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We have all seen the ads, the promises of a better body with this special diet or that special exercise program.  The pictures are promising.  Wouldn’t we ALL love to look like those models used in the print advertising?

So let’s say we joined in all of the hype and decided to make some changes to our diet and to our activity levels. At first it’s hard. Dieting and sweating are not two of my favorite things.  I like food, I like GOOD TASTING food.  I don’t like sweating.  There are soooooo many better things that I can think of that I would rather be doing than sweat.  But we do it.  Why?

We may be at that point in our life when we start looking at our children and realize that we need to be around for them for a long time.  For some, it may be due to medical reasons.  Maybe we are tired of feeling lethargic all of the time.  Maybe our bodies ache from carrying around too much weight.  Maybe we are tired of looking at ourselves in the mirror when naked.  Whatever the reason, we start something.

We begin and things start looking good. We start feeling better by drinking more water, and making better food choices.  We have more energy from exercising and that scale starts moving down.  That is when the excitement begins.  It is good to see physical results when we are aiming and striving to make changes in our life.

Then life happens and we stop doing all of those things that are good for us and we start reverting back to our old ways.  We start binge eating.  We trade exercise for computer and television time.  Those extra pounds seem to sneak back  onto our hips and butt.  We start to feel guilty.  We start to think that there isn’t any hope. You start telling yourself, ” I am just going to be fat.” You convince yourself that your children made your body this way.

And you settle…………..

Does this scenerio sound all too familiar?  I know for myself, this was an excuse I used many times over the years.  I weighed about 180 lbs for many years while having babies.  I used the excuse that having babies made me fat.  But that was a lie.  All of the food choices and my inability to choose to exercises is what made me fat. Making poor choices when I wanted to satisfy my self loathing self did nothing but make me feel poor physically.  I had to change and I did.  I worked at it consistently and have not reverted back.

But this series isn’t about our physical bodies, it is about something more important…….. our spiritual bodies.

I wish I had an image that would portray a Christian woman living life to the fullest potential.  One that was living in the supernatural blessings of the Lord.  One who lived a complete life of faith. One that did not take offense on things.  A woman who had the joy of the Lord very present in her life.   For myself, that is a woman that I want to strive to live like.

Unlike the worlds standards of having a total body makeover and the perfect looking body, Gods’ standards of having a total body makeover would include our lives portraying Him.

Instead of writing about changing our physical bodies, which is important, but this series is about changing our spiritual bodies  the MOST important.

Everything that we do should be a direct reflection of Him.  How do you determine whether you need a spiritual total body makeover?  Ask yourself these questions:

• How many of you are run down and tired most all of the time?
• When was the last time that you sat and read the Bible and did not fall asleep reading it?
• How many of you think that God seems just too far away?
• Do you feel like sometimes your prayers go unnoticed?
• Do you think that your friends seem to have it all when you just can’t seem to keep it together?
• Are you bogged down by your past?
• Do you have recurrent feelings of anxiety, fears, worries, and doubts?
• Do you let others dictate what type of mood you are going to be in for the day?
• Are you easily offended by comments made from your husband or friends?
• Do you feel like maybe you made a mistake by marrying the “wrong man” and want out?
• Do you sometimes spend hours or even days in bed with the “cloud of doom” hanging over top of you?
• When reading God’s word, do you ever feel like He isn’t speaking to you or that you just don’t get it?

If you can answer yes to any of these questions,  it’s time for a spiritual total body makeover.

This series will target the different parts of us that  need to be changed to fully walk in the anointing and power of the Lord:

• Give us pure hearts to be knit  with God
• Renew our minds to have the mindset of Christ
• Ears that learn to listen to God speaking to us.
• Give us clean hands that perform the will of God in love.
• Eyes that focus only on God and His will for our life.
• Feet that don’t hesitate when God says to do something.
• Mouth that speaks words of life into others.

Each week will include a new topic.  I pray that you will join in because you want a change in your life.  Stop settling for a second rate life.  God DOES NOT want you to live a life full of defeat.  We should be walking in the victory!!! That begins by walking in the anointing of God.  Want to learn how to do that?  Follow the series………..part 2

 

Today we will be tackling the bedrooms!! Skip any type of clothing areas, that will be for next week.

