Celebration of Hope antics

So my church does this thing called Celebration of Hope, pretty much something where, as a church, we come together to try to raise awareness for global hunger issues and make an effort to do our best to fight global hunger. This leads to seed packing (where you volunteer for an hour or so and either scoop vegetable seeds into an envelope or seal said envelope), donating money (which goes towards equipping people with better housing, better technology, etc.), and the rice-and-beans challenge. Oh boy. What is this challenge exactly. It's technically a fast. The essential idea is to live for five days off of less than $2 a day by consuming beans, rice, and oatmeal in small portions. So, for five days (except for dinner on the fifth day), you get a packet of instant oatmeal for breakfast, rice and beans for lunch, and rice and beans again for dinner. And you drink tap water only. It's now day 4. I have never wanted to eat rice and beans any less than I do now. I even gave in last night to temptation and had sweets at like 9pm (granted, they didn't taste that great because my tummy wasn't used to the food I was putting in it), because I am so sick and tired of rice and beans! asdfghjkl;' (<-- mental frustration) And yes, I was disappointed in myself a bit afterward because I was doing relatively well with the fast. But none of this is the point of this blog post. In fact, what God recently taught me far outweighs the fact that I gave in to temptation, and perhaps God used this temptation as a test rather than true temptation, thus He helped me learn from it. So, the point: We humans are weak. I can tell you that and you might not realize it for a long time, but it's true. We're so easily swayed and persuaded and tempted and convinced. In fact, when we are trying to do something that goes against the instant gratification that society tends towards, we really have a hard time doing it out of our own strength. That's why, dear reader, we need to stop doing such things out of our own strength and doing them our of God's. God grants us access to His strength. It's one of the wonderful gifts we recieve when we become His children. That's definitely not to say that we'll be tempted any less; in fact, we might become even more tempted! But with His strength, we know for a fact that we can overcome such temptation. Why do I say that God used my temptation as a test? I think the test He was given to me was one titled Using God's Strength to Overcome Temptation. As I told you, I didn't exactly pass this one, and I consumed delicious confections that made my tummy hurt a little. But upon prayer and just listening for God's voice to learn what He was trying to teach me (because I had gotten really nothing from Him up until that point), He pointed this out to me and revealed that it was a test to me. And then, when wondering if I should continue with the fast or just give up, this verse floated into my mind: 1 Timothy 6:8 = "Fight the good fight of the faith..." That first part, "fight the good fight," in this particular situation means that I need to see this beans-and-rice challenge through to the end, doing the best that I can as a way to glorify God and understand all that He wants me to understand through this challenge. While finishing up my beans and rice tonight (and feeling awfully, awfully tired of eating them), I realized too that hey, at least I have food. At least I'm not starving. But people all over the world are. I've got the feeling that I'm going to pray differently with respect to my meals after this challenge. One more portion of oatmeal and one more portion of beans and rice to go!!!