Here’s a scary statistic: Over one-third of our children are overweight or obese. This number has tripled in the last two decades! Here are some practical ways to help them to lose weight:

When they are teens or older, don’t focus on their weight or what they eat. Instead, focus on yourself as you…
1. Eat in a healthy way and start exercising daily for 30 minutes.
2. Write down what you eat.
3. Get the junk food out of our houses (even if this is unpopular).
4. Cook in a healthy way (even if others don’t like it at first).
5. Encourage family meals almost every night—where you sit down together to eat.
6. Provide lots of green vegetables and fruits so that no one will be hungry.
7. Don’t lecture overweight kids about their weight or preach to them about healthy eating.
8. Journal your feelings and have a daily Quiet Time with the Lord. Don’t hide the fact that you do, but don’t brag about it either.
9. Invite your kids on fun activities that encourage exercise such as hikes in the woods, walks in the park, swimming, skating, golf or bowling. Do other not-so-fun things with them such as gardening, washing the car, parking far away from the store, taking the stairs instead of the escalator, walking briskly in the mall.
10. Pray for your children to have a desire to lose weight and make other healthy lifestyle changes. And pray that as they see you lose weight and feel better, they will want to join you.

When your overweight children are young, you have more control over them, so also do some of these things:
1. Teach them how to read labels and make healthy choices. Whether they’re eating out or at home, make a game of finding food “bargains.”
2. Teach them how to have a brief Quiet Time almost every day. If they can’t write yet, help them to draw pictures of their prayers and Bible verses. Help them also to journal their feelings by drawing pictures of things that upset them.
3. Give them non-food rewards when they do something good. Don’t reward by giving them their favorite foods, punish them by taking favorite foods away or calm them with food.
4. When having family celebrations, focus on the fun of fellowship instead of food.
5. Teach them how to cook in a healthy way, but never put them on a diet or force them to eat something they don’t like.
6. Limit their TV, computer or video-game time. One good rule (but not very popular at first) might be to allow them an hour of TV, computer or video games for each hour they spend doing sports, riding their bikes, or playing outside.
7. Don’t tell them that they can never have sugar or other junk food, but limit it. Supply yummy substitutes instead.
8. If they say that they’re hungry between meals, offer low calorie snacks; for example, small packs of raisins, fruits, baby carrots, individual packages of low-fat cheese and yogurt.
9. Never shame them for overeating, gaining weight or making unhealthy choices. Give them lots of hugs and compliments and let them know that you love them.
10. Don’t focus too much on food, diets and weight. Let healthy eating and exercise be a normal part of every day.

The difference these changes can make in your life and the lives of your children will amaze you! Place checks next to the items that you want to try and start making some changes today!

Adapted from Guided By Him…to a Thinner, Not So Stressed-Out You! by Julie Morris and Sarah Morris Cherry.

In January, we started looking at Biblical prophecies God predicted as the End Times approach—prophecies that might come true right before our very eyes. The first prophecy we looked at was Israel is back in the Promised Land—just since 1948, and some people from that generation are still living today.

Other prophecies seem to imply that mass communication—visual, not just audio—will need to exist for them to be fulfilled. Today we have radio, television, and the internet. These things did not exist much more than a century ago.

Here are two examples of prophecies that might show world-wide visual communications are needed in End Times prophecy, visual communication that only became available in recent decades:

Revelation 11:7-10: “Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days men from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.”

Revelation 17:8: “The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come.”

It’s true these events might be shown on the evening news or carried “Live” as breaking news. But did you know that you can watch events in Israel live right now?

Currently live web cams broadcasting 24/7/365 overlook the Wailing Wall, also known as the Western Wall, in Jerusalem. You can also view live footage from other areas around the Temple Mount, such as Wilson’s Arch. You can find the link on the internet if you do a search for kotel cam.

Kotel is the Hebrew word for the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which is a part of, or all of, the western wall of the ancient Jewish temple that was destroyed by the Roman, Titus, in 70 AD.

Isn’t it fascinating that today, through computers, laptops, tablets, and even smart phones, we can watch live in real time, at any time we want to, what is happening at the foot of the mount of the very Temple in Jerusalem we’ve read about in our Bibles?! Will we, or those who are alive at the time, gaze upon the two dead bodies of those prophets via internet? Will unbelievers see the Beast on their smart phones?

