Archive for December, 2008

How to lose 30+lbs in 40 Days

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 24 December 2008
in Church Planting, City of Weston Florida, Health, InDependence Church and My Life
. 18 Comments

This is my personal daily log of my 40 day fasting experience. I tried to keep them brief because I really want you to read through the progression. I didn’t go into the really spiritual side because I have some personal stuff there that I just didn’t feel led to share. So I focused mainly on the physical because I want you to know that it is physically possible. This is something that you can do WHEN GOD LEADS YOU TO. (Emphasis added again and again and again).

Not everybody is called to a 40 day fast but we are all called to fast. It is good for the spirit, the mind and the body. If I didn’t think it would be creepy I had considered doing a photo journal as well but with a thin 5′-8″ frame to start, it is easy to imagine the progression. So enjoy reading about the last 40 Days of my life as I have set out to give Jesus the gift of me for His birthday.

(As a continuation to the follow-up I have posted comments for a couple of days to give you the aftermath)

Day 1 - 157.0 lbs- Headache from 2:00 throught the remainder of the day. Probably due to the types of food I have been eating and the amount of caffeine I have been drinking. In hindsight I should have cut out caffeine and sugar a while ago and making a chocolate chip cookie the last thing I ate… not brilliant.

Day 2 - 155.2 lbs - Beginning of mental attack. Why am I doing this? What is the purpose? Will it really change anything?

Day 3 - 152.7 lbs - Slight stiffness and soreness throughout my body. Some is usual given the set-up and tear down at church but a lot more than usual today. Lusted over my sons breakfast today. Remembering from my previous 30 day fast getting past the first 3-4 days is the biggest challenge so I am gutting it out.

Day 4 - 150.8 lbs - Today I am feeling my first real hunger pains. I also am having a little bit of “laziness” in my muscles, specifically my legs. I feel like God dropped another purpose to fast in my spirit. I was taking part in the 40 days with our church but this season may take a more personal direction.

Day 5 - 149.2 lbs. - Really sluggish start to the day but the brisk motorcycle ride in today really got the blood flowing. Yesterday was a company lunch which is always really good. I don’t feel the physical need to eat as strong as the mental need to eat. Sounds strange but frankly I like to eat more than I need to eat.

Day 6 - 148.8lbs - I am glad the weight loss slowed down a little today. Today I feel the best that I have felt so far. Company birthday breakfasts two days in a row… you have got to be kidding me! Struggling a little to force myself to drink enough water to stay hydrated. Simply tired of the taste and going pee all the time. I know that it will make the difference between my success and failure so I had better get used to it.

Day 7 - 147.2lbs - Today has been the best morning yet. Very little uncomfortableness or sluggishness. I feel like my mind is clear and can really focus on the purpose of this fast. If I remember from my 30 day there is potentially another rough patch at +/-20 days but we’ll see. For now I am excited to be on this spiritual journey as God strengthens me in this process of beating this earthly flesh into submission.

As a side note: Sneezing with an empty stomach is pretty painful.

Day 8 - 146.4lbs - This fast is forcing me to get some more rest which is good.

Day 9 - 145.8lbs - Found myself easily winded at set-up today. Operated for most of the day on pure adrenalin. With that said I believe it was one of the best Sunday’s we have had in a while. I confirmed it with my wife because I couldn’t believe how focused I was during message delivery. By evening I was cooked but my favorite TV show helped me wind down: 24 Redemption. In reality I didn’t need any help winding down, I was pooped.

Day 10 - 143.6lbs - This is the second biggest weight loss day right behind last Sunday. This has me a little concerned because we are headed into the holidays and some of our college student help will be leaving which almost guarantees me a spot on the set-up team. I had anticipated losing 20-25lbs and I am already at 13 lbs just one quarter of the way through. Continue reading ‘How to lose 30+lbs in 40 Days’

In the loop…

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 19 December 2008
in InDependence Church, My Life and Random Ramblings
. 2 Comments

Christmas Eve is just 5 short days away and at 7:00pm I will hopefully release to the world what I have spent the last 35 days preparing. I know that I haven’t blogged a lot in recent weeks but this really has consumed me.

 

This combined with the Christmas Party at InDependence which was really a great time. We had great food, a lot of fun, and my wife even hooked us up with some Starbucks competing coffee.

 

We are also preparing for a new series starting in January called “Bail Me Out”. This is really the first series that we have done centered on material goods. We have talked about through the course of other series but I believe this 4 weeks is really going to inspire some people to fight to get free from debt (including me) and help them to recognize that the plan God has for your life does include your stuff.

 

We are looking to use this series as a springboard into a Dave Ramsey based InVest Group so that we can give people not only the theology but also the practical tools to make it happen for them, their children and their children’s children.

 

So fun stuff coming up and I forgot to mention that our one year anniversary is just around the corner.

WACKY WEEKEND

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 16 December 2008
in City of Weston Florida, InDependence Church and My Life
. 1 Comment

We had just a crazy weekend around InDependence and really had to persevere through some challenges but God did some great stuff this weekend. I don’t usually blog about Sundays because even though they are a big part of what we do I am just not disciplined enough to do it every week so I don’t want to set expectations for it.

