PASTOR RICK: BREAKING THROUGH SUMMER SLUMPS
Excerpt from Pastor Rick’s series on “The Invisible War.”
I’m so proud of you, those of you who joined The Daniel Plan in January. We started this plan, which is a one-year plan, to get in shape. We now have over 14,000 of you who have gone online and registered on The Daniel Plan. 14,000! Our church since January has lost over 200,000 pounds! That’s pretty amazing.
Think about that. That’s over 1,000 pounds a day this church is losing. That’s a good thing. But right now some of you are getting into the summer and thinking, “I’m not losing as fast as I thought I was going to,” or you’re getting discouraged.
This happened to me. I dropped 35 pounds pretty quickly. Then it got into June and I got really tired this month. All of a sudden I was just fatigued, tired, trying to do too much. I just got tired! And I didn’t lose anything during the month of June.
What did I do? Just give up? Of course not. You reconsider, re-collect, you lay aside whatever is holding you back. So I just did a little spring cleaning, a little self-evaluation. I looked and realized there were four things I needed to change.
- One, I wasn’t drinking enough water. When I first started I was drinking a lot of water. You can’t lose weight if you don’t drink enough water.
- The second thing, I wasn’t getting enough sleep. It was a very busy month for me. I was doing a lot of teaching and a lot of preparing of materials for our small groups that we’re going to be doing during this series. I was very busy and I wasn’t getting enough sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep your body starts holding onto fat.
- Three, I went to the doctor and got checked out and found out I had low thyroid. So they gave me thyroid medicine.
- The fourth thing was I’d stopped writing down the foods I eat in a food journal. When you stop writing it down before it’s a habit, guess what. You cheat! You start to think, “I only had a few…” But did you count how many you ate? Five or six handfuls?
So I made those changes. You know what insanity is? You know the definition of insanity? Continuing to do the same thing you’ve always done and expecting different results. That’s insanity. So if you start to get discouraged what do you do? You change what needs to be changed. It could be something simple. But let’s lay aside every weight that slows us down, especially the sins.
Sin especially will slow you down. If you’re holding on to a grudge – you won’t forgive that person – you’re going to get discouraged. If you harbor anger in your heart, if you harbor guilt in your heart, and you have unconfessed sin in your life, you’re going to get discouraged.
What is sin? Sin is knowing what to do and not doing it. That’s sin; your conscience tells you. Sin – when you know the right thing to do and you don’t do it, that’s sin.
Where is that in the Bible? It’s in James 4:17, “Anyone then that knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it sins.” That’s going to slow me down too. I’ve got to remember that heaven is watching; I’m surrounded. My life is being watched by witnesses. And I’ve got to eliminate the things that hold me back.