Hanging Up My Idol

Today I'm sharing something very personal. Why? Not to gain praise please, but to share with you the true life struggles of my flesh and my heart and I truly truly want you to see what kind of transforming work God can do with us and is doing with me.

 

This week past week I had a week of conviction. Not one that is unfamiliar to me though. Most of you who know me know my passion and NEED for fitness. It is exactly that. It is a passion of mine. I love to be active, it makes me feel alive, it makes me feel strong, it makes me feel healthy and energetic. It is however a need. I need to exercise because it's a portion of my life that I have decided to control. It's the portion of my life that I honestly don't trust God with. My fitness is done out of love and yet out of fear. Fear that if I don't I won't maintain my weight or an image that I'm comfortable with.
You know I've actually been having an ongoing tug-of-war with God for the about a year and half over this issue. He would challenge me with it and I would either make excuses why it wasn't good for me to stop my activities or I just chose to hold on to controlling it because I feared God's dream for my body was not what my dream was.
Some time ago a wise and Godly friend found me in my struggle and suggested something that has stuck with me. She said, "You know Stephanie, the things we build on our own God leaves us to maintain on our own and the things we give to Him to build he maintains them for us". Well that would take the pressure off but again, I wasn't yet believing that God would maintain my body the way I wanted.

Habakkuk 2:18

Of what value is an idol since a man has carved it? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation. He makes idols that cannot speak.

Fast forward a year and half.....
This conviction of needing to give up my physical activity that I love so much is weighing so heavy on me. That's called conviction of the Holy Spirit. Enough wondering if this is really what God is asking me to do. Enough making excuses that it's healthy so he wouldn't take away something that is healthy. As I fell to tears several times this week I recognized that if giving something up brings me to tears and is so hard to do.....it's an idol. Yes. An Idol.
Although not a statue, not a pillar or false god it is a stronghold in my life that creates a barrier between me completely yielding my whole self (body) to God. It is an idol because it's so painful to give up.
Here's the thing I can say about idols (of whatever form they may take in your life). The act or action or item is not necessarily the idol. The idol is in the way we treat it. Is it our? Are we taking ownership of it? Could we give it up if we were asked? Is it taking priority over God in your life? Only each of us as individuals can answer this. This is an intimate conversation between us and God.
So, I have shed my tears this week about giving up my idol. Handing it over to God. Trusting that he will be enough for me and that my desires for me would line up with his desires for me as I commit to a time of "rest" for my physical body. Yes, I'm hanging up my running shoes, biking shoes, Shaun T. shoes, Gillian Michael shoes, and TRX shoes.
I believe that God will return this activity to me at the time when my heart is right, when I can fully live in the love and joy of who God has made me outside of what I look like, what I feel like and what activity I have done. So, don't be sad for me. My God shall supply all my needs according to his riches in glory (Philippians 4:19).
For those of you who don't know God in a way that you see this request of God as a blessing. I challenge you to see it that way. God wants more for us than we can provide for ourselves. Me stuck in the "but it's good for me and God shouldn't ask me to give something I enjoy up" is only hindering me from experiencing something new waiting for me. When God returns things and rewards obedience he does it 10 fold! I don't do it for the reward but I know his providence will be greater than this sacrifice!

Psalm 19:9-11

The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them are your servants warned; in keeping them there is great reward!

On a closing note. I recall the words that Lord spoke to us the Sunday before we left. God spoke through Chester to us and his words said that  we will have to die to ourselves. That we would have to give up something that was close to us. God's words is truth. We have seen a portion of this word come to life. What God says will happen. I can no longer wrestle with this thought, it is what God is requiring of me.

So here's our warning.....

2 Kings 17:12

They worshiped idols, though the Lord had said, "You shall not do this." The Lord warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and seers: "Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees, in accordance with the entire law that I commanded".

Here's the result......

2 Kings 17:40

They would not listen however, but persisted in their practices. Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.

And the promise we already mentioned...

Psalm 19:11

....in keeping them there is great reward!

Greetings Friends and Family and Followers!

Well, we are obviously getting much busier as it was kindly brought to my attention that it's been a month since our last posting! Thanks you to that anonymous person.....you know who you are!

Yes, we are filling our days now and finding that we even almost have  weekly routine.

We just this past week made our second trip to immigrations and yes got granted another 30 days with little to no hassle from the officer. Praise the Lord! We cover that trip in a lot of prayer as we never really know what to expect.

Chad is doing a lot of slow ground work for a number of projects. We are seeking to apply for a small business/farming work permit. If we can get this it will save us from needing to get our passports stamped every month and the children (we've stopped calling them kids as "kids" are most often referred to here as the goat kind) and I can register as dependents under Chad's business permit. He is also diligently researching seed, shipping seed, importing seed and growing seed in Belize. We have found most of what we need for seed and have all the steps outlined to get it imported we just need to send in the final paperwork, pony up some cash, and confirm the order. We are patiently awaiting this next step to move to the next step in our business venture. Some time ago I would have said, "All in good time" but I'm truly believing it's more, "All in God time".

 

May I introduce you to our alarm clock! Not sure but it might be a Red Lored Parrot...either way it puts roosters to shame! This was taken from our second floor deck in the morning. Beautiful bird but so loud, especially when there is a flock of them fighting at 6:00 am. Opa, you would appreciate them!

 

 And if the parrots sleep in you can count on the woodpecker who is almost as loud....remember we most have hardwood here. That beak is amazingly strong.

 What have we been doing. Well, we are praying for chickens so we need a house for them to live in. Thankfully although we are renting here the owner were more than willing to let us have chickens and there was already a fenced pen that needed only minor adjustments to make a perfect chicken pen. Chad and the kids designed a fine coop with 6 layer boxes. We ran out of staples for the gun today so  it will be finished and ready for chickens on Monday. This give me a great opportunity to share with how our life has changed. In the past we would have finished the box and the next gone out to get some chickens to fill it. You know we are just witnessing so much of God's hand in our life and the lives of those around us that we are learning to pray for even the little things. For some reason we adults think we should petition for only the "big life changers".  There is a family that is becoming very dear to us and I tell you they live a life of prayer and they receive everything....everything the need and more by God's mighty hand. We joined with their 11 year old daughter to pray for a horse and the next day they get not one but 8 horses! Did I mention they have no house, no vehicle and their are 8 family members. They have what some may call "mysterious' money show up in their bank account. The list goes on but all to say that we are learning to wait on the Lord and ask for all things before we run ahead and do it on our own merit. But yes Lord, we are ready for some eggs!

 Because these little chicks are not laying well!

 We have started a small life group and meet every Wednesday for a DVD study and we are currently learning from one my new favourite speakers, Robert Morris: Dream to Destiny. Highly, highly recommend this or The Power of Your Words. Life changing lessons in my opinion.

Paige and  Keaton have been singing in a children's choir at church. There are about 20 kids and they will sing at church for Thanksgiving and apparently they enter a competitions with other local schools. The choir won last year so this may be the tell tale if they take after Chad or myself musically!

School is going well and we are still very flexible with our routine. I am not a woman of routine...some things may never change. I do however appreciate this flexibility as already we've been able to drop what we are doing when a need is brought to our attention. This has also been a focus of our family's growth. We are learning and pray every day that we yield to whatever God has for us for this day. We have a plan but we are praying about always having a servants heart and putting aside what our schedule might say to do the "will of the Father" and serve those in need. It's probably one of the most rewarding things that we are able to teach and participate in as a family.

Today we took on some property maintenance tasks. It's a beautiful property we live on but it does require like any property some TLC. So, rakes and shovels, buckets and .....water bottles in hand we filled a day with landscaping. We are learning to how to work around the heat because working with the heat is just not possible. So, it's best to work outside from early morning to 10ish and then hind from the sun until about 3ish.

The past weeks have been very spiritually challenging for us as we attended a 3 day prophetic word conference put on by our church. It was our first experience with anything that deep as far as the Holy Spirit goes. Powerful, challenging, amazing, exhausting, hope filled and in the end we stand even more in awe of what a mighty God we serve. Wish I could tell you more but we'll have to save those story's for face time.

Moving from what is consuming our time to what is consumer our thoughts we are SOOOOOO excited that my parents are coming on December 13 for two weeks! There literally is not a day that goes by that we don't talk about it! We can't wait to see them and even more so I can't wait to have a new perspective for those at home of what our life if like here. You only have our perspective and I think it will interesting to see what a fresh set of eyes sees it like. Did I mention we are so excited!

 

Time for some Belize horticulture. This tree brings new meaning and likely origin of the phrase "the big cahuna"! This is a Cahun palm. Those pods of cahun nuts must weight about 150-200lbs! The tree is huge and so are branches of nuts. I believe you can eat them but similar to chestnuts I think they are a lot work to extract the nut. We have used local cahun oil from this tree for cooking though. This tree is at the centre of our driveway so I'm for one of those branches to fall off so I can really weigh it.

 

 We celebrated our first Belize birthday on Oct 1st.  Happy 33rd Daddy. What better way to celebrate than a dinner of lobster tails, curried cauliflower and roasted parsley potatoes. Mmmmm. Oh, yeah and chad got some wine from the village grocery store.

 Birthday breakfast set up by the children on the second floor deck.

 We have a great opportunity for volunteer and outreach work that are super excited about. In addition to this mission facility we live on the owners that are currently in Canada also had run an after school pgm in our village at another small community building right in the village. Since they have been gone the center has been closed which sad because it has about 8 computers and in the past was opened up after school to enable those children (most of the children in our village) who don't have access to get to a library or have computers at home to come use the resources there. Along with the pastor and another family from church that lives in the neighbouring village we've had on our hearts to reach out to the village people. So this is a great opportunity for us. We will hopefully each take one afternoon a week to open the center and be available to help village kids (not the goats) with their home work and research. If you are praying for us this is an area you can pray for us in. We are praying that we can get it open this week or next and that we would be able to be used to help meet the needs of the village school children. We are excited to build relationships with them. Pray that we are sensitive to God's moving and what ever way he wants us to serve there.

Signing off until next time. Hopefully I'll post sooner than a month from now!

We are all doing well and living very vibrantly here in Belize!

Love you all.

Stephanie