A Message from God God's passion for you, it's all about you! God Warns America  Index President Bush, Iraq, Patriot Heroes & Troops: Our forefathers would applaud! United Nations, Davis Recall Plot,  BlessedCause impacts in Politics & Whose groping Arnold Schwarzenegger? Spirit of the antichrist alive and well in California schools Stand up against Sex Ed Porn in public school Archive News Coverage of Islam in Public Schools Woe to ACLU and NEA Teachers Union Free Original Christian Art, Music & Sculpture Links Page Home

Main Index The Sign of Jonah explained,  God's message is heard Islam Induction in our Public School Textbooks actual words of Houghton Mifflin exposed and why Quotes of Quran, Hadiths, Koran about infidels Revelation 12 BlessedCause Footwashing Ministries Christian Encouragement Hearing God & Personally Witnessed  Miracles Free Original Christian Art, Music & Sculpture How Clinton, ACLU rigged Religious Guidelines & U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton Thank you to all vets, our troops and military! God BLESS and lead you! John Walker Lindh & California school proselytizing Islam proselytized in Public School Homeschool or Public School Militant Terrorist Islam God blesses those who bless Israel For Women Only About us /Contact

"Not by might, not by power, but by His Spirit" page 3 of 3 Once you break the stronghold, once you learn to walk with God, hunger will become a nuisance that you’d rather ignore for a while and you’ll be interested in other things. You’ll suddenly realize you haven’t eaten all day and maybe you should. But most of us fall before we even get to hunger, right? There is the craving for comfort food that has nothing to do with actual hunger. I would get those whenever I was emotionally drained, ‘or stressed, or allowing what I call "toxic thoughts" which are negative thoughts about anyone and anything, especially myself. This is why dieting never ever worked for me. It’s one giant toxic thought loaded with "I’m not good enough" and "You overate again! Why can’t you stop eating?" And even if successful, negative thoughts abound with, "I was good yesterday, why doesn’t the scale show it?" "Great, I lost 5 lbs and I’m still as big as a house" or "I lost weight and nobody seems to notice" Then there’s the dis-settling feeling when someone well-meaning says, "You’ve lost weight! You look great!" I’m still not sure why I resent that somehow, I think it’s because I know I’m still me whether I’m up or down a few pounds, and somehow the heavier me just got slammed. It’s a dilemma because your friends are sincerely happy for you and that’s awesome, and you know it was meant with the best intentions but somehow it still hurts. So just see through that and know that they love you. In fact, know that to your depths, fat or thin, you are beloved! You are a masterpiece of GOD today! If you struggle in anything, it is because you have failed to fully claim that truth. You are His own creation! He designed you and He loves what He has created! You are perfectly formed to the last strand of hair on your head, God delights in YOU! Even now, some may be reading these words thinking, "yeah yeah, where is the part that tells me when or what to eat and lose this weight…" But this IS the battle before you that has been crippling you all of these years. If you would just stop and begin to see the glory of God, the MAJESTY of His being, and understand that He has been all about you, calling to you, waiting for you, pursuing and fighting for you…if you could just get a glance at this truth, if you could see yourself as HE sees you, your life will be transformed. Radically transformed. "We love Him because He first loved us." We are to love Him with all of our hearts, minds, souls and strength but that first starts with the recognition of His love for us. We need to know who He is or we might believe so many who misrepresent Him. God restores us, He dresses us in white linen, in garments of praise, with a ring of authority and the oil of gladness. You, precious daughter, are of such value to Him, and the wonder of it is that He can focus on all of us at the same time to such depths because He is omnipresent. And He already cares. He always has. In various ways, we have been chasing after our lovers when all the time He was right there, waiting, with a truly pure and holy love, a love that we were born for. Christ has been right here, waiting to know us so intimately that He indwells us, never leaves us, is thinking of us when we fall asleep at night and is still thinking of us when we wake up in the morning. He even knows us better than we know ourselves, every word of our childhood was recorded and kept like a precious picture. Whatever wounds we have suffered through life, God has been there offering to help and has been, strengthening us that we would shine in the bigger