BOUGHT AT A PRICE

"Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s."

-1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NKJV)

The wisdom of the world tells us our bodies are our own and that we should indulge and pamper ourselves; indulge and pamper our flesh. In fact, this is evident in every aspect of the American culture; from the cars we drive to the houses we live in, from the vacations we take to the food we eat. We see our wants as necessities that we can’t live without. But God’s word gives us a much different picture. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Romans 8:5-6) The wisdom of the world leads to death, but if we stand fast to the truth of God’s word, we have peace and life eternal.

Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 that we are not our own, but we belong to God for we have been bought at a price and our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. I remember hearing that my body was the temple of God since I was a little girl, but I never really understood how that applied to my life until recently. The temple of the Holy Spirit, the temple of God is holy; it is set apart. Being in Christ, my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and is therefore holy and set apart by God and for God. Wow, let’s just let that sink in for a second. My body is holy, my body is God’s. As I look at my life and how I have cared for my body, I realize I have not been a very good steward in many regards and I have definitely not cared for it the way I would God’s temple. Instead, I have had my mind set on the things of the flesh and I have indulged my flesh time and time again. But there is no life in the flesh, only death. I can indulge my flesh all I want but ultimately there is no reward; there is no emptiness filled, no peace, no life. The truly wonderful and amazing thing is, once I started looking at my body as God’s and not my own, I was able to finally surrender those things of the flesh that I have been in bondage to and Christ has taken the chains from me and replaced them with freedom, peace and life.

You too have been bought at a price and have been called to glorify God in your body and your spirit which are God’s. Are you a good steward of God’s temple?

COACH'S CALL TO ACTION

• What does it look like to be a good steward of “your” body, the temple of the Holy Spirit?
  
• What do you need to surrender?
  
• When your flesh and your heart fail, where will your strength come from?

Copyright © 2009 Radiant Sun Life Coaching. All rights reserved.

THE STUBBORN CHILD

“That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the law of the LORD; who say to seers, ‘Do not see,’ and to the prophets, ‘Do not prophesy to us right things; speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits. Get out of the way, turn aside from the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.’ ”

-Isaiah 30:9-11

In Isaiah 30, we see the people of Judah seeking protection from Egypt rather than the LORD. They sought counsel that was not of God. They made plans that were not led by the Spirit. They chose to hear only what they wanted to hear and see only what they wanted to see. They put their trust in Egypt, in the ways of the world, which is worthless. The world cannot protect us, the world cannot provide for us, the world cannot save us, only the LORD can protect us, only the LORD can provide for us, and only the LORD can save us.

I have considered myself a Christian for most of my life. The reality is, I was a selective Christian, if you could call me a Christian at all. I was a Christian when it served me and I had my own version of Christianity based on what I wanted to believe and what was convenient. My version of Christianity was a perverse twisting and melding of what I thought to be reasonable and what I liked. So, I chose to believe the Bible was a history book only, not a handbook for how I am to live my life today. If there was something I didn’t like in the Bible, I chalked it up to “well that was a different time, that doesn’t apply to our time and therefore, it doesn’t apply to me.” So, I believed you need only be a “good person” to go to heaven and that no matter what your faith was, whether you were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Atheist you would go to heaven when you died as long as you were a “good person” at heart. Oh, and I can’t tell you how much I struggled with the fact that I am to submit to my husband as stated in Ephesians 5:22, Colossians 3:18 and in 1 Peter 3:1. I had spent most of my adult life trying to be a strong, independent woman, taking great pains to establish myself as an equal in the workplace and at home and here I am told I am to submit! How foolish and conceited I was to think that I could re-write the Word of God, that somehow I knew best, I knew better than God, that I was a good person and I could somehow save myself just by who I was. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized, by the grace of God, how ignorant I had been and how far from the truth I had strayed. I now know that it takes much more strength to submit to my husband than to defy him and while I still have those times when I struggle with God’s Word, I know that the answers I seek in my life can be found in the Word and by seeking counsel from God. I was a stubborn child, but God was patient with me and when I finally tired of doing things my way, He was gracious and showed mercy on me.

