Devotions for Dieters

John 14:27
'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.'

Bill felt it was a no-win situation. If he dieted, he felt lousy because he was hungry all the time. If he broke his diet, he felt guilty. It was hard to tell which was worse, the hunger or the guilt. He wanted to trim down, but he loved to eat. He never knew that he'd suffer through so much turmoil just trying to lose weight. Diets can really stir us up. They make us feel physically and emotionally strained. During periods of dieting, we need to find peace of mind and heart. Ask God for that peace. He promises to deliver it to those who ask Him for it. When we need it most, God gladly gives it.

Today's thought: Better to have peace of mind than a piece of cake!

Today's thought: If it's a choice between dieting or dying, I think I'll diet!
Copyright © 2008, Crosswalk.com. http://www.crosswalk.com/devotionals/fordieters/

Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Keep A Quiet Heart
Scripture Reference:

A Lesson in Things Temporal

I am upset when things are lost. Even small things. I like to know that things have places and are in them. It's much worse when something like a manuscript is lost. I had worked for a number of weeks on a certain piece, and when I went to do the final rewriting it was gone. It just wasn't anywhere. I looked, then Lars looked, then we both looked. In all the likely and all the unlikely places. We prayed about it, of course, together and separately, but we could not find it. At last I told the Lord that if I did not find it today I would begin again from scratch, as the deadline was closing in. That day Uncle Tom, who was eighty-nine and was staying with us, became very ill. There was no time to think of manuscripts.

The next day we happened to move a piece of furniture and discovered that moths were doing their dastardly work underneath it. Lars went out and bought a can of moth spray and proceeded to fumigate every nook and cranny. The manuscript was behind a desk. It had fallen down and lodged standing up on the baseboard. If Uncle Tom had not gotten sick I would have done a day's unnecessary work on that piece that I was so worried about. If the moths had not taken it into their tiny heads to chew my carpet, we probably would not have fumed up that sheaf of papers until next spring. It was not for nothing that the collect in my church that Sunday (the eighth after Pentecost) was: "O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy, that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

Stay Weak

Ecclesiastes 4-6, 2 Corinthians 12
Key Verse: 2 Corinthians 12:9

As usual, strength is "in." Join the fitness center, work out, eat right, take supplements, be strong. Then be self-reliant, capable, assured, accomplished, using your connections and abilities to get where you want to be. Overcome your weaknesses and conquer the world.

You hear this over and over again, don't you? What you don't hear is an encouragement to be weak. The closest thing to that is the emphasis on "servant-leadership," but notice that it is still "leadership."

What Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:9 is truly counter-culture: "I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." When did you last hear someone say, "Let me tell you about my weak points"? We think they are to be hidden, put out of sight, covered up. But Paul said he would boast about them.

The difference is Christ. Paul knew, and we need to also, that Christ's power rests on us in our weaknesses, not in our strength. Where we say, "I can't," Christ says, "I can." And as long as we say, "I can," Christ says, "I can't." It is not that He can't but that we won't let Him. We are like a child, unwilling to let a parent help. It is only when the child in weakness admits he can't that the parent, in strength, can help.

It's the same for us. Stay strong and you are weak. Stay weak and by Christ you are strong.

"God, help me be weak, to put aside my arrogant self-sufficiency, drawing instead on the strength of Christ. I can't, but He can."

Joshua 1:8

The Key to Good Success

My local newspaper reported that a man and woman who tried to hop a Union Pacific train from North Platte, Nebraska, to Omaha were being held in Dawson County jail on trespass charges. But the couple wouldn't have gotten to Omaha even if they hadn't been apprehended; the train was headed to Kansas City.

Many people who think they're on the train headed for success are really going in the opposite direction. History is awash with examples of men and women who found a form of success, but lived to regret it. It was not what the Bible calls "good" success. Lord Byron, who achieved fame both as a poet and a libertine, wrote at the age of 35:

My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.

God's success is far different; it's always headed in the right direction. Joshua was assured that if he lived consistent with what was written in God's Word, he would achieve success--but not just any success. God's promise to Joshua, as well as to you and me, is that if we live by all that is written in the Bible, we will achieve "good" success.

The key to good success is obedience to God's Word. If you conform your life to God's will, as it is revealed in His Word, you'll experience the kind of success that will be a blessing rather than a burden.

Prepared To Be an Answer

How wonderful it is to receive an answer to prayer. But there is something even more wonderful--to be an answer to prayer. Have you been an answer to prayer lately? Joseph was. In verse 17 we read, "He sent a man before them--Joseph--who was sold as a slave." At the time, Joseph could not see what God was doing. But God was preparing him to be an answer to prayer. He was going to use Joseph to protect the people of Israel. If Joseph had not done this, the nation might have perished. If the nation had perished, we wouldn't have a Bible, and we wouldn't have a Savior.

God plans His work. We never have to worry about what is going on, because God knows. He is never caught off guard, and He is never surprised. God never says, "How did that happen?" He chose Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Jacob's sons to accomplish some great purposes in this world--to bear witness of the true and living God, to give us the Bible and the Savior.

