I'm pretty preoccupied with my health right now, frankly pretty unhappy with it, and so this is what's on my mind today. So that's what this post is about; both my spiritual and physical health. Let me tell you what that has to do with the above title...
I am so blessed to attend a great church that freely teaches great tools for spiritual growth. One of these tools is called the Gospel of Wholeness. Think: accountability with a healthy dose of critical thinking built on a Biblical foundation in areas most people hide or ignore... Or this is how I'd describe it today. Here's how I found out about the gospel of wholeness:
In early 2004, Hubby & I decided we needed to diet and a friend had gotten great results on the Atkins diet. So we started Atkins (which does work, but it's not good for you, and it's hard and who likes hard things?) and after one week I found out I was pregnant. Yes! No more Atkins! But hubby kept on it and was a whole new person, or half a person, when baby Grace arrived. (I'd like to throw in a hot picture here, but that's not what this post is about!) And he looked and felt so great that that should have motivated me to make some positive changes, but I was still nursing and baby needs some Dairy Queen, too, you know?
Fast forward to Fall/Winter, 2005. My poor habits had sabotaged hubby and now we were both needing to do something about this same topic. So we kicked around the idea of doing Atkins again. I didn't want to. I still don't want to. 1. Because it was unpleasant. No, because it sucked! Really. And B. because I just felt like the state of my body was the result of more than a diet choice and Atkins or not, I felt like there was some other component in this whole thing that I needed to get a handle on. I confided this to a friend while I huffed and puffed to keep up with her on a lunchtime walk and she exclaimed about how I needed this Gospel of Wholeness as she had just gone to a GoW workshop. And so I got the CDs of the workshop and we started going over this stuff together.
It's life changing. I want to be clear here: this is not a new Gospel. GoW is a set of tools that I was never taught on how to go deeper, learn more, get healing, receive from God... I was actually pretty angry when I heard some of this stuff the first time - why didn't anyone ever tell me some of this!!! (deep, cleansing breath....)
Now I have a friend going through some pretty tough stuff and I am thinking about going through GoW with her. She's a newer Christ follower and I know this stuff will help her, and just thinking about it is helping me. Which brings me to the title of this post (thanks, if you've made it through this whole story!). I need a refresher myself! As soon as I started thinking about doing this, 'empty well' started going through my head. This phrase comes from Jeremiah 2:13.
My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
And I know the Spirit is calling to me to look at my actions. Instead of going to God, who has everything I need and only the best in mind for me, I continually choose to literally feed my emotions. Happy? Let's celebrate (with food)! Sad? Feed that sorrow. Bored? Just eat... You get the idea. I go to empty, dusty, echoing wells to meet my needs instead of the Father who is the Spring of Living Water! Which is just wrong. When I lay it out like that it seems so obvious which choice is the right one, it's just not as clear in each situation.
So I'm working on it. And if I blog about it, I may feel just a bit of accountability. I'm going to pull those discs out and start going through them again and I'll pass on the tools to you, too. I just know God wants to bless your (our) socks off!
In the meantime, what are some of your empty wells? And how're they working for you?
No comments:
Post a Comment