Healthy Living Devotional – Is Stinking Thinking Sabotaging Your Health?

 

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Healthy Living Devotional – Is Stinking Thinking Sabotaging Your Health?

Are you thinking about how fat your thighs are? Do you mentally flog yourself for eating dessert? You can retrain your brain, stop that stinking thinking and stop sabotaging your health. Learn how to meditate on Him, His love for you and be set free with this healthy living devotional.

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What are you meditating on? Food? Diets? Exercise? How much you hate your body? Is stinking thinking sabotaging your health?

There is a fine line between obsession and meditation. Obsession is an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind. Meditation is to engage in mental exercise for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness. To reflect or ponder.

Meditation is on purpose. You are purposely pondering a thought over and over in order to reach awareness. There is a goal to meditation.

Obsession, however, is a thought that is preoccupying your mind. You don’t want it there, but it is intruding into your thoughts for the sole purpose of causing you misery.

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John 10:10 A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. (MSG) 

The Bible tells us we have an enemy and that enemy doesn’t want us to live a healthy fulfilled life. He doesn’t want us to know that we are a cherished child of God, but you have to remind yourself of that fact. You have to meditate on God’s love and provision for you.

He tells us how to do it –

Ephesians 6:11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. (ESN)

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He explains what the armor of God is –

Ephesians 6:14-17 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (ESN)

I like the way the Message Bible breaks it down – “Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You’ll need them throughout your life. God’s Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.” (MSG)

These words were very important to my 125 lb weight loss (you can read about my story here).  It reminded me that I have an enemy that doesn’t want me to be healthy. He whispers in my ear that I’m tired, my back hurts, I’ll always be fat, people will look at me in the gym, etc.  Do you hear similar things?

You can decide to meditate on His Love for you.

I had to DECIDE to stop listening to those negative messages. I had to become DETERMINED to take care of my health and body.

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You can DECIDE, too. You can begin by meditating on His word and what He says about you.

 

Psalm 136:26 Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is in your mist, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Romans 5:8 God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:25 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

1 John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.

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Choose your thoughts wisely.

You can meditate on how much He loves you instead of how “fat you are.”  You can ponder all of the blessings you have instead of “I want to eat cookies.” You can whisper thanks and list all of the attributes of God instead of listing your negative attributes.

 

The battle is in our minds and we have to realize that we don’t have to replay negative thoughts over and over.

You can think on purpose about how far you have come, how you are making healthier choices, how you are going to feel when you reach your monthly goal, etc.

Retrain your brain.

It takes practice to retrain your thinking, so give yourself time.  Here’s a few tips that helped me:

  1. Memorizing one scripture that you can repeat when your thoughts are leading down the wrong path.
  2. At the end of the day, write down all of the ways you saw God “winking” at you, i.e. a friend contacted you that you had been thinking about, a surprise flower popped up in your garden, or maybe someone spoke an encouraging word to you.
  3. Guided meditation (here’s my cd). You can listen, relax your body and mind, then focus on your intention.

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You can retrain your thinking and meditate on how much you are loved, how you were created in His image and how your body is a temple. Ask Him to help you. Ask Him to show you how much He loves you and how important you are to Him. He will.

Remember to – “Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.” (MSG)

 

Need a prayer for a healthy mind and self image? Click here.

 

Praying for you and Intentionally Eat,

Cindy

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