News You Can Use

I received a startling, but affirming tweet the other day about a report in Men's Health Magazine. Houston is the 9th fattest city in America and Texas has 5 cites on the list. You may have already heard about this and said...so what? I live in Pearland, LaMarque or League City, not Houston. Can We Talk?!   

What is happening in the world as a result of our uncontrolled appetites and flesh feeding frenzy should be a concern for everyone. It is a concern for this passion project because I know that many of you, your families, friends, and communities are affected by this epidemic. We are eating are ourselves to death! As a society, we are fatter than we have ever been in history. People are dying from weight related health issues, which touches us all and should concern us all.  

Certainly, we have to examine and determine the worthiness of the information before we go out and make changes in our lives based on that information. Examine how (criteria) the information was gathered for the report and determine the actions you need to take for you and your family.

WE already know that we need to live healthier lives. We really don't need the report to tell us that. God has already spoken and I pray that as you are reading this you thinking of new ways to improve on what you are already doing for your temple...to the delight of God, I might add!

I wanted to share this with you so that you know that we are on the track and to encourage you to press forward, incorporating more healthy lifestyle changes into your daily routines. Still drinking soda? Give it up! There is no nutritional value in soda. Check out the sugar content of your cola. Not to pick on the soda drinkers...Are you smoking, a fast food junky, or sedentary? Make some changes that can impact the rest of your life and bless generations to come. We will be blessed, our children will be blessed, and our children's children will be blessed if we follow God's leading, choosing Him. That is His promise!

If you haven't gotten started with your health and fitness lifestyle yet or you are having trouble with consistency email me. Remember to send your temple related questions and comments. Let's talk and pray about how to stay faithful to this journey through the power of God. I am passionate and committed to seeing you live your best and blessed life...a healthier life to the glory and honor of God.

Your body is the temple of the Living God! Live Well in His Name!   

Oh! My Aching Muscles!!

God day everyone! I hope that you are enjoying life to the fullest! This is what God desires for us. The response from our first communication was overwhelming. Our community is growing! Please make sure you forward as appropriate. Our first in house clinic is in the works. I’ll be giving away 2 personal training sessions with none other than Minister Ronald Marshall of The One Training, LLC. Check him out here. http://www.theonetraining.com/

We also have a testimony from a community member who is winning the war on diabetes through faith, diet, and exercise. Stay tuned! Take the Diabetes Risk Assessment on this blog page. We have great question today which many of us have dealt with and still deal with if we are keeping our workouts fresh and meaningful. Send questions and sign up to be on the distribution list at DearAqua4HisTemple@gmail.com

Dear Aqua

Is there anything I can do to help my sore muscles in between exercising/strength training?

Dear Operation…

Check out this great article on WebMD about muscle soreness. The link is provided below. You've heard it said, "no pain, no gain". I don’t advocate punishing our temples for the sake of fitness. But we do have to push our temples past our personal comfort zones to see results. With that said, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, soreness goes with the program. I still get sore if I do a new activity that my muscles haven't "seen" before or "seen" in a while. Not real good news, but the good news IS the muscle is being worked (getting stronger) and conditioned! As long as it is only mild to moderate pain you should be okay to keep exercising, resting the muscles when you are not exercising as much as possible. Heat (hot pack or warm bath), ice, and stretching may also offer some relief. Make sure you are stretching before and after the workout routine. You can also take some over the counter pain relief, an anti-inflammatory. Please see recommendations from the article about more severe pain.

Ah, now what would Jesus say (WWJS) about our sore muscles? Our faith is like a muscle. Just as the muscle must be stretched to the limit of it's endurance in order to grow and be strong, so does our faith. God stretches our faith through trials and testing so that we become strong faithful believers. The pain we feel as we go through testing is meant to draw us nearer to God increasing our faith, love, and dependence on Him, that pain is not meant to move us away from Him. (Side note: The pain we feel after exercise will also draw us closer to God too! Haha! I know I called on Him many times when I was trying to climb a flight of stairs when I started working out). The pain we feel when we train our muscles is also not meant to deter us from exercising but to keep us motivated and moving forward, knowing that the benefit and the victory, just like with God’s testing is on the other side.

