I can do it on my own!

    Recently I decided to get back in shape as I was over 50 pounds overweight. My size 36 jeans were almost too small now and I needed size 38 instead.  I still remember my wife bringing me to the Eddie Bauer store in the mall to try on some new slacks and shirts.  I decided to give size 36 one more try and went into the changing room knowing in the back of my mind that they were not going to fit but thought maybe, just maybe, they were a large 36.   So I put them on and could barely button them up.   There I stood in front of the large mirrors and tried to pull my gut in, but finally just said to myself, "No John!  Just let it go"  and so I relaxed and my gut pushed out and the pants clearly were not going to fit and I was a hideous site to see.   I couldn't pretend anymore.   I was obese.  I handed them back to my wife through the door and said, "I need size 38 now"  and she without saying a word handed my the size 38 slacks I needed.

    That moment was life changing for me.  I had to change.  I started to workout every day (sometimes 2 times a day) and the weight slowly began to come off.  Of course I decided to do it all on my own.  I played lots of sports in grade school and high school as a youth.  I knew how you have to work hard and do lots of running to burn calories.    I have always prided myself on being self-sufficient.  In my work I could take on most jobs without any help.   Even at home I could get through most home projects without too much help from friends or neighbors.  But I soon learned that much of my knowledge on weight-loss was outdated and I need to not only address exercise but also my diet and eating habits.  My wife helped me with that as well.  She too was in need of losing weight and when we joined a new gym she signed up for a Team Weightloss class to help her get going and what she learned in the class "spilled over" to me as well and helped me lose more weight.  In the end I've lost the 50 pounds and I am in better shape then ever.  In the exercise business they refer to this as "transformation".

     It's interesting that in life we all too often don't want help.   Maybe it's our American Spirit or something that says "I can do it on my own!".  This attitude isn't just with work or at the gym but is also in our spiritual lives.   We brazenly say,

"Don't worry God!  I can do it on my own!   I've got this!  "

    He must chuckle inside like an fitness coach looking at an obese person who hasn't exercised in years  who is trying to do it all on their own.   How silly we must look to him as we think to ourselves that we can fix our sin and the evil inside of us.   He quietly tells us, "Let me help you!" but we resist until we finally have to face ourselves in the mirror of his law and say, "Let it go!" 

    In the Gospel of John, we read about Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman.  She was getting water from a deep well in the middle of the hot afternoon.   She was not a well liked woman in the community as she was divorced 4 times and her current "husband" wasn't her legal husband.  She had figured out a way to do it herself.  She would get the water in the middle of the hot afternoon so she wouldn't have to endure the lectures and hateful looks of the other women.  Like the obese person who as found the perfect time to go to the gym to exercise so no one can see them (including no trainers).   Her solution was like theirs, "self-imposed social isolation".   But Jesus is like that trainer who won't go away.  He comes up to her and talks to her.   He knows her situation fully and he reaches out to her with the truth, that he is the Messiah and he wants to have a living relationship with her.   She has her "Let it go!" moment and runs off to the local town to call all the people out to the well to meet Jesus. 

    Jesus reaches out to us each day on the Cross and says "Let it go!  I've got this!"  we just need to surrender and listen to his word and let him transform us from the inside with the help of his Holy Spirit.