What do you think? Is this prophecy in preparation to be fulfilled right before our very eyes?

We have triplets!!! My husband and I are proud parents of three baby mockingbirds. I’m sure that sometime in your life you have experienced the joy of watching the maternal care of one of God’s creatures. There is no training camp, no apprentice program, and no how-to baby book for these moms, yet they seem to know what to do.

I have heard many mothers say that something happened to them when their baby was placed in their arms for the first time. They didn’t have all of the answers, and especially the first time moms were afraid they would do something wrong. Yet, they instinctively knew their main role: to love and care for that child with a depth of love that can only be described as unconditional.

In the book of I John, John was an older man when he wrote boldly of begetting and birth in the passage listed below. He tells of the intimate relationship between Christ, God the Father, and the Christian. He explains that the “seed” of God’s nature is placed within each believer allowing that seed to be nurtured until it becomes a mature tree in the likeness of God. Verse 1 tells us who we are- God’s child, verse 2 tells us we are becoming reflections of God; verses 16-18 shows us how we are to respond to the gift of God’s love. Love is an action, not a feeling, and He wants us to learn from God’s love how to sacrificially love others.

PRAYER: Thank You for being my Heavenly Father, for showing me Your great love on a daily basis through the gifts of my relationships. I Praise You for placing the seed within me that allows me to become more like You every day. Help me learn from Your example how to love more sacrificially and more unconditionally today and every day.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:1-3, 16-18 NIV).

Sometimes love looks a lot like ham.

It did the day someone gave us a third-hand ham. Oh, it was new, fresh, still in its original packaging, but it had traveled through two other homes before it came to rest at ours.

Its first owner won the ham in a raffle. He doesn’t eat ham. So he gave it to a friend. But the friend insisted the ham was outrageously too big for his small family. So he gave it to us. For us, it was an answer to prayer for something nice to serve at a big family gathering. Spiral ham, no less.
Now that I think about it, the ham was a fourth-hand ham, if you count the people who donated it for the raffle.

Rather than viewing it as the dreaded “regifting,” we saw the journey that ham took as a journey of love.

It made me stop to think about a subject that the Lord often uses to reveal more of His genuine heart toward His people. Toward me.

I’ve marveled before at the feeding of the 5,000 where Jesus took five small loaves of bread and two small fish and turned it into a feast for the multitude…with twelve basketsful left over! But fourth-hand ham stirred me to consider what might have happened with those leftovers.

Did the disciples throw the leftovers away? It doesn’t fit the picture of how God operates. Did Jesus instruct His disciples to take those baskets out into the villages and find homeless or hungry people who would receive the scraps with gratitude? That seems more likely. Once Jesus touched anything, it wasn’t worthless. His leftovers, His glances, the dust-caked hem of His robe brought people in contact with His mighty, healing power.

Someday I may meet a new friend in heaven who starts her story with, “I wasn’t there that day, for the feeding of the 5,000. But my family was the recipient of one of the baskets of leftovers. I’ve never tasted anything so delicious. It fed us for a long time and not only kept us from starvation, but it showed us that God cared about us, even us.”

What do I have—in its original packaging, fresh, valuable—that might need to pass through a few hands until it gets to the hungry person God had in mind from the beginning?

PRAYER: Father God, thank You for all the times You’ve laid a ham at our doorstep, a bag of groceries, a gift card. Please make me more sensitive to those around me who not only need the food, but the reminder that You care.

BIBLE VERSE: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38, NIV).

It all started with a blanket of feathery snow during the night. My husband and I had just returned from a weeklong trip and early the next morning we were leaving again on separate jaunts. He was flying south on business and I was headed three hours west with our kids for two and a half days of skiing.

Bright and early, after a hasty goodbye, Gerry dashed out with his luggage. I woke up our three teens. If we wanted to be on the slopes by noon we’d have to get rolling.

The phone rang as I stepped out of the shower. I grabbed it, still dripping. It was my neighbor: “I noticed some luggage in the middle of the street. It had your phone number on it. I put it on the sidewalk in front of your house.” I thanked him casually, trying to act like this was the way we usually did things and said good-bye. I ran in circles for several seconds before I became rational.

