Continuing to share my SparkPeople journey to self-control:

Feeling Good About Me in the True Victory!

SparkPeople community moderator Denise says: “Don’t let the scale tell you how to feel about yourself!”

As I sought the Lord about where to begin on my journey to experience Him through my journey to improved health, He pointed me to the flavor of “Self-Control” found in the fruit of the Spirit’s produce in us. I know that flavor is a vital bookend to the fruit of the Spirit, Love holding things together on the one end, and Self-Control on the other, but that is the flavor of the fruit of God’s presence that least enters my mind when I seek His flow in the day. Yet it is there, a bookend to all the others, signaling me to the need of my deliberate effort in surrendering myself to His controlling power of life if I truly want His Spirit flow.

So I began, and as I prayed to discover a starting place for my journey to experiencing Him through self-control, He led me to start anew the goal to eat nothing after dinner unless it is something lite and healthy in response to true hunger. I made it through last night, day 1 on this renewed journey to the goal of overcoming night time eating, and it showed on the scales in a big way this morning.

Now I know that extreme changes in diet—and this is a biggy for me—will result in water weight loss, so I am not letting that loss determine how I feel about myself in this victory. It is not the scales that are the true success, but the success in standing firm in faith to practice self-control, calling on the Lord for strength as my husband had his snack, and seeing success in staying the course and winning the day. That is cause for rejoicing: increasing my nature of self-control as a faithful, faith-filled child of God.

On this journey to discover how I can experience God through my weight loss and lifestyle change efforts, I promised to look at two of my life goal verses, sensing there is wisdom to be gleaned there. The first is found in the Amplified version of Philippians 3:8-11.

“Yes, furthermore, I count everything as loss compared to the possession of the priceless privilege, the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and of progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, of perceiving and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly. …

“For my determined purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection which it exerts over believers, and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed in spirit into His likeness, even to His death, in the hope that if possible I may attain to the spiritual and moral resurrection that lifts me out from among the dead even while in the body.”

Self-control means to die to something, denying self in order to enter into the controlling power of God’s Spirit, bearing the fruit of life in the earth. As I learn to walk in the power of dying to self, I experience more of Him through His power that resurrects true life in me.

Wow! To God be the glory. I think I will mull on that one for a while. See you back here in my next post.