The RESET button

Reset – To put into proper position again


I joined Weight Watchers about a month ago and I’m now realizing why I’ve not been able to drop these pounds over the years – I get too easily distracted. Losing weight is all about consistency – consistently eating well and consistently exercising. My first two weeks on the program, I lost 9 pounds! On the third week, however, I vacationed in Florida and it’s gone downhill since then. I’ve since gained back 5 of the 9 pounds I’ve lost. The problem was that once I got off track, I wasn’t motivated to get back into my routine of healthy living.

My faith walk tends to mirror my struggle with weight loss. I take a few steps forward & then I take a few steps back. I realize that Christianity is not a competitive race where we’re all challenging each other to see who reaches perfection first, but it is about forward movement. In Philippians 3:13-14, Paul states that he is “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”. Forward movement. There are times in my faith, like my commitment to weight loss, when I become stagnant and stale. I stop going to church. I don’t pray like I should. I engage in sinful activities & it doesn’t bother me. In Weight Watchers, they call it “hitting the plateau”.

So what do you do when this happens? How do you motivate yourself to get back on track? Well, my Weight Watchers meeting leader suggested that I hit the RESET button. Here’s an example to put it into perspective: Let’s say you’ve just washed your hair and are in the process of drying it with a blow dryer. All is going well and then it suddenly shuts off. What’s happened is that the dryer’s internal cutoff switch has turned it off to prevent overheating, which could be harmful to the user. While that’s happening, you shake the dryer and hit it a few times with the palm of your hand, to no avail. Dismayed, you are just about to give up when you notice a little red button sticking out from the plug – the RESET button. You push it and the power immediately returns. Hallelujah!

Isn’t this how God works when we hit spiritual plateaus? When we’re not living as holy as we should be & we don’t seem bothered by it? Or when we get comfortable in our walk and aren’t concerned with making forward progress? God allows an auto shut off to occur in our lives. We lose our job. That perfect relationship ends. A loved one gets violently ill. We can’t seem to make ends meet no matter how hard we try. At the time that it happens, we can’t see that God was aiming to get our attention. That He wanted us to hit the RESET button and get back on track. That He realized the path we were headed down was meant for our destruction. Was that boyfriend or girlfriend a distraction from your relationship with Christ? Was that job taking you away from your true purpose in life? Would an abundance of money take your eye away from the cross? Did you find that you were on your knees more than ever as a result of your ill loved one? It’s wise to ponder just what God is up to when He initiates the auto shut off in your life. And once you realize it, it’s even wiser to hit that RESET button on your faith walk: open your Bible & start studying his Word again, get down on your knees and open the dialogue with God again, go back to church and seek out the support of the saints, start paying your tithes.

It’s almost embarrassing the number of times God has had to shut something off in my life to get my attention and I’ve had to hit the RESET button. And just like my struggle with weight, God is showing me that it’s about being consistent. I’m not going to achieve perfection as a Christian, but I can make forward progression the more consistent I am. I pray for strength to ignore distractions and I am thankful for the ones He’s already removed from my life.