I called Gerry’s cell, hoping he could return for his luggage and still make his flight. He didn’t answer. Flustered, I threw on some clothes and fetched the luggage. Dropping his computer bag and suitcase inside the door, I tried calling again. To my horror I heard a muted ringing in the foyer.

I found his phone and plane ticket inside the computer bag. This threw me into another tail-chasing frenzy, wasting more precious time. After praying for help, it occurred to me to check his itinerary. I saw that his flight was leaving an hour later than he’d thought. I could get his luggage to the airport with 30 minutes to spare!

I stationed my groggy son by the phone. “When dad calls, tell him I’m on my way!” I headed for the airport 45 minutes away. My fuel gauge was dangerously low. Can’t stop now! When I tried to wash the salt spray from a passing semi off my windshield; I got a small drool and nothing more. The wipers spread the slurry around. I drove into the glare of the rising sun, barely able to see the road. My mood darkened. I confess, the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” crossed my mind rather uncharitably.

Not far down the road, my son called to report his dad had phoned and would be watching for me. “I guess this means we won’t be able to ski this afternoon?” he asked.

I arrived at the terminal squinting through the white haze in search of Gerry. I saw him frantically waving and pulled over. He yanked open the passenger door, saw my dour expression and blurted, “I’m so sorry!” His apologies poured forth. He felt terrible for ruining our plans but his sincerity and appreciation softened my heart.

Even though he had no time to spare, I just had to ask: “How, exactly, did your luggage wind up stranded in the street like a couple of gunslingers at high noon?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he confessed, sheepishly. “And I think I figured it out.”
I felt the corners of my lips begin to twitch.

“When I left the house, I set my suitcases down behind the car so I could open the trunk,” he began. “Then I noticed I had your keys, not mine so I dashed inside to exchange keys. When I came back out, I forgot about the bags. I jumped in the driver’s seat, backed out, and drove off!”

I started to chuckle as I pictured the bags gently rolling, nudged by the bumper over the slippery snow to where they would remain, abandoned in the middle of the road.

“When I got to the airport and opened my trunk I thought, ‘I’ve been robbed!’” I snorted, unable to hold back the laughter. He leaned in for a kiss, grabbed his bags and was gone.

I was still grinning as I headed for the nearest gas station with one eye on the big E and the other eye on the single clean streak that narrowed my view to a slit. Yes I had forfeited a ski day but it wasn’t a loss. It was an investment. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I needed Gerry to be part of my village too!

By yourself you’re unprotected. With a friend you can face the worst. Can you round up a third? A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped (Ecclesiastes 4:12. MSG).

The rain pelted against my windshield with such force that the wipers could not keep it clear. The overwhelming volume of rain pooling on the roadway created a slick covering. As I crept along, hands tensely gripping the steering wheel, I feared that at any moment my car, with its bald tires, would be caught by a gust of wind and skid across the sea of water. Suddenly from behind, a large pick-up truck approached and passed with confidence and precision. This heavy bodied vehicle enabled the driver to manoeuvre the treacherous highways without fear of swerving or hydroplaning.

There is a phrase in scripture that reminds me of my stormy driving experience. Numerous times when we are admonished to hope, the adverb unswervingly is added. Hope by definition is having a desire for something and a reasonable confidence that it is going to happen. As Christians we say that our hope and confidence is in God. But, is it really?

When the torrents of life strike – teenage children go astray, a scary diagnosis is received, a spouse betrays, a parent dies, a friend ridicules, loneliness looms dark – does our hope hydroplane? Battered by the wind and rain, do we skid from one side of the road to another, perhaps even ending up in a wreck? Or, do we have an unswerving hope in God?

I surmise that my fellow driver in the large pick-up truck, who cut through the storm without fear, knew the capacity of his vehicle and was accustomed to driving in the present formidable circumstances. This leads me to ponder how well I know God? Have I studied His character and trustworthiness? Have I prepared for the storms of life by going deep into God’s word and fostering an intimate relationship with Him? Can I recount the storms I have weathered with Him remembering that He has proven faithful?

When our hope is placed in God’s faithful presence in our life, then we will have the confidence to go through any storm knowing that God is carrying us in the palm of His hand and nothing will overcome us. God is trustworthy. He will make our paths straight. God alone is our Rock.