picture when we finally turn to Him and surrender our futile attempts to take on life and the enemy alone. THERE IS NO FAILURE WHEN YOU LEARN TO TRUST You cannot fail at this because it can’t be measured by the scale. If you think it can, then you never started. This is all discovery. You can’t MAKE this happen, for it’s "Not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit, sayeth the LORD" (Zech 4:6) For all I know, God might bless your socks off with instant success with the slightest effort, He may have been waiting for you to come to this moment your whole life. Or He might simply answer, "not now" or "not yet." But whatever His answer is, you have already won, because you have started seeking HIS will for your life. WHEN GOD SAYS NO Struggling with weight loss reminds me of the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites toward the Red Sea. They were going in the wrong direction and it is written, "He troubled the army of the Egyptians. And He took off their chariot wheels, so that they drove them with difficulty…" (Exodus 14:24) Jesus Christ is our Good Shepherd and we are His beloved sheep. When we are determined to run to destructive places, God WILL sometimes do what He must to keep us from harm. He knows the beginning and the end, He knows what the end result will be if He lets us keep going, and like the Good Shepherd, He will stop us. I remember when I was in high school, I asked God to help me diet and was discouraged with Him when help didn’t come. I felt completely at the mercy of a compulsion to eat "that which I will not to do." After all, I took 5 seconds to ASK for His help, why didn’t He deliver me? But looking back on those days and the years that followed, I realize that I was asking the Good Shepherd to give me what I needed to run with the wolves. My goals were completely wrong. Visions of water skiing looking hot in a bikini were my ambitions. My role models…well, I was built more like Raquel Welch so to look like Julia Roberts wasn’t going to happen. But Raquel would find just as much trouble and more if God had given me what I asked for. My mind was also completely steeped in the American culture. I was young, impressionable, and my head was full of the theme of "About last night." I was raised on movies that portrayed beautiful women jumping in the sack and somehow ending up with a true love that would fight for her into eternity…after a one night stand…wait…is that how it goes? How did Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman), Demi Moore (About last night) and Meg Ryan (Presidio) jump in the sack so aggressively and find a wedding ring? My generation watched this theme over and over again and yet our sexual revolution usually ended up with somebody dropping us off at Planned Parenthood to butcher our young. Wait…what? So Lord, please help me stop this self-destructive behavior as I reach for this fattening food that I’m craving, help me lose weight so I can wear that new bikini and drive men absolutely nuts with my sexuality…a toy that I have absolutely no idea how it effects the male species but somehow it’s supposed to bring me a husband that loves me forever… Uh…yeah. I think the Lord might have broken a few chariot wheels in that endeavor and I am forever grateful. Our motives are essential, and only you with the help of the Holy Spirit, can truly examine the motives of your heart. Our culture is so messed up that there are actually women who claim to be Christian that would ask to lose weight that their married boyfriend would actually leave his wife and marry them like he promised. Now isn’t that a whopper of an ambition? We can fool ourselves but we can’t fool God. For a long time, I was convinced that I had the right motives, but God can even see the "what would happen Ifs"…He knows the end result of everything He blesses us with. So even if we sincerely intend it for good, God knows how it would end before we even ask. For instance, I might be asking to be thin and gorgeous with the right desire to attract a husband, or to keep my husband’s attention at home, but God knows how it would actually play out and the Holy Spirit might actually hinder you from achieving destructive goals. And if you think you’re better off dumping God to achieve your dreams, well good luck with being your own god. The thing is, God indwells us, He knows how it feels to be us because He knows our pain through us. He knows how the AIDS victim feels, He knows the desperate cries of the woman about to abort her child, or the ripping of her heart as she gives that precious little one up for adoption…these were not the plans He had for us. This is not what He will move mountains to enable us to achieve. This is something that we trust the Good Shepherd for, to keep us from the horrific consequences that the enemy is always trying to lure us into. And sometimes