...this is not a race.

I Cor 6: 12-20  All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. 13Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. 14Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. 15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 16Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.” 17But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 18Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. 19Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

Okie dokie....  Here we are.

Lord, I'm not sure if I should call you "Lord" over this passage since this is an area where I am an idolator.  Food.  Sugar in fact.  I confess to you that I turn to food more quickly than I turn to you.  The rest of the passage doesn't apply to me, but the principles surrounding it do.  I do not want food to be where I spend my thought time.  I want to see myself as a girl for whom Christ died and rose and reigns in every area of my life.

Lord, I WILL call you Lord, because the fact is you ARE Lord of all, whether I submit or not.

Help me please not go back to unhealthy here as I plow through this verse by verse.  Let me, if maybe for the first time, approach this area in the light of your grace.... for me.

This will be a section I have to go through "intimately" because of my first commitment.  There is freedom for me here and I want to walk in it.

Recently, I felt I heard the Lord gently say, "You trust sugar more than you trust me."

---------------------5 day break happened here----------------

I don't know where to start.  I'm glad to be back.  We just produced a show that was THE most challenging ever.  It was mainly because we were tired and tense before we got to show week which rubs off onto everything.

The end product was beautiful!

The clean up was ... is... overwhelming.  (Did I mention we ombre-d over 80 t-shirts?)

I confess to collapsing.  I keep talking to people who are so busy, we aren't breathing.  We've created so many BIG events that we are missing the small ones.

This has nothing to do with these verses, but if I'm learning one thing through 1 Corinthians, it's this:

...everything is connected.

So sometimes, we just need to back up.  Slow down.  Reflect.  Then we begin to feel our own breath.  Smile gently.

Even this blogging began to feel like a race.  This blog is not a race.

This blog is not a race.

This        blog         is           not            a               race.


I know I need to back up to the section before this and maybe research what the word "judge" and maybe see what the Greek word means in each case, but I confess I'm just feeling like I "should" - a word that has haunted me into guilt more than any other word in my life.

Hmmm.... and here's the connection.


SHOULD.

I had to go through counseling because of the word SHOULD.

I vividly remember my wonderful counselor, after several weeks, saying, "Lydia, you have the biggest list of shoulds and oughts I've ever seen."  I remember thinking, "Whoa.  I know a tiny handful of his total list of clients...  If I top even them, this is really a big statement."

I went silent.  We had been talking about telling myself the truth.  I realized that literally every task I undertook or even a dream of a painting began with "I should...."

I smiled at what I was about to say, but I honestly didn't have any other vocabulary to ask with.  "So... what should I say instead?"

We both busted out laughing.   Then he said, "How about this...'I would like to...'  That way, if it doesn't happen, there's no guilt."

I immediately saw the freedom there.  "... and saying, 'I would LIKE to...' makes it something I can look forward to..."

Am I on a tangent?  NOPE.  I'm not.

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.

It's right there.  See it?  Lawful....  should/ought.  Law.  I should do this..and the list never ends.  Profitable. I would like to...   joy.  Not mastered by guilt.  Not mastered by others' opinions and expectations.  Focusing on the profitable possibilities because all the possibilities, even the good ones, aren't necessarily profitable for me to pursue.



I lived the last few weeks back in the shoulds and oughts.  I confess, working in the shoulds and oughts can produce a really pretty product, but does it profit my life? I could have done the same work with joy.  It's not always the task.  Sometimes it's just who I am in the task.

profitable:  beneficial, expedient, helpful

This is about to play into the next verse about food, but I'm done for today.  I've got to let some of this soak in for a while.

Thought for today regarding working relationships:  We are commanded to love difficult people.  We are not commanded to necessarily work with them.  (profitable?)