QUOTE: “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, achieves the impossible.” Anonymous

BIBLE VERSE: “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23 NIV)

It is not uncommon for our family to run to “America’s Drive-In” a few times a week. Sometimes we will eat lunch there, while other times we will go through there to pick up a drink for my wife. Either of these times will be at the end of the typical lunch hour.

Following lunch, our children will take a nap. At least that is the ideal situation. Our two kids may go down for a nap at the same time, but may not end up sleeping at the same time, unfortunately. This lack of symmetric schedules often affects my wife much more than me.

One such day as we had been out running errands around town, we had gone by the drive in before we went home. It was later in the afternoon, and our kids were showing signs of fatigue, which meant that a nap was just a few minutes away.

After we left the drive-in, we came to an intersection. Our son asks us where we are going to go next. My reply was “Naptown, do you want to go?”

My son then responded, “Is that very far away?”

His mom, after her initial snicker at his remark, said “‘NAP-TOWN’ means you’re going to take a nap, it’s not a place.” My son is not usually a gullible person but this caught him off guard.

It reminds me of the times when I am trying to think my life’s plans instead of leaving them up to God. I want one outcome and God has another planned for my life.

PRAYER: Father, may I learn to enjoy or at least appreciate the interruptions You place in my life.

BIBLE VERSE: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, s are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 44:8-9).

This will probably get me in trouble, but … I think it’s possible that children shouldn’t be allowed in church, at least not until they’ve been trained. I don’t mean that typical genteel parental kind of training. I’m talking more like truly useful, kid-to-kid warning and wisdom. Call it “How-to-Survive-the-Next-Hour-Without-Getting-Spanked-101.”

For example, I learned at a very young age that, when the elderly Edith Cooper began her weekly snore, looking back at her would invariably produce a tiny ping from my mother’s index finger. Mother was a firm believer in the Head-Always-Forward theology. Once, when the second to the last pew completely collapsed, sending three people through the floor into the basement, emitting a cloud of centuries-old dust, I hesitantly glanced up at my mother only to watch her simply nod to the pastor and quietly say “Amen.” She was a rock.

Young children, coming to church for the first time, need to be warned. Don’t look back! Or if you must, do so with technique. I eventually learned that if I dropped the bulletin at the correct moment, when returning from my retrieval lean, I could swipe a quick backward glance that was, if not elegant, at least permissible. But there is a firm once-per-service allotment of this technique. Use judiciously. You’ve been warned.

Children should also be told about the risks involved when they are all taken up front for a “children’s message.” Who invented this terror-filled activity? This situation is fraught with peril. The most important rule is simple: don’t offer anything unless asked. Sharing that your sister has a bank of boogers on the inside slat of her bunk bed will not endear you to your parents. While there is a risk in saying too much, there can also be a risk in saying too little. A visiting pastor shared with us a time when he called all the children forward and asked a seemingly simple question.

“Hi, kids! Got a question for ya’. What’s little and gray, has a long fluffy tail, skitters around on trees and stores up nuts for the winter?”

Total silence met this man’s eager face.

A little surprised, he nonetheless cheerily continued.

“Oh, come on, guys. Let’s try again. Little and gray, long fluffy tail, skitters around on trees and stores up nuts for the winter.”

Again … not a peep, but this time the children’s eyes were huge and fearful.

This visiting pastor was clearly becoming agitated.

“Kids … this isn’t tough. The story won’t work unless you answer. So help me out.” He shot through the question again. “Little and gray. Long fluffy tail. Skitters around on trees. Stores up nuts for the winter!”

Finally, one kid timidly raised his hand. Clearly fearful at this line of questioning, he nonetheless took a deep breath and said, “Pastor … I know we’re always supposed to say ‘Jesus’ … but that really sounds like a squirrel to me.”

This kid knew one of the most basic forms of church survival. When in doubt, answer “Jesus.” Nine times out of ten, it’ll be the answer they want. But, as it turns out, listening is also a pretty good strategy. Who knew?

I actually love the buried truth in that concept. When in doubt, answer “Jesus.” Not only is it usually the right answer to the teacher’s question, it’s the right answer to most of life’s questions. I love it when we actually learn something from our kids. Maybe that’s why Jesus turned to the pompous adults in his company and said, “Be more like kids.”