that lure is how great it would feel to strut around in a sexy bikini, followed by that drink with that great looking guy that’s pursuing me… Can you imagine a Hollywood script that contained these words, "Mom, I’m so disappointed, I really liked this girl, but I took her out once and she treated me like a man whore." Nope, that doesn’t fit the liberal Hollywood narrative or the music industry. It’s a rare movie or song that has a positive message and generation after generation is falling for the lies. Our public schools are further promoting sexual promiscuity and our government insists on funding Planned Parenthood to keep the butcher mills running. Meanwhile legislation is continually introduced to lower the age of consent. Parents would not be able to legally protect their children from being seduced by pedophiles. The world is going insane and in the middle of it all, we ask God to help us lose weight that we can play deeper in it. We don’t know what we’re asking for. So before you bow your head before the King of King and Lord of Lords to ask that He help you lose weight, examine your heart. What is it that you really desire? We all want to be healthy, we all want to look good, but how much of it is about competition with other women? How much of it is because you want to feel sexy and turn heads, distract men, make other women envious, etc? It took me a long time to be honest with that one. The answer might make you want to look for a different "diet" to help you get what you want, because if those are your goals, your goals might be the exact reason why you’re banging your head against a wall and wondering why you can’t get anywhere. So what is the right motivation? For me, there isn’t one. There is no reason for me to hate myself, to tell myself that I’m not good enough, a thousand beratings every time I look in the mirror. That isn’t what God wants for us either. That’s the goal of the enemy, to tie us all up in self-loathing, to tell us we’re worthless, to bundle us up with anger and shame and frustration…how able are we to love others when we’re preoccupied with how much we hate ourselves? Do you think that you don’t hate yourself? Then why are you trying to change? Would you love that precious overweight friend any more if she was 10 or 100 lbs thinner? Doesn’t it make you angry that anyone would think that you would? Likewise, why would you love yourself more or less if you were heavier or thinner, you are still you, and you are precious in His eyes, a jewel, a treasure today, just as you are! Or maybe the answer is yes, you would love others more if they lost weight because you won’t allow yourself friendships with the fat and less beautiful. You don’t want that kind of bad influence around you and you constantly remind yourself that if you let yourself go, that you could look like THAT fat acquaintance. If that’s your stimulus to keep the pounds off, then you’re sacrificing relationships with some of the most precious people you could ever have the privilege of getting to know. You’re in your own unique prison designed by the enemy, a cold ugly cell suffering your own set of chills… but the answer is the same, it’s Jesus Christ. He pursues you, He fights for you, He even died for you, that He would rise again and call you to Himself, the Good Shepherd calling to lead you to green pastures that your cup runneth over. No matter where you are, no matter what condition your body or heart, God loves you completely, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us! "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends." (John 15:13) WHEN THE WELL RUNS DRY For months I have walked this walk and am continually stunned at how easily weight has dropped off because it truly is, "not by might, not by power, but by HIS Spirit" (Zech 4:6) Weight loss has been an after effect and a struggle because it can be so distracting. It’s too easy to forget the true reason I’m praying, especially when I purposely TRY to forget because it’s too painful when I dwell on the spiritual state of my sons. I go through the steps, reading the Bible every morning after praying God be with me and teach me, followed by prayer for people, I praise Him with my MP3 player and the most amazing worship songs for me that I have found but we are ALL DIFFERENT so chances are you won’t like these: (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4AAAE8DCCFFB4151) It is so important to find songs that moves you. God made us unique and our tastes and desires are unique, so seek with the Holy Spirit for those songs that reverberate the symphony of your relationship. When my focus is on God, well it’s like I just woke up minus 70 lbs. I didn’t always have this much to lose, but I have never been successful at weight loss, ever. I might have been able to lose a few after much head banging and struggle, but it always came