Self-Care Isn't Selfish- Why God Wants You to Take Care of You

This isn't the self-love, self-help nonsense of today. This is self-care and filling your cup before you try to fill others cup and how do we do that? 

1. We start every day with Jesus first, not your phone or email, Jesus. When we start our day this way, He leads us and speaks to us and reminds us that we are so important to Him. 

Matthew 28:19 tells us to go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Holy Spirit and teaching them all the commands He taught you. That is the premise of the verse, go read it in context and ask Him to speak to you how you can walk out that Great Commission. 

Have real conversations with your family and tell them what you need. Ask them to help you and support you, they will, clear expectations are vital here! 

Are you sick of trying diet after diet and NOT losing weight?

Hey there friend, I'm Lindy Schlabach, Christian Fitness & Nutrition Coach. I gained 100 pounds in my late twenties and struggled for years to get it off. Seven years ago, I found a basic system that worked and has helped me lose 90 of those pounds. I’ve been working with women in online fitness and nutrition ever since to break chains of diet culture, embrace their bodies and fueling instead of dieting.

In this podcast, I'll teach you how to:

• • Lose Weight in a Way that honors God without obsessing about the scale
  • Meal Plan and Prep for Your Family
  • Follow a MACRO based plan that allows you to eat the foods you love.
  • Recognize and pray through triggers keeping you stuck.
  • I’ll help you Plan your week and schedule your self-care time.
  • Cultivate a spirit of self-discipline in your workouts you actually enjoy.
  
  It's time to give God your health journey and watch Him make you new, from the inside, OUT.

Join The Biblical Weight Loss Framework: https://bit.ly/JoinTheWeightLossFramework

Join my FREE Community + get a copy of my Free Weight Loss & Routine Guide: www.herweightlossmindset.com

Check out my FREE Nutrition & Fitness Masterclass: https://youtu.be/EqM9jfQMbBA

Transcript

Now we're going to talk about self-care.

Self-care is not selfish.

I want to talk to you today about why God wants you to take care of you.

Do you feel mom-guilt for wanting to work out or have five minutes to yourself?

Listen, self-care is not selfish.

It is required for your sanity.

So let's stay tuned and seek God's word here.

Are you sick of trying diet after diet and not losing weight?

Are you tired of doubting your ability to actually lose weight in a healthy way?

Do you wish you could find a laid-out-for-you plan that will help you stay accountable to your goals?

Hey, friend, I'm Lindy Schlabach, Christian Fitness and Nutrition Coach.

I gained 100 pounds in my late 20s and struggled for years to get it off.

Nine years ago, I found a system that works and has helped me lose over 90 of those pounds.

I've worked with women in online fitness and nutrition ever since.

In this podcast, I'll teach you how to reframe your thoughts about weight loss and your ability to achieve lasting results and lose weight in a way that honors God without obsessing about the scale and meal plan and prep for your family.

So grab your pre-workout and let's chat.

Hey, family, you have one day left to partake of the Secret Sale.

This offer is going to expire tomorrow, Friday.

If you have not joined the Insiders List yet, you have got to hop in there.

I am going to send you a link to the application for the Secret Sale.

And once you submit the application, I will email you back the one time, never before seen offer for the Biblical Weight Loss Framework, which is a 90 day, five step proven approach to weight loss God's way.

Listen, it is time to heal your mind so you can heal your body and walk in your God given purpose.

So I've been a mom for about 12 weeks, and I cannot believe the times that I have felt guilty for wanting to do a workout or just take a bath.

The enemy loves it when we live in shame, when we live in guilt, and when we're constantly second guessing, our desire to have a little bit of self-care.

So, what does God say?

Like, what biblically are we supposed to do when it comes to self-care?

Matthew 28, 19 says, Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

It says, go out and teach them to obey the commands that I have taught you, and I will be with you to the very end of the age.

I know that I'm paraphrasing that, I'm speaking that off of memory, so forgive me if I missed a little bit.

But we are supposed to teach people to obey the commands that God has taught us.

And listen, I don't want to get confused with this whole self-love, self-identity crisis that we've been into lately with the world and self-help and all of that, you know, nonsense.

Because we are supposed to rely on Christ.

Our identity is strictly in the relationship that we have with Jesus Christ, asking him to be the Lord of our lives, believing in his life, death and resurrection and getting the Holy Spirit when we proclaim him as our Savior.

So when we think about self-care, self-care looks like waking up a few minutes earlier than your kids so that you can pray and spend time in the Word and maybe enjoy a hot cup of coffee and really connect with the Lord, giving him the first fruits of your day.

When the Word says to teach others, teach the people that you're discipling to obey the commands that I have taught you, that means that if we're not waking up intentionally spending time in prayer, hearing from the Holy Spirit, connecting with the Holy Spirit through the Word, how are we going to teach them to obey the commands if we're not obeying the commands?

Self-care looks like going to bed earlier.

It looks like putting your phone down, removing distractions, taking screen time out of your life, waking up early with intention to spend time with your Holy Father that loves you so much and who's going to guide you to the Word, and he's going to implant that Word in your heart so that you can go out and teach people the things he's teaching you through Holy Spirit Connection and through the Word.

Matthew 22.39 says that we are to love our neighbor as ourself.

How many people living in close proximity to you do you actually know?

Hubs and I have been doing, we've been part of a discipleship group for almost two years now, and we've read a couple of books by Dan Greider, and he's really talking about making disciples where we live, work, and play.

