Spiritual Spa #5 Great= great?

"He must become greater; I must become less." John 3, 30

Dear family in the Lord!

Who is "he" and who is "I"? John the Baptist ("I") is talking about Jesus Christ ("he") in this frequently quoted verse.  As soon as we get the slightest idea of the breath taking beauty  and power of our Lord Jesus we enter right in and with the hope of a desperate man agree: LESS OF ME OH LORD AND MORE OF YOU!!!

Praise the Lord! Let's agree with HIS plans for our lives!

Today I want to share some facts on obesity (I must become less...). What is going on there? Chew on this:

Your body needs X calories per day. As soon as your body receives X + calories per day it will start to store those "++". Where? Right under your skin, in your organs, your blood. That shows on your scale, your physical appearance, your energy level and your health.

How many calories does the body need to add one pound of pure squishy body fat? 3500 calories more than you burn a day (or a week- the body has the memory of an elephant!).
That is about one meal at a restaurant with appetizer, main course, desert and beverages.
Now, how many calories does the average person need? Roughly most people with a desk job burn no more calories per day than 1600-1700. Are you shocked now? You should. Run, run fast, run for about 1 hour to burn about 500-600 calories!!!

Now let's look at the X as mentioned above. How do you know how many calories your body needs per day? http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php Put in your information and be surprised how many (or how few) calories your body actually needs to maintain itself, if you can handle truth.

Guess how many calories your body needs to miss out on to lose a pound of pure squishy body fat? 3500 calories! Yeah, it's easy! I have mentioned this before in another Spa, but if you want to lose 1 pound of body fat a week, cut out dessert and any sweet beverages for a week and be amazed! Live 3 months like that and maybe find a friend to work out with and you will see a new you.

Let me give you a recommendation for a food journal + exercise counter: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/. To track calories for a while is very fruitful, since we COMPLETELY lost understanding of what our body really needs, versus what our flesh craves. We are obese because we consume too much. We consume too much for we are eating bad food (and we have a strong habit). Myfitnesspal will give you a good idea of the calorie amount of what you want to eat. If you have an I-phone, consider getting the app or if you have an internet phone, have this page be a quick link, to access it to your convenience.

Ever heard of "empty calories"? We call them empty because they are just like empty promises, they smell great, get your brain in the mood to eat, contain a TON of calories to keep you still hungry and craving the same bad stuff. That's what most of us eat and have eaten for most of our lives. And the food industry has gotten more efficient every decade since about the '60s when it is about creating "Frankenfood" for us.

It is so easy to lie to your self, and others, (Oh, this butter burger has a salad leaf on it! or The name of my mayonnaise bomb-dish is "dip" or "salad"). You will not see the promised land of optimal weight and the benefits that come from a well nourished body if you don't learn to overcome your deceived  flesh with the spirit of Jesus Christ.

(Did you know that you can easily substitute mayonnaise with greek (no or low fat) yoghurt and save tons of calories and add many nutritional benefits?
 http://www.linda-rd.com/blog/what-is-greek-yogurt-brands-nutrition-facts-recipes/)

If this Spa speaks to you, go to the Father in Heaven and tell him something like this:

"Lord Jesus, my body is a temple created to your glory and I have been and am abusing it to glorify my own flesh. I am almost not even sorry. I have received the reward of bad Nutrition willingly. I know that I use food as a source of cheap and empty satisfaction and hardly let you interfere with my attitudes and choices. I just don't want to think about bad consequences. But I know aswell that the reward of sin is (eventually) death. Today, oh good Father in heaven, I ask you to convict me. Let me feel and see the ugliness of the burden of my sin for a moment so that I can realize and confess that I am under the law of the devil who wants me to follow my dull senses into my own, and my family's, destruction. Jesus, claim your right over this your temple and open my spiritual eyes and ears so I can see and hear you leading me into a lifestyle that honors you, right by the fountain of abundant life. Thank you Jesus!"

I wish this Spa would have turned out more witty and funny. But the bottom line is, to lose ourselves and give room to God goes hand in hand with the cutting of our flesh (outch!).

