not ready?

Ok, I so want to do the triathlon, been waiting so long to do one now. But I think it is too soon to do one, especially one a little bigger than I had wanted to do for a first timer. I am so out of shape and my joints are having issues. I think my body is still getting back to normal after having the baby. I don't remember it taking this long to recuperate in the past with my other two kids. The running not only gets me winded but it is a little hard on my knees so I think I should stick to the eliptical, bike, swimming type stuff for now. So that means now running 3 miles in a triathlon, lol. I hate to back down after just agreeing to do this event, but I think I was just eager to do it. I am already passing up a smaller triathlon at our YMCA next weekend because I knew that would be too soon, and that one would have been a great one to do. Hopefully I can do the one I was going to do last summer, it is at the end of July. So we will see. For now I will stick to my 6 day workout fat loss routine and work my way up to triathlon training from there. I could still use the prayers and support though, thanks.

Chrissy

Steppin it up

Ok, I have been working out again for about 2 wks now... well, last night I was contacted by a friend who is a trainer and she asked me if I wanted to join her and some friends in a mini triathlon on April 26th. I said i would do it and so now with my workout today I have started gearing myself to prepare for it. Yes, I know I am crazy! I just had a baby 8 wks ago and i still have weight to lose from that and I have never done a tri before. But I have been wanting to do one for a long time. I actually was supposed to do my first one last July right before I turned 30, but I got preggo, lol. So, I am going to need a lot of wisdom, energy, stamina, prayers, and support. I do not want to overdo it in anyway or push myself too hard. But I do need to be able to finish the thing. That's the goal, just finish it! It is an indoor triathlon consisting of 1 mile swim, 15 mile bike, and 3 mile treadmill run. I am going to need to go shopping for a new swimsuit, blah.

I was training for fat loss, but now I need to focus my training more on the event, so that means steppin it up and doin some major sweating and breathing. Today as part of my workout, I first decided to jog a mile straight through just to see if I could do it and see how long it took me (since I haven't really jogged in like 11 months. Well, right into it I was already tired and wanted to stop but i pressed on. I did it without stopping but it was a horrible time, 12:38 at a speed of 4.7-5.0 and my heart rate stayed in the mid to high 170's. Man am I out of shape.

I will keep you updated on how the training goes. I am looking fwd to getting in shape!

Chrissy

feeling sick?

Last week Erick and I both got sick. I can't remember the last time I was sick like that. It was a bad stomach bug of some sort. I never recall my tummy hurting so bad. I was sitting there praying for God to make it go away, to get the sickness out. It got me to thinking... we hate being physically sick, we do not like feeling bad or being in pain. We moan and groan and beg and plea for it to go away so we can feel better. Don't you think we should be that way spiritually as well? I mean think about it. When you are sick, you clearly have signs that you are; you can feel it and see it. What about when you are spiritually unhealthy? Shouldn't we feel sick when we are falling away from God? Are there signs, symptoms, pains, moans, praying to get better? Do we crave feeling spiritually healthy as much as we crave feeling physically healthy? Shouldn't we? Even more so maybe? We should be able to tell when we are "sick" spiritually. We should know the signs, feel the pain, see the destruction, seek out help to "feel better", etc. It would be great if we treated our spiritual lives that way... not wanting one hint of "sickness" to creep in to bring us down and hold us back from living the life we are meant to live. As much as we hate being sick and feeling bad, we should despise being away from God and do whatever we can to restore our "health". We should be on our knees crying out to God to draw us closer, to forgive us, to restore us, to cleanse us, to take away anything hindering us, etc. We should not want to remain "sick", the pain of it should be overwhelming and pushing us to get better.

Salvation

What does the bible say about salvation?

What is it?

Salvation-
• in my bible it is defined as redemption
• in the english dictionary it is defined as Preservation or deliverance from destruction, difficulty, or evil. n 1: (Christianity) the act of delivering from sin or saving from evil [syn: redemption] 2: a means of preserving from harm or unpleasantness; 3: the state of being saved or preserved from harm 4: saving someone or something from harm or from an unpleasant situation
• before: dead drowning in sin that overpowers us; after: alive in Christ, power of sin broken

The greek word is soteria which translates to: rescue, safety, deliver, save. He rescues us from any harm, we can no longer be harmed by anything or harm ourselves.


When does it happen?


The change from death to life- Salvation

Romans 6:22 but now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life.

Romans 7:5-6 for when we were controlled by the sinful nature the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies so that we bore fruit for death. But now by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” The law says that we have to be perfect or have eternal separation from God. That was impossible for us, so Christ came to redeem us from that law. This is salvation.

When we choose salvation we are choosing to be united with Christ, associated with Christ, a member of Christ’s family and of his mission. When we accept His salvation it is not a selfish act but it is an act of worship. It should all be about God, not us.

With that in mind, there should be a transformation inside that person so that their life will never be the same again. They are now living for something else instead of for themselves. Everything they do in life should be based on God and His ways. And the ultimate goal in that person’s life should be to want to please God and honor Him with their life because of how awesome He is; this is evident in how much He loves you and what He did for you even though you were filled with sin. It is amazing that He could want us. We have to give our life to Him; make Him the Lord of our lives- this is salvation. Luke 9:24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

Our lives must try to resemble his as much as we can. 1 John 2:6 Whoever claims to live in Him, must walk as Jesus did. 1 john 3:23-24 this is His command: to believe in the name of His son Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us. Those who obey His commands live in Him and He in them. And this is how we know that He lives in us; we know it by the spirit He gave us.

God is love. To know God is to know love and to live for God is to live in love. All our actions should be led by love. 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed form death to life cuz we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love, remains in death. 3:18-20 let us not love with words and tongues but with actions and truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence whenever our hearts condemn us.

We are saved by faith. Faith in who Christ is and what he said and promised and in His power. That faith should spur us on to do the things Christ commands us. If someone is saved their life should reflect that. James 2:14 What good is it my brothers if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds. 2:26 as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Therefore, if someone has a lifestyle of purposefully committing sin, I would say that person prolly does not know God. Matt 7:16 by their fruit you will recognize them. Yes we all sin daily, but when we are in Christ we are striving to pull away from that sin and become more like Christ. Read pretty much all of Romans 7 and 8.


Who does the saving?

Deut 32:39 "See now that I myself am He! There is no God besides me. I put to death and I bring to life. I have wounded and I will heal. And no one can deliver out of my hand
Nobody is worthy of God’s love, not one is good.

Matt 19:16-26 read it

Romans 3:10-12 there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.

There is no way we can say on our own that we were saved. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves, nothing that shows us worthy. He loves us so much that he offers us life and all we do is accept that love. He chose us while we were engrossed in the evil of this world. Works do not save us. Love saves us in grace through faith in Christ. We do works because we are saved and that salvation moves us to good works. We do not rely on those works for salvation.
Gal 3:11 clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith.
Gal 5:4 you who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

God is the one who saves us. He offers the gift of salvation freely. He chose us before we even existed, before we could chose Him. How could we chose Him if we didn’t know He existed? He revealed Himself to us. If He didn’t do that, then we would not be able to chose Him. Romans 3:20 therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law, rather through the law we become conscious of sin.

Eph 1:4 for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight

Vs 9 and he made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Christ.

Eph 2:8-9 for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works so that no one can boast.


Can we become unsaved again?

John 10:28-29 I give them eternal life and they shall never perish, no one can snatch them out of my hand, my father who has given them to me is greater than all, no one can snatch them out of my fathers hand.

This says that we have eternal life. That means from the moment we accept life, we have it eternally. When we accept we are united with Christ. He is in us and us in Him. We may not always act in His ways but nevertheless we are still in Him. We can not overpower God’s love for us.

Romans 8:38-39 (paraphrase) nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, no angel or demon or even ourselves.

If we say we can do something to loose our salvation then basically we are saying that works take part in salvation. We would be saying that we have to do something to deserve salvation. We know this is not true, as stated above in scripture (eph 2:8-9) Works have nothing to do with receiving salvation so they can have nothing to do with taking it away.

We are perfect in God’s eyes once we are saved cuz He looks at us through Jesus. Hebrews 10:14 because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. Coll 3:3 for you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

How funny does it sound to say… today I have been really good so if I die today I will go to heaven, then the next day say today I have been really bad so if I die today then I will go to hell? To say that would be to say that our daily actions determine our eternity.

Rom 6:23 The wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus.
He is our savior, He redeems us from that death we deserve and gives us eternal life. He has overcome death, death is no more when we are in Christ. 2tim 1:9-11 “…Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel…”

Parasites

This week in our fireproof small group study we talked about "parasites" in your marriage. You know, bad things like drugs, gambling, pornography, etc or good things like work, kids, dreams, etc that can end up stealing your focus... basically anything that gets in the way of building that intimacy with your spouse and ends up tearing apart your marriage. One of the verses that we discussed was 1 Peter 5:8-9 ⁸Be of sober spirit, be on the alert Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.⁹But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.

This verse tells us that we need to be careful. Things are going to attack us in all aspects of our lives and we need to be prepared for it, expect it, and be ready run from or to attack it right back and defeat it. Especially in our marriage. These are the three points that were brought out in terms of helping with temptations and keeping parasites from taking over...

be sober- we need to control our selves and be in the right mind- dont be clouded in your thoughts and views, know the truth
be alert- we need to keep our eyes and ears open to things around us in the world and in the spirit and always be ready- on guard, dont even give an inch
resist him- not only are we to fight back or turn and run from things that try to destroy us, but the very fact that this is in the scripture is telling us that we have the power to fight back and/or actually resist and flee. YOU CAN DO IT!!! Phil 4:13 you can do all things through Christ you gives you strength.

Now I want to add an extra point here, and that is:
Humbleness- now this isn't in these verses but I think it is a very important thing to mention when discussing this subject. (little did I know that it was talked about in the previous verse as I found out just now when re-looking up the verses) But when a strong temptation hits you and you are struggling really hard with it, you should pray of course, but also you should stop right there if possible and seek out your spouse and ask them to pray for you too. We need to be able to humble ourselves and let our spouse know when we are struggling with something. There is power in prayer and in numbers. It also helps to get things out of the dark. Darkness is not good anywhere, especially in a marriage. Let the light in to shine on everything. If a sin or struggle stays in the dark, it can and most likely has power over you. Once it is revealed and brought into the light, the hold it has over you is broken and it is so much easier to see and defeat. It is so important that you can trust your spouse enough to talk to them and share yourself like this; so do what you need to in order to have that kind of trust and that kind of humbled spirit when it comes to your struggles. This kind of openness will also bring so much intimacy into your marriage. Be "naked and unashamed" with each other and see what it does for your marriage and personal struggles.