So, when we think about self-care, how are we going to go out and make disciples if we are not caring enough for our temple to spend time with Jesus every day, to move our bodies, to fuel ourselves properly?

I'm not saying you got to be totally in love with yourself and be totally happy with where you are before you can go out and serve other people, but how can we be outward focused if we are so focused inward?

When we're focused inward, we're thinking about all the things we don't have.

We're thinking about how I'm not in my weight loss goal, how she got to buy this new car and how she got to invest in this workout program instead of just being where God is calling us to be, which is in his Holy Spirit presence.

How can we make disciples through caring for ourselves, through making time to exercise and strengthen your body, through making time to just sit down and read a book, whether it's for pleasure or you're studying trying to improve your faith?

Self-care allows us to heal so that we can serve.

Who do you need to talk to in your family today to tell them what you need?

Maybe you need your husband to fix dinner so you can go for a walk or go meet your girlfriend for a coffee or just go have some quiet time soaking in the tub.

Self-care is not selfish.

What is selfish is thinking that you can do all of these things on your own without touching base with the Holy Spirit every single day.

God wants our obedience.

He wants our obedience.

He wants us to be so connected with him that when we are feeling stuck or we are feeling the overwhelm, the self-care in that moment might look like escaping to a quiet room in your house and opening up your Bible or saying a prayer.

Self-care looks different for all of us, but if you're not making intentional time to spend with him every morning, you're missing a massive opportunity for him to do the work in your life that he wants to do.

Self-care isn't selfish.

He needs you to take care of you.

He needs you to be in direct connection, Holy Spirit communion every day, not just in the morning.

I'm reading the 40-day sugar fast for the second time in a row.

It is a season of Lent.

I am working hard on my self-sacrifice.

He's been telling me to fast from sugar since October of last year.

I have not been obedient and I know what happened the last time when he was telling me to follow a macro plan and not lift weights and I didn't listen and it took me 10 months and I don't want to be disobedient.

I am disobedient every day.

I fall short every day.

I have to repent of my sin, of comparison, of selfishness, of covetedness.

I have to repent from those things every day.

I have to repent for vanity.

I have to repent for gluttony.

Like my list of repentance in my daily prayer is long.

And sometimes I think, man, God, you have got to be tired of my issues.

He's not.

He's not tired of your issue because if it is something that you feel convicted to repent over every day, that means that he's calling you to something better.

Our pastor said in a sermon, he said, guilt comes from the enemy.

Inviction comes from the Holy Spirit.

We have to learn to discern the difference.

If you're feeling shame or guilt over something, that could, I mean, shame is definitely coming from the devil.

But if you're feeling constant conviction or maybe a little bit of guilt isn't necessarily bad, that could be interpreted as Holy Spirit conviction.

You have to seek God's will.

You have to let him be the truth speaker over your life.

Self-care is not selfish.

If you are not good for you, you cannot be good for anyone else in your life for very long anyway.

You might make it a little bit.

But the sanctification process teaches us that quiet time, that rest and Sabbath are mandatory in God's Word.

Fasting is mandatory in God's Word.

It does not say if you fast, it says when.

Fast from social media, fast from food, fast from caffeine, fast from online shopping.

Whatever the thing is that you think about before God every day, start fasting from that or start praying when you think of that thing.

If you think, I got to get on social media, say, okay Lord, what is it that I actually need to do right now?

If I have some idle time, idle hands, like it's the devil, that's where the devil does his best work, idle hands.

He has created a level of distraction in us through social media so deep that we are not willing to delete our social media apps.

We're not willing to say, oh well, I spend too much time here, I need to remove that from my life.

I say it every day and I find my thumb going there just automatically.

I keep moving my social media apps, my thumb keeps going there automatically.

It's an idle.

When we focus on self-care every day, we're going to be more in tune to the Holy Spirit.

So when those moments come, he's going to be like, oh hey, remember you were going to talk to me first.

Sometimes our flesh is going to kick in and we're still going to go to that thing, and other times we're going to say, yes, Lord, give me what I need, and that's a win.

So when you mess up in the next choice, just try again the next choice.

We're not waiting till tomorrow.

We're not waiting till Monday.

We're trying again.

We're doing the next right thing.

Self-care is not selfish.

You have to take care of you, and the best way to take care of yourself is to spend time in the Word, in prayer, every single morning before you drink your coffee, before you wake your kids, before you open your email or touch your phone.

Put it away!

Self-care is putting your phone away.

This is an area I struggle, but by golly, I'm going to try every single day to do better.

I'm going to start leaving it in my room.

I do that a lot in the evenings when Daryl comes home, because I don't want him to be on his phone, and he's on his phone a lot.

And even sometimes when he's on his phone and I think, well, I want to be on my phone, I'm like, no, I don't need to be.

I need to be present with my family.

You deserve some self-care.

You deserve to spend time with Jesus every morning and in the Word.

You don't have to spend an hour, you can spend 10 minutes.

But pretty soon you're going to crave that time.

Pretty soon that time is going to start to transform you, and you're not willing to sacrifice it for anything.

I don't care if I've had six hours of sleep and I know the baby is going to wake up in an hour.

I will get up so that I can spend time with the Lord and read my Bible before she wakes up.

It is worth it.

You are worth it.

Make this a daily habit and watch your life transform.

Hey sis, I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with a friend?

Also, please leave a quick review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

It lights me up to know this podcast is helping you.

Okay, it's time to go make a protein shake and get my sweat on.

No more standing in the kitchen waiting for motivation to appear.

I will meet you back here for another episode.

God bless.

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