Do you have picky eaters in your family? For children, simple recipes that incorporate some fruit are probably the best place to start.

You can start babies on a single item such as carrot or pear at about six months. Though I don’t recommend drinking very much fruit juice. I am also realistic. Young palates and those that have been accustomed to a lot of sweet drinks may never drink juice unless you make it taste really good. That’s when adding fruit to juices makes sense.

It’s still the healthiest thing you or the people you care about could drink. But remember, you can always tuck a few green leaves or a couple sprigs of parsley in a juice, and no one will know it’s there.

Try making this recipe for the pickiest palate in your family:

Fruit Punch

2 apples

1/4 honeydew melon with rind if organic

1 cup red grapes

1/2 lemon, peeled if not organic

1-inch-chunk ginger root

Cut produce to fit your juicer’s feed tube. Juice all ingredients and stir. Pour into a glass and drink as soon as possible. Serves 2.

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For more information and recipes, see The Juice Lady’s Big Book of Juices and Green Smoothies by Cherie Calbom. The book can be purchased at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com or Christianbook.com.

Today, May 14, marks the 65th anniversary on the Gregorian calendar of Israel’s Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. It is also the beginning of Shavuot, also called Pentecost, in which Jews around the world celebrate as if they are standing at Sinai together. As one of my Jewish friends said, this is about “not just receiving the Torah, but accepting and embracing it.”

In many ways, there is no holiday we celebrate that is more evocative of the binding connection between Jews and Christians than this. At Shavuot (Pentecost), the Jews celebrate receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, which was literally the beginning of Judaism. For Christians, Pentecost, which we celebrate next Sunday, was literally the beginning of the church, when the Holy Spirit was outpoured and 3,000 were saved as Peter preached about the risen Christ.

My same Jewish friend pointed out that many of Israel’s neighbors and other detractors “mourn Israel’s rebirth as a catastrophe.” However, “this intolerance is all the more reason to celebrate this joyous occasion,” and this is why it is imperative that Christians and Jews stand together.

Thirty-four years ago today, I was in Jerusalem with Jamie Buckingham when Israel celebrated its independence. I remember it was difficult to sleep due to the Israelis celebrating all night long in the streets.

We went from Jerusalem on a pilgrimage to the Sinai Peninsula, controlled in 1979 by Israel (it is now part of Egypt). There we climbed Jebel Musa, which means the Mountain of Moses. There are actually three mountains that people think might have been the original Mount Sinai, but this is the one accepted by most Protestants.

It was a moving experience to be able to climb that mountain and spend time at the top with my friends, contemplating what happened on that spot and how God revealed himself to Moses in a way that has affected all of mankind to this day.

While in Jerusalem, we also visited “the Upper Room,” where the book of Acts says the Holy Spirit was outpoured. Our group of nine American pilgrims had a wonderful time of worship. I remember being overwhelmed with emotion as I prayed that day in my prayer language. It was from that experience on the Day of Pentecost that those of us who believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit call ourselves Pentecostals.

I am encouraging those who call themselves Pentecostals to celebrate Pentecost Sunday next week. Billy Wilson’s ministry, called Empowered21, is taking the lead and providing materials for your church. We are also posting information about the Holy Spirit online.

As you may know, we devoted our May issue of Charisma to the work of the Holy Spirit. We have gotten a wonderful response, and now the printed issues are gone. So we are making that digital issue available free of charge during the month of May. You can get it by clicking here. It’s a wonderful way to experience the beauty of the digital issue. You can also share it with friends on social media.

Please leave your thoughts about Jewish independence, about the Jewish festival Shavuot (pronounced Shuhvote) and Pentecost Sunday. And let me know how you like our digital issue.

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Steve Strang is the founder and publisher of Charisma. Follow him on Twitter at @sstrang or on Facebook (stephenestrang).

