Ways to worship

It always amazes me how God can bring so many things together.

The path that the study of Genesis 12 led me on earlier this week brought me to the question - How to worship. As I often do I 'googled' it! I simply typed in 'ways to worship' and the first one I clicked on was titled 10 WAYS TO WORSHIP WITHOUT MUSIC. Here are the 10 ways they list, click on the title to read more about each item.

1. Worship through prayer


2. Get in a regular habit of reading the Bible


3. Obey God


4. Tithe


5. Build deep relationships with other Christians


6. Share your faith


7. Serve others


8. Build into your life the attitude of thankfulness


9. Begin turning over to God areas of your life that you have never committed to Him


10. Live a life of purpose

These are all great and each deserve more focus. However, it was number 9 that hit me hard! The first sentence of this point said "This is the heart of worship – surrender." uggg Surrender! My area of surrender, or what I have not been surrendering is weight loss. I have simply been lazy and stubborn about it. I know what I have to do, but I have not been doing it. It is time to surrender - God brought me here today to reinforce what I have to do (more on that in a minute).

As I was typing this very post I paused to go to the bathroom, not that you needed to know that, but... As I often do I take an extra minute or two to read a magazine article, and I so happen to keep all the magazines in the bathroom. Anyway! I am in the middle of a Good Housekeeping magazine right now and when I turned the page to get to the next article I found, "The 10% trick". The premise of the article is that a complete overhaul of something (such as a diet or exercise program) is too overwhelming and therefore very likely to fail. Instead we should focus on changing things in small ways, 10% at a time for example. Well what hit me hard today was the first point...

Lose 10% of your body weight. This immediately brought me to the Weight Watchers program where one of the first goals they suggest is losing 10% of your body weight. Several months ago I joined Weight Watchers online, but have been lazy and stubborn and have been ignoring it. Time to change that, and I have!! I have been putting in my points all week.

Then the article went on and point #8 was Can the Cola. I have generally allowed myself one Pepsi a day and even calculated it into Weigth Watcher points when I was tracking. The article made the point that just one 20 oz soft drink is 240 calories, which is more than 10% of a 2,000 calorie diet. Yeah, that was a big ole hard hit too!

It was September 1 when I started this post and the calendar verse for that day was 2Thessalonians 1:7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels. I immediately focused on "to you who are troubled rest". I need to rest, I need to get up earlier so that I can do my bible study and have time with God. I need to do this so I can start each day on the right track. Even more important to do this, now that I have started my fast!

Yes, you read that correctly. I am doing a 40 day junk food fast. I grabbed the idea from Tyler's blog Titus 2:3-5. She called hers the 'fast food fast'. As much as I love fast food, my struggle lately is more with junk food - especially chips and Pepsi. I must say thank you to Tyler for the idea and encourage you to read her posts on this. It is so encouraging, it is more than just giving up junk food it is a study in obedience to God.

As I complete this post we (yep Hubby is doing it too), I am completing the 4th day of this junk food fast. Yep that is 4 whole days without a Pepsi - that in itself is amazing! But it is all God and he deserves all the glory.

Thank you God for leading me in this direction, through it I know I will grow closer to you. Please help me as I struggle to overcome the temptations of junk food and continue on the quest to lose weight. In Jesus name, Amen!