I chatted with Ashley, the owner of the gym I work at, and we agreed that in a way it is unfair that the WIDE SPREAD sin of gluttany in the body of Christ can be so obvious, when other sins can be performed in secret. Let's not waste our lives treading around in a desert for 40 years! Let's choose obedience and wisdom= follow the Holy Ghost! Greatness on earth does not equal greatness in the kingdom of Jesus. Lord become greater in me, I must become less.

Okay, let me end on a funny note: Imagine my german father told me this one and I try to keep it as literal as possible: What is a monkeys' Schnitzel? ....a banana!

Be blessed abundantly!

Spiritual Spa # 4

God’s Manner: Manna!

Read: Exodus 16

Dear family in the Lord!

What, you might wonder, can the post-modern society today learn from basically ancient folks wandering around in a small desert for 4 decades about 3000 years ago looking for a promised land they ended up sharing with the wrong people anyway?? Good point! Can we all agree though that the sin that was in those people's hearts back then is the same sin that still tries to dominate us today? How often do we read for example through the story of Moses with his people and recognize ourselves in the different characters described? How sweet is the Holy Spirit’s conviction of sin! We read about something that happened 1000s of years ago, start to think “those jerks!!”, until we feel the “wait a moment…”. Lets look at Exodus 16 and see what we can learn about our own and the Lord’s manners!

The context in a nutshell; The Israelites have just escaped their exile in slavery with Moses and Aaron leading them in the wisdom and power of the Lord himself. They started to wander about in the desert and experience the Lord's supernatural provision. The people begin with the infamous murmuring (“those jerks!!”…”wait a moment…”), thinking, they complain against their "irresponsible" leaders. Turns out those leaders where acting in God’s authority and appointing, so to be upset with their decisions meant to doubt God. By the way, I don’t think this means we cannot pose questions to our leaders! Let’s keep track of the motives in our hearts though when we do question others or get questioned ourselves.

Now, how does being scared of starving, like we find it in Exodus 16, relate to us today, keeping in mind that these people where just released from slavery? A known interpretation of the story of the Exodus (the “taking off”) is to relate it to us being under the reign of sin until Jesus Christ sets us free. The Israelites were set free in the physical realm, but in their minds they were still bound to Egypt. How do I know that? Ever heard of the Stockholm Syndrome? (No worries, I will end up talking about nutrition :) ). In simple words: it's a psychological reaction of a hostage towards their rulers, partnering with and interpreting their abuses and criminal actions as desirable and not questionable. That explains why often after we get freed from sinful habits e.g., we tend to feel like we want to go back to it if something unexpected occurs. In our minds we may have partnered with a sin and being freed from it needs to include an exposure and clean cut with all benefits we might have received. That includes breaking with bad food choices, just because it's tasty and everybody eats it, doesn't make it God's plan for your life!

Let me interpret the Exodus story on a different level: Nutrition. The first Spa was about facing the ugly truth: We are in captivity. We think we are on top of things, we enjoy (some sort of a) provision. Too bad that the side effects of our cheap and irresponsible (not knowing what we’re doing) lifestyle costs us our and our kids' health. Do you want to be free? Ask Jesus to free you from the reign of the spirit of modern provision. Hey, I’m not against recipes from grannys’ cookbook. I am against attitudes (strongholds) that raise themselves up against the knowledge of God. AKA in this Spa: Preservatives. We already talked about enriched foods and artificial sweeteners being vicious, let me add preservatives to the picture.

Let’s go back to Exodus, God lets it rain bread (they called it Manna) to bestow his supernatural provision on his people. With it comes the rule to not store it. God says, this is to test the hearts of the individuals in the whole people (4). Everybody gets a certain amount for every head in his family for every day. No one has too much, no one has to little (verse 18). Now read this:

 ¹⁹ Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
 ²⁰ However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.

Ring a bell? Hello!! God’s provision is enough for one day for each member of our family!! The food he has created for us is good the way it is! It is meant to perish if we don’t need it! (I’m not demonizing freezers or natural ways of preservation! I am talking about the preservatives that make us sick. See below!) One critical side track question, did the Bison die out when America was only populated by the Natives or when the white men took over...  Let's face it, we lost the ability to honor God's creation.   