Don't let those sore muscles deter you, it is natural. You are in training. You are doing a great job! Celebrate the soreness! Your victory is on the other side!

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/sore-muscles-keep-exercising?page=2

Your body is the temple of the Living God! Live Well in His Name! 

An Unfolding Relationship With God- Guest Blogger Michelle Copeland

God morning! Yes, it has been awhile since I posted or even had a guest blogger. I wanted to share this email (daily inspiration) that I received from my sistah and friend, who just happens to also be my sister-in-law for more than 20 years. (My brother is a blessed man!)

Michelle shares her perspective on hearing from God. This piece spoke to me because so many people ask when we talk about hearing from God " How do I know it is God speaking?" Well, you have know Him and be in relationship with Him to hear Him speak and know that it is Him (and not your own ideas and desires leading you). So the next questions might be " How do I prepare to hear from God and What do I do once I have heard?" I am glad you asked, Can We Talk?!

Good morning saints! In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He will direct thy path.

''The way of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, which shines even brighter until the full bright of day''.(Proverbs 4:18)

I've come to know that one of the best things about hearing God's voice is that it is progressive. It's not a skill that we can master; it can be an unfolding relationship we enjoy. As the relationship unfolds, we learn to communicate with him more often, more deeply, and more effectively; we learn to follow the holy-spirit more closely; we learn to pray with more confidence; and we learn to hear His voice more clearly.

Have you ever been happy in your relationship with God, feeling that is was going quite well for a while and then, for no apparent reason, you start to feel restless, bored, distracted and unsatisfied? Have you ever felt a nagging in your spirit that something was just not right about your fellowship with God, or you had a stirring inside of you to do somethings differently? Most of the time when we experience such impressions, it's the Holy-Spirit trying to tell us something.

The inner man (your spirit, the part of you that communes with God) knows when something is not right in your prayer life, because the Holy- Spirit lives within your spirit and will let you know when something needs to change in your relationship with God. When this happens you must to have it in your mind to be obedient, and be bold enough to follow the Holy-Spirit. God knows when we are ready for more and is urging us on to a deeper place of communing with Him and hearing His voice. Our great and wonderful God is always on the move and He desires us to move with Him. God would not have our relationship with Him to remain the same. I'm learning for myself through studying His word, that there is so much more about God that I must learn in order to better my relationship with Him.

Knowing God and being able to hear from Him is the way for us to know what plans He has for us.

How is your relationship with God progressing? Can you hear Him when He speaks? When He speaks are you listening? When He speaks are you bold in the way you respond to the Holy-Spirit? Most importantly, Are you choosing to be in the light of His righteousness and obedience ?

In God's Love, Sis. Michelle

Michelle and her daughter, Cierra

Pruned for Greatness! Part II

Every spring, the landscaper prunes the overgrown landscaping, beautifies, and refreshes my yard for the new season. One year, in my busyness and frugalness, (hey…settle down there was a recession) I skipped a year and decided I would wait until the following spring. During this time, we had an incredibly rainy spring and fall season so the foliage in the front yard literally looked like...a jungle. The scenery had lost its beauty and splendor, the plants lost their shape, some of the more delicate plantings died from a lack of sunlight, and even some of the larger plantings which once were so healthy showed signs of dis-ease and death (I think you know where I going with this).

Last time we chatted, we talked about God pruning us for our greatness and for His glory. But WHY does God HAVE TO prune us? I’m glad you asked! Can we talk?!

When a gardener prunes a plant or tree pruning is necessary for many reasons. Some of the reason include…to train or direct growth, control size and shape, improve fruit quality (by increasing light penetration), remove diseased or storm damaged branches, and aesthetics or beauty.

God, the Master Gardener (and oh, what a Master He is) prunes us for many of the same reasons. God uses pruning to train and direct our growth. He is concerned about us becoming mature, complete, and lacking nothing (James 1:3-5).

One of the ways that God prunes us to control our size and shape as believers is through humility. God may prune away arrogance and pride from our lives so that humility might grow and in fact abound in its place. When we humble ourselves before the Lord, we live and learn true obedience and He promises to lift us up in due season (1 Peter 5:6).