From Tuesday evening until sundown on Wednesday, Israelis will celebrate the feast of Shavuot. Most Christians know this feast as Pentecost and some are not even aware that it is a Jewish Feast.

In this video, Israeli/American pastor Ron Cantor breaks down this holiday for us, sharing the biblical significance from both the Old and New Covenants. What do you think of these revelations? Please comment below.

When Hungarian radical right-wingers rallied against a Jewish conference in Budapest in early May, a well-known Protestant pastor hid behind the stage while his wife stepped up to the podium to denounce Jews and Israel.

Lorant Hegedus could have preached the same anti-Semitism as his wife, a deputy for the populist Jobbik party in parliament. But his part in launching the rally may cost him his role as the far-right’s favorite clergyman.

With anti-Semitism on the rise here, Christian churches are working with the Jewish community to counter the provocations against Jews and the Roma minority that have won Jobbik support among voters fed up with the country’s economic crisis.

The Hungarian Reformed Church has begun proceedings that might end up defrocking Hegedus and depriving him of his high-profile base at the Homeland Church on the upscale Freedom Square, near the central bank and the United States embassy.

“This is a permanent provocation,” Gusztav Bolcskei, the Church’s presiding bishop, said of Hegedus’s political activity. “It has nothing to do with the Gospel.”

Hungary’s small community of 80,000-100,000 Jews appreciates the Christian support. “We’re satisfied with the actions of the churches,” said Peter Feldmajer, who stepped down as head of the community on Sunday.

“I think, at the end of the day, he will be fired,” he said. Hegedus declined to be interviewed for this article.

Religion in Politics

Anti-Semitism has deep roots in Hungary, which began passing anti-Jewish laws in 1920, more than a decade before Nazi Germany. About half a million Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust, which the Christian churches failed to oppose.

Other trends that resonate with sections of Hungarian society are a tradition of vibrant nationalism after centuries of foreign domination and, more recently, a strong resentment against the country’s largest minority, its 700,000 Roma.

With the country in economic crisis and voters disillusioned by the previous Socialist governments, Jobbik tapped these emotions to win 17 percent of the votes in the 2010 election.

While conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban has condemned anti-Semitism and rapped Jobbik in recent comments to an Israeli newspaper, he shied away from denouncing the party in a May 5 speech to a World Jewish Congress assembly here only minutes after WJC President Ronald Lauder urged him to do so.

“If Orban goes too hard against Jobbik, he’s worried he won’t be able to scoop up Jobbik’s voters,” said Robin Shepherd, author of a study for the WJC on neo-Nazi parties in Europe.

Neutralized in public during the four decades of communism that ended in 1989, religion has crept back into Hungarian politics in recent years as Orban’s Fidesz party stresses the country’s Christian roots while Jobbik fans resentment of Jews.

This has come despite a dramatic fall in church affiliation. Census figures show that self-declared Roman Catholics dropped from 54 to 39 percent of the population between 2001 and 2011 and self-declared Reformed from 16 to 12 percent.

The Jewish community remained stable at 0.1 percent.

Difficult to Defrock

The resurgent mixture of nationalism and anti-Semitism has presented a challenge for the Reformed Church, which has a strong patriotic tradition rooted in opposition to the Catholic Habsburgs plus church laws allowing wide leeway to its pastors.

Its national leadership has denounced anti-Semitism several times but failed a decade ago to oust Hegedus, whose father was bishop of Budapest at the time. It renewed the effort to defrock him last month after he called for the anti-Jewish rally.

“According to our democratic rules, this should start at the church district level,” Bolcskei said. If the district agrees to move against a pastor, the case then goes up the hierarchy and through church courts before a final decision.

“It can be done, but it’s a very long procedure,” he said.

Thanks to regular dialogue between Jews and Reformed Church leaders, Feldmajer said he understood why Bolcskei – who he said was “totally with us” – could not easily expel Hegedus.

