Are You Healthy? (Part 2)

Wow! It's been a while since I started this series, and I suppose it is time to move on. Let's start with a brief review, shall we?

"HEALTH''Y, a. Being in a sound state; enjoying health; hale; sound; as a healthy body or constitution. 1. Conducive to health; wholesome; salubrious; as a healthy exercise; a healthy climate; healthy recreations."

I think sometimes that even though I do not have any particular obvious sickness or disease, I am not necessarily as healthy according to this definition as I could be. I am not really in shape or physically fit. Lemuel's mother could not have pointed me out to her son as a girl who "girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms" (Prov. 31:17).

After some thought on the matter, I think that there are basically seven essential ingredients to a truly healthful life.

1. A Healthy Diet

Now for ingredient number 2! :)

2. Plenty of Exercise - Ah! What a deliciously fun idea! Is that how those words sound to you? Not to me! At least not usually. But the concept is still extremely important. What would happen if I was ever-so-careful to perfect my diet until it was a healthy as possible this side of glory, and then laid around the house all day reading books or writing Christian things or listening to Christian radio or talking with my family? Would I be healthy? Well, no.

This is a great deal of what Lemuel's mother meant when she said that the virtuous young woman "girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms." Yes, ladies, that means exercise.

But not to worry! It's not all gloom and doom! Remember how you felt the last time you played football with your brothers (or whatever particular sport they happen to be into at the time)? You were sore and exhuasted, true, but you probably felt happy and refreshed and energized at the same time. God wants His daughters to have energy so we can do His work and to have joy so we can do it honorably.

Every little girl wants to be a princess. Lately I've been realizing my status as such - after all, my Father is the King of all the earth! But think with me what a princess is like. Would she exercise? I can't really see her doing calisthenics, although she might and I do. But I can definitely see her taking walks, playing games of "romps" with her siblings, riding horses, scrubbing walls and floors, carrying water, and being active in many other ways.

This is the truly fun way to exercise. Simply be active. Move from the sedentary life to the active, full, bubbly life! It may be difficult at first (it still is for me at times) but you will learn to love it, and your body will shout a resounding "Thank you!"

For me, this issue takes on a little greater importance, as I was told recently that my heart rate was unusually low. No problem now, but when I grow old and gray-headed I may need a pacemaker. The antidote? Be and stay active for as long as possible!

Activity is Biblical, and it is crucial for our health! So I'm committing to being more active during the upcoming week than in the past. Will you join me?

To See Your Face

My Lord and my Creator,
You bear with me and nourish me - be my helper.

I thirst for You, I hunger for You, I desire You,
I sigh for You, I covet You:

I am like an orphan deprived of the presence
of a very kind father,
who, weeping and wailing, does not cease to cling to
the dear face with his whole heart.

So, as much as I can, but not as much as I ought,
I am mindful of Your passion,
Your buffeting, Your scourging,
Your cross, Your wounds,
how You were slain for me,
how prepared for burial and buried;
and also I remember Your glorious resurrection,
and wonderful ascension.

All this I hold with unwavering faith,
and weep over the hardship of exile,
hoping in the sole consolation of Your coming,
ardently longing for the glorious contemplation of Your face.

~Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)

Why God Sends Dry Spells

What happens when you enter a dark, dark time when you feel like God is only frowning at you and you can never please Him? When you feel like He is always just beyond your reach? When you seek Him so hard and all you get is reminders of your sin? When you confess and repent until it seems like you're just repeating the same things with no real purpose or meaning? When you pray and it feels like you're talking to yourself? When God seems unknowable? When you don't feel His love and don't see how He could love you? When you know this is all wrong and you have to find a way out, but there just doesn't seem to be any way at all? When you know that if there was one, you wouldn't deserve it, so why would God let you find it anyhow? When you begin to doubt that you are even His child?

I don't really know the answer. But this is how I have felt in the last few weeks. So dry. So far from God. With no idea what to do yet a deep longing for some relief, I kept on with my devotions and my prayers. Where was God? Why didn't He help me? Or why should He help me? Don't I always forget about Him and seek my own way? Don't I always choose my pet sins over Him whenever I think I can get away with it?

This is the amazing thing.

He DID help me!!! After several weeks of this had passed, He spoke comforting words to me at just the times I was most desperate. He led me to a book, Living Purely in an Impure World, and showed me through it that I was legalistically trying to earn His love by living purely rather than rejoicing in His love and learning to truly love Him in return.

He led me to an online article in "Daughterhood by Design" about having a new heart. I had asked for one, but it didn't feel like He had given it to me. The article said to walk in faith, believing that He had. So I did. And as I walked this way, it soon became apparent that my struggles with sin were a little easier to win. Oh, and I could look back and see how this had been true over the past few weeks since I had begun praying for a new heart. He had given it to me after all! Then some of the songs in church reassured me even more - "Are You Washed in the Blood?," especially.

