Lean and Green: The Smoothie Challenge

How often did we shutter when our mother reminded us of the importance of eating our vegetables? My dog eats several things I won't mention in this blog but one thing she refuses to touch is...vegetables. Broccoli alone is chock full of valuable vitamins and minerals, most of which are lost during the cooking process but who eats raw broccoli every day?

For quite some time now my family and I have been partakers of Green Smoothie Girl's (www.greensmoothiegirl.com) 30 Day Smoothie challenge. We have already completed the thirty days and are enjoying the benefits of eating at least 15 servings of green vegetables and fruits a day.

James and I have both lost weight, I get more compliments now on my appearance and the kids love the smoothies too! Increased energy, decreased irritability, no more struggling to get through tired afternoons, it's amazing stuff.

GSG (Green Smoothie Girl) recommends starting with mild greens and mostly fruit (25% greens: spinach or kale are great starters and 75% fruit: must include at least one if not two bananas then whatever else you like) If you can add a superfood (goji berries, acai berries, wheat grass, hemp seed, etc.) all the better!

To start add only the green lettuce to the number 5 in your blender. Then add juice or water about halfway up the greens. Blend until liquid. Then from here add all other ingredients. Blend and serve. For a creamer smoothie you can add kefir or yogurt. This can also boost up your probiotic intake which will only help mop up all the free radicals and cancer causing carcinogens in the digestive system. The greens alone are great at cleaning up the digestive tract of all unwelcome toxins left behind from most anything we eat. The fruit helps to hide all the bitterness from most greens and the blending process of the smoothie helps your digestive system to make the most of all the nutrients and live enzymes contained within for optimal health.

My six year old (who has already noticed an increased ability to concentrate and maintain his anxiety levels: thank you ADHD, OCD and CTD) is quite the smoothie connoisseur. He LOVES them. Below I have his famous Kandy Kooler recipe he makes for the kids for breakfast.

Kandy Kooler
3 cups Spinach
2 cups Kale
1 T. Hemp Powder (a complete protein full of Omega 3's, 6's and CLA's)
1 T. Ground Flax Seed (full of Omega 3's and 6's)
2.5 cups grape juice or cherry juice or combo of both (juice with no added sugars recommended)

Blend together

Add

1 Banana
1 cup blueberries
1 peach cut up into chunks
4 Strawberries
1/2 cup kefir or yogurt of choice

Optional ingredients to add:
Acai pulp or berries
1 pear
1 apple
1 mango for punch
1/2 cucumber
2 carrots

Blend all together then pour in cups and serve. Can be kept in the fridge for up to 24 hours.

Your First Love

"Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you left your first love." -Jesus Christ, to the church of Ephesus, Revelation 2:4

In love I am calling out to you my sisters and brothers in Christ as I, too, am convicted of this. Conservative Christians: do you find it easy to boast in your godly wisdom and revelations yet is it difficult to show grace and love to others? Both to believers and unbelievers alike? Stacy MacDonald once said, "I would rather have lunch with a willing heathen than a prideful Christian." Christians, we MUST watch our pride. In the recent past, I watched as a brother and sister in Christ were told that the cause of their endless trials and suffering were being brought on by God as judgment. Shameful! This reminds me of Job's response to his friends, "Oh, that you would be silent, and it would be your wisdom!" Job 13:5
I believe we conservative Christians, reformed theologians, have fallen astray from our first love. One man, I know, has great love for Jesus. It emits from him. It doesn't mean he dresses in pants down to his ankles and curses and witnesses at bars in an effort to become all things to all people so that some might be saved. (A gross misinterpretation of Paul's preaching to the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 9:22.)
No, this great man of God, full of the wisdom of His Father and yet humble in his knowledge, fully displays the love of Jesus. So please, my friends in Christ, know that I love you because I love my Master and if I fall from this way and have gone astray in my love for Him, please, in love, tell me so that I may never take my eyes on the only One deserving of my adoration.

I close with wise words from the Prince of Preachers: Charles Spurgeon, my love to you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.

"The love of Christ constraineth us."
--2 Corinthians 5:14

How much owest thou unto my Lord? Has He ever done anything for thee? Has He forgiven thy sins? Has He covered thee with a robe of righteousness? Has He set thy feet upon a rock? Has He established thy goings? Has He prepared heaven for thee? Has He prepared thee for heaven? Has He written thy name in His book of life? Has He given thee countless blessings? Has He laid up for thee a store of mercies, which eye hath not seen nor ear heard? Then do something for Jesus worthy of His love. Give not a mere wordy offering to a dying Redeemer. How will you feel when your Master comes, if you have to confess that you did nothing for Him, but kept your love shut up, like a stagnant pool, neither flowing forth to His poor or to His work. Out on such love as that!
What do men think of a love which never shows itself in action? Why, they say, "Open rebuke is better than secret love." Who will accept a love so weak that it does not actuate you to a single deed of self-denial, of generosity, of heroism, or zeal! Think how He has loved you, and given Himself for you! Do you know the power of that love? Then let it be like a rushing mighty wind to your soul to sweep out the clouds of your worldliness, and clear away the mists of sin. "For Christ's sake" be this the tongue of fire that shall sit upon you: "for Christ's sake" be this the divine rapture, the heavenly afflatus to bear you aloft from earth, the divine spirit that shall make you bold as lions and swift as eagles in your Lord's service. Love should give wings to the feet of service, and strength to the arms of labour. Fixed on God with a constancy that is not to be shaken, resolute to honour Him with a determination that is not to be turned aside, and pressing on with an ardour never to be wearied, let us manifest the constraints of love to Jesus. May the divine loadstone draw us heavenward towards itself.

