Wow. God just keeps blowing me away. Grace in action. He is such a gracious, loving, merciful God.
Weds. night, Julie F. and I began our new online support group at the Thin Within website. We had quite a group show up for our first chat! It was WONDERFUL!
Yesterday morning, I knew I, too, needed to open my workbook and “do” the material that I have encouraged all the group members to complete. My words to them Monday night had something to do with “Even if you have done the workbook several times before, believe that God is doing a new thing right now! Go through it with a fresh heart, believing that God will meet you in a new way! Invite Him to do so!”
I have seen God do that with me before with Thin Within material, but I guess I just wasn’t sure He would pull it off again :-/. I don’t know why…There it is again! “Oh me, of little faith!”
Even after saying that to the group, I felt a bit…well, “Ho Hum” about doing the workbook…*again* yesterday morning. It is SO familiar. What I really wanted was to work in my Beth Moore Stepping Up study. But I figured I would get to that after I hustled my way through the reading of Lesson 1 in the Thin Within workbook.
First, I spent some time journaling a prayer to God to help me see the material in a new way. Then, I began to read Lesson 1 and God gave me an “assignment.” To those of you with the Thin Within quarter one workbook, I challenge you, the readers of this blog, with the same “assignment:”
Go through Lesson 1. Read and highlight, circle or underline everything that is said about God’s character–what He is like or what He does. Write down a list of all of these character qualities or behaviors in a journal. If there are verses, write them down (look them up, too!). Then next to all of these, write down if you believe them or not–REALLY believe them! Use this list (and keep adding to it as you go through the workbook for the next 3 months) to pray in faith, “God, I thank you that you do the impossible. Thank you that you embrace me and are doing a new thing in me. Thank you that your grace is immeasurable and steadfast.” If you struggle with believing any of the things you have written down, pray a prayer of confession and ask God to help you to believe these things about Him in a new way.
As I began to do this…oh wow…I sensed His power and His presence in such a mighty way, it was like I could touch Him! Like FEEL that embrace, literally!
I continued to bask in His presence as I left to go on a trail ride with my best horse. Mercy Me was playing in my truck…This video (by someone else) plays the song that I listened to…the words really became me…or I became the words. God was so ver present it was almost overwhelming! (In a good way!)
If you can take the time to listen to the song all the way through, I hope you will do that. It is so powerful. The words to the song are here.
It struck me so powerfully…I was truly caught up in God’s beauty, just as the song says.
But then, suddenly, God gave me an amazingly powerful *contradictory* image. Yes, I was swept off my feet by Him in this moment. But He showed me what happens when I am not.
He showed me what I have often done…replacing the object of my devotion. This may sound so silly, but he showed me what it would be like if the music that was playing was sung to what I sometimes focus on, sometimes surrender to–as if the music was sung to the pizza, or the chocolate muffin, or the hot fudge sundae…Picture it with me…
I sit down, grinning ear to ear at my dining table, eyes GLUED to the food, heart fixated on the tasty morsels landing on my taste buds:
“I can feel your presence here with me…(singing to the food…)
Suddenly I’m lost within your beauty… (this breaks my heart…)
Caught up in the wonder of your touch (on my lips and the taste),
Here in this moment I surrender to your love…”
How often have I surrendered to the “love” of food?
This broke my heart…but God showed me this so tenderly. I did *NOT* feel shamed. He doesn’t use shame. It is His kindness that leads me to repentance…
I felt…well… “educated.” I felt like he “enlightened” me, pulled back the curtain, as it were, to expose (there it is again) the truth. But, again, he showed me truth with the perfect balance of grace.
And just as quickly as that vision of my sin came upon me, it left and He restored me with an awareness of HIM. HIS beauty. HIS majesty. I was caught up again by the “wonder of His touch.”
I can tell you for SURE, the two do NOT begin to compare.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
– Psalm 73:25-26
Thank you, Lord, for a vision, just a taste of your amazing presence. Oh, God, it really does make me fall down to my knees like the song says…And thank you for showing me so clearly, just what I have been doing when I allow food to have my affection…I have “surrendered” to it. Thank you that, in each moment, I have a choice. I can choose to surrender to your love. I can surrender to your grace. I can surrender to the One who took my place. Let me not forget. Oh, God…thank you. In the matchless name of Jesus, Amen.
I am going to date myself. Do you remember the song from the 70s, sung by Roberta Flack, “Killing Me Softly?”
Have you ever felt like someone has been reading your journals and is talking to YOU or, worse — others— about what is there? Or that someone knows even the unspoken, unwritten…maybe unspeakable things in your heart…is bringing them to the surface…exposing you?
That is how I felt last weekend when I spent some time watching video Session Two of Stepping Up by Beth Moore.
