions.  Granted learning these lessons to the full is also an ongoing process and likely always will be, but it helped me grow even more by helping me to understand what had happened to me and why.

The most important change was in growing spiritually; developing a relationship with Jesus.  God led me through a very winding road to the church that I now attend.  I started by going to counseling with the pastor, which led to me being able to truly forgive those that have hurt me most in my past.  It also led me to being able to truly open my heart to allow the Holy Spirit in to begin His work in changing my heart as well.  I started to learn how to socialize again.  I  learned how to develop a prayer life and how to put daily bible reading and devotional habits into my life.  I learned how to worship God; whether that meant volunteering in the church office, or listening to praise and worship music when I’m alone. 

This is obviously an extremely condensed version of my story, but it will show you how God led me through the process of renewing my mind, so I could learn His will for my life; and in the process grow closer to Him than I ever would have imagined possible.  God has good plans for each one of us who has invited Jesus into our hearts.  Like every one of God’s children, my journey and series of struggles will continue until the day I stand before Him.  However, I know that His will for my life is to be productive, happy, healthy, and to have a relationship with Him.

If you are in need of renewal, just know that He will guide you through every stage.  If you don’t currently have a relationship with Jesus, you can begin now by asking Him into your heart.  Confess that you are a sinner and that you want Him to be your Lord and Saviour; and that you are willing to let Him change your heart and life to follow Jesus.  Tell Him that you believe that He died on the cross and rose again from the dead to save you from your sins.  Tell Him that you believe Him; that you know you are forgiven, and that you have faith.  He will guide you through the next steps.  Just listen to His voice in your heart.  You will hear it. 

My expedition in this world was / is long and difficult; but I wouldn’t go back and change it for anything.  Though it all started with fear, this journey has led me to a relationship with Jesus; to eternal life with Him. 

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~~ Dear God ~~  Thank You for every stage, struggle, and obstacle in my journey on this earth; because it brings me closer to You each and every day .  Continue to change my heart to become like that of Jesus; and continue to use me to bring others to Him as well.  May Your will be done, Lord, in every part of my life.  In Jesus name, AMEN.

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