Day 25:

If you read the old testament, God seems to be in constant communication with the Israelites and this is in my mind what prayer is but it is barely referred to as prayer. It is more or less called communication. A dialogue. This is sort of a foreign concept to most of us now a days I think because the word prayer referes to this communication but it also refers to so much more.

Now, I know how frustrating it can be to say, "Your will be done" because in all honesty, I can't look back at my life and remember a time when I wanted Gods will to truly be done unless in happened to be what I wanted for my life. That is the nature of selfish humans.

Having said all that, I believe that the word regret used by God in reference to Saul is not the word the author would have chosen if he knew what its meaning was now. I don't believe God actually regretted making Saul King. I think He was sorry about the choices Saul made. And if you think about it, if Saul hadn't made the choices he did, we wouldn't be having this conversation so maybe God allowed it for this exact moment! Do you ever think God raised up a king or allowed a story to be put into the Bible just to that your life could be changed and therefore you cold change lives? Maybe that is why God allowed this word to be put here.  (I am referring to the writing in day 22.)

This comes back to my thoughts on the Bible not being perfect. It was written by humans and I don't think they always used the right words and the translations through the years have given new meanings to old words and so on and so forth. Just because I believe the Bible had errors does not take away from the power of the book. In fact, I think it enhances the majesty and mystery. It begs us to ask questions like these and work through the answers together.

God doesn't make mistakes. And Saul was no exception and neither am I. I am willing to bet that God looks back at me and is sorry for the mistakes I have made. But God doesn't make junk and he doesn't make mistakes. I am here for a reason and so are you.

So for day 25, I accomplished the following:

No Drinking
No Smoking
P90X Diet and Exercise
No Lying
No Dating
Allotted Bible reading

Changes:

I am feeling much more energetic than I used to. If you notice, I said in earlier blogs that if you do something 22 times in a row without breaking the chain, you have developed a habit. Well, I am on day 25 and I have not drank or smoked or dated. I am making habits of not doing things but it is the habits of doing things that I am still working on. I have worked out every day for 25 days except two days. I was sick one, and depressed the other. I will not stop until this exercise becomes such a habit that I won't even have to think about it.