Sweet Grace For Your Journey

Episode 140-I Can't

Many are at the point that they feel they just can’t lose weight. On this podcast episode I give seven steps to walk out of the I can’t lifestyle. 

1. Know that God loves us just as we are. He sees us as beautiful. After all, He created us. Psalm 139:13, 15-16 NLT and 1 Peter 3:3-5 TLB.
2. God wants us to honor Him with our bodies. That means not doing anything that harms the body. Overeating is a way we dishonor the body. God calls it gluttony. I’m sorry but that is just the truth. 1 Cor. 6:19-20 NLT and Galatians 5:22-24 NLT.
3. God doesn’t condemn us for what we have done to ourselves. Romans 8:1 NLT and Romans 8:1-2 MSG. 
4. In order to allow God to work in our lives we must confess what we have done, repent and ask Him to give us strength and direction for how to go forward on our journeys. 1 John 1:8-9 NLT and Psalm 51:1 TPT.
5. Surrender completely to God in order to be transformed into the person God wants you to be. Surrender is not a one-time event. It is a daily process to stay in tune with what God desires for you. Romans 12:1-2 NIV and Psalm 27:14 TPT.
6. Experience breakthrough as you follow God and allow Him to hold you close. Psalm 51:12 TPT and Psalm 130:4-5 TPT.
7. Don’t try to do everything on your own. Allow God to give you strength. Proverbs 3:5-7 MSG and Psalm 55:22 TPT.

There’s a lot more on this podcast. If you’re looking up the scriptures, please look them up in the translations mentioned.

Overcomers Link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/overcomers/

Episode 139-I Love A Party

An excuse many have is I can’t lose weight because I want to eat at family gatherings, parties and holidays. Hey we have one of those coming up in a few days. It’s called the Fourth of July. 

Here’s what happens. When a party, holiday or family get-together happens we look forward to it. Then we begin thinking about seeing everyone so our next thought is, “I need to lose weight.” Then we think, “But this isn’t the right time. I don’t want to be limited in what I eat at the party. I want to have fun like everyone else.” So, we use the thing that might have been a reason to begin losing weight to become an excuse for not losing weight.

When one woman realized she was using every event or gathering that came up as an excuse for not getting healthy, she finally drew a line in the sand. She said, “I’m going to get healthy anyway no matter what comes along. But I can’t do it without your help God.” And she did. Why? Because she made a firm decision not to let her excuses rule her and she asked for God’s guidance and direction.

We talk about how to get through this excuse in this episode.

Overcomers Link: https://Teresashieldsparker.com/overcomers/

Episode 138-I'll Fail, So Why Try?

“It’s going to be too hard.”

“I might fail so I don’t even want to start trying.”

“No diet works for me.”

“I have to be strong for too long. My strength gives out.”

“I’ve tried many times in the past and failed.”

“I’ve always been fat. I’ll always be fat. Nothing ever worked in the past so why try?”

Those are comments from real-live brave souls who shared their excuses for not even trying to lose weight. 

Failure is the topic that seems to be on every person’s mind who has ever tried to lose weight. I blame the diet mentality and false advertising for a lot of this. 

Diets promise quick weight loss because that’s what we want. We want to fix the outside and do it now. But God is all about fixing us first on the inside in our hearts, minds, souls and spirits. This is where the desire to eat resides. 

Until we get to the root of why we eat, we will always gain the weight back and add more on. In other words we will be stuck in the gain-lose-gain cycle. Yes, people lose weight on diets. Some, like me, lose lots of weight on diets. That’s because we eat next to nothing in order to lose weight. For me it was always 100 pounds. Then we reach the goal and gain it all back plus more when we start eating what we want or think we have to have.

Finally I just threw up my hands and said, “I give up! I can’t lose weight. I am just a failure. But if I don’t try, I won’t fail. So I just won’t try because failing is too much for me to take. I will just be fat and happy.” That didn’t work either because I found out I wasn’t happy being fat. So I ate to assuage the unhappiness. That made me gain more weight which made me feel like more of a failure.

If you can relate, don’t miss this episode of Sweet Grace for Your Journey podcast.

Overcomers Academy Link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/overcomers/

Episode 137-I Want What I Want

My excuse for eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it was, “I want what I want so I need to eat it.’ What I wanted was sugary desserts. It felt like I was a bottomless pit where those kinds of foods were concerned.

Both the withholding of desserts and candies and the unlimited supply of those things can set this up in kids. Both certainly had a huge impact on me.

God always has an answer for all of our issues, though. Galatians 5:16-18 TPT sums it up best. “As you yield to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life.  When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit you hinder him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the new creation life of the Spirit. But when you yield to the life of the Spirit,  you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it!”

