I don’t think anyone will disagree when I say life always offers two roads to travel, sure we can always blur that truth with excuses and justifications, but every avenue and aspect of our daily living brings with it the ultimatum of “choice”. The choices we make leave the ability of decision in OUR hands, no one else’s.
So, this thing we call life cannot help but bring with it faith…. you may say, I don’t want to incorporate anything “religious” into my life. Yet, you go to sleep at night and take it on “Faith” that you are going to wake up in the morning. You take it on faith that your heart beats on its own, that your lungs will continue to inhale and exhale. Whatever category you choose to say your “faith” resides, deny it if you want to, but FAITH is all around you all day long folks.
I constantly remind myself that “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Hebrews 11:1 (New Living Translation). Whether I am taking stock of my health, my life, my work, pick a topic people, I cannot always see what is coming around the corner, I have to take it on faith. Every single day I take it on faith that what takes place within my body is doing what it needs to do, that there is air to breathe, I take it on faith that my job will be there tomorrow, that after a storm our home will still be standing. Which adds further weight to 2 Corinthians 5:7 “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
Here’s an analogy I’ve paraphrased from (The Best of Tozer compiled by Warren Wiersbe).
“One marked difference between the faith of our fathers as conceived by the fathers and the same faith as understood and lived by their children is that the fathers were concerned with the root of the matter, while their present-day children seem concerned only with the fruit…
Our fathers looked well to the root of the tree and were willing to wait with patience for the fruit to appear. We demand the fruit immediately even though the root may be weak and knobby or missing altogether.
The bough that breaks off from the tree in a storm may bloom briefly and give to the unthinking passer-by the impression that it is a healthy and fruitful branch, but its tender blossoms will soon perish and the bough itself wither and die. there is no lasting life apart from the root. (when we have storms in our lives, many times we blame God, because we believe God is supposed to make our lives all rosey and beyond easy, so we get discouraged and break away from our faith, or claim we don’t believe in God or that there is a God, and LOOK at me I’m doing just fine, I’ve got this, I CAN DO IT ON MY OWN)
Much that passes for healthy today is the brief bright effort of the severed branch to bring forth its fruit in its season. But the deep law of life is against it. Preoccupation with APPEARANCES and a corresponding neglect of the out of sight root of its true life are a prophetic signs which go unheeded. Immediate “results” are all that matter, quick proofs of present success without a thought of next week or next year… There is but one test that seems to matter today: success. Everything is forgiven him except failure…
The whole Bible and all the great saints of the past join to tell us the same thing; “take nothing for granted,” they say to us. “Go back to the grass-roots. Open your hearts and search the Scriptures. Pay no heed to the passing VOGUE. The masses are always wrong.
So where am I going with this, well everywhere actually, we have become a generation of “instant” results, we want it NOW, and one only need take a serious moment and look around and realize this isn’t working real well for us on any level of living.
Take our health, we assume if someone is thin they are healthy, NOT true, social media is LOADED with a wide variety of diets that are going to assist you with losing X amount of weight in 10 days, or 2 weeks, just eat or drink this and wham bam, that rocking healthy body you are desiring is going to magically appear. Forget about what wrong unhealthy habits you have ingrained over the years, or habits or viewpoints you should be putting effort into changing. Forget the stress or nutritional deficiencies that these quick FAD diets also bring with them, your headed on vacation in 3 weeks and 25 lbs. need to be GONE before then. Sure you can definitely lose some weight using these quick methods, but it won’t change the fact that your foundation is riddled with cracks. Things you do on a daily basis led you to where you are at the present moment. For some of us these daily habits are YEARS in the making, so trying to convince yourself that 2 weeks will erase all your “go-to” habits is crazy. It sets us up for defeat and deep dissappointment.
If we honestly take a look and dare to examine the facts that stare us in the face, this mentality affects how our food is grown and packaged/produced, because we want FAST food, quick ways to toss something down the hatch, forget that the very foundation that these quick fixes are constructed on hold no valued stability. As long as the results will “LOOK” amazing and pass as “VOGUE”. Why not just Live for the moment giving not much though for the long-term?
