Doing Hard Things

So- here’s a blog-life update- No books, no projects. I feel led to share what I learned in church this week. As you know, (because I blogged about it) I am struggling to make some life-changes to be healthier. At church we are in a series called “My Life Could Be Reality TV” and this week’s focus was on the show The Biggest Loser and about doing hard things in life. Fitting right?
To here Matthew’s sermon click  here.
This was a really hard lesson to sit through for me, because I have a lot of difficulty with self-discipline and this message pointed out to me that I am not relying on God or the Holy Spirit to help me be disciplined. The message was focused on 2 Timothy 2 and how Timothy was charged with very difficult tasks and challenges as a young man. Paul also gives Timothy tools to complete these tasks- namely that the Holy Spirit is inside of him and has given him the tools to do hard things in his life.
I have been completely relying on myself and clearly- this is not working for me. One of the major points in the sermon was that if you do what is easy in life, life gets harder. If you do what’s hard, life gets easier. Case in point for me- my weight. If I continue to do what’s easy and just eat yummy-but-so-bad-for-you-food and continue to sit on my butt, I am going to get fatter. I am going to have less energy and my health, at 24 years old, is going to deteriorate. On the other side, if I do what’s hard and deny myself calorie-filled-bad-for-you-food and set aside time to be active, I am going to lose the weight, have more energy, feel better, and not break down crying in a fitting room (yes- that happened on Saturday). I have hit a low in my physical health and self-esteem and I am completely aware of it, but yet do not have the strength on my own to change it. That was a fantastic realization yesterday- that I CANNOT change this on my own strength. I HAVE to rely on God. This has been very clearly laid out for me in the past week. At small group last week people were sharing victories they have had in their lives and how they realized they could not overcome difficult things on their own and had to rely on God to give them the strength and discipline to do it. Could this be beat into my head any more clearly? I hear you God. I finally hear You.
So, readers, thank you for starting on this journey with me and thank you in advance for your patience and support. This is not something that is easy for me to write about and I have only very recently actually acknowledged that this is a problem. Thanks again and I will leave you with this Scripture because it tells us that God has given us the tools to do the hard things:

2 Timothy 1:7 (New International Version)

⁷ For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.