This is telling us that when do what we want, we are not following the Holy Spirit. We are allowing our cravings to lead us. The solution is to surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Overcomers Academy link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/overcomers/

Episode 136-Procrastination by Excuse

When we are procrastinating we are just making excuses for why we aren’t doing what we know we should be doing but are avoiding. To procrastinate is to delay or put off doing something. An excuse is coming up with a reason to delay or put off doing something. Basically procrastination and excuses give you the same results

I have heard many different reasons (or excuses) for why someone would procrastinate about losing weight. One big one is I need to take care of my family or others. We feel others are more important than we are. We put off taking care of ourselves because we haven’t been successful with that so we take care of others or do things for others. 

Mark 12:31 is a verse we might use to justify how important it is to prioritize doing things for others, but let’s look at it closer. It says to “love others AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF.” 

If we aren’t taking care of ourselves, we aren’t loving ourselves. That means if we are trying to love others like we love ourselves, we aren’t doing a very good job of taking care of others either. It’s another excuse for not doing what we know God wants us to do which is before we help others we need to put on our oxygen mask first! But how do we do that?

Links:

Overcomers Academy: https://Teresashieldsparker.com/overcomers/

Sweet Grace for Your Journey podcast: https://Teresashieldsparker.com/podcast/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/teresashieldsparker1

Episode 135-Excuses, Excuses

We’re starting a new subject for the next who knows how many weeks: Excuses, Excuses. We’ll talk about why we have them, why we use them, how they keep us from God’s best and how to put them in our past and move forward with what we know God has in mind for us. 

What is an excuse and how does it relate to strongholds? An excuse is very similar to a stronghold because it has an element of truth to it and yet, we all know deep down inside that it’s basically a lie designed to keep us from doing what we don’t want to do but know we should do.

Excuses are dangerous to us because they keep us from doing what is best for us. So, why do we have excuses in the first place? An excuse helps us not have to put forth the effort to change. We want to continue to do what we are doing instead of what is best for us and will take more time and effort than just coming up with an excuse that we tell ourselves and others.

This is dangerous, especially for a Christian, because we are making excuses for why we can’t follow God in some particular area. It feels too difficult or overwhelming but that isn’t a good enough excuse because it makes us sound like a wimp. So we make up other more elaborate excuses that we can live with. Many times these excuses are so that we can continue to do what we’ve always done before. Other times it’s because we just want to go along with what our friends are doing.

As we go talk about excuses I’d love to hear from you. What are your excuses? You can email me at [email protected], or comment on this podcast at https://Teresashieldsparker.com/podcast/. 

Also feel free to comment on 

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Episode 134-I Trust You, Jesus

Trusting Jesus is at the core of our faith. If we don’t trust Him completely in everything, we aren’t going to get very far because the strongholds will move in. One definition of a stronghold is something we trust instead of trusting in God. 

God doesn’t want to be at the top of my list, He wants to be my list period. I shouldn’t be the director and orchestrator of my life. I have surrendered those positions to Jesus.

It’s more than just walking down, shaking the preacher’s hand and saying a prayer. It’s a faith issue. It’s a trust issue. It’s a total surrender issue. 

How do we get there? This episode is all about that process. Don’t miss it. It’s a life-changer.

Overcomers Academy link: https://Teresashieldsparker.com/overcomers/

Episode 133-God Sets My Destiny

For years I didn’t believe that God had a purpose or destiny for me. The lie I believed was that God can’t use me because I’m too fat and I can’t lose weight. Turns out my destiny and my weight were very intertwined.

It wasn’t just what I was eating and how I was moving which had to change. The biggest thing was surrendering my wants for His and giving over control of my life completely to Him. I thought I had surrendered to God, but as long as I was making my desires my priority I had not completely surrendered to Him.

I learned the hard way that God won’t move us towards our purpose until we have surrendered everything to Him. Let me tell you more about how to do that.

Overcomers Academy Link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/overcomers/

Episode 132-I Have A Voice

Ever since I was 12 years old I felt I had no voice. It wasn’t a natural lie I happened upon. It was much deeper than that. It was a stronghold the evil one set up in me from an early age to keep me from fulfilling my destiny.

Writing was different, though. Writing came easy. God knows me, though. He knew the day would come when my voice would be more than words on paper. I am more than mystified at how He got me to the place where I now dearly love to speak.

Now, I know I have a voice because God broke the stronghold that kept it silent for many years. Now, nothing and no one but God can shut me up!

Sweet Surrender: Breaking Strongholds link: https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Surrender-Teresa-Shields-Parker/dp/0986159247

Episode 131-What is Comfort?

Comfort foods when served by those we love and admire can become the substitute for real comfort. They can absolutely obscure what real comfort which only comes from the Holy Spirit looks like.

The comfort certain foods give us that remind us of loving parents, grandparents, great aunts, etc., can also become a stronghold when we think we have to continue making and serving them so our children and grandchildren will be comforted.

What is comfort? Is it food or is there something deeper that we need to understand in order to break the stronghold it has in our lives. 

Overcomers Academy Link: https://www.teresashieldsparker.com/overcomers