Convicted....and Consecrated

Our amazing pastor, Blake Lorenz, at Encounter gave a great message on Sunday featuring Romans 12:1,2 "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

Of course, I am familiar with this passage, and have studied and prayed on it before. My body is a sacrifice to the Lord. Not only my body, but my entire life. But...am I truly proving the perfect will of God if I hold part of myself back? Always before, I'd dwelt on whether I was treating my body as an acceptable sacrifice. Wondering. Does that mean I should exercise more? Eat less sugar? Get up earlier to read the bible, pray, make the kids breakfast?

Now, on Sunday, I found God convicting me on a different level. Don't get me wrong, He is happy with me. He loves me with a LOVE unbound. Unfathomable. However, He likes to teach me in gentle whispers. He wants me to be aligned to His perfect will. After the birth of our 7th child, I made the decision to have an IUD implanted in my womb. At the time, it made sense. We'd considered tubal ligation, vasectomy, the essure procedure, but figured the IUD worked with the body's natural system best. Plus, it was good for years. I should have known it was a mistake right away. The midwife put the wrong IUD in. She used the Mirena, which uses chemical hormones (like the pill) as well as the IUD technology, and I knew it was wrong. She said to give it a try, and if I didn't like it, they'd take it out. I was 6 weeks post-partum and just wanted my life back to "normal." It seemed to. After a few months, I didn't even have a regular cycle. However, after I stopped nursing when Sabina was just over 1 year old, I started putting on more weight. I hadn't heard that the Mirena did that. Out of laziness, I guess, I never did anything about the thing. It's been 4 years.

Now, God is directing me to think about trusting Him. I need to present my ENTIRE body as a living sacrifice to Him. It's time that I stopped being conformed to the world in this ONE way. Stop holding this part of myself back from Him. God is our provider. He is our caretaker. He hasn't let us down yet! I have to be willing to submit and prove what is good, acceptable and within the perfect will of God.
It's time to consecrate myself, my WHOLE self, to God.

Thanks for listening.