It seems that there is a big interest in losing weight in our community, and I must admit it has my interest as well. As I began to think about losing weight I thought about all the things that I could give up: from soft drinks and ice cream to pecan pie and honey buns (can you figure out my weakness). This inventory of things I should give up made me think about other things that we should all give up.<\/p>\n
Paul in Romans 6 was talking to a group of people who thought that they could take advantage of grace. They thought the more they sinned the more grace would show up. Paul asks, “shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound?” and the reply of course is, “by no means.” He goes on to say in verse 11 that we who are in Christ have become dead to sin and been made alive in Christ. <\/p>\n
The more I thought about these verses I realized that Paul was not calling us to give up certain aspects of our lives. He certainly was not calling us to give up the “sweets” of life. Instead he told us to die to sin and ourselves and be made whole and alive in Christ. So if you want to be a big loser don’t just give things up, die to them and not only will you lose them but you will find a life that’s worth living. I hope that in this sense you can be a big loser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seems that there is a big interest in losing weight in our community, and I must admit it has my interest as well. As I began to think about losing weight I thought about all the things that I could give up: from soft drinks and ice cream to pecan pie and honey buns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastorsblog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2dF3Y-6e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakgrovebaptistchurch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}