Diet & Exercise

Love you all, praying for you.
 
I just love God’s Word.  It gives light and life!  Have you ever felt a little sluggish? Low energy, weak, soon tired or distracted, not physically or mentally sharp?  Nutritionists will tell you.  It’s probably your diet.  You are what you put in.  A junk food diet won’t lead to a sharp and fit mind and body.  You need a food check.  Your body needs the right fuel, and it needs exercise.  A latent body is soft and weak.  But with use and the right fuel - your body becomes strong, resilient, capable, and it affects your mind as well.  That same truth applies to your spirit as much or more than it applies to your body.  You are what you eat.  What are you eating?  What is fueling your spirit? Perhaps, you need a food check.  What influences you the most?  Probably the things that influence you most often.  What are you feeding on?  Are your inputs spirit or flesh?  Here’s a quick way to do a food check for your spirit.  Take a PiVAT What If – this week, and write down your diet.  Not the food you eat, but the input and influence you eat.  If Tik Tok is your diet, if the news cycle, or the Top 40 on iTunes, if video games, and Social Media is your diet. that junk food will make you soft in spirit.  Easily weakened, frustrated, discouraged, angered, easily deceived, lacking wisdom.   And before you know it, you are a slave to the system of that other kingdom, that makes you ignorant, and powerless.  Seems good, sounds good, entertaining, enjoyable for a season, but underneath the oversized sweatshirt, is just flab, soft.  Buns of marsh mellow, not buns of steel.  When it comes to influences that you allow in your mind and spirit, what you watch, listen to, what preoccupies you, it will determine your life, even more than your physical diet.  It’ll slip into your mouth, what comes in goes out.  And before you know it, you words are condemning you, and bondage is inescapable.  But if Worship, that Time in His Presence with thanksgiving and praise, PiVAT before dinner getting God’s plan, not yours, and doing it…  If His Word becomes your preoccupation, over the inputs of this world… soaking in truth until it runs over into, and then overruns from your mouth, you will grow strong in wisdom, discern deception, it will make you wise, strong, diligent, humble, kind, selfless, effective, powerful, in Spirit.  Iron Relationships – Iron sharpening iron – Daily Time with people who are pursuing the excellence and wisdom of God, not the pleasure seekers of this world…  If you are feeling weak, frustrated, unsatisfied, fearful, prideful, sluggish, ineffective, or after all that chasing and doing and enjoying -  still just feeling an emptiness, still lacking true victory, and true joy, and you know that there’s got to be more than the life you’re experiencing so far, and the harvest you’ve been reaping.  There is.  That’s not what God has for you… You need a change of diet, and exercise.  PiVAT What If – can help you track your hours of influence.  Are you being influenced by the world? or influenced by the Word – and what it says that will make you grow strong in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man.  Have you ever seen someone who completely transformed their body, from the ninety pound weakling to blown up, and ripped with guns and an eight-pack? or from extra everywhere… flabby and overweight to strong and toned, just rocking it in that black dress?  Those body transformations that are so obvious – are equally obvious in the spirit, but far more important.  How do you get there from here?  Food Check, a decision, then, a change of diet and exercise.   Worship (Praise and Thanksgiving), Pray in the Spirit and you’ll grow in the Spirit!  Seeking His plans daily! and being diligent in them, His Word and Prayer, and Overcoming with someone – The system that God designed for your victory!  This is the change of diet and the exercise that makes you buff in spirit.  Full of energy, and powerfully effective.  But in order to gain it and maintain it, your real food intake has to surpass your junk food intake.   Spiritual Calories, you’re at a surplus or deficit.  John 4:30 – They came out of the town and made their way toward him.  Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”  Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?  (Did He get Door Dash or Uber Eats?)  - Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.  He knew the will of the One who sent Him, because He asked – He got God’s Plans, and the Word of His Father, He had a different diet.  And He did what His Father Told Him – that’s the exercise that removes the weakness, the flab, the under-performance, or the lostness, and brings strength of spirit soul, mind and body.  Obeying His Heavenly Father, walking in the plans God had for Him, and the inputs that come from God - is real food.  Praying that PiVAT, PRISM, and your Daily Call – increase this year as your habit.  Praying that His Presence consumes your downtime, that you would be fervent and effectual in prayer, that your praise and thanksgiving would be excellent, and your words to yourself and others would reflect it.  Praying that His real food, will become your new diet, which will replace and far outweigh the junk food.  So you grow strong in spirit, effective in prayer, established, and producing fruit that will last – even after you’re gone!  Just Ask God, what change He wants? He’ll tell you.  You don’t have to be Mr Universe, or Miss Universe – just buff in spirit! It’s not a competition, it’s an invitation, to life that is truly life! 
 
Love you all,
dad