Day Five
Thursday, 01/11/2007, Day Five:
I went to church last night because I wanted to hear NC's female associate pastor preach. It was so good!
She read the first part of Gideon's story (in Judges) - the part where he is called by the Angel of the Lord.
Here are the highlights:
Israel fell into sin, again. The Lord handed them over to a foreign nation (the amelekites... or somthing like that... we'll call them the A's). The bondage was so bad that the Israelites had to flee into the hills and hide. If they grew crops, the A's would come steal or destroy them.
So Gideon is in the wine press threshing grain. The reason he wasn't on the threshing floor is because he was hiding from the A's. This made it especially difficult to thresh.
1. Sin (even if it's not your own) affects everybody. Israel sinned, and even though Gideon himself may have been innocent, Israel's sin made even the mundane every-day task of threshing grain more difficult.
As I was praying about any sin that I may have in my heart, the Lord revealed to me that my habit of over-eating is a sin. I am not being a good steward of the body that the Lord has given me. And this is making everything more difficult: I have no energy, I have low self esteem, which affects my social life and my married life, and I eat more to make up for all that! It is affecting me and everyone around me. And it is making the every-day tasks harder.
So.. on with the story...
It was in the winepress where the Angel of the Lord chose to speak with Gideon
Point 2: Even if you are not where you want to be and things seem more difficult than they should be, God sees your faithfulness and He will find you there.
And then the Angel said to Gideon, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior."
Gideon responded, "Where is the Lord? How can the Lord be with us if all this bad stuff is happening to us?"
The Angel said, "The Lord is going to use you to save Israel from the hands of the A's."
Gideon argued, "But my clan is the least of all the clans, and I am the least person in my clan, how can the Lord use me?"
Point 3: God looks through our bad attitudes and the labels that we put on ourselves, right to the heart, and He sees a "mighty warrior."
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Anyways, it was all really good, and I certainly felt the Holy Spirit ministering to me in the service.
The food stuff is good today. Nelle (N's girlfriend) is doing the fast also. We made the decision together that we will continue the fast in the mountains this weekend, as much as we can. Nelle, N, B and I are all doing the fast, and we had decided before the fast started that we would "break-fast" during this weekend and then add those four days onto the end of our fast. But Nelle and I have decided to pack our own food and do our best not to break-fast. The exception may be when we stop at fast-food restaurants on our way up there and back. Although, even most fast food places have salad.
So, we'll see how it goes. I hope we can do it without drawing a lot of attention to ourselves. Some of our family are not Christians, and I doubt the rest have ever done a fast like this. I don't think they would understand. So maybe nobody will point it out. We'll see. We'll see.
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Things with B and I are much better now. I think we have a mutual understanding. Basically, it all boiled down to our love languages. His is "acts of service." And mine is "verbal affirmation." Neither of us were communicating well on these levels.
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Well... I can't really think of too much more to write about.
AB, I just read your journal. Do you think you could meet with him in a public place, like a restaurant or the mall or something? I mean, I'm sure you will pray about it first, and if you get the okay from the Lord, just keep in really public, and I think you should be okay. Let us know how it turns out!