Starving SteinMart

"Temptation doesn't take kindly to being starved" (Lysa TerKeurst in Made to Crave). Have you experienced what it's like to starve temptation in any area of your life? How did it make you feel? For Lent this year, I gave up Steinmart. For more than 40 days, I willfully chose not to go to my favorite store in the world because I knew it was a place I wasted time and money, a place I went to for ‘retail therapy,’ a place that tickled my fancy and fed my ‘stuff’ habit. I wanted to use the time I typically spent shopping doing something more productive . . . like finding a place for all the stuff I had already bought at Steinmart and beyond. For the most part, it was not a difficult assignment. I found great pleasure in clearing out a couple of cluttered areas – the corner in my bedroom and the spare room on the second floor. The pleasure was not in the decluttering (the process always wears me out mentally and emotionally as I wrestle with what to do with what I thought I needed so badly that I bought it and brought it home). The pleasure was in seeing a clean spot in each of these rooms. But then I’d get a coupon in the mail, an alert on my smartphone, or an email in my inbox. The temptation started as simply as that. The higher the discount, the greater the temptation. But then I’d look at that cleaned out corner and smile. Nope, not going back there today. Can’t say ‘ever’ because I don’t know what tomorrow will bring but that day I didn’t go to Steinmart. As a matter of fact, I threw away the coupon, ignored the alert, and deleted the email. I focused on the end goal rather than the instant gratification. Fast forward to today and relating this to food issues (focus of Made to Crave). I love to eat. It is my sustenance, my comfort, my entertainment, my friend. It is to me all the things I say it shouldn’t be because I know in my head that food is fuel, and I really only need a limited amount of fuel to accomplish the tasks I have before me each day. And yet I eat. Starving physical temptations is difficult for me. I need to stay focused on the end goal and not be so caught up on instant gratification. Stay tuned. I've got a lifetime to work on this!

Damage, Danger, and Deception

A friend recently shared how she had to have some trees removed from her backyard due to damage from Hurricane Gustav. She didn’t have them removed back in 2008 right after Gustav blew through Southeast Louisiana; she had them removed just a few weeks ago.

Why the delay? In her words, “we put the removal process off as long as we could because of the pleasure of beauty and shade the trees brought to our yard.” Sure, if the roots had been exposed like the photo above, it would have been obvious that she needed to do something right away. But instead, it was easy to ignore because the roots were still in the ground. Even though there was always the danger that the damaged roots would give way and the tree could fall and hurt someone or something, it was easier to put it off. Removal required effort and change.

This friend got me thinking as she compared this to the danger of habitual sin in our lives . . . something that brings us pleasure but we forget that this pleasure is a deception and danger (think Genesis 3, Eve, a piece of fruit, and a lying serpent).

What’s the damaged “tree” in your life that needs to be removed? Don’t expect the process to be easy . . . if it was, you would have cut it out already. What you can expect is for the process to be challenging and the results to be rewarding. Sure, things will look different once the damaged “tree” is gone but sometimes – most of the time – different is good. Very good.

Really, God, the Desert Road?

I was doing a study on Moses and the Israelites (think Ex. 13 and Heb. 11) and was struck by Moses' report in verses 17 and 18: "When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, 'If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.' So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea."

Isn't that amazing? When we are faced with what we think is a challenging (maybe even terrifying) situation, we can know that God has weighed the options for us and decided THIS is the road we need to take -- this is the road that stretches our faith but doesn't push us to the point of 'changing our minds'!

The Israelites still struggled with fear, even on this supposedly easier path (see Ex. 14:10-12) but they followed Moses into the Red Sea and experienced the provision of God in a way that they may not have known otherwise.

However, knowing the rest of the Israelites’ story provides a warning: just because we've experienced a God-sized miracle once doesn't guarantee that we won't doubt or fret ever again. But that's the subject of another blog!