Energy For Your Calling--Day 6

I am the trumpeter of questionable news:

Pain occurs when the seed of your calling sprouts into reality.

Pain is the strength of God.

Pain is the stretch of God.

Pain is the stay of God.

Pain is necessary nutrition for your soul.

It seems nothing great is accomplished without the shedding of some kind of comfort in which we would love to remain. Yet, to find our calling, we are required to leave that comfort and allow God to break us, stretch us, fashion us into someone useful and productive for each other and for Him.

What a crazy pursuit--to find the purpose and place for which we are wired.

So--energy comes through pain. If you are seeking your calling, your passion, your fit in this world--and attempt to avoid pain and suffering--your seed coat cannot be broken. Your calling may remain dormant within.

From Bette Midler's The Rose:

Just remember...in the winter...far beneath the bitter snows,

Lies the seed...that with the sun's love...in the spring,

Becomes the rose.

I've often thought that sun might be the Son.
   

Energy For Your Calling--Day 5

Everydayness.

Some people attach boredom to that word but in fact, I think, in it resides the very power of God.

He (God) doesn't go off on a whim and decide it's too boring to keep the earth spinning, the seasons changing, and the sun precisely where it won't fry us to death.

He participates in the stability and life-giving routine of everydayness.

If you are following our path of the last few days, you are probably plowing new ground for you and your family by considering a whole food, plant-based eating regimen.

Everydayness must come along for the ride.

Oh, did I mention that everydayness only has power if your activity is optional? No points for going to work every day. Everydayness counts when you have the option to be random, occasional or completely absent.

So our next component of energy for your calling is as life-giving as good food. It is definitely optional, but carries the weight of the Word. It is the practice of meeting with God everyday in some context for some version of relationship-building. Yes, you can be random, occasional or completely absent.

But ignoring everydayness with God and expecting to find energy for your calling is its own version of insanity where you are doing nothing (with Him) and expecting different results.

I bet God's face is lighting up now at the very thought of another everyday encounter with you.

Energy For Your Calling--Day 4

A staggering thought:

For believers, our bodies are the "building" in which the Spirit of God resides. Could it be that what we eat is, in essence, a tithe of sorts? If we rob ourselves of nutrition for this fleshly "house" of God, are we robbing God?

It seems believable that there an enemy of God lurking in our culture. If so, wouldn't that enemy try to rob God by leading us astray from that which is God's best?

The Western diet is killing our bodies, and to the extent that we participate, we simply thumb our noses at that part of God's creation.

If you determined the 10 foods you eat with the most frequency (Day 3 blog), now circle every choice that is not a whole food, plant-based item. Whole food means not processed but rather in its natural state, and plant-based means it has no animal protein in it (meat, egg, dairy).

There are other elements of finding the energy for your calling and we will move on from food after today.

But food occupies part of every day. It is that with which we routinely build or tear down our very selves.

You are the contractor.

What's in your body?

Energy For Your Calling--Day 3

Yesterday (from Day 2) you may have secured a small notebook.

Write down the 10 foods you eat with the greatest frequency. Not your favorites, not the ones you wish you ate frequently--the ones that actually go down the hatch the most times in a week.

It may take a few sheets or a few days to bring honesty to this list. It matters because the next step is going to take you into truth about nutrition that you might not wish was...true. And your honest list might show you that you are in direct conflict with this truth.

The extent of that conflict is the war you are waging against your own body and thus, the energy for your calling.

So, here's the next step. I might or might not have credibility chips to cash in with you--in other words, when it comes to hard truth about what we should eat, why would you listen to me? Instead, I offer two websites, one book, and two documentaries (available through Netflix), any of which can point you into the world that Hippocrates, considered the father of Western medicine and born 460 BC (!), prescribed:

Let food be thy medicine.

By your food, you are well...or sick.

Here are your homework choices that may very well save your life:

The Diva Dish

Dr. McDougall

The China Study, by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell

Forks Over Knives (Netflix)

The Engine 2 Kitchen Rescue (Netflix)

Be data-driven.

Be determined.

Be a (food) diva.

Energy For Your Calling--Day 2

All of us participate in word spillover.

Our words spill over into meaning that becomes our experience.

Teachers shape student self-view by voicing expectations. Parents either erect or dismantle hope in their children by words that praise or defeat.

By the same token, we sabotage ourselves when we say, "I'm exhausted."

But, you say, "I am exhausted." (True, but for now stop saying it to yourself--your self needs to quit hearing it.)

There are two giant, concurrent word wars in our culture whose single mission is to defeat us. The first, as we've just pointed out, is what we tell ourselves.

The second--and most chilling to me--is the word war of American advertising that cares much less about your well-being and zeroes in on selling you that which is designed to slowly deteriorate your health.

If you want to take this journey of intent and care to find the energy for your calling, be prepared to throw out two items: (1) the phrase I am exhausted, and (2) much, if not most, of everything that you have been taught about the American way of eating.

Today--buy a small notebook. There is a new teacher in town.

Her name is Truth About Nutrition and she wants you to join her. Her class is Recovery Health.  Hope to see you there.

Energy For Your Calling--Day 1

Your calling is God's doing.

Setting the stage to have the energy for it is up to you.

That is a scary, two-way street.

We say, "I'm exhausted" with alarming frequency, as if that is something that is happening to us.

I might surprise you by saying we are the cause; our lifestyle choices are slowly burying us under the tower known as exhaustion.

I can give you proof but you are not going to like it because somewhere in my argument might lie a hard step that you just don't want to take.

That's okay. I'll fight for you anyway. In sharing the war I've fought to come out of exhaustion exile, you'll see that I never give up...on myself or on you.

This could be the week that you find your first step out from under your exile--or potential exile--that keeps you from finding the energy for your calling.

Your Bucket of Belief

You carry a bucket of belief about God.

Inside the bucket is the weight of everything that remains of your belief after listening, pondering, reading, discarding, adopting.

Your bucket could be out of balance--too heavy or too light--with untruth, wrong perceptions, and damaging threads of belief.

Or it could be filled with living water.

In John 7, Jesus says:

"If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says."

A bucket of belief about God that doesn't include this Jesus is not going to serve you well.

You are responsible for what is in your bucket of belief; free will is the handle.

Feeding your strength is asking God to help you correct any untruths in your bucket and refill it with the power of living water.

It is said that we take nothing with us out of this world, but don't be fooled.

You will be transported in that very bucket of belief.