back with a vengeance. But you can feel so strong and secure and walking this effortlessly when suddenly it all that comes to a screeching halt. A few books have described it as under serious spiritual attack. That makes sense, after all you’ve been following the pied piper quietly for years and are suddenly making a U-turn. When it happened to me, it felt like I fell off a horse and was sitting in the mud wondering how to get up and get back on that horse again. It wasn’t easy. Old habits can suddenly rear their ugly heads and a scripture about dogs returning to eat their own vomit or pigs back in the mud?... those are not helpful…in fact they were drowning me in condemnation…hey wait, that’s how the enemy works, doesn’t he, Satan and his minions know the Scriptures better than I do, so I needed to find that sword of the Spirit and get back in the saddle fast! Circumstances roared into my life. A few cruel and thoughtless actions by loved ones, discouragement that my sons seem no closer to God than months ago, doing more for others than ever before and not seeing any appreciation whatsoever gets magnified. Then in the middle of one of my fasts, my son is injured up north. I drop everything and run up there, only to feel extremely intrusive and awkward as I try to help. A couple of days turns into five as a host of delays of surgery and mishaps occur. I am completely thrown off of my focus on God. My morning routine of time with Him should have been easily continued but regrettably wasn’t. All of my smoothie and soup routines are thrown at the wayside as I try to improvise while stocking my son’s refrigerator and cooking a surplus for easy access as he recovers after I’m gone. Things spiraled down from there. I prayed to be replenished and refreshed in the Spirit but heaven seemed silent. I had lost the edge. Finally a Sabbath, a time of rest and prayer and keeping it holy. Meditating on His word, it seemed illuminated to me that our choices are all like a running river. Where it is used to flowing, it flows. It’s like when I water my potted plants, if I dribble a little water at a time, that dribble will follow the last dribble and the majority of the roots will dry up. But if you flood the topsoil all at once, the pressure of the water evenly seeps thoroughly throughout and everything is nourished. That’s how to get back in the saddle, devote a whole day to spiritual reset. For me that means no news, no politics, nothing of the flesh that wears me down. Whatever it takes to keep that day holy. "Walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh." (Zech 4:6) I plan on hammering that text into a piece of leather and wearing it as a bracelet as written in (Deut.11:18). In fact I plan on quite a few Scripture bracelets to wear depending on what I need for that day. I bought one from Good Works a while back and love It, for a while the leather strap would hang down into my palm as I walked, and it felt like a reminder that God was walking with me, the strap suddenly becoming known, caressing my hand much like a Father walking with a child, His familiar hand suddenly finding and holding my hand. And I remember how God loves me. I read those words all the time and in so many ways. I know them to be true but can so quickly forget without reminders, just like a neglected wife or husband, we all need reminders. I find myself impatient with pastors who preach that we need to love each other better, and we do, but just telling ourselves on command to love isn’t how to generate sincere love. I love others when I fill up on God’s love for me. It comes down from heaven and flows through me. While we were yet sinners, God loves us. There is nothing that can come between us and the love of God. But unless I sense it, unless it surrounds me, unless I allow myself to drink it in, I am so quickly distracted by the things of the world and God’s love becomes forgotten. And oh! There is no greater loss than the distraction from a sense of God’s agape love! From that comes God’s peace. Shalom. The disciples often wrote, "May the peace of God be upon you." His communion, His presence, His indwelling, the peace of God beyond all understanding. THAT is what enables us to truly love each other, without that sense of God’s love we look for such empty replacements from the world! And once we choose one, how Satan’s minions will chase after us, reminding and tempting us with it if ever we walk away. "Walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh." Once we choose the walk of the world, it makes it harder to change course. The more time we spend on that road, the deeper the rut we make for ourselves. I think it is part of the reason the Sabbath is so important. It’s a time of watering all of our roots, a time of reset. Flood yourself in the Spirit for a day by prayer and keeping it holy, and then choose that rich course