For most of us, this is probably a huge problem area.  Even for myself, I tend to throw things into the bedrooms because they are usually out of sight for me.  We are going to tackle this room just as we have the others.

Grab:

• your cleaning bucket with rag for wiping out the insides of things
• your trash bag for garbage
• your donate box
• your basket for delivering items to other areas

Start with one thing, and move around in a clockwise pattern around the room.  If it is your child’s room, it is best to do this room while they are asleep or gone.  I know that my children are apt to not allow me to throw anything away, especially if they have 10 art projects and 20 different rocks!

Choose a workspace and use that for sorting, the bed is a good flat area.  Start with a nightstand and take all items off of it.  Wipe the inside drawers out that way they can dry as you are sorting through your items.  Looking at your items, grab up the pieces of trash, receipts, empty bottles of lotion, etc and throw them away.  Next look and see if there is anything that does not belong in here and goes somewhere else, put that in your basket to deliver later.  Take each item and look quickly at it, deciding if you REALLY want to keep it or have not touched it for some time.  Donate those items right away.  The rest put neatly back on the nightstand.

Move clockwise to the next item.  A dresser perhaps.  Start by cleaning off the top of the dresser, removing items and then wiping it down.  Place hair items and miscellaneous things in the basket to deliver to other areas where they are kept.  Put away jewelry and any makeup.  Keep it minimal.  If it is a child’s room, how are they supposed to learn how to keep it clean if you have it so full of items that take too long to straighten each day?  Give them a few items and that is all.  Even if it looks bare, it will teach them how to straighten things.  This is a good rule for you as well.

Continue moving around the room, tackling the items.  If you have a bookshelf, start by going through all of those books.  Decide which ones are worthy of keeping and pass along the rest.  If you haven’t read them in years, get rid of them.

Clean out ALL of the nooks and crannies.  Oh, and don’t forget the areas under the bed!!

If you are in the children’s room, find a container to hold all of their toys into.  We like those plastic dish pans that you can buy from the Dollar Store.

They are sturdy—which is a requirement around here.  I give one to each of the little ones and then they are responsible for picking up their toys.  If cleaning up toys is taking a long time, or they don’t do it, maybe they have too many.  Fill just one small container and keep it in their room.

Take the rest of the toys and put them away.  Better yet, give them to someone else! But if you cannot depart, rotate them every couple of months.  Don’t stress your children out with tons of things to keep neat.  Keep it simple.

We have a couple of shelves that each child gets to display special things on. If they are older, it usually is neat.

One is by their beds and it holds a mirage of different items, depending upon the day. Sometimes the younger ones collect a vast amount of things at one time.

Here Jadyn was working on painting, so it holds her new creations.  I don’t  fuss and make this stay nice and neat.  I encourage them to keep it picked up.  But I am not freaky on making them keeping it perfect.

If your the youngest, it looks like this….with nothing but a stuffed animal.  (smile)

The other is part of a bookshelf. Each child gets one shelf on our bookshelf.  The older ones hold books, but the younger ones haven’t accumulated many yet so they look like this.  This is Brooklyn’s. Simple

Then I have Jadyn’s.  She is more of my saver and collector.  Likes to keep everything.  Just the other day, I had thrown out some cords that we no longer needed and guess what, the one time came that I needed a certain cord that I have never used before and I was like “OH!”.  I looked on Jadyn’s shelf and she kept the cord I  needed.  (smile)  It pays to have a child like that.

The younger ones get the body shelves and usually will set up a dollhouse on them.

I love to look at our shelves and I can tell right away which one of my children is more like me, the minimalist, and the ones more like my husband, the hoarder (smile.)

Finish off by wiping down the walls, dusting the corners, and wiping all of the furniture off.  Don’t forget windows, blinds, and curtains.  Vacuum the entire floor, this includes under the bed and under furniture.

Next week  we finish out with closets part 8!