Hence many things we have done before, now plague us today in health damage, financial debt (living outside our means, all of these ADD to our internal stressors, which affect the “JOY” of living.)
Not to mention we get stuck in the mentality of it’s all about ME, what makes ME happy, what brings ME joy. Folks we were all bought with a price and it’s NOT about US. Deny it, excuse it away, but we are all here to bear fruit and be fruitful but not to bring glory and honor to ourselves, but to the Lord. We over burden ourselves with our STUFF and how much of it we have, we race to obtain THINGS, believing when I have that sports car THEN I’ll be happy, so maybe we get the car, then we realize it requires maintenance, which is expensive because the car is a specialty, the insurance rates are ridiculous because it may be a model that is sought after for thieves, it begins to lose it’s luster, but wait, this car was supposed to be my answer for happiness, or maybe that great big house that YES, when I achieve that goal, THEN, my life will be complete, or when I loose 20/30 lbs. and have a rockin body, everyone is going to love me and treat me with the respect I long for and the list goes on and on, we live and beat ourselves up to obtain all this STUFF, or maybe its to be a millionaire cause think of all the THINGS I can do with all that money.
I just watched last night “The Last 100 days of Princess Diana”, and you know it was so sad to me, she was the most photographed woman in the world, did that make her happy? Not from what I saw, She was physically beautiful in every way that society seems to approve of…. did that make her happy? Not from what I saw, She was wealthy , she had servants to meet her every need, fancy clothes, jewelry, none of those things made her happy from what I could see, in fact all those THINGS, literally robbed her of not only her happiness, but her freedom, and self-confidence, she became a hostage/prisoner of her own fame. With it comes isolation, loneliness, she lived in an artifical hollywood set as far as I’m concerned, the people who surrounded her were not genuine towards her. That lifestyle and title robbed her of precious valuable time spent with her own children, for a woman who by the worlds standards had it ALL, she seemed so lost, so lonely, so unloved. When she died dodging the media, everyone worldwide wept, and said WE LOVE YOU DIANA, yet, none of us actually KNEW her, not deeply, personally, if we did LOVE her, we would have seen her pain and stopped being so consumed with needing to invade her private life as we do with all the celebrities, we hold them to a particular living standard that we ourselves cannot live by either, so how can you say how much you LOVED her, you loved her image, what her lifestyle personified. Diana had from what I can see a very giving heart, she was concerned and wanted to help those with AIDS, and the hungry and her charities did wonderful things for so many. But she spent so much time trying to be what everyone told her she was supposed to be, what she was supposed to represent, and all of it was superficial, she wasn’t allowed to just do HER. We read and see failure after failure of people who are destroyed by a glamourous lifestyle. Yet, so many people fight to have it, maybe thinking they can do it different, or better, I’m not sure.
As a practitioner, and a walking, talking, living, breathing human on the same spinning rock you all are on, we struggle like we do, and I say WE, which includes ME, we are conditioned that it’s all about appearance, competition, what will people think, this is what drives us over the edge, what adds to our emotional/physical stress. It causes us to compare ourselves to others to guage whether we are hitting the mark and being “successful”. Why does it seem that today we have more imformation that is easy to access virtually at our fingertips, and more people seem so lost, confused, depressed and desperate that ever before?
So ask yourselves, what kind of people do you associate with? (Are they in your circle because of what they can DO for you, or is it because they are people you genuinely care aboutand who genuinely care about YOU?). Who do you turn to for advice? (does their lifestyle emulate the answer you seek?) Is God’s Word a priority in your decision-making? Ask yourself what God’s view on fruitfullness looks like compared to that of the worlds view, man sees the outside but God sees the heart:
Explore these verses that talk about Fruitfulness from God’s definition: Matthew 3:8; 25:14-28; John 15:4-8; Phillippians 1:9-11; Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Peter 1:5-6.
In my life I realize it’s time to make changes in my “life, faith and fruitfulness”, my perspective needs to shift from world centered to God centered and with that shift comes ” a peace that surpasses all understanding.”
Healthfully Yours,
Jodi Barnett N.D.
Harvested Health LLC
http://www.mkt.com/harvested-health-llc
http://www.harvestedhealth.mynsp.com
Harvested Health LLC. 
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