 

But this past Sunday was just a perfect storm of issues and I want to note it because I feel like it has the makings of a turning point.

 

Started off the day with our worship leader’s son being rushed to ER via ambulance after having a seizure. We obviously stopped set-up to pray which put us behind in that. Ultimately he stabilized and our worship leader came to church which was huge. For the record I told him to stay with his son but his wife had different thoughts.

 

That was big as you will read further. Our drummer was a last minute cancellation and so we tried to get the symbols and snare there in time for our bass player to hop on the kit. For a “non-drummer” he did a pretty good job the last time he had to fill in. I don’t know if they actually did that or not because I missed the first three songs running home to get the Advent reading for the day.

 

With the Christmas party the night before (which was awesome) I had forgotten to print it out and didn’t remember until the couple who was reading it sad they didn’t have one. So all of that combined with one other huge piece to my current spiritual and physical place which I pray I can share in 7 days, led to an all out argument with Satan in my car on the way back to church.

 

I got some head turns I am sure but I was just angry and frankly wanted to let him know that this day wasn’t going to break me. When I got back to church my wife ran to the car to tell me about the 4 new families that were visiting today. She didn’t know what I was going through at that moment but couldn’t understand why I wasn’t a little more excited.

 

I would like to say that everything went smooth after that but I had missed our lead guitars amp malfunction and when I unpacked my notes I couldn’t find the first page and so on and so forth. But… God showed up in a pretty cool way and through this video testimony and the message you can find here I believe that some hearts were changed.

 

As a bonus to our podcast I left in a little unplugged worship at the end. Because this is live and we don’t have great acoustics nor great recording equipment you’ll just have to imagine how really talented our group is or you can come check them out for yourself this Sunday at 10:29am.

 

As one final follow-up our worship leader had his van stolen from the hospital that his son was in… I can’t wait to see what amazing stuff God has in store for InDependence Church.

Reason #227 why I am angry my wife stopped blogging…

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 12 December 2008
in InDependence Church, My Wife and The Word
. 1 Comment

This is the devotion my wife prepared for our church Christmas Party tomorrow. (so if you are coming don’t ruin it by taking a sneak peak) 

“I want to paint a picture for you. It’s December 26th and you’re sitting on your couch. You look around your house and you see the evidence that Christmas did come and go. You see little pieces of wrapping paper that didn’t make it into the big bundles of trash that were carted out and then little Johnny runs in and his hearts broken because his gift card to Game Stop is missing and you tell him to go look in the big bundles of trash that are outside. Then, little Susie comes running down the stairs and the collectible figurine that Grandma bought has been broken. You’re too tired to get out the super glue and so you sit and ponder and your wonder, “Why was it that this Christmas was no different”. Oh, you set out way before Christmas to make sure that this Christmas was Christ-centered. You set out to make sure that this Christmas was going to be different. This Christmas there was going to be less focus on finances and more focus on giving. Less doing, and more being. Less commercialism, and more Christ. But as you sit and you ponder on that December 26th you realize that this Christmas was no different than any other because, you see, your heart had not changed. Christmas is born out of a heart that is focused on Christ. Christmas literally means “more of Christ”. It’s a time if the year that you set apart, not only with your family and your celebrations, but we are to set Christ apart in our heart… yet here we are. Continue reading ‘Reason #227 why I am angry my wife stopped blogging…’

More Stories

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 10 December 2008
in City of Weston Florida, InDependence Church and The Word
. 0 Comments

So we wrap up Stories this week and it has been a pretty amazing series. Here are two out of the four stories that we shared. Check them out and you can listen to the corresponding messages here. I’ll have one more available next week.

 

 

Gift Exchanges

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 4 December 2008
in My Life and Random Ramblings
. 7 Comments

I am off to shop for a gift exchange gift for the office Tree Trimming event. I am so not equipped to buy anonymous people something for less than $20. I guess for that matter I am not equipped for over $20 either.

 

You always want to have the “cool” gift that everybody fights over but that usually involves alcohol or methods of distributing it. I am not going to get all “religious” here and go off on drinking because the Bible doesn’t say drinking is a sin only drunkenness. But regardless of that I am not sure that Jack Daniels says casual drink with some of the people I work with.

 

So I have to go a different route and as you can imagine working in an Architectural firm there are a lot of artistic people with trendy taste. Of those two characteristics I really posses neither. So I think I’ll go buy something I would like and then try to bring it home at the party. I’m just kidding but it isn’t a bad idea…

Stories Week 2

Published
by
Nathan Griffis
on 2 December 2008
in City of Weston Florida, InDependence Church and My Wife
. 0 Comments

Everybody does these Sunday wrap-up things and I just haven’t for really no apparent reason. But I do want to take just a moment to say that this past Sunday my wife spoke for the first time at InDependence. I have to say she did an amazing job. I knew that she would.

 

I wish we could have podcasted it but we had some issues with the recording of it. She shared her story and related it to David (in the Bible not David from the previous week). It was a strong word and I am so proud to have her as my wife. I can’t wait to ask her to speak again but I have to wait a little while so I don’t ruin a great thing.