Fruit quality…this is my favorite reason for pruning! God prunes us to improve the quality of the fruit we bear. Just as the gardener, prunes long hanging branches so the shorter hanging branches can receive more light, God prunes us to increase the Light penetration (Jesus) in our hearts, minds, and spirits so that we might bear good healthy fruit.

“Future fruit is always the result of present obedience.”

Many of us will really love this reason for pruning. God prunes us to remove the dis-ease and storm damaged remnants (past hurts) that haunt us and keep us from moving forward mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. When the storms of life come (and they will come), God can take away all the pain, all the heartache, and dry our tears through the pruning process. (Hallelujah!) The key here is we have to choose to let IT go, so that God can take IT away.

Finally, beloved God prunes us so that we are beautiful to behold. Not beauty in the sense of vanity or debonair good looks (although I know you got it going on) but the beauty that comes from within, from a heart that longs for God and a heart that loves the things and the people of God. We must love what and who God loves! Pruning makes this love and this beauty possible.

When the landscaper finished pruning the landscaping, I walked outside and noticed the beauty again, almost for the first time; I noticed some of the greenery, the various shapes and sizes of the plants, and the fall colors. The same yard that I passed everyday and hardly gave a glance captured my attention and was fresh and new again. We are the same…when we allow God to prune us people look at us differently. They notice our beauty and our fresh new anointing.
In Part III we will talk about WHAT God prunes FROM our lives. Hope to see you later!
 

From the PALACE to the PIT

A friend/colleague and I had been discussing her leaving one job for another job. I had some inside information about the job she was seeking and shared that information with her. I told her that there would certainly be some challenges associated with her moving into this new position. She said, “I am up for the challenge, I just don’t want to move from the palace to the pit”. From that statement, you can probably deduce that she has a good job. (You might be asking why she is considering leaving) The issue is she cannot move to her next career aspiration by staying in her present job. The “pit” may be the stepping stone to her future.

I started thinking about Joseph. Many of us are accustomed to hearing the story about Joseph moving from the pit to the palace (Genesis Chapters 37-39). However, what many of us may not remember from Joseph’s story was that Joseph’s life prior to being in the pit was NOT glamorous. Though he dreamed of greatness, he came from meager beginnings. He was a shepherd. He was placed in a pit, sold into slavery, lived in the palace as servant, then wrongfully imprisoned before he realized his dreams of greatness BACK to palace living as a ruler…living out his God breathed destiny. This journey for his life was not by happenstance. (Nothing ever is with God).

Many of us have never experienced this type of hardship prior to reaching our place of abundant living. Certainly some of us had (have) some difficulties in our lives. Largely though, we are richer than we have ever been. We drive nice cars, we live in fine houses, we have maids, yardmen, nannies, private schools for our children, and the like. We are college educated and have extraordinary earning potential and our children are college educated. Nonetheless, when things are going well (our palace) and God changes our position we cannot fathom how to get up and go on from that place. We find ourselves in the pit.

If we find ourselves in the pit after “palace living”, we must use this time wisely. God is preparing and equipping us for our future. He could not get us to our future best and blessed place (Kingdom living) from where we were. God wanted to do something in us and with us that could not be accomplished in our palace. The pit is a stepping stone to your greatness. We can use it to our advantage or we can just wallow around in the pit. What a waste! I have heard it said like this “time in the pit is JUST time in the pit” if we do not get everything out of it… learning all the lessons, passing all the tests, growing, and progressing. We should not spend our time wondering why God moved us. This revelation may never come or may be revealed months to years later. We do not have time to spend and waste wondering what if, what did I do wrong, what was God thinking (you get the point). The time in the pit is useful to strengthen our character, increase our faith, and deepen our love for and dependence on God.

In my conversation with my friend, I reminded her that it was in Joseph’s toughest times that he was truly blessed, experiencing the power and favor of the Lord. God used this time in the pit, in the palace, and the prison to prepare and equip him for kingdom living and ultimately for his reign as governor. Joseph remained faithful squeezing all of the lessons out of these difficult times and passing all the tests. God can and He will bless us in our struggles (in the pit). If we are going to realize our dreams of greatness, we have to reconsider how we spend and the value of those times in the pit.

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