Last night as I read Mr. Binney's book on pure living in today's world, he talked of three causes for a deer's thirst - a long run, a strenuous battle, or a dry spell. Could that be what God was doing? Did He see that I was getting too complacent? Allowing a dry spell so that I would have to seek Him so diligently it hurt? Did He know that I needed this in order to truly delight in Him?

Of course He knew! He is my kind Father, and He was teaching me with the same care - no, far more care! - that my earthly father would. So what is different? Talking to God comes much more easily now. I was doing so much of it in my desperation! Victory comes more easily. Joy is more natural. Love is easier to give. I know for sure that God is my Father, that He is good, and that He loves me.

What more could I ask?

Will Your Children Be on Death Row?

The other day I came across an interesting statistic. According to Susan Sikes with News From the Nest, a survey of 200 questions was given to death row inmates.

What do you think they had in common?

1 - Their families didn't eat together.

2 - Their families didn't play games together.

Wow! To me these things seem so simple, so commonplace. I guess you could say I have mostly taken those blessings for granted. But that's what they are - blessings! If your parents ate with you and played games with you, then you are richly blessed! :)

Oh, and if you're a parent, these are definitely some good ideas to consider. Even if you're "too busy," just try taking little steps at first. Like eating one meal together each week, and playing one game of UNO or basketball or whatever your family might enjoy. If you love your family, make time for them. These activities are truly great memory makers, and you will never regret it!

Neither will your children, by the way!

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

A couple of months ago I pushed myself to stick this book out to the end. It was very interesting and amusing; however, the language was rather difficult, requiring frequent trips to the dictionary (not necessarily a bad thing :D). The real issue with the book is the many times when the author's opinions disagree with Scripture. Therefore I cannot bring myself to recommend the book. Here are a few quotations which I found to be of some value for those interested in a taste of it. Oh, one last thing: please don't think I'm endorsing every word in these quotes; I just like them for what good can be found in them.

"Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence" (page 17).

"How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of theose whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call blessed! There are not a few who, even in this live, seem to be preparing themselves for that smileless eternity to which they look forward, by banishing all gayety from their hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. I meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling look of recognition, - somthing as if he were one of Heaven's assessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met, - that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her to play with it?" (page 85, emphasis original).

"Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered. The front-door is on the street. Some keep it always open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some bolted, - with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in; and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its threshold. This front-door leads into a passage which opens into an ante-room, and this into the interior apartments. THe side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers.

"There is almost always at least one key to this side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally, have duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas, if none is given with it!

"If nature or accident has put one of these keys into the hands of a person who has the torturing instinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words that Justice utters over its doomed victim, - The Lord have mercy on your soul! You will probably go mad within a reasonable time, - or, if you are a man, run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco, - or, if you are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or, turn into a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other.

"Be very careful to whome you trust one of these keys of the side-door. The fact of possessinjg one renders those even who are dear to you very terrible at times. You can keep the world out from you front-door, or receive visitors only when you are ready for them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Som of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semi-tones, - touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found. . . . No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well, - parent, child, brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to whom you give a side-door key; too many have them already" (pages 114-115, emphasis original).

A Day to Celebrate!!!

On July 4, 1776, a very important document was written - the Declaration of Independence! Excitement reigned across the colonies, and John Adams wrote TWO letters to his wife Abigail.

In the second, he prophesied that this day "will be the most memorable . . . in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

"You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all the means."

How are you celebrating our nation's anniversary today? However you do it, remember to thank the God from Whom comes every good gift including life and freedom, pray for God's will to be done in our nation, and determine to do what you can to exalt Him in your celebrations!

John Nazigan and Water Bottles

Here is an interesting piece of food for thought that I first heard from Mr. Nazigan last summer at the Word of Life Ranch where I was a counselor.

If I have a water bottle in my hand and you bump my arm and water spills out onto the ground, why did the water come out? Because you bumped my arm, right? Wrong!

What? But if you hadn't bumped my arm, the water wouldn't have come out! You are responsible! Wait. There is a deeper reason. Water came out because water was in the bottle in the first place. If orange juice had been in the bottle when you bumped my arm, water could not have possibly escaped onto the ground.

But of course. What's so profound about that?

Let's apply this principle to our everyday lives. There will always be trials that will "bump our arms," so to speak. Yet those trials are not at fault for what comes out of us. If anger comes out, it does so because it was already present deep within our hearts. If love comes out, it does so because love was inside of us. Neither you nor I can ever change how we react to those "arm-bumps." What we must concern ourselves with is what is present inside our hearts. If we are controlled by fleshly emotions, then what escapes us will only be displeasing to the Lord and embarrassing to ourselves. On the other hand, if we are controlled by the Holy Spirit, then the fruit of the Spirit that shines after each "arm-bump" will surprise the watching world and bring glory to our Father.

What do you want spilling out of your water bottle today?