Introduction: My Summer Prayer

This summer, I was challenged in my women's group to spend time with God daily and just develop my intimacy with him, with the intent of loving the Lord with all my mind, soul and strength. We even decorated beautiful journals from composition notebooks in which we were to record our prayers, thoughts, and experiences and then share them when we met together. While I don't have a great history of maintaining a daily devotional time with the Lord, I was really dedicated to this venture! 

Over time, I realized that one request repeatedly made it's way into my daily prayer: "God, please guide me in what I do, think, and say." Yes, I'd prayed that before but never with such tenacity. 

When you pray a prayer like that, it's probably best to live expectant of great things! I'm not sure what I expected, but I tried to be sensitive to whatever it was going to be, and things began happening. Some were wonderful blessings, some were trials, and some were tests of obedience. While I didn't pass all my tests, my heart was sifted for God's glory and my good.

The most notable result of my summer prayer was the realization that I could no longer control my life-long weight problem. My biggest clothes were tight, I couldn't breathe well, and I was depressed. The ways I had controlled my weight in the past were completely ineffective, yet I had no confidence in any man-made, scientifically-proven, or research-based method or product. 

So I prayed. I prayed what I'd been praying every day, but I specifically begged for God to show me what to do regarding my weight. And he did. 

Not only did he tell me what to do, he also gave me a strong belief that I now had the key to losing and leaving my excess weight behind me forever. 

The purpose of this blog is to record my journey, not to educate or judge others with weight problems. Readers needs to inquire of God what he'd have him or her do, just as I did in my Summer Prayer, whether it be with weight, salvation, gambling, etc.