God also works His plan. He uses people to accomplish His purposes. We don't always know what God is doing. He didn't send an angel down to prison to explain to Joseph all of His plans. Joseph worked and walked by faith. He went through trials and dishonor, but he ultimately triumphed. From trial to triumph, from bondage to blessing, Joseph was an answer to prayer.

You may be wondering today, Why am I going through this experience? Why doesn't God make life easier for me? Remember Joseph. God chose him, prepared him and used him as an answer to prayer.

* * *

God doesn't waste your trials. He designs them for your good and His glory. Perhaps you are going through difficulties and trials today. Let God prepare you for what He has prepared for you. He might be planning to use you as an answer to prayer.

Born Free!

Galatians 4:19-31

The lesson God has for us in Galatians 4:19-31 is that we cannot ever fulfill the commandments of God by our own human efforts. They can be kept only as we accept Christ as Saviour.

Then, through the indwelling Spirit, the life of Christ is fulfilled in us.

The bringing of Ishmael into the world was all of man's planning. God had nothing to do with it. That which is of the flesh displeases God, and He will not accept it.

Ishmael was a child born after the flesh; and since his mother was a slave, he, too, was a slave.

With Isaac it was entirely different. He was born of a freewoman. His coming into the world was due to God's work.

So the point made here is that we are considered through faith in Christ to be the brethren of Isaac. We are the children of promise, born through divine power and not through human effort.

There is a strong tendency on the part of those who insist that Law is necessary for salvation to persecute those who preach salvation by grace plus nothing. Those who insist on Law say that we who preach grace are making it easier for people to sin.

But this is not the case. Grace does not give people license to sin. It teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly and righteously in this world. So even though opposition or even persecution comes, we should be ready to endure it.

But what is to be our attitude in this teaching of Law and grace? Are we to go along with the teachers of Law and say nothing?

The answer of Scripture is, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir to the son of the freewoman" (v. 30). The two will not mix. We are saved by grace. We are not in bondage to the Law. We cast it from us.

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Gal. 5:1).

Satan's Imitators

Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning; lo, he goeth out unto the water; and thou shalt stand by the river's brink against he come; and the rod which was turned to a serpent shalt thou take in thine hand.

Of all the brother teams in the Old Testament, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Hophni and Phinehas, etc., perhaps none was so outstanding as Moses and Aaron. Together they were called upon to undertake the impossible dream—the exodus of Israel from Egypt. Jehovah had made Moses a god to Pharaoh and brother Aaron was his prophet. As a team they stood before the Egyptian king and demanded the release of God's people Israel.

During the new kingdom period the power of Pharaoh was unsurpassed among contemporary nations. At times his kingdom extended as far as the Euphrates River. For Moses and Aaron to appear at the royal Egyptian court demanding that the people of Israel be set free was a challenge to Pharaoh's power. From the start the king's attitude was one of arrogant defiance. Pharaoh said, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go"(Exodus 5:2).

But the Lord had forewarned Moses and Aaron of Pharaoh's attitude, informing them that when the king asked for a miracle to prove God's power they should cast Aaron's rod to the ground and it would become a serpent. When Pharaoh questioned them, Aaron obeyed God and, as God had promised, the rod miraculously became a serpent. However, much to the surprise of Moses and Aaron, the king of Egypt called upon his wise men sorcerers to do the same and their rods too became serpents.

Apparently these Egyptian magicians knew the secret of paralyzing a snake by applying pressure on the back of the neck. This would make the serpent become rigid and the pompous Egyptian sorcerers would stroll along the streets using the paralyzed snakes as walking sticks. When they cast the snake to the ground, releasing the pressure, the snake would begin to crawl. Capturing the snake was a simple matter of grabbing it by the back of the neck, renewing the pressure, and making the serpent rigid again.

Such was the case in the contest between Moses and Aaron and the magicians of Pharaoh's court. However, as the Egyptians imitated the miracle of God they did not have opportunity to grab the serpents by the back of the neck and reapply the pressure. Before they could do so Aaron's rod-serpent swallowed them up.

Rather than be stunned by the defeat of his magicians, Pharaoh's heart was hardened. Thus the Lord instructed Moses to "Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning" and to demand that the people of Israel be released (Exodus 7:15). Early the next morning the confrontation took place and as a result of Pharaoh's refusal the Nile River, long worshiped by the Egyptians, turned to blood. Thus began the great plagues of Egypt.

Although in the first two plagues God allowed the Egyptian magicians to imitate His miracles, by the third one they had run out of tricks. Candidly they had to admit to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God" (Exodus 8:19). This did not end imitations of God's power, however, for Satan is the great imitator of God. He has been imitating God through the centuries, and many have been deceived by some clever counterfeits which seem to be of God, but actually are of the devil.

Today the world is deluged with deception. Satan is on a rampage imitating the acts of God. This is why Christians are cautioned to "Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world" (1 John 4:1). Moses and Aaron were not fooled or intimidated by the imitation miracles of the Egyptian magicians. Believers today must not be fooled or intimidated by the power of Satan, "because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4).

MORNING HYMN
Thy Holy Spirit, Lord, alone,
Can turn our hearts from sin;
His pow'r alone can sanctify,
And keep us pure within.