He thought only about 10 percent of Reformed preachers and congregants harbored anti-Semitic views, a figure that matches pollsters’ estimates of Jobbik’s core political support, and hoped the Church leadership could change their minds.

Cardinal Criticised

“It’s easier in the Catholic Church,” said Feldmajer, who praised Cardinal Peter Erdo for his strong support for the Jewish community “not just in a closed room but also in public.”

Jews used to feel some hostility from some Catholic clergy, he said, but that faded away after Erdo became archbishop of Budapest a decade ago, he said.

The Catholic bishops issued an open letter before the 2010 election warning against “neo-pagan tendencies” in some political parties, a clear reference to some Jobbik ideologues who hark back to Hungary’s pre-Christian history.

Erdo, who was frequently mentioned earlier this year as a possible successor to retired Pope Benedict, joined the 2012 Budapest March of the Living to remember the Holocaust.

“I’ve received some hostile letters and criticism in some newspapers saying that the Catholic Church is not patriotic enough,” the cardinal said. “There are also people who say Jesus Christ was not a Jew. Come on, this is crazy.”

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(Editing by Anna Willard)

 © 2013 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved

For every mile of road, there are two miles of ditch. Extremes are exaggerations or overemphasis of a truth. You can be in error simply by emphasis.

I have noticed some men either are overly confident, even arrogant, or they are insecure, not thinking enough of themselves at all. In both cases, the extremes cause the error.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.” (Henry Ford)

Paul gives some good advice: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has distributed to each of you” (Rom. 12:3, NIV). 

Notice the emphasis on the self-assessment is based on sober judgment. To think soberly means to have sound judgment, to be in agreement, to be harmonious or to have the same mind.

What are you to be in agreement with? Paul says, “In accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” In other words, to have a sober assessment of one’s self is to be in harmony or in agreement with God’s Word for you.

When your child has fallen short on a task, do you emphasize that failure every day for the rest of his or her life? Of course not. You build them up, focusing on their strengths. It would be unhealthy to constantly remind them of their shortcomings. The same is true for you: If you fall short or make a mistake, don’t rehearse the failure over and over—get over it and move on. Change your thinking.

The summer before my last year of high school, we moved to our lake house near a small town where I would finish my senior year. Previously, I had played football at a school with an excellent coach. He eventually went on to be an assistant coach for the Oklahoma Sooners. That coach led us to a consistently winning record.

However, now I was at a smaller school. At the first team meeting, I knew we were in trouble. I looked around the room to see a bunch of sloppy guys. They seemed to drag themselves around, shoulders drooping, with stinky attitudes. Their team talk was all negative.

“We haven’t had a winning season in years,” one of my new friends commented. The self-doubt and unbelief was contagious. Others chimed in to echo the defeatism.

Sure enough, we lost every single game we played that year. It was demoralizing to say the least. That team was defeated before we ever started practicing, much less before we played a game.

I’ve seen grown men act the same way—constantly regurgitating their experiences rather than their expectations.

Listen, men. We cannot win with a losing strategy. We’re in the game of life, and we need to win! The scores we earn have a real effect on us, and our attitude matters immensely.

Stop talking defeat. Stop discussing your fears, doubts and unbeliefs. And just as importantly, stop thinking defeat and doubt.

There is a great story in the Old Testament where Jonathan says to his armor-bearer, “Let’s go fight our enemy. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the Lord, no matter how many they have.”

The armor-bearer’s response is awesome. He says, “Do all that you have in mind. Go ahead; I am with you heart and soul.”

That’s the kind of statement we need to make if we’re going into battle, if we’re going to lead a company to new levels of success, if we’re going to raise up our children to have confidence.

What patterns of poor thinking do you need to change or overcome?

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For the original article, visit fivestarman.com. Fivestarman was founded in 2008 by Neil Kennedy. Kennedy has passionately promoted God’s Word for 25-plus years of ministry. He is known for practically applying biblical principles that elevate people to a new level of living. As a business, church, ministry and life consultant, Kennedy has helped others strategize the necessary steps to reach their full potential.