Ten Reasons Not To Ask Jesus Into Your Heart

Written By Todd Friel
The music weeps, the preacher pleads, “Give your heart to Jesus. You have a God shaped hole in your heart and only Jesus can fill it.” Dozens, hundreds or thousands of people who want to get their spiritual life on track make their way to the altar. They ask Jesus into their heart.
Cut to three months later. Nobody has seen our new convert in church. The follow up committee calls him and encourages him to attend a Bible study, but to no avail. We label him a backslider and get ready for the next outreach event.
Our beloved child lies in her snuggly warm bed and says, “Yes, Daddy. I want to ask Jesus into my heart.” You lead her in “the prayer” and hope that it sticks. You spend the next ten years questioning if she really, really meant it. Puberty hits and the answer reveals itself. She backslides. We spend the next ten years praying that she will come to her senses.
Telling someone to ask Jesus into their hearts has a very typical result, backsliding. the Bible says that a person who is soundly saved puts his hand to the plow and does not look back because he is fit for service. In other words, a true convert cannot backslide. If a person backslides, he never slid forward in the first place. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.” (II Cor.5) No backsliding there.
Brace yourself for this one: with very few if any exceptions, anyone who asked Jesus into their hearts to be saved…is not. If you asked Jesus into your heart because you were told that is what you have to do to become a Christian, you were mis-informed.
If you have ever told someone to ask Jesus into their heart (like I have), you produced a false convert. Here is why.
1. It is not in the Bible. There is not a single verse that even hints we should say a prayer inviting Jesus into our hearts. Some use Rev. 3:20. To tell us that Jesus is standing at the door of our hearts begging to come in.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” There are two reasons that interpretation is wrong.
The context tells us that the door Jesus is knocking on is the door of the church, not the human heart. Jesus is not knocking to enter someone’s heart but to have fellowship with His church.
Even if the context didn’t tell us this, we would be forcing a meaning into the text (eisegesis). How do we know it is our heart he is knocking at? Why not our car door? How do we know he isn’t knocking on our foot? To suggest that he is knocking on the door of our heart is superimposing a meaning on the text that simply does not exist.
The Bible does not instruct us to ask Jesus into our heart. This alone should resolve the issue, nevertheless, here are nine more reasons.
2. Asking Jesus into your heart is a saying that makes no sense. What does it mean to ask Jesus into your heart? If I say the right incantation will He somehow enter my heart? Is it literal? Does He reside in the upper or lower ventricle? Is this a metaphysical experience? Is it figurative? If it is, what exactly does it mean? While I am certain that most adults cannot articulate its meaning, I am certain that no child can explain it. Pastor Dennis Rokser reminds
us that little children think literally and can easily be confused (or frightened) at the prospect of asking Jesus into their heart.
3. In order to be saved, a man must repent (Acts 2:38). Asking Jesus into your heart leaves out the requirement of repentance.
4. In order to be saved, a man must trust in Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31).
Asking Jesus into your heart leaves out the requirement of faith.
5. The person who wrongly believes they are saved will have a false sense of security. Millions of people who sincerely, but wrongly, asked Jesus into their hearts think they are saved but struggle to feel secure. They live in doubt and fear because they do not have the Holy Spirit giving them assurance of salvation.
6. The person who asks Jesus into his heart will likely end up inoculated, bitter and backslidden. Because he did not get saved by reciting a formulaic prayer, he will grow disillusioned with Jesus, the Bible, church and fellow believers. His latter end will be worse than the first.
7. It presents God as a beggar just hoping you will let Him into your busy life. This presentation of God robs Him of His sovereignty.
8. The cause of Christ is ridiculed. Visit an atheist web-site and read the pagans who scoff, “How dare those Christians tell us how to live when they get divorced more than we do? Who are they to say homosexuals shouldn’t adopt kids when tens of thousands of orphans don’t get adopted by Christians?” Born again believers adopt kids and don’t get divorced.
People who ask Jesus into their hearts do. Jesus gets mocked when false converts give Him a bad name.
9. The cause of evangelism is hindered. While it is certainly easier to get church members by telling them to ask Jesus into their hearts, try pleading with someone to make today the day of their salvation. Get ready for a painful response. “Why should I become a Christian when I have seen so called Christians act worse than a pagan?” People who ask Jesus into their hearts give pagans an excuse for not repenting.
10. Here is the scary one. People who ask Jesus into their hearts are not saved and they will perish on the Day of Judgment. How tragic that millions of people think they are right with God when they are not. How many people who will cry out, “Lord, Lord” on judgment day will be “Christians” who asked Jesus into their hearts?
So, what must one do to be saved? Repent and trust. (Heb.6:1) The Bible makes it clear that all men must repent and place their trust in Jesus Christ. Every man does have a “God shaped hole in their hearts,” but that hole is not contentment, fulfillment and peace. Every man’s heart problem is righteousness. Instead of preaching that Jesus fulfills, we must preach that God judges and Jesus satisfies God’s judgment…if a man will repent and place his trust in Him.
If you are reading this and you asked Jesus into your heart, chances are good you had a spiritual buzz for a while, but now you struggle to read your Bible, tithe, attend church and pray. Perhaps you were told you would have contentment, purpose and a better life if you just ask Jesus into your heart. I am sorry, that was a lie.