The devotions aren't just for folks who are overweight. As the back cover says, "This book is for those who are weary of feeling not good enough, regardless of the source of those feelings."
I'll post each day's devotion the evening before so that early risers or middle-of-the-night-wanderers can have access according to their schedules.
Today's reading is the book's preface (I've called it a prelude as you'll see below). God bless each person who reads these words, in Jesus' Name, by the Holy Spirit's power; amen!
~~~
Prelude
Let heaven and earth
stand amazed at his love.
Matthew Henry[i]
A
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prelude is the melodic beginning of a musical composition, while a preface introduces a book. However, the
term “prelude” is appropriate as we sense the beginning strains of the melody
of our freedom journey; it is the music of our love for God, love that is
released like a hidden spring from our hearts by the power of His great love
for us. And so ahead of any determination to gain mastery over health habits
and weight, let’s focus on abiding in His love.
We are being groomed to bear much
fruit for God’s kingdom; this requires His virtuosity and our cooperation. We
tend to reverse this process as we devise good plans for our own lives and then
ask the Creator of the universe to cooperate with us.
We are commanded to love the Lord
with all our heart, soul, and mind,[ii]
and so we bind ourselves with cords of determination as an athlete might lace
up a pair of running shoes. We are grimly prepared to strive with valiant
effort to do a good job of loving God, but we err. Praise is a release, not a
weight to be lifted; delight in the Lord is a gift we give, not a burden to
bear. Our job is not to work hard at loving God more, but to put ourselves in a
position where we can know more of His love. It is God’s love for us that sparks
our love for Him.
Our lives are difficult, our
burdens many; we are earthbound and can’t see with human eyes the hope to which
we are called. With the Psalmist we might ask, “How can we sing the songs of
the Lord while in a foreign land?”[iii]
The answer to this heart cry is that loving God is not about us, or our
circumstances, or the state of our hearts; it is about God and what He has
required us to do. We resist opening our hearts because we want to make things
right in our own strength, ahead of the vulnerability of allowing Him full
access to all our hidden places. But in truth, failure to come into God’s
presence with praise on our lips and delight in our hearts is disobedience that
requires repentance. Diligent effort will not enable us to purge ourselves of
sin; cleansing from sin is the exclusive domain of Christ.
When we finally open our hearts to
God without reservation, delight is the natural response. We don’t need to
conjure emotion any more than we would have to pretend a smile in response to
an adorable child, because the Lord is beautiful. Human eyes could not bear His brilliance and
beauty; we must view Him with the eyes of our hearts in the place we have
learned to call imagination. Not our earthbound imagination run wild (which
will gravitate to the thrill of the free fall of sin), but the Holy Spirit
guided imagination that affords us the best view of heavenscapes physical eyes
cannot perceive.
Ahead of it all, let’s fall in love
with Jesus all over again.
~~~
And
one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the
great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Matthew 22:35-37
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