Pure Flix  

There’s a famous line from a Robert Burns’ poem that goes, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” That’s perhaps because men try to order their own steps instead of listening to what God has for them—and that’s exactly the revelation a group of friends receive in the Pure Flix film This Is Our Time.

After graduating from high school, these young adults believe it’s their time to set the world on fire. But they soon discover God has His own timing for their lives, in addition to some trials and tribulations. 

Ethan (Shawn-Caulin Young), for example, hoped to attend graduate school, but instead of being accepted into a program, he’s relegated to serving in his father’s (Eric Roberts) restaurant. Catherine gets hired for her dream job in the financial sector but soon discovers a lack of ethics among the company’s leadership. Ryder scores a social media job but is fired after a mistake spawned by good intentions. Luke and Alexandria get married and follow a prompting to move to India.

It isn’t until the friends endure a tragic death that they discover God’s real purpose for their lives. Their pain paradoxically strengthens their relationships with the Lord and with each other. 

A couple of  familiar faces grace the screen in this film, as Dawn Wells (Gilligan’s Island) and Erik Estrada (CHiPs) take supporting roles.

This is Our Time is an inspirational film that reminds us of the power of Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (NIV).

Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) is an Israeli humanitarian organization that has provided life-saving heart surgeries to more than 3,000 children from 44 developing countries in Israel that otherwise would not receive them. The organization works to save the lives of children worldwide, regardless of whether or not those children hail from countries that are at peace with Israel. SACH has helped children from the Palestinian Authority, Haiti, Angola, Tanzania, China and Russia.

Recently, the organization brought three Iraqi children, ages 1, 3 and 6, to Israel to receive life-saving medical treatment. According to SACH, the youngest child, Yousef, was diagnosed with a heart condition the day he was born and needed to visit a hospital five times per week in Iraqi Kurdistan in order to get the oxygen he needed to breathe. His heart condition delayed his development.

The oldest child, Kawyer, used to get exhausted very easily due to her disease, while the third child, Yasna, has undergone shunt procedures since 2011 and is about to enter the final phase of her recovery. Since 2004, 180 Iraqi children have received medical treatment in Israel, 50 of them within the past two years.

“This work produces a sense of fulfillment that is hard to put into words,” Dr. Lior Sasson says in Yedioth Achronot, himself the son of Iraqi Jewish immigrants and the project’s lead surgeon. “We save children who would otherwise not have made it, because they could not get treatment. The ability to help parents from countries defined as enemy countries and restore their hope after they lost it is not at all obvious. We are in fact sowing seeds of peace with the country that my parents left.”

Sasson claims that during the Second Intifada, Israel kept the “door open” to provide medical treatment to needy children, even if they hailed from the Palestinian Authority. Founded in 1996, SACH funds operations through a combination of donations and a special budget provided by Minister Silvan Shalom.

“I shall continue to support the activities of Save a Child’s Heart. It is essential that we continue to send out the message that Israel is a humane state,” Shalom told the Jerusalem Post. “The humanitarian treatment that we grant to children is in essence the difference between us and some of our neighbors. I’m proud to be a partner in this project which brings hearts together and promotes fraternity among nations.”

Simon Fisher, executive director of SACH, says in Yedioth Achronot, “The complexities of bringing in children from countries defined as ‘enemy countries’ depend on the cooperation between the medical staff and the government, but in the end it all proves that human life is above everything.”

In reference to the staff members working for SACH, Fisher says: “They build bridges and break stereotypes.”

For the original article, visit unitedwithsirael.org.

Have you ever heard of “brain hijack’? By the end of this article, you will know what it means and why it’s the real reason you overeat.

Scientists once did an experiment on rats to determine the nature of drug addiction. They trained the rats to press a little bar and they would receive a small dose of cocaine.