Today’s preservatives in processed foods are so bad that they not only make food taste artificial (you start to realize that when you eat the real thing!!), but way worse: they literally make us sick. Can you see the pattern by now? There is a godly way of everything leading to “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!” and then there is the opposite. The opposite is MS, diabetes, various forms of cancer, obesity, hormonal disorders, heart issues, depression,  and so forth!

Still want to blame the devil? Well, yeah, but we buy his schemes and products- literally.

What do I mean when I talk about processed foods? Basically everything you can think of in the grocery store that just needs to be tossed together and warmed up. For example: Soup, refried beans, bread, sauces, pasta meals, meats, rice meals, snacks, chips, tacos, nachos, dehydrated foods, you name it. How in the world can it stay good in that climate for years and years? Even if it is “only” weeks, most real and fresh foods have a fridge lifetime of about 3-6 days max. And that is God’s manner! Are you surprised about bad consequences for messing with his system?

As a child I used to think that food stays good for a loooong time in cans for the lack of oxygen. Now that I am an adult I left that fairytale idea behind and learned the truth: The reason are all sorts of different and complicated to spell and pronounce additives. Do you really need certain words to look for? BHA is one word to look for and avoid to get close to. There are many, many other chemicals worthy to be mentioned, making this a long and hard to read spa. Look for the foods with the least ingredients, that's a good thumb rule. If you can't pronounce it, it's likely harmful.

Let me pose this: Are you really too busy to gather the provision of the Lord together and cook your own meal? If you cook your own meals (maybe even have some bonding time preparing it with your kids), you know pretty much what’s in it and I bet you and your family enjoy it the more. 

For example, instead of opening a can of Pasta with meatballs to warm up, buy whole wheat pasta, make your own sauce from fresh organic tomatoes, fresh garlic, onions and fresh herbs, look for (best: organic, Trader Joes) beef without nitrates and without nitrites (good luck with that one!). To buy regular meet, well, just think about what the cows, chicken and turkey are fed today. Not only is it cheap bad food, unlike what they were created to eat, they get fed growth hormones to add quantity, lacking quality. A must (according to Jillian Michaels book "Master your Metabolism") is to at least find meats without nitrites, those are the most harmful preservatives in meat. This is a controvercial topic though! Following Jillians advice though has proven it self to me. Your call!

Needless to say that we don't live in a desert anymore, so usually appropriate cooling of foods keep them good as long as they are supposed to, without chemical preservatives.

Be blessed abundantly!  

Spiritual Spa #3

Jesus Christ says: Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20

Dear family in the Lord!

Reading this I get goose bumps. When we open the door to Jesus he will come inside and eat with us and we with him. He will come in when we hear his voice! Are some of us too busy chewing on chips and crackers so they can't hear his voice? Is this spa about making you feel guilty for craving chips? No, it's not!

Today I want to bring to our attention that Jesus is either going to move  deeper into "us" or is about to for the first time, when we invite him. But how huge is one heart! Has he been given permission to enter into every room of our hearts yet? And if he does have permission, what are we going to serve him to eat? What does this even mean??

Jesus calls himself the bread of life. I think in the spiritual sense of this statement he doesn't rely on us grabing our fancy cook book from the shelf and start preparing a 4 course meal (hoping he wouldn't smell in the fridge for what we usually eat). I think Jesus is for dinner. And for breakfast and lunch. All about us (will, emotions, memories, drives, craves, etc.) is stored in a deep place, maybe even too deep for us to have on our radar. The bibel calls this place "the heart". Out of this heart flows who we are, showing in our thoughts, actions or interactions with one another. In this heart of hearts he wants to enter, he wants us to show him what's brooding on our own stoves, warming up in our microwaves (when we don't expect him as a guest), he will toss it out with a loving smile (with our permission) and serve us himself as the dish that brings forth life, life to the fullest. The best meal ever.  The effect is great joy and new life!

Can we transfer this into the physical realm? YES WE CAN! I have seen and heared people's health improving significantly when they started allowing Jesus to come in to one dark room after the other of their heart. People receiving forgiveness or choosing to release others by forgiving them and then being set free from diffrent physical issues. Let's not harden our hearts when we are confronted with our own sin or by holding on to unforgiveness and bitterness! Let's choose to trust Jesus to be the best chef there is.


Be blessed abundantly!