So often we choose to be selective Christians, we pick and choose what we like, what is convenient and discard all the rest, all the things that are challenging or unpleasant; choosing instead the wisdom of the world. We are stubborn children, fighting against our Father, believing what we want as truth, believing we can enjoy the pleasures of the world and of the flesh and still have salvation. We want the path to salvation to be broad, all inclusive and tolerant, but the truth is, the path is narrow and only those who walk that narrow path, those who are born again of the spirit are saved. God has given us His Word as a handbook, an owner’s manual for this life. But an owner’s manual is only helpful if you open it, read it and apply it. Are you opening the Bible, reading the scriptures and applying God’s Word to your life today?

COACH'S CALL TO ACTION

• How are you a stubborn child or a selective Christian?
  
• What is the lie that you are choosing to believe?
  
• What is the truth?
  
• What will you do to walk in truth today, this week, for the rest of your life?

Copyright © 2009 Radiant Sun Life Coaching. All rights reserved.

REMOVING THE WEEDS

“If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”

-Matthew 5:29-30

Wow, this seems harsh doesn’t it? If your eye causes you to stumble or to sin, you are to pluck it out? You can’t be serious! In years past, that was the way I responded to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:29 & 30. It is kind of funny when you think of it, we struggle with removing that from our life which causes us to sin, but we have no problem removing the weeds that threaten to take over our flower bed. Our sin is a weed that threatens to take over our life and choke all that is good and beautiful causing them to wither and die.

So, we weed. But how do we weed? This may sound like a silly question, but let’s think about this a little. When we weed, do we trim off the top or do we dig out the root and remove the source? Well if we don’t want that weed to keep coming back, we remove the weed at the root, we remove the source and that weed can no longer live. However, if we were to trim the top of the weed off leaving the root, not only will the weed grow back but it still has the potential to spread and take over the flower bed steeling nutrients from the beautiful flowers.

We all have weeds in our life that threaten to take over. As you may know, I have a really difficult time with television. Most people can watch a show or two on television and turn it off when the time comes. Well, not me. For me, television is a weed that I have tried time and time again to trim without removing it completely. However, it doesn’t take long for that television weed to take over my life and I find myself choosing television over my relationship with my spouse, my relationship with my children, and most importantly my relationship with God. I now know that television must be removed from my life completely, since any amount of television keeps me from being the person God wants me to be, the person He has called me to be.

So often we try to work around the things in our life that cause us to stumble and sin, without removing them completely from our life. Like our eye or our hand, there is something we don’t really want to give up or remove completely because we rather like having it. While this may seem to work for a time, there is always a point when we stumble...often when we are weak and weary. But if we totally remove the things from our life that tempt us to sin, if we remove the root, it is much easier to keep from stumbling and sinning when we are weak and weary. If we fail to remove the cause of our sin at the root, not only will we continue to sin, but, like the weed in the flower bed, that sin has the potential to spread and take over; thus moving us further and further away from Jesus, further away from God. He is our light, without Him we will surely die. I need the light that He provides in my life, so I want to be moving closer to God, not further from Him...how about you?





COACH'S CALL TO ACTION

• What is the weed in your flower bed of life?


• Where is the source or the root of this weed?


• What would removing this weed at the root look like for you?


• When will you do your weeding?

Copyright © 2009 Radiant Sun Life Coaching. All rights reserved.

ALL TO THE GLORY OF GOD

Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

-1 Corinthians 10:31

This verse resonates so strongly with me and I find it truly sums up who I want to be for God. I want to do all things for His glory; I want to live my life for the glory of God. For the first time since I have come to know Christ and the knee injury the Lord used to bring me to Him, I am participating in a church softball league. Now, I have always been ultra competitive and the desire of my heart when I was participating in athletics was to be great at whatever sport I was playing; I wanted others to take notice of me and recognize how good I was with praise and recognition, trophies and awards. So, when I signed up for the church softball league, I was more than a little concerned at how I would behave on the field and where my heart would be. I wanted to have a heart set on Christ, a heart that desired only to glorify the Lord on and off the field, but I was afraid that my old self would come out, that I would seek the glory, praise and honor for myself and not for the Lord.

