Press On Towards Your Goals

Last night, when we went to bed, Rueben and I continued our 30 days of studying Philippians experiment. We have a goal to read the entire book every day, no matter what. It is possible because it is a relatively short book. Today is my day twenty-one. I say "my" because I am one day ahead of everyone else. I started it one day, and the next day recruited my husband and two girlfriends to join me. We plan to compare notes after everyone reaches 30 days. Anyway, last night, instead of going straight to Philippians, I decided to look in my concordance to find a scripture I memorized years ago, that I felt could help my husband and I achieve our goals. I thought that we both just had disappointing weigh ins. He lost .8 pounds and was hoping for a bigger loss, and I gained 1.4, which is definitely going in the wrong direction. At Jenny Craig, slow and steady win the race. Any loss is a call for celebration, as we are going for "progress, not perfection."

Anyway,the scripture that came to mind that I thought we needed is "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" (Proverbs 14:12). This seemed helpful because whatever we did last week seemed right at the time, or we convinced ourselves that they if were at least okay, if not right, but the results killed us. While I was looking for that scripture the Holy Spirit lead me to another very powerful one: "The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands, the foolish one tears hers down" (Proverbs 14:1). This to me addresses the foolishness of self-sabotage. There are lots of moments every day when you are either wisely building something in your life, or foolishly tearing yourself down. I turned to Rueben with fire in my heart, saying, "Let's build ourselves up, not tear ourselves down. Let's be wise, not foolish."

Right there was a turning point. We decided from that point on, we will check in with each other about what we eat, what we drink, and how much we exercise. We will keep each other accountable and spur each other on, "being one in spirit and purpose" (Philippians 2:2b).

I told him today that we are in this together and we are going to have a great week. He had his doubts, but I have confidence in God and confidence in each other that with God's help, we can complete whatever we set out to do (Philippians 1:6).

A friend of mine once said that a goal is a dream with a deadline. Well, by each of our next weigh ins, I am convinced we can both have weight loss to be happy about, by forgetting the mistakes of the past, and pressing on to the successes of the future (Philippians 3: 12-14).