You Are Invited

Hi friends.  I am starting this Made to Crave online bible studies and I would like to invite you to join me too.  I have been struggling with food since I was about 12 years old.  I know that I am made to crave things.  I used to crave food, sugary foods, salty foods, all kinds of foods.  I yo-yoed up and down the scales on a regular basis.  Finally I got tired of all the dieting and decided to give up.  Then I just ate what I wanted when I wanted to.  That didn't work either.  The diets were bad because I would loose the weight but then gain all of it back and then some more.  I have tried weight watchers, diet shakes, shots, hypnotism and almost any diet program that you can name.  The only thing that ever worked was Overeaters Anonymous.  I lost the weight and kept it off for 5 years right after I had my second child.  They have you focus on changing your life with your Higher Power.  They tell you to give it to God so when I did that I was able to get my weight off and kept it off.  But I quit working it and finally I relapsed and went back into the unhealthy eating.  Only this time I did that for 12 years or more.  The thing that worked for me was the focus was off the food and on God.  A year ago I went back to O.A. and have lost 60 pounds and kept it off.  But the problem was I had gained 120 pounds since I left the first time.  Today I want to combine what I am doing with O.A. and also use the Made to Crave Bible Study to help supplement my program of recovery.  Because my problem is not just the food.  I have to work on my emotional, physical, and spiritual recovery.  They all fit together.  Made to Crave will be the perfect fit to my healthy lifestyle change that I had already been making.  It should give me that extra spiritual boost.  If my spiritual life is good it seems that my physical and emotional lives are better too.  But if I let one of them get out of whack they all will suffer for it.  My name is Lee and I am a compulsive overeater.  But now I take each day at a time and work on my recovery in all three areas.  I hope you will join me in this process of a life change in whatever area of your life that needs to change.  Thanks for letting me share.

I Surrender All

Last year was a tough year for me.  My step dad died of cancer at the end of August and I ended up retiring early from teaching.  Then we moved to Texas to be close to my husband's youngest daughter Jamie and her family.  I always felt like we were a burden for them.  I felt uncomfortable living there.  We weren't able to immediately get jobs so I felt even more like a failure.  Our bright spot was that we finally found a church home.  I know part of my unhappiness stemmed from not working.  I had always worked.  As a matter of fact,  I worked too hard.  Working as a kindergarten teacher was all consuming for me.  It took up most of my time, energy, and my life.  But leaving TN was harder for me because I also missed my family.  My sons live there, my brother, sisters, and mom all lived with in an hours drive or less.  So I had been feeling like a failure because of leaving.  Then my husband and I started fighting a lot.  Things got so bad that I started to feel like I needed to leave.  Then I started to feel that for some reason that God wanted me to leave too.  So I went back to Portland TN.  My sister needed help with taking care of my mom and I felt like God really wanted me to leave too for some reason.  So I left my husband in TX and went back to TN.  While I was gone things didn't get any better with my husband.  We seemed unable to communicate.  But several things happened to me while I was gone.  God had been in my life while in TX He got me back to Overeaters Anonymous last January.  I had been going to meetings and started reading devotions on a daily basis.  But when I got to TN I started this online bible study because I didn't know where I would be TN or TX.  The study was on being Stressed Less.  It was so amazing!!!  I really started realizing that I had never let God have total control of ALL of me.  I gave God control over  my food again and that was easy.  But i had never let Him have total control.  The more I studied the more convicted I got.  I had the OBS workers praying for my relationship with my husband, because I never stopped loving him.  I never talked to a lawyer and I never wanted a divorce.  But things weren't working.  God began changing me inside and out.  I still have a long way to go. I started putting my focus on God first in my life, not way down the line.  I started listening to God more and more.  Where as before I just seemed to do the talking.  After a couple of months, God revealed to me that it was time to go back to TX.  He said that the reason He had needed us to be separated was because He had been working on us both during the separation.  However I was not quite willing to go back to things as they had been.  So I moved in with a lady from our church when I got back to TX.  At first I wondered why I had even come back because things were still very tough for both of us.  Over time and marriage counseling with our pastor, God healed our relationship.  During the time I was gone,  My husband began preaching in a nursing home.  He also was and still is leading a bible study there.  God called my husband to the ministry while I was gone and he surrendered to God to preach.  The preaching and bible study are not paid work but God has provided that too. I joined him in the ministry there and also volunteer at the nursing home. I am not a failure.  In this story I felt like I had failed in my job but I think God wanted me to know that I can't let a job be where my focus lies.  Also I felt like I had failed in my marriage because it looked like we would never make it.  But God had other plans for both of us.  I never expected what was going on in my husbands life while I was gone.  God told me He was working on James but I never expected this.  God also told me that He would heal my marriage and that I would know that He had healed it because it would be better than it had ever been.  He was right!  James is still preaching.  He is going to college to get a certificate of  ministry.  He is also working each day as the Lord has provided him with work.  We have less than we ever had and I am more content with what I have. We thank God every day for all His blessings.  We are each not failures in this life.  Through surrendering all we can be Overconmers.  I have lost about 60 pounds and gained much more serenity, peace, humility, and hope with a closer relationship to Jesus by surrendering all to him.  Some days I have setbacks where i want to take back the control but I am intentionally working on it day by day.