Beth was in my home via my laptop and Windows Media Center. The morning was quiet – sunlight flooding my bedroom through the tree-framed, glass door. My golden retriever (psycho) dog was earnestly standing guard to prevent the reflections and shadows from causing any harm. All normal things, on normal mornings…
As Beth drew me in to the video session focusing on the Feast of Unleavened Bread and its applicability to my life, rather than Don McLean (who “Killing Me Softly” was written about), it was the Lord who was “strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words, killing me softly with His song…”
“Hidden Hypocrisy…” How did she know? How did Beth know that, like the symbolic gesture of holding back a little bit of “dough from a former baking,” I, too, had been holding something back, not ridding myself of ALL the yeast in my life. Like the fermented dough “hidden” in the flour, this tiny little bit seemed so harmless…but it had been working its way through everything, affecting all of it…
From the human, worldly perspective, from all outward appearances, I, Heidi Bylsma, have been a “Thin Within Success Story.” (Can you hear the tooting of the proverbial horns!?) In fact, my “success” has been proclaimed from the rooftops — literally, even in a national magazine. With more on tap this summer…
Mud on my face!
FIRST magazine ran a feature last December.
To add to my chagrin (the timing is oh-so-interesting), the July/August issue of Health magazine will include an article on “Mindful Eating,” including possibly a paragraph about my testimony with Thin Within. Quick and Simple’s August issue may have a feature on yours truly…(unless the Lord says otherwise, and He may…) Announcing yet again, “Here I am world!” “Look at me!” “God has done a new thing in me!” (More tooting of those horns…the head getting ever larger…)
Yet here I sit as I type this entry, wearing my “skinny jeans,” wondering if these well-worn, well-used, Levi 550s have *shrunk* some more (hmmm….no, I don’t imagine so after being washed at least 100 times!). Yes, they feel uncomfortably snug around the waist. :-/ But worse, there is a knowing that:
I am not as I claim.
Hidden Hypocrisy….
When did I let it become all about the outside—even while claiming it was about so much more? When did it stop being about GOD and being about ME?
I was challenged in my Beth Moore Stepping Up lesson yesterday, too. Have I begun to trust more in God’s blessings than in God himself?
Exposed again.
The “package” may look so different than it did in 2006, but the lusts are still there! (Or are there — again!) I may not indulge them as often as I used to, but in so many ways the “inner me” feels like it is still in need of being transformed by the renewing of my mind. I guess it does. *I* do.
Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me…
The out-of-the-blue realization that I am blatantly something other than what I intentionally lead people to believe followed an email exchange with a dear friend…where I claimed (again) to live with integrity. I alleged that I would never do something hidden. I claimed to be authentic, genuine, what-you-see-is-what-you-get. “And durn proud of it, too…” (Toot toot toot…)
Hidden Hypocrisy…
If these things are true, then why, when Beth began to speak about “hidden hypocrisy,” did I feel so exposed? Why did I want to hide? (Hmm…a pattern emerges.)
Would I really want anyone who reads this blog, or my church friends, or my family to know me? What I am thinking? What I am…eating? Would I want any of those who “admire” me, “respect” me, who feel I am an “inspiration,” to see that the scale has nudged up in recent weeks? To know about the vacancy of my prayer life?
Hidden Hypocrisy…
And what is with ME ME ME making a You Tube video talking about the three phases of Thin Within and speaking about “discernment” and “mastery” — phase 2 and phase 3 — when I live SOLIDLY in phase 1…not just some of the time, but most of the time…without any desire to even let God change me? “God will remake your tastebuds!” Well, good grief. I sure can preach it, but there it is again…faith is seen in what I DO and what I DO says I do NOT believe what I said!
Hidden Hypocrisy…
I *have* experienced phase 2 and a bit of 3 before…and yes, I spend *some* time there now, but so often it is still my taste buds that determine what I will eat. How can I dare to speak about not being stuck? How can I encourage others when I am such a hypocrite? :-/
In fact, when it comes to my eating and drinking, I have SHUT off God’s voice of late. After a year and a half of eating “this way,” I know I can have thus and so for breakfast, this and that for lunch, and about this much of this-other-stuff for other eating occasions throughout the day, thank you very much, and still “hover” around the same weight. I have created the “Heidi Diet!” There is NO walking with the Spirit. There is NO praying. There is NO discernment. What there IS is a tuning OUT of God! What is UP with that? :-/ Pride, pride, and more pride.
I confess these things here, now, loudly. Frankly, I don’t want to put this blog entry out there…because with the coming of this realization, an old, but familiar companion has returned as well…shame. I remember well that shame breeds more shameful behavior if left unchecked. Like the blackberry brambles in my backyard, I must wage an all out assault against shame and not allow even a fragment of it to remain.
Knowing that, I reject the old way of secrecy and wallowing in shame. (Proof that God is doing a new thing! Praise YOU LORD!)
I know that shame is evidence of the enemy prowling. Like footprints on a dusty floor…footprints on the unkempt floor of my life, footprints of the enemy who is sneaking around accusing, scheming a way to devour me. I refuse to let him make any mark on my life. That is why this confession is public. I believe that in order to BE RID of this yeast, