How to Eat More and Keep Your Figure

 

It's Thanksgiving Day.

Like many people, I'm about to enjoy a feast. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, the works.

It’s a lot to take in. It’s best to make sure your metabolism is properly kicked off.

And not just for so to be physically hungry enough to eat all the goodies.

Spiritually hungry, as well.

I had a friend on my heart awhile back. I knew he was hurting, in need, and I longed to give him something.

I wanted to encourage my friend, give him something that would stir him up, and bring in excitement to counter-act the depression and body-blows he was victim to.

But when I went to talk to him, he had no appetite to hear it.

I had so much excitement when I called him, his disinterest and dismissal of my concern stung. I got off the phone, wrestling with it.

“God,” I prayed. “I would have helped him. Why couldn’t he hear me?”

Inwardly, I heard a still, small Voice.

“You're the same way.” I felt God speaking to my spirit: “I have so much to give you, but you don't have the appetite for it."

That revelation cut deep.

I asked a wise man once: "how do you get a hunger for the Lord?"

"Well, how do you normally get hungry naturally?" he asked me.

That's easy.

I get to working on stuff, and after awhile of exerting myself, I can get very hungry.

I remember going to the woods and doing firewood all day. I came home and I was ravenous.

"It's the same way," the man said. “You exercise your spirit, and your spirit builds up an appetite in the same way."

I start giving, I start operating in the spirit, and before long, I'm very hungry for God.

God put someone in my path to minister to. I really have a heart for her, and her numerous physical afflictions has caused me to pray for her for hours.

I know God put her in my life so I could speak something real to her.

As I’ve continued to speak to her, pray for her, and wait on God to give me the words to speak, God has continued to press me to see her delivered of her physical and spiritual bondages.

That burden for her led me to start diving deeper into what it means to have faith.

Because of my burden for her, the Lord started taking me deeper.

While I was working one day, God showed me something about faith I had never seen before.

Jesus, Son of the Most High God, could do no miracles until the Holy Spirit came on Him in the form of the dove.

Because Jesus received that spirit, it anointed him to preach the recovering of sight, liberty to the bruised, healing for the brokenhearted, and preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

But only those that heard that word and received it were healed. Jesus repeatedly says in the Gospels, "let it be according to your faith".

Mark 6:5 says it was impossible to Jesus to heal people in his hometown because they couldn't get over how familiar they were with Jesus.

Jesus was just this neighborhood who grew up and started making crazy claims.

As I was working on rebuilding the compost box that day, God gave me a super clear revelation.

Jesus might not be physically here, but that same Spirit that anointed Jesus is still here.

I can have faith in the same Spirit just like those people in the Gospels.

The revelation came like a bolt of light, like a key that opened a lock, and it changed my life.

It helped me know better how to help that person God had put in my life.

I called her nearly seven times the next day, trying to get a hold of her. She didn’t pick up.

God was doing something else in that moment, continuing to teach me.

But her need caused me to go deeper than I could’ve taken myself.

Do you want to be used by God?

Do you want to see God do mighty things through you?

Do you want to walk in everything God has for you?

I sure do. But until I submitted my life, to give, to start investing my heart into the people God put before me, God couldn't give me more.

I wouldn't have caught that revelation about faith without exercising and responding to the person God put in my life.

That “spiritual exercise” helps build up your appetite for what God has for you.

What do you do when someone doesn’t want to hear what you have to tell them?

“I haven’t called you to feed everyone,” God showed me. “Just feed the hungry.”

That’s the reason for the title of this newsletter.

God showed me He had given me a measure of hunger, as God has given to everyone.

But instead of valuing that measure of God-given hunger, we often throw it away. We give our attention to other things, and they therefore become a distraction.

Like Esau with his birthright, we sell it for a bowl of stew.

As I kept going through these encounters over the summer with trying to give to people who had no appetite, God started building in my heart a deep appreciation for the value of spiritual hunger.

Romans 3:11 says: "there is none who seek for God".

Me, an average Joe Schmo, I've got no appetite for God naturally.

But God has supernaturally given me a hunger for him. As miraculous as that hunger is, I can give it away just that easily.

Mom says: "don't eat snacks and spoil your appetite".

God says that, too.

God’s spirit keeps giving sight to the blind. And as I sit here, God opens my eyes so I can glimpse the unfathomable feast God has spread in front of us.

The turkey. The cranberry sauce. The pistachio pudding. The mashed potatoes and gravy. The cornbread casserole. The fluffy white rolls. The pumpkin pie. All of it.

Deepen our hunger God, so we don’t merely taste of all Your Spirit has to offer.

Make us ravenous. Let us be filled.

Heart Surgery by A.P.

 

The depth of our need is often obscured from our view until some challenging event reveals it.

In the days since God answered our cry and healed my husband, there is a heightened awareness of our need.

We say yes to the Lord and He shows himself!

This evening, my husband, Jeremiah felt the need for our family to pray together against the attack of the enemy.

We gathered in the living room and began to open our hearts to receive what He would give us.

One by one each spoke up. Some a prayer, some a song, some a word. "There are no dams in the river of Life”.

.......and.....the flood gates burst open.

The dam within my husband broke.

A sound I have never heard rose from the depths of his heart with an intensity that shook heaven and earth.

Refining, purging, healing, declaring, and beautiful!

It drew us all into a tight circle, repentance washed over us, hardness is not our inheritance, it was passed down from many generations past, and met its end today in our family!

Hardness shattered and love poured forth as the head of our house declared the word of the Lord, as he reached out and grasped the inheritance of Son of God.

There was not a dry eye in the room as we embraced.

The blessing of God washing over us! 💕

The High Points of Lowliness by Emily

I recently went on a road trip across the country.

It started out as an adventure of sorts.

But--of course-- it always turns to more as the Lord does His Work.

We slept in that car, we ate in that car, we drove long hours. Stopped in parking lots and rest areas, wherever we could find a place to spend the night.

It dealt with my pride.

Here I was, around these people going here, there and everywhere.

People with fancy cars, nice outfits, they would watch us like we were homeless country hicks.

But it hit the hardest when an older man in a grey van came up to our car in a Walmart parking lot one evening as we had all our totes and blankets laid out to get set up for the night.

“Sleeping in your car too, huh? I know how that is. I’m pretty tired of it. I miss sleeping on a real mattress.”

I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t like that for us.

That we had chosen it, we weren’t in the same position as he was.

We weren’t “homeless.”

But that’s not what it was about.

“He made Himself a man of no reputation.”

My sister quoted that verse the next morning, and it rang in my ears the rest of the trip.

We always want to make a reputation of our selves.

We are “tough”, “capable” “smart” “strong” “rich”….fill in the blank.

While “He made Himself a man of no reputation”.

But that’s not where He stopped:

“...and took upon Him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man.”

Jesus humbled Himself to become a man.

Not a wealthy man, not a handsome man, not a man of great man.

Just...a man. Jesus just took on the form of a man.

One that could reach us, our infirmities, and our wounds. One that could be touched by our pain, that wept for our sorrows, whose heart broke for us.

“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Isaiah‬ ‭53‬:‭5‬ ‭KJV‬‬

It doesn’t matter who we think we need to be, or who the world thinks we should look like or act, when we are His.

It doesn’t matter what car we drive, how much money we have, what clothes we wear, when we are His.

It doesn’t matter how we are esteemed or brought low, when we are His.

In the joys and in the sorrows, we can be His.

“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”

‭‭James‬ ‭4‬:‭10‬ ‭KJV‬‬