At first, the rats would press the bar just a few times a day. Eventually though, the rats became so addicted that they would press the bar dozens of times a day, even forgoing food and water just so they could get their fix.

The scientists discovered that when the rats received the drug, it lit up the brain’s pleasure/reward center, the nucleus accumbens. When this area of the brain is stimulated, it naturally makes you feel good.

However in this case, the brain was lit up for a dark purpose—drug addiction. The term “brain hijack” describes this process.

If you are currently binging on food, then you too are suffering from “brain hijack.” When you overeat, you are lighting up your brain’s reward center, but it’s ultimately for a dark purpose.

It didn’t start out that way. Just like the rats, all you wanted was to feel good. You made the connection that high-fat, high-sugar foods make you feel good.

But soon your brain’s pleasure center was hijacked and, in spite of logic and the Holy Spirit’s warning, you found yourself unable to stop.

John 10:10 says, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (NKJV). You know logically that overeating consistently causes you to gain excess weight, which will ultimately destroy your health.

I’m not telling you this to frighten you, but I do want to understand how serious this is. I want to empower you to change.

The Bible says, “’All things are lawful for me,’ but all things are not helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by any” (1 Cor. 6:12, ESV).

So how can you take your brain back? You have to retrain your brain to seek other sources of pleasure besides food. God built the nucleus accumbens for a good purpose—it enables you to enjoy life.

Here are four ways you can take your brain back:

1. Prayer. Your first line of defense is to ask the Lord in prayer for help. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said that you should pray not to be led into temptation. So before you start your day, pray, “Do not lead me into temptation, but deliver me from the evil one” (see Luke 11:4).

2. Remove temptation. Say this statement out loud: “The best way to win a fight is to avoid getting into one in the first place.” It is a principle from the martial arts. The martial artist only fights when she has to; she doesn’t go around picking fights to prove how big and bad she is.

In a similar way, you know which foods trigger your binges. Stop picking fights with them—get them out of your house, your desk or wherever you keep them. Stop leading yourself into temptation. This is different from forbidding yourself to have them; rather, you are making a personal, empowered choice to remove yourself from harm.

When you prepare your plate, look at the side of your fist. The human stomach is naturally that size. So fix your plate to be an appropriate size to satisfy your body’s hunger only. If you overfill your plate, you will be tempted to eat it all, whether your body needs it or not. So avoid the fight by controlling your portions.

3. Build pleasure into your daily life. Here are some activities that also light up your nucleus accumbens, but in healthy ways. These are a necessary part of your healing, so take time for them daily.

Take them as seriously as you would a prescription from your doctor:

• Good music (especially praise music)
• Laughter (funny movie or clean joke book)
• Massages or using a foot roller
• Warm baths or showers
• Body stretching
• Dancing
• Learning new and interesting things
• Sex (if married)

I suggest making a list of other things that have brought you pleasure in the past. Then get creative as to how you can introduce them back into your life.

 4. Activate a physical “stop” signal if old thoughts appear. If the thought to eat when you aren’t hungry comes into your mind, then do a physical action to tell yourself “stop.” My signal is to extend my right leg and flex my foot, pulling my toes in toward my body, almost as if I’m putting on brakes in a car.

Another signal is to hold out my right arm with my palm pressed out, like a traffic officer telling someone to stop.

Both of these techniques work for me as a reminder to control myself, but for persistent thoughts, I play praise music that I love. Soon, my brain starts feeling good worshiping the Lord. I’m lighting up my nucleus accumbens. By the time the song is over, the urge to eat is no longer there. I just took back my brain!

Depending on how long your brain has been hijacked, it may take time for you to take it back. But this work is not optional. You want to obey the biblical directive not to be brought under the power of those things that harm you.

May God bless you as you seek to do His will in every area! Watch the video below to see what else God has in store for you.

