I don't FEEL like it

Today the book talked about how feelings tend to rule what we do or don't do. For example "I don't feel like working out today." It asks the question whether you do it anyway, or you end up sitting on the couch and not make an effort. It says this:

"Right now, you may be solidly committed to your goals. But what happens when you don't feel like cooking healthy meals or following your diet plan? If you aren't careful, you can easily slide back from being committed to being just interested. You don't usualy wait until you feel like going to work. You just go. The same thing is true for visiting your mother or changing dirty diapers. Because you consider these things to be important, you do them regardless of how you feel at the moment."

I really like the example of going to work. I don't feel like getting up for work a lot of days but it's important to me in many ways. When will my health become just as important? It is starting to become important. I'm making it important. Even though I don't feel like completely overhauling my life, I'm doing it anyway. I'm important. My health is important.

Today I don't feel like exercising. But I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to take a walk--I might listen to Richard's sermon...or I might just listen to music. Whatever will keep me walking and focused is what I want to do.

Also, today I'm going to wash my dishes, pick up my clothes, straighten up my bedroom and living room, clean my bathroom, and figure out how to work the Wii. I don't really want to do any of these things...I'd rather sit on my couch and watch Serenity. However, I'm going to do them. All of them. Anyway. :)

"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at reset in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us." 1 John 3:18-23

This verse makes me wonder how I am loving people in action and in truth. The funny thing is is that I've always seen the "action" part but never really looked at the "truth" part. What does this mean? Does it simply mean living honestly? Do it mean being transparent and vulnerable? As I'm sitting here and looking at my life and how it fits in, that seems to be the most logical answer. To not hide myself away, and just present a picture that people want to see. I need to not just love people in action by giving them what they need, volunteering, listening, etc. I need to love people in truth. I need to admit my faults, my doubts, and weariness. I need to shed my various masks that I put on and be vulnerable. I need to she this hardness, this "need to be strong" for other people and learn how to be weak for Jesus.

Those words are powerfully strong...to be weak for Jesus. All I've known is that I need to be put together. That I need to have it all figured out so people will think that there is something strong out there. But what people really need to know is that I'm just as jumbled up sometimes as they are, and that God's love gets me through it anyway.

Lord help me to love in action and in truth. Help me to not lock my true self away, but help me to reveal it little by little, however you want me to. Help me to be weak for you.