I promised a report on my Eighteen Day Fasting Challenge; A pledge I decided to try for the month of August and September. You can read here where I explain the process.

So, in preparation of this great “PRAISE Report” I had my dear hubby capture a picture of me jumping with prodigious success. Well, the jump wasn’t all that prodigious or successful as I fell to my butt in landing. Then, receiving my blood work results just a few days later while hearing my numbers are even higher than they had been, even though I have been working extra hard to lower them, you can say I felt quite defeated!

What went wrong? I was feeling great and by all outward appearances, there was going to be success!

Well turns out, God wants more than outward, He wants inward success stories! He wanted to teach me something so much better through the aspect of my mourning and fasting and praying then just lower numbers.

This praise report is all about what God (once again) has done and not me. Through my time spent in mourning, fasting and praying He was happy to reveal the faulty way in which I have been looking at this problem and even pursuing prayer for a rescue.

For so long now, since September of 2017, I have been on the journey of fasting. It has been labeled as a dairy, sugar fast at times, trying to reign in this indulgence to sweets. But honestly, my love for them is the all-consuming sin of the matter. Do I really want God to take away sugar from my life? My answer would be “NO”! Why haven’t I asked the Lord to fill me up with so much of Him that sugar wouldn’t be on my radar? To be honest, it isn’t just regarding sugar but other ways His Word speaks, and I possess double mindedness (James 1:8; Luke 16:13). I read or listened to a podcast (can’t remember which), not long ago, about prayers of sincerity. Do we really mean what we are praying. Are we sincerely asking with the right heart motives? Do we honestly desire God to answer that prayer?

Unfortunately, I must return to my own blog post again and again, because I forget what God has shown me in the past. I hate that once I learn something it doesn’t necessarily become a way of life. So often I feel myself wishing away the problem, asking the Lord to get me back to “Go” as I fly around the board collecting the spoils and bypassing the hard; “please just get me past it and home safely!”

My prayer is a work in progress, just as I am. But I know for certain, I don’t want to be consumed with anything but Christ. I don’t want anything to rule my life but Christ. I want His transforming work of sensibility to rule my life. I want the fruit of self-control that the Spirit produces. I want to be His Titus 2 woman!

“Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible (Greek word  “self-controlled”), pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored” (Titus 2:3-5, NASB).