 

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Kimberly Taylor is the author of The Weight Loss Scriptures and many other books. Once 240 pounds and a size 22, she can testify to God’s goodness and healing power. Visit takebackyourtemple.com and receive more free health and weight-loss tips.

It’s a much-debated question, and there are many sides to consider, but perhaps the best answer to the question, “What’s more important, diet or exercise?” comes from the ongoing data provided by the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR).

As the largest ongoing investigational study of long-term successful weight-loss maintenance, the NWCR is currently tracking the exercise and diet habits of over 10,000 individuals. So far, the average NWCR participant has lost an average of 66 pounds and has kept it off for over five years.

Established in 1994 by Rena Wing, Ph.D., from Brown Medical School, and James O. Hill, Ph.D., from the University of Colorado, the NWCR was developed to identify and investigate the characteristics of individuals who have succeeded at long-term weight control.

Here are the statistical numbers from the study of the 10,000 NWCR participants:

• 1 percent succeed with exercise alone
• 10 percent succeed with diet alone
• 89 percent succeed with a combination of exercise and diet

As for the “Why?” part of the question, consider these three weight loss fundamentals:

1. Losing weight requires a calorie deficit (using more calories than you consume). You can create this deficit by eating fewer calories, by making your body burn a greater number of calories daily or by a combination of both methods.
2. A healthy, portion-controlled diet means you take in fewer saturated and trans fats, added sugars and refined flours, which are conducive to weight gain. In addition, a healthy diet reduces your risk of developing chronic diseases and improves your energy. Simply losing 5 to 10 percent of your body weight can have positive health implications. However, portion control is also essential because you could easily overeat even healthy foods, thereby creating a calorie surplus and gaining weight.
3. Exercise helps you burn calories and retain lean muscle mass. With physical activity, you burn more energy and can create a bigger calorie deficit. Adding lean muscle mass also helps burn more calories because it is a more metabolically active tissue than fat. (A person with a greater percentage of muscle mass burns more calories at rest.) In addition, when you lose weight, especially quickly, you lose lean muscle tissue along with fat. Then if you gain weight back, you tend to gain fat. If you consistently lose and regain weight, you end up with a higher percentage of fat than when you started. Exercise can help counteract this problem.

To summarize: On the one hand, you can easily out-eat your best exercise efforts. On the other hand, without dietary control, weight loss will not happen. On top of that, if you do not exercise, you can only cut calories so much, for only so long, before you start to starve your body of essential nutrients and risk damage.

All of which—thanks to the NWCR—brings us to the realization that, given only one option, diet is more important. However, overwhelmingly, the best possible answer is that diet and exercise together are best.

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Don Colbert, M.D., is board-certified in family practice and anti-aging medicine and has helped millions of people discover the joy of living in divine health. He is the author of numerous books, including the Bible Cure series, Toxic Relief, Reversing Diabetes and the New York Times best-sellers Dr. Colbert’s “I Can Do This” Diet and The Seven Pillars of Health.

For the original article, visit drcolbert.com.

Let’s dive right back into Luke 4:1-11. Here’s Jesus in the desert. I want to read through verse 11:

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit returned from the River Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert where for 40 days, He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end, He was hungry” (vv. 1-2).

So there’s a physical pressure.

And then: “The devil said to Him, if you’re the Son of God, tell the stone to become bread.” Jesus answered: “It is written that man does not live by bread alone” (vv. 3-4).

There’s the first temptation: Indulge in the flesh.

Now fast-forward to today. Is the temptation the same? Hey, you’re in this situation. You’re isolated. You have a need—physically—to gratify yourself. Feels good. Feel the urge. There you go. Same thing.

There is physical pressure. Isolation. Then there’s temptation. Finally, there’s a test. Jesus survived it by being full of the Holy Spirit and full of the Word of God.

Do you want to know how you survive pressure and temptation? There are two keys.

First, be full of the Holy Spirit and be full of the Word of God.