Maybe we should let them back in church after all.

Does fitness begin by doing physical acrobatics or is it mental acrobatics that must come first? God gives us the answer in Romans 12:2 (NIV). “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

It’s what’s on your mind that counts! It’s estimated that we think about 60,000 thoughts per day at a speed of 600-800 words per minute.

Do you find your thoughts consistently running along positive paths or negative ones? When something bad happens do you think or say, “It figures. Nothing good ever happens to me.” Or do you say, “You know what? I’m not moved by this because God says in Psalm 34, ‘Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all,’ so I’m coming out of this one, too!”

Does God “tell it like it is”?

Why are people who quote God’s Word called extremists and fanatics while those who quote Murphy’s Law are considered realists who are just telling it like it is? Did you know God never told us to “tell it like it is?” In fact, if that were the way God operated, creation would not have happened.

Imagine if God had stepped out into the black void of space and said, “Hey, it sure is dark out here.” It would still be dark! God chose not to “tell it like it is.” Instead He “calls those things which do not exist as though they did”(Romans 4:17 KJV).

He used His Word and said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3 NIV). And there was light. Since we’re made in the image of God and Ephesians 5:1 tells us to be “imitators of God as dear children,” doesn’t it make sense to say what God says instead of what the enemy and the world say?

Start Looking in a New Mirror

Thinking and speaking God’s words and thoughts will change you! Your faith will grow as you hear the Word of God. You will begin to see yourself in a new light with a new mirror: the Word of God. It will become easier for you to encourage and bring hope to others, for you’ll begin to know that the Lord can help them. Situations that used to baffle you will become easier to understand.

Health and fitness issues will also become easier to solve, for godly fitness is tied to what the Lord is telling you that you can and should do to take care of your body. Your health and fitness also depends on the development of the fruit of the Spirit–especially self-control (Galatians 5:22, 23)–more than any diet or exercise routine.

Look at yourself in the mirror of God’s Word today. You will LOVE the way you look..in Him!

A few years ago, I underwent intense training in order to compete in a triathlon. Having a defined goal to shoot for encouraged me to push past laziness, run through drizzle, and fight against my self-justifying tendencies. I had a two part-goal: To develop endurance and to train muscle memory. Muscle memory is when your body responds as if by instinct, allowing your body to work more effectively.

Endurance comes through repetition and consistently pushing your body one step, one hill, one mile farther. They call this “brick-workouts” and like the cement blocks that hold a house aright, these long training sessions carry the athlete through the bulk of their race. They in turn have a two-part function: to develop an “I can” mind-set and reduce the amount of fatigue an athlete experiences during a race.

In our spiritual lives, trials and disappointments often serve the same purpose. They take the sting out of many of life’s events, enabling us to press through without giving up. The first trial might leave us sore and trembling, like a first work-out does, but over time, it gets easier. In fact, we develop “spiritual memory.” Our actions, like responding in love when we’ve been wronged or biting our tongue in a tense situation, become more natural, and soon turn into habit.

And like with running, the mental component here is equally important. Everything is more manageable when we face it with the right mindset. If we have other “brick-workouts” to look back on, suddenly our current training session doesn’t appear so daunting. In fact, we know we can make it through because we’ve done it before.

But like with any training, the minute we take our eyes off the goal—the minute we quit moving forward, we start slipping backward. This leads to unsightly flab. It’s easy to spot the physical flab. It encircles our mid-section, widens our backsides, and creates less than appealing jiggles in diverse areas. Spiritual flab is often equally apparent—quick tempers, apathy, selfishness. To truly battle the “bulge,” we need to take our training seriously. Otherwise we give in to comfort more often than not, and choose the path of least resistance.

My current exercise schedule is a perfect example. Now that I’m not training, I find it increasingly difficult to stay on task. My rest days grow more frequent and I don’t approach my work-outs with the same intensity. Break a sweat? I’d rather not. Feel the burn? Maybe tomorrow. Or Friday. Better yet, next week. The result? A little more cushion around my middle and less endurance to carry me through the day.

I think our spirituality is a lot like that. Without goals and intentionality, we’ll muddle through, never quite breaking a sweat, and thus, lingering near immaturity. But God has called us to more. He’s called us to excellence—to run after Him with everything we’ve got. Why?