Have you bought into the deception that your temple is
beyond the point of repair? Perhaps you have tried countless times to fix the
damage to your body by eating healthier, losing some weight, and exercising, only
to eventually fall off the bandwagon of the good habits you began to establish
and fail miserably; resulting in being in a position of more ruin than when you
first started. You want to change yourself
but based on the account of your history, you’ve lost all hope that a restoration
of your temple is actually possible. The above statements once accurately described
my thoughts about myself and being able to lose weight. I had tried so many times- you name the diet,
the pill, the promising exercise routine- I had tried them all! Looking back
now I can laugh, but I must have been pretty darn desperate to actually attempt something as grotesque as “the cabbage soup diet” with expectations of obtaining lasting
results! While I would like to forget about a lot of the crazy diets I tried to
lose weight, I’m thankful for them because they served a significant role in my
weight loss journey. Each one of those
failed attempts at losing weight functioned as a stepping stone that paved the
way to my point of breakthrough, when I realized that my mindset towards losing
weight needed to shift drastically.
My Father is a mechanic by trade and delights in fixing
things, in fact recently, he received the nickname “fix-it” by a friend and it couldn’t have accurately
defined him any better! His favorite
thing to fix is cars, especially classic cars.
I have many memories as a child of being loaded up in the family car to
visit the local junk yard to go on a treasure hunt for various parts he needed
for the car he was working on at the time.
Being the only girl in the family, I was never quite as thrilled as my
brothers were when we were required to go on such outings, nonetheless, I always
tagged along and helped my Dad with his search.
I remember as we weaved in and out of each row of totaled vehicles, I
would think to myself, “who would actually pay money for this junk” but my
father had a much different perspective from mine! What I observed as something that was beyond
the point of repair and of no use, he viewed as something of great value that possessed
the potential to be transformed and restored into something amazing. Time after time, I have watched my father
transform junky cars into stunningly restored classic cars. Only recently, did I make the correlation between
this childhood memory and my own weight loss journey.
After many failed attempts of losing weight, I could be
compared to one of the trashed out cars sitting in the junk yard. Just as a car cannot fix itself, I sat “parked”
for years as I attempted to restore myself only to fail miserably. When I had reached the point of no hope, my
Father in heaven, looked down at my junked out self and saw the potential of
what could be transformed and restored into something new. My friends, the breaking point in my journey
was when I came to the point of surrendering my trashed out temple to God and
allowing him to have full reign in the restoration process. When my perspective
shifted from one of self-help to one that aligned with the Father’s perspective
of me, was when restoration began to actually take place. Perhaps today you are in a similar situation-
you have tried many times to lose the weight only to fail. You may believe your temple is ruined and beyond
the point of repair but your Father sees the potential of what can be restored into
something beautiful, if you will simply change your perspective. While my Dad loves to
fix and restore cars, my Heavenly Father delights in fixing and restoring something much greater, his children. To take what the rest of the world deems as beyond repair and restore it into
something so amazing is his specialty-complete turnarounds that leave the world asking how did they do that? Your age doesn’t
matter, how many pounds overweight you are today doesn’t matter, how many times
you’ve failed doesn’t matter- God is ready to restore you! Of course, you will have
to do your part, God isn’t a Genie who is going to wink from the sky and poof
you’re skinny (although that would be pretty awesome!) but he will direct your steps and give you the strength you need to walk each step of your journey to complete restoration. If you have been living in ruin for far too long, take hope! You are never too far gone,
it’s never too late to restore your temple my friend!
