B90X Report - Like Father, Like Son

B90X Day 2 Report - Like Father, Like Son

My little man will be here in February. Ryan and I are very excited. On the ultra sounds I have had, he has been doing flips. I looked at Ryan and said, "He is going to be just like his father." And if he is, I am going to be so proud of him. If he is not, Iwill love him just the same.

I feel that is how God viewed Isaac and Abraham. Twice Abraham did not trust that God would protect him and his wife. Twice Abraham told kings that Sarah was his sister and not his wife. With Abraham, it was just a half-truth. Sarah and Abraham had the same father but different mothers. Both times, God interferred and did not let anything happen to Sarah. He protected Abraham and Sarah's marriage.

In Genesis 26, Isaac and Rebekah returned to King Abimelech. This is the same king that his father Abraham deceived in Genesis 20. Isaac tells the king that Rebekah is his sister and not his wife. This wasn't even a half-truth for Isaac and Rebekah. It was an outright lie. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. King Abimelech was no fool. He watched Isaac and Rebekah and saw Isaac treating Rebekah as a wife, not a sister.

How many times must God provide for them for them to get it? God provided a wife for Isaac. God protected Abraham and Sarah in foreign lands. Yet, they continued to lie and deceive to "keep safe." They feared they would be killed over the beauty of their wives.

Day 3 Reading: Gensis 28:20 - 40:11

B90X - Day 1 Report

Day 1 of B90X was reading Genesis 1:1 - 16:16. It took about an hour and a half, with me taking some notes. God has opened my eyes to scripture that I never knew existed! I have read through Genesis many times; however, I never saw these words until now.

In Genesis 1:11, God said 'Let the land sproud with vegetation - every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.' How many times have I read that? Taking is metaphorically, God made us to produce what we are. If we are bad, we produce bad fruit. If we are focused on Christ and his goodness, we will produce good fruits. We can't produce that which we are not.

In Genesis 8:21b God said "I will never again curse the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood." I know that this theme is present throughout scripture. I just didn't know this was what God said when he gave the first rainbow.

When I think of famous battles in the Bible, I think of David and Goliath or Joshua and Jericho. I don't normally think of Abram (Abraham) and 318 of his men. Genesis 14 talks about a great king who destroyed many kingdoms and eventually defeated and looted Sodom, taking Lot and all of his treasures with them. When Abram heard of this, he gathered 318 of his men and took off after his nephew, Lot. Abram and his men not only destroyed this great army, taking back the possessions and people looted from the cities. He also made the remaining army flee for their lives! How great our God is that with 318 men, he defeated a great army.

Day 2 Readings: Genesis 17:1 - Genesis 28:19

The B90X Challenge

I tried this (although six days after Elevation Church did) last year. I barely made it through and had to double up on two of the days.

I have printed out another copy and have decided to do it again. B90X is an intense Bible reading plan. You must commit to 90 days straight of a few hours of reading a day. I am committed. I am going to read through the Bible in 90 days and this time, I WILL NOT fail.

Day 1 Reading : Genesis 1:1 - Genesis 16:16

So here goes!

Free Stuff - Not always a Scam

SWAGBUCKS

Ok. So I have been using Swagbucks for awhile now. You can see the widget for more information for Swagbucks on the right side of my page.

Well, I have always been skeptical when it came to offering "Free Stuff" on the internet. I have installed the Swagbucks toolbar, signedup for swagbucks, and use the search engine instead of google or a favorite to get to my favorite sites (i.e. facebook, myspace, ebay, amazon, etc.) I also try to take part in the daily polls and surveys. What has it gotten me thus far? Well, I have saved up enough swagbucks to get three Amazon giftcards, won a Swagstakes rug for the nursery, and gotten a neat little pair of earrings!

If you know how to work it without giving away too much personal information, this is DEFINITELY worth it!

COUPONS

Another subject is couponing. I have recently become a coupon junkie! With a baby on the way, money is getting tighter. I thoroughly enjoy running through the store and saving money! Especially if you can catch a double or triple coupon day at your local grocery store!

My favorite coupon site is www.southernsavers.com. It is a MUST for any mom! And if you don't have kids, well you can save money too! I bought Huggies wipes for $0.97 the other day. And no mother can ignore $6 packs of diapers!

I have recently kept a tally of CVS extra care bucks with coupons. If you play it right, you can actually get PAID to shop! For example, when there is a rebate on a Pepsi product and CVS offers extra care bucks when you buy so many. I got PAID for buying four packs of Pepsi the other day.

Satan's Methods of Deception

I have been doing another Bible study on Eve. There is so much we can learn from the first woman; however, I want to focus on how Satan deceived Eve. I know he continues to try and use these methods to deceive me and keep me from doing God's work. Sometimes, he even uses Christians to do it. So don't ever put your guard down. Satan is good at what he does.

" 'You won't die!' the serpent replied to the woman. 'God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.' " - Genesis 3:4-5

This is a story everyone seems to know by heart. However, I do not think we really take time to look at the contrast between what God said and How Eve and Satan quoted God.

1. Doubting the truthfulness of God

The first method Satan uses is casting doubt on the truthfulness of what God said. He did this when he told Eve, "You won't die!"

In Genesis 2: 16-17 God said:

1. From any tree of the garden you may eat freely
2. but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
3. you shall not eat
4. for in that day you eat from it you shall surely die.

