"Prayer should be backed up with work, not backing up our work with prayer"

"Prayer should be backed up with work, not backing up our work with prayer"
Backing up our work with prayer is a common misconception among Christians and it can become very confusing among Christians especially when things don't go to plan for them. Because they think "Yes"- I have prayed, "Yes"- I have faith and "Yes"- I have worked hard. If prayer is your back-up plan then all it is ever going to be is your back-up plan. We must put God first.
Many people think when we say put God first it means it means that when we wake-up in the morning we should pray to God even I sometimes think this. But if we think about it, it doesn't mean putting God first in the day. It means putting God first throughout the day.
And if you are backing up your work with prayer you are not putting God first.
The Bible says in James 2 vs 26- "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also" (New Kings James Bible)
It doesn't say that work without faith is dead. Even though that is partly true, we must have the faith and then work before we can work with faith.
Having faith and praying before you work to me is like fuel that carries you and it will carry you so much further than if you are working and then whenever something goes wrong you pray. I call these kind of prayers survival prayers or panic prayers.
Even if something does go wrong when you pray beforehand, you will have the confidence or the faith that God will help, just simply because you have prayed.
In Church we were looking at the importance of planning.
Most successful people plan before they work which is great. But as Christians we should learn to pray, plan and then work. The PPW- I like to call.
In fact we can even think of it as the PPP- Prayer, Plan and Progress. If we pray and plan we will progress.
Prayer doesn't substitute for planning and planning doesn't substitute prayer.
Jeremiah 29 vs 11 "I alone know the plans I have you, plans to bring you prosperity and not disaster, plans to to bring about the future you hope for" (good news)
It clearly states that God has plans for us. So as we pray to God he will reveal he has for us and then we can plan how we are going to fulfil God's plan for us. In fact, God is so great that he will help us plan and he will also help us when it comes to doing the work. So when you come to think of it since God is with us every step of the way there isn't really a problem.
Again as I said earlier if prayer is your back-up plan it will always continue to be your back-up plan. And like all back-up plans it only works once everything else has failed. I think the best thing we can do is to think of it as a sandwich and back-up our prayer with work and back-up our work with prayer.

Fitness routine for the month of August

I know I am completely guilty I have not blogged in a long time.  I am too ashamed to say how long that is. And no, I do not have any excuse. So being the 1st August and being on my Summer vacation- YES!! No school for a month!! I just thought I will share my plans for the month August before I go back to school. And part of my plans for August is to definitely blog more. So this is my fitness routine for August and yes I know I have already uploaded lots of routines in the past that I try to follow. I am not too sure if I will make this a page or not, it depends I know I already have a couple of pages. I may reshuffle them. And also one last thing to end this long introduction I will be editing my pages so beware...

And this is great if you don't want to go to the gym

Fitness Routine
I do pretty much everything in this order.

Flexibility

• Sit on knees (hold for 1 min)
• Sit cross-legged similar to yoga pose and lean forward (1 minute)
• Straddle stretch ( I call them V legs)  (1 min)
• Butterfly stretch (I call these ones diamond legs) (1 min)

Core

• Plank (1-2 min)
• Side plank (1 min)
• Side plank- other side (1 min)
• Superman plank (there are different versions of these I do the easy one- in which you lie down on your front and you lift your legs and arms off the ground) (1 min)
• Flutter kicks (50 in total. 25 each leg)
• Russian twists without the medicine ball (50 in total 25 each side)
• Leg lifts (50 in total- I tend to do 10 reps 5 times)
• Bicycle kicks (50 in total. 25 each kick?)

Cardio

• Running up and down the stairs-- (we have a lot of stairs where I live- so as you can see I barely leave the house, and I do these until I am really tired which is after 1 minute- that was not a sarcastic comment)
• Optional: Jump rope/ Skipping rope- whatever you want to call it. (100 reps in total. 50 take a break then another 50.)

I just thought I would do this to inspire people if they want to get fit and healthy over the summer. As you can probably tell I am trying to work on my cardio, abs and flexibility. I am definitely not an athletic person- I am not any sports teams or anything and I am also that kind of person that dreads P.E

Note: No, I am not trying to lose weight. I actually want to join the cross country club at my school- and in order to do that I need to prepare.