world meet mabel.

It's time to introduce the blogging world to Mabel. Mabel is my loud, chubby, lazy alter ego who loves to justify my bad life choices and especially loves homemade chocolate chip cookies. Somedays Mabel wants to move to Paris and eat homemade bread and butter all day.  Mabel is the person I fight with every morning when I am trying to get to the gym. I took a week off from last week and Mabel was loving every minute of it. Well this morning was a bit of a reality check for us both. I almost died and Mabel had to be wheeled out on a gurney. 

There are two good reasons I go to the gym. 1. My flesh is very loud, and discipling myself to get up is hard. 2. I don't want to turn into Mabel.  Going to the gym is incredibly difficult for me, because quite simply I hate it. However it's encouraging  to see growth from training and discipline. I does get easier to wake up, tie your shoes and go. You can run longer, sprint faster, lift more. (that makes me sound so legit!) 

By the grace of God, discipline in your walk with the Lord  leads to a deeper, sweeter, more passionate relationship with Him. It gets easier to trust Him. It gets easier to see your sin and turn faster to repentance and run back into His open arms. Often it requires getting up and telling your very loud flesh no; It requires you die to yourself and your wants and desires. But the Lord is kind and merciful and He gives grace aboundantly to all His children. He's walking beside you, He's watching over you, He's sustaining you. 

[Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.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.
 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.]
Romans 5:1-6

Jesus it was clear at the gym that I can't do very much in my own strength. Help me love training my heart to love you more. Help me rejoice in your plan for my life. Help me rest in the fact that you've completed everything I couldn't  do. Father help me to live in light of Romans 5. You're shoulders are the only ones that are wide enough to carry the load. Remind me that there isn't anything I can do to make myself more presentable to you. But out of a deepening love of my Savior, let there be a outpouring of God ordained change in my life. Help my heart joyfully sing the words of this old hymn...

Take the world, but give me Jesus,
Sweetest comfort of my soul;
With my Savior watching o’er me,
I can sing though billows roll.
Take the world, but give me Jesus,
Let me view His constant smile;
Then throughout my pilgrim journey
Light will cheer me all the while.
Take the world, but give me Jesus;
In His cross my trust shall be,
Till, with clearer, brighter vision,
Face to face my Lord I see.