Second, let’s center in on verse 5. The devil led Him up to a high place and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and said: “I will give you all their authority and splendor for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to, if you worship me.”

Jesus replied: “It is written, worship only your God and Him only.”

First was the lust of the flesh. Then there’s the pride of the eyes—or the boastful pride of life. There’s pressure, then temptation. The first one was indulging. The second one was temptation: I will elevate you. I’ll move you from here to there. You can pursue this fantasy of power. It’s a false way of being validated.

Next, Luke 4:9 says: “The devil led Him to Jerusalem and let Him stand on the highest point of the Temple, and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here because it is written that He will command his angels concerning you and will guard you carefully, they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone.’”

Jesus answered, “It says do not put the Lord your God to the test.” 

When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

Is the devil going to stop tempting you? When does he come—when you are strong or when you are weak? Weak, of course!

When a man is weak, he is full of negative emotions. Satan can lie and tempt you when you are full of negative emotions. What does that mean? It’s right after an argument with your spouse, after a conflict, after your boss does something to take away your financial future or fire you or whatever. He’s not going to come when you are riding high. He’s going to come when you are vulnerable.

When pressure comes, it is a test of God and also can be hijacked as an opportunity for Satan to tempt you. Under that pressure, you may be vulnerable. God uses your availability to test you. Satan uses it to tempt you. God uses it to develop. Satan uses it to destroy.

There’s a second perspective on pressure. What do diamonds and pearls need in order to become diamonds and pearls? You dive to great depths because inside that little clam, sand is making a pearl. But you need the pressure at those depths to make the pearl out of sand. Diamonds sometimes take centuries of heat and pressure to form. Then we polish them, and they become something beautiful.

Strength and value require a process to form in us as well. That is what God is doing with the pressures in your life. It’s a process. He is turning you from a boy into a man—something of value, something of worth, something of dignity.

Satan, however, tells you not to hang around for the process because the process is uncomfortable. He wants you to bail. Leave the process of relationship, he says. But don’t buy into that lie. Satan says, Leave the process. It takes too long. It’s way too hard. Look at how it makes you feel. Go over here and pursue the fantasy. Escape the pressure.

God wants to mature you and make you the person He created you to be. To make you into that pearl of a guy that has tremendous value.

God is interested in the process. Look at any man of God who is worth anything in the Bible. He took Abraham through it. He took Joseph through it. He took David through it.

Why? Because He is forging steel, creating a strong man.

You can’t create a strong man by avoiding pressure, tests, trials and difficulties. A man has to face them and go through them.

The good news is that God wants to go through them with you, to use these tests in your life and develop something that wasn’t there before: a stronger man, a more valuable man, a man who is worth more after the process.

Satan knows this and will tell you to bail on the process. He’ll try to get you to skip to the product. Men just want the bottom line: “Give me the bottom line. Don’t tell me what to do. I want to pole-vault over the process and get right to the product. I want to be strong and powerful. I want to have status. I want to enjoy everything.” But we don’t want to earn it. This is a huge battle.

Pressure comes. God uses it to test. Satan uses it to tempt. God uses it to develop. Satan uses it to destroy.

How do you lose? By bailing out on God’s process in your life.

Note: This is the third in a series of articles titled Fantasy Island, Part 2, where Kenny Luck takes a closer look at the emotional aspects of fantasy. He also discusses God’s will for men like you who want to grow in maturity, truth and reality, versus Satan’s plan to replace your reality with his fantasy, escapism and unreality. Part 1 Part 2

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Kenny Luck is the founder of Every Man Ministries and the men’s pastor at Saddleback Church. His 20th book, Sleeping Giant: No Movement of God Without Men of God, is the proven blueprint for men’s ministries and was recently released through B&H Publishing. Watch and read more of Kenny’s teaching at EveryManMinistries.com. Follow Every Man Ministries now on Facebook, Twitter (@everymm) and YouTube.