The next right thing.
Last week over 24,000 people, I assume mostly women, watched the first “Get Real Journey” video. Fortunately/unfortunately, this topic resonates with way too many of us, and I for one am ready to live a free life! I am ready and willing to put my complete trust in Him daily to achieve this!
Sharing my number (my weight) and getting that out in the open has gone from feeling embarrassed and mad at myself and kicking myself, to feeling much freer and open. Your messages have absolutely helped with that, which is why this is a journey we cannot do alone. We must do it with God, and we must do it with other girlfriends who understand our “why”.
I will admit, if I’m being completely honest when many of you shared your numbers, I immediately compared that number to my number. And I quickly reminded myself that this is exactly the reason why I am sharing this with all of you; to stop the comparisons, and to live in a space where we believe we are who God says we are, and that we are here to support and uplift each other and not compare ourselves to one another.
I knew this was going to be a journey that I had to be completely open about. I have done this way too many times in my life, although never losing more than 40 pounds total at a time; so my goal of 100 pounds is huge and scary, and all the things. I knew that something had to be different this time. And the difference that needed to happen is that I needed to dive deep into scriptures. If you told me that every time I wanted cake and ice cream and wine and chips and delicious queso that I should go directly to Scriptures, it would only irritate me. Number one, because I wouldn’t know where in scriptures to dive into, and two, that just isn’t what I would want to hear in those “I want to eat everything, I don’t care the consequences, blah, blah, blah” moments. So, what then? How do I give the struggle of this “get real journey” over to God? Here’s what I decided:
I have to be in scriptures and have a plan of where to be in scriptures daily, before the challenges of the day begin, before my food cravings begin, before the temptations surround me and attempt to overtake me. I need to make sure I’m prayed up about this specific issue; this issue of my health, and this issue of finding freedom through healthy living physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I knew the answer would be in Scripture. Every answer is somewhere in scripture, but I wasn’t sure exactly where to start. So I started from the beginning, I bought a chronological study Bible and went at it this week. I’m up to Genesis 26, and I’m going to attempt to share with you what I’ve learned through the people from thousands of years ago.
Over and over again in the Old Testament, there are stories of people who either put their trust in God or who worshipped other idols. I am overwhelmed by the way that people like Abraham and Sarah trusted God and then lacked faith in him to give them a baby at a very old age, and then how after the mistakes they made, God still loved them and provided for them. He gave them direction and redeemed them. I love how Abraham did as God asked him to do, often without question or understanding as to why God was asking it. I appreciate how Hagar, his servant, did as God told her to do. I appreciate how Abraham’s servant went to another land for his son as he had been told to do. I love how Rebecca followed God‘s direction to go back with a servant and marry Isaac, son of Abraham. Over and over again we see proof of how people in the Old Testament followed God or didn’t follow God. And while we don’t have many of the day-to-day details of these people’s lives, I do believe what we are given as far as their stories have to show how they needed to live daily in God’s grace, or they simply wouldn’t have survived. They had to choose over and over again to put their trust in Him, believing that He would provide for what they needed. In some ways it was a different time than we live in today, and yet I wonder if there are really that many differences, especially emotionally and spiritually. I think it boils down to their daily choice to live under God‘s direction and trust in Him to provide for them, which led me then to the idea of the daily choice, or the hourly choice, of doing the next right thing.
In my daily life, I’m attempting to choose to do “the next right thing.” When faced with a choice: a food choice, a social choice, a work choice, a relationship choice, I’m attempting to think to myself what the next right thing is for me right now. When I begin to feel doubt about whether I can lose 100 pounds in one year, whether I’m going to crash and burn with this goal, and embarrass myself in front of thousands, my goal is to remind myself to just do “the next right thing.” And I will tell you, doing that the past four days has impacted me and my daily choices immensely. It has freed my mind from having to make bigger choices, from doubting the bigger goal, and helped me just to concentrate on “the next right thing,” the next right choice for me at this time. It has also helped me to stay in the present rather than stressing and fearing all the what if‘s in the future. This brought me back to Philippians 4:8, the verse I memorized in my early 20’s at my a*unt’s suggestion. This verse explains “the next right thing.” Doing “the next right thing” is a choice, an emotional choice, and this verse explains and shares with us what to focus our mind on in order to live our best life. I encourage you to meditate on Philippians 4:8; learn the eight attributes so that they spew out of your mouth anytime you need them, in those moments of temptation to do what isn’t best for you. I am choosing God’s best for me this week by doing what is best for my body and my soul.