for the week. And if you stumble during the week, it’s important to quickly change course as soon as possible. Don’t wallow in it or decide to blow it for the whole day and begin fresh tomorrow. Every moment in the flesh further entrenches that rut of a road. It’s just like jumping back on the horse. You might get thrown a few times but don’t give up, for God will never give up on you. HE will finish what HE has begun. "…being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil 1:6) And if you have godly reasons for being on this walk of the Spirit, He will finish it, He surely will, but in HIS timing and purposes and results. SIDENOTES: HOW DID IT HAPPEN? There are so MANY reasons for food compulsion including the generational one of mothers expressing their love with food, a nightly FEAST of food, an abundance that starving Americans during the Great Depression could only dream of. Those dreams crashed into the industrial reality of chemically altered foods and our dreams avalanched into our nightmare: equating food with love and provided an empty substitute. It’s the ultimate "looking for love in all the wrong places" buried so deep within our childhoods that we can’t understand where it’s coming from or how to combat it. And who would imagine that we need to combat the loving hand of our moms, comforting us, caring for us…15 years of trusting mom’s love since before the understanding of time and memory has been a difficult foe, hasn’t it? And so Americans fail and fail again at resisting the flavors they crave because it represents the unconditional and complete love of most moms. Some of us have outwardly reached success by reprogramming our minds. Nutrition has become their all consuming passion but the energy and effort is a neurosis in itself without rest. Some reach it temporarily only to fall back and self-condemn in a defeated pit, drowning in despair. How did mom’s love become so toxic? Add a few personal reasons that we’ve picked up since birth and we find ourselves lost and confused, trapped in what feels like a prison of self-destruction and self-loathing, doomed to fail at our next attempt to lose weight. The extremes that we go through to change our behavior is a billion dollar industry and we spiral down grasping at diet drinks and sugar substitutes while MSG is pumped into our foods under different names, a chemical used to make mice FAT so they can figure out how to make them thin again. We are fed that under the guise of dozens of different labels and so many processed foods purposely make us fat. We are SO set up! And the enemy merely has to stir the coals a little to fan the flames of our despair. Meanwhile, the Father of Life, the Alpha and the Omega, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords stands near. He knows and understands us better than we understand ourselves and His heart is ever towards us. "Here I am, come to Me, lay down your burdens and come." Some of us have visited Him for a bit, some have cried out to Him weeping in despair, some of us actually know Him but skim over some of the all-important truths about Him, which is His unbelievable depth of love for you. Check yourself…even now, are you thinking, "yeah yeah, God loves me, I’ve heard that before." A deep and intimate relationship with God is what breaks us out of all prisons. More than that, it’s the ultimate reason of our existence. Without Him, all roads become snares eventually. Look at any lifestyle and follow it to it’s completion, in the twilight years of the elderly, who are the joy filled? How is the athlete doing in his 80’s and 90’s? How popular is the geriatric beauty queen? Take any measure of success and follow it to his or her last years, where do we find fulfillment? Is it the grandmother surrounded by family? Absolutely. But how does she feel when the holiday is over and everyone goes home? Is she alone, or has she found the ever increasing love and fulfillment that only Christ brings? Love and fulfillment. We look for it in husbands and wives, in competition and sports, in empty [decadent food] cartons. Needle or spoon, they are all empty substitutes for the love of God, the water that (how did Jesus put it) the water that you will cause you to never thirst again. "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!" (Psalm 34:8)

God understands us even when we don’t understand ourselves. He was there through our whole childhood. He saw how we were molded and shaped, from the smallest slight to complete devastation, God saw it all. He remembers, He is the keeper of all memory and He knows every tear. Nothing is wasted, nothing is too small for God’s notice. Scriptures tell us that He even knows the number of hairs on our heads. Think about that. He’s even aware if you lose an eyelash…do you love anyone so much that you care if they lose an eyelash?

BACK TO BLESSEDCAUSE HOME