In Genesis 3: 2-3 Eve quoted God is Satan as:

1. From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat
2. but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden
3. God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it
4. least you die.'

Read each again. Do they say the same thing? No. They are similar but Eve adds to what God really said. She changes the perspective. Satan uses this to not only bring doubt to Eve's heart, but he also uses Eve's misquote to misquote God himself.

Remember, keep in God's word. If you can't quote God correctly, you won't be able to see past Satan's lies and misquotes of God's Word.

2. Doubting God's Motives

Satan says to Eve, "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Satan tells Eve that God isn't looking out for the wellbeing. Satan suggests that God is holding Eve back from something good.

Unbelief

"But despite all the miraculous signs he had done, most of the people did not believe in him." - John 12:37 NLT

This verse may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you who read this. I have struggled recently with unbelief. I believe in my God! I believe that Christ died for my sins, rose from the dead, and now (since 1992) has resided in me. I have a clear remembrance of the day I accepted Christ.

My unbelief comes in the form of not trusting God with every aspect of my life. Over the years, I have trusted God with a lot of things. But my baby, apparently, did not fall in that list until today. I have struggled since the third grade with asthma and allergies. They are chronic problems, not just the every day allergies. I used to get sick only during the spring and fall. Some teachers put me outside in elementary school. The problem was that outside the classroom was also outside the building. We had no indoor hallways. This going outside made it worse...and caused me to miss school.

When I got to middle school, my medical problems took a drastic change. It was like a night and day affect. I seemed to get sick all the time, not just during certain seasons. I had just recovered from a second battle of strep throat. My doctors didn't know what to do with me. They couldn't understand how medicines that used to work, suddenly stopped. This escaladed until eigth grade. In eigth grade I never went to school. I was put on homebound. A teacher picked up my assignments from school, came to my house for an hour a day, and I had tons of work to complete before she showed up the next day. During this time, even the hospital ER began to just drug me up and send me home. During this time I went in circles from pulmonologist, to allergist, to family doctor, to ENT and in a continuous circle. Every doctor tried what they thought would work, and when it didn't, sent me on to someone else.

I had one brilliant doctor who finally took out my tonsils my freshmen year of college. This drastically decreased the amount of time I spent sick. Two years later, I had a doctor tell me I might have cancer. They decided to take out a lymph node instead of biopsying it. When they went in, they took out two. PRAISE THE LORD! The biopsy came back negative for cancer; however, it was labeled as a chronic infection - same as my tonsils and adeniods two years prior to this.

It wasn't until after I graduated college that we discovered the method to the madness. The entire time I had PANDAS. Apparently, when I had one of the episodes of strep I developed an autoimmune disease. This disease caused an involuntary muscle spasm - or a tic - to be developed, which set off my acid reflux and asthma. The only time I could get peace was when I was asleep...because the involuntary spasm wasn't like the reflex of breathing....it did not occur when my brain was in sleep mode. Thankfully, I outgrew it or something. But the damage has been done to my lungs before that with my chronic asthma and allergies I continue to struggle with to this day.

So what does all this have to do with my baby and my unbelief? A LOT! I was on so many medicines, and many of them trial medications, that one doctor took me off of them saying that they could cause med to be infertile. So for the longest time there has been doubts in my mind whether I could even conceive. When I found out I was pregnant, that burden was lifted off my shoulders and I praised God with everything I am. But.... I found out non of my medications were safe for the pregnancy. That includes the nasal spray, preventative and emergency inhalers for asthma, my singulair, allegra, lortadine, and acid reflux medicines that were prescriptions had to go.... so now I am on very low dose over the counter wanna-bes. They don't do the job...but God is slowly helping my body heal and adjust. I have been so worried that either the stress that my asthma puts on my body, or the medications I took for a month before I found out I was pregnant, or the fact that I have a lengthy family medical history would make my baby an unhealthy baby.

I talked to the NP and midwife at my OBGYN on Thursday. They both told me that God doesn't make mistakes. That every baby was put on this earth for a purpose and a method to serve God. (we were talking about the downsyndrom and some other testing they want to do) That helped ease the way to what God told me tonight through various methods. First, was the music for DNOW. "God is healer" and "Healing is in [His] hands" were a major theme in the music. Then God used a wonderful lady to help answer so many prayers that I had today about various other things. God just reminded me tonight that he was in control of my baby and my future whether I wanted to let him have the reigns or not. I used to say My god is bigger and He CAN do it...now I have a new motto. My God is bigger and He WILL do it!

Nursery is Coming Together

No, we are not setting up the nursery yet...we plan on doing that with the help of my parents and his for Thanksgiving this year. We have picked out a theme of Winnie the Pooh. My best friend and I loved Winnie the Pooh ever since we were kids! We had nicknames for the three of us. We had a Tiger, Robyn, Pooh, and Piglet in the group. So much of my childhood through teenage years had Winnie the Pooh in it.

We have a crib - pictured above - without this bedding. We painted it white (you can see in the picture with the Winnie the Pooh stuff). A sealy mattress! We also have a basinet. Not pictured because my mother is working on turning her wedding dress into a basinet skirt. She is also making pink and blue ribbons so that depending on what this one is...and what we have in future pregnancies.... we can use the same furniture.