#perfectlove

Gods perfect love has been shown many times in my life.  All I have to do is accept it.  I grew up with a demanding mom who I thought expected me to be perfect.  Therefore I had a misguided perception of God's love as a child.  I thought God expected me to be perfect too.  Somehow with my mom I could never be perfect enough for her no matter how hard I tried.  This is still true today. Later as I grew older I discovered that God's love was different .  He didn't expect me to be perfect like my mom did.  All I had to do was accept him and He would accept me just as I was.  In the last few years I had gained 120 pounds.  Each time I gained a pound my mom was critical as always, but God just kept loving me.  But last January 4th God did something different about my weight problem.  I had just given up trying to loose by that time.  He woke me up early that morning and put a thought in my head that I needed to go back to O.A. (a 12 step program for people with eating disorders)  I had been to O.A. before and had lost 50 pounds and kept it off for 5 years with His help.  I got a gentle nudging again saying you need to go back to O. A.  "But God I said, I am so much older I can't go back to O.A. I haven't got the willingness to work a program again.  But God, this will be too hard for me.  I weigh so much more than I did last time.  It will be too hard."  But God won me over.  I asked several friends on Facebook to pray for me.  I got 12 responses back of people committed to praying for me to have the willingness to do it.  Well 9 months later and now I have lost over 60 pounds and dropped sizes in clothes from a 22/24 to a 14/16.  God has been the focus of my recovery.  Through my recovery I have gotten a closer walk with Jesus through it too.  God loved each of us enough to give His favorite thing away(His son Jesus).  He had His son die so that we might live with Him eternally.  That is totally showing His #perfectlove for  us all.  We are all so blessed.  Thank you for sending us Jesus to die on that cross for our sins and for raising Him from the grave.  Thank you for the everlasting perfect love that only you can give.  Thank you for your patience with us Lord.  Help us to be strong enough to weather the storms life brings into our lives.  We know we can have the God Confidence that you can give us if we want it.  Help us to remember that with you all things are possible.   That is God's #perfeclove!

Who You Are: A Message To All Men

Who You Are: A Message To All Women

Been There, Done That, Loved It!

I have now done two online bible studies with Proverbs 31 Ministries and one Gap study.  My first one was on "Stressed-Less Living in our Chaotic World" it was so wonderful. I got so much out of it.  I didn't do the blog hop or the phone calls but I really got a lot out of it and learned how to give God all my stress and problems instead of eating over them.  I also loved the praise and prayer days that we shared.  I got feedback from someone at P31 each week asking about my concerns and letting me know that they were praying for me. I am so thankful to P31 for having that one.  It saved my life and helped restore my marriage.  The next bible study I did was their latest one "What Happens When Women Say Yes to God".  This one was so inspiring.  I really was able to get in touch with God on a more personal level and really started listening to what God was telling me to do.  I also participated in a Facebook small group on this one.  It was so special to have twenty something ladies in our group communicating and sharing our hearts and I was able to step out in faith and do so much more for God because I actually started listening to Him instead of telling him all my problems and needs.  I even participated in the phone calls and Facebook parties.  They are also very inspiring and were so helpful.  What I think is so neat is that you can participate as little or as much as you want to in their bible studies.  When our last bible study was almost over I started feeling so bummed out because I didn't know what to do before the next study started.  Then I was invited to participate in Real Life in the Gap - They Said Yes!  This is something that is offered to Facebook small groups during the time in between bible studies. This bible study was really great because they taught us how to dig deeper into scriptures to find deeper meanings of the scriptures.  I learned so much more. We didn't purchase a book or anything we just used our bibles and websites that have tools to use to learn more about the bible. I even learned to Blog Hop through this study.  I finally listened to God and started my own blog.   I got behind on the last week.  But you know what that is okay too.  They know that we all have many things going on in our lives and sometimes we get behind.  That is not a problem with P31.  I hope that helps you know a little more about how special these online bible studies are.  Right now I am in TN but I live in TX.  I couldn't stay involved in a regular bible study when I am out of town.  As a matter of fact my husband is leading a bible study tonight in TX that I will be missing. 

I hope you enjoy your online bible studies as much as I have.   If you are just thinking about it I hope you just take the plunge and just do it.  I really recommend the small groups they give you the feel or being in a group that you miss just doing the studies by yourself and commenting online.  Thanks P31 for doing such awesome studies.

Mary, Mary, I am Just Wild About Mary Magdalene

Well this was a great week when I learned how confused I was about Mary Magdalene.  I thought she was the one who was being stoned when Jesus said whoever was without sin should cast the first stone.  I don't know if it was because of some Christian movie I had seen or where the confusion came from.  I did know some things.  I knew she was devoted to Jesus and I had forgotten about the 7 demons.  Can you imagine what it must have been like for her to have had 7 different demons in her.  I can't even begin to imagine that.  One demon would be awful let alone seven of them.  What I also liked about her was she stayed steadfast in her faith and she continued to serve the Lord.  She was there when he was crucified.  She was with Jesus's mother at the crucifixion and with her when they went to the tomb as they followed Joseph there.  She came back with His mother the next day when they went to prepare the body and found He was no longer there.  She must have been a great comfort to His mother Mary because we see her with her during the most difficult times when she desperately needed someone to comfort her.  So I also see Mary Magdalene as a very loyal, and compassionate friend to Mary the mother of Jesus.  She was also the first missionary by sharing  the good news about Jesus that He was ALIVE and was not believed by His disciples.

Truly she was a special person!  I also thought it was important that when He called her by Name she immediately recognized Him.  Many others didn't have her discernment.