Because of the limitations I have with my knee and the fact that I hadn’t played softball in at least six years, I didn’t expect too much and I approached our first practice from a place of total humility. However, by the end of practice as I had received encouragement and accolades from others on the team, I found it to be more and more difficult to squash my pride and my hunger for glory. I noticed that prideful seed of darkness begin to take root and grow in my heart. Then during our third game of the season, I noticed that prideful seed had grown into a weed that was taking over and choking out the light. I found myself getting frustrated at myself and my teammates, getting angry at the official, comparing my athletic abilities to others and simply having a bad attitude in general. As I drove home from the game that night, I realized that I had a heart issue and that I was not doing all to the glory of God on that field. I contemplated quitting the league, but I knew if I did I would not confront and deal with my heart issue and it would only surface again the next time I tried to participate in any athletic competition; this weed was not going away unless it was taken out at the root. Yet, I knew that I could not overcome my prideful heart on my own, I had already tried and failed, but God can and He is. “My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:26) So, for the first time in my life, I am learning what it means to be a witness for Christ in athletics and what it looks like to do all to the glory of God on the athletic field. I am still a work in progress, but I am confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in me will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

So often, we long for that encouragement, praise and recognition from others. It makes us feel good when others acknowledge us, our efforts, and our abilities. But Paul reminds us who we are to seek to please in Galatians 1:10, “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.” My prayer for you today is that you would not seek after the praise and recognition from man, but would instead seek to do the will of God, bringing honor and glory to Him in all things and knowing your treasure awaits you in heaven.

COACH'S CALL TO ACTION

• Where in your life, are you not doing all to the glory of God?
• What would it look like to do all to the glory of God here?
• What is the weed that needs to be taken out at its root?

Copyright © 2009 Radiant Sun Life Coaching. All rights reserved.

LORD, I AM NOT...

Then Moses said to the LORD, "O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." So the LORD said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say."
-Exodus 4:10-12

It is interesting to me to see how Moses responded to God's calling on his life. God had big plans to use Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. Yet, when the Lord revealed Himself and His purpose for Moses' life, Moses responded with, "O my Lord, I am not..." as if to say, "Lord, I think you have made a mistake. If you haven't noticed, I don't speak very well." Worldly wisdom would tell us Moses lacked self-confidence or had low self-esteem because he had a speech impediment, but what does the Lord say to this? "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say." (Exodus 4:11-12) God knew Moses wasn't eloquent; He knew Moses was slow of speech and slow of tongue, yet Moses was the one God chose to speak to Pharaoh and lead His people out of Egypt. This reminds me of 2 Corinthians 12:9 when the Lord responded to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." God often calls us to do things that are bigger than anything we could ever imagine doing; bigger than anything we are even capable of doing in and of ourselves because of our weaknesses. Yet that is exactly why God wants to use us, because in that weakness God's strength is made perfect.

While I truly desire to respond like Isaiah when the Lord called him, "Here am I! Send me.", I find I often respond instead like Moses, "O my Lord, I am not..." My natural instinct is to look to myself; to my own abilities and doubt that I can do what the Lord has called me to. Instead of looking to the Lord and trusting that He will be with me and teach me what to say or do, I look to self and I doubt. The issue here is, not only do I doubt myself and my own abilities, but ultimately I doubt God and His ability to accomplish His purpose through me. When did I forget that God is the God of the universe? When did I forget that He parted the Red Sea? When did I forget that He created the heavens and the earth? Without realizing it, I have placed God in a box that only allows Him to work within the parameters that I can conceive. But God is so much bigger than that, He cannot be contained by any box I can conceive and while He doesn't need me to accomplish His purpose, He does use me for His purpose that His strength would be made perfect in my weakness and that He would be glorified.

God is calling you too and He wants to use you to accomplish His purpose. How will you respond?
COACH'S CALL TO ACTION

• What is the big thing the Lord is calling you to?
• Where have you put God in a box?
• How would things change if you stopped looking to self and started looking to God?
  

Copyright © 2009 Radiant Sun Life Coaching. All rights reserved.

HE WILL DELIVER YOU

“And the king, when he heard these words, was greatly displeased with himself, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him; and he labored till the going down of the sun to deliver him. Then these men approached the king, and said to the king, “Know, O king, that it is the law of the Medes and Persians that no decree or statute which the king establishes may be changed.” So the king gave the command, and they brought Daniel and cast him into the den of lions. But the king spoke, saying to Daniel, “Your God, whom you serve continually, He will deliver you.”’

-Daniel 6:14-16

King Darius was tormented with finding a way to save Daniel from being thrown into the lions den. He struggled with this burden until time had run out and he had to follow through with the commitment he had made by signing the decree. Only after his own efforts had been exhausted did King Darius surrender Daniel’s fate to the Lord, knowing only God could save Daniel now.

So often, when I am in a tough place, usually by my own doing, I find myself struggling to find a solution. This struggle creates stress and anxiety in my life; and as long as I struggle with this burden, the stress and anxiety grows, sleep evades me, food becomes my comfort and my family avoids me as I become more and more difficult to be around. When we try to carry our burdens alone, we fail miserably. We cannot deliver ourselves or others, only God can deliver us. Our only true option is to turn to the Lord for help, but we must first come to the end of ourselves and surrender it all to God. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Our first instinct is to “solve” our own problems; to come up with our own “solutions” and it is only when we have exhausted all other options that we finally take it to the Lord and surrender it to Him. We know that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13) and we can do nothing without Christ (John 15:5), yet we turn to our flesh for answers rather than taking it to the Lord immediately. We rely on our own wisdom and knowledge to “logically” find a solution, but if we were truly looking at things logically we would know that we cannot find the answer in and of ourselves. We willingly choose to struggle under our burdens until the weight becomes too much to bear and then we offer it up to the Lord. Wow, think of the stress, the anxiety, the sleepless nights that could be avoided if we took everything to the Lord in prayer first; if we surrendered all our burdens (big and small) immediately to the Lord how much more peace we would have and how much lighter our burden. I challenge you to take everything to the Lord in prayer today and notice the rewards.

COACH'S CALL TO ACTION

• What is the burden are you carrying?
• How long are you willing to struggle under the weight of that burden?
• When will you seek the Lord and cast your burdens at His feet?

Copyright © 2009 Radiant Sun Life Coaching. All rights reserved.

IT IS NOT IN ME

Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him quickly out of the dungeon; and he shaved, changed his clothing, and came to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that you can understand a dream, to interpret it.” So Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace.”
-Genesis 41:14-16

I love Joseph’s response to Pharaoh when he is called to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace.” Joseph knew his place, he knew that he was only a vessel for the Lord’s work and that his gift to interpret dreams was not of his flesh, but came directly from the Lord. Joseph is a great example of how we as the body of Christ are to humble ourselves and give the glory to God for the work He is doing through us and the gifts He gives us.

As you may know, God recently gave me “Transcend Your Weight: Building on the Rock” (a 12-week Biblical weight loss program that helps individuals overcome their struggles with weight loss by building on the Rock of Jesus Christ, that they would be set free from the bondage they are in). I know that some people look at me strangely or think I am off my rocker when I tell them that this program was not of me, but it was totally God. But I knew that the completed work sitting before me was bigger and better than anything I could ever do in and of myself. It was beyond my capabilities; it was not in me, but it had come from God. Yet even knowing this, there were times when I found myself doubting this program was good enough. I started to notice fear creeping in; I was afraid of what others would think about “my” program, afraid of being rejected by the church and my friends, afraid no one would want what I had to offer, etc. Then I would get that ever so subtle reminder from God; that little tap on the shoulder or the whisper in my ear, “But this isn’t yours, it is Mine. It did not come from you, but from Me.” At some point, without even realizing it, I had taken ownership of the gift God had given me; I had made it “my program”. All my fears and doubts came down to the fact that I had outwardly given God the glory for this program when I would tell others about it, but I had not truly given God the glory in my heart. In my heart, I still saw it as “mine” and all my doubts and fears came from the doubts I rightly had in my own abilities. However, once I gave to God what was His all along and really gave Him the glory for what He had created, my doubts and fears disappeared because I knew that there was nothing to doubt, nothing of this world to fear. God was on the throne, He was in control and this program was and is His; if I were to continue to doubt or fear, I would be doubting the power of God and doubting His perfection…how dare I.

The world tells us we need more self-confidence, more self-esteem, more self…the reality is we need to stop looking to self at all! We are called to die to self and live for Christ. Our confidence doesn’t come from ourselves and our abilities, but from God! We don’t need self-confidence and self-esteem, we can be confident in God; in His abilities, in His perfection, in His plan and purpose for our lives. Isn’t it great when we can say with confidence, “It is not in me, God…”?

COACH'S CALL TO ACTION

• Complete this statement, “If only I had more…”?
  
• What would it look like to die to self and live for Christ?
  
• Complete the following statement, “It is not in me, God…”
  

Copyright © 2009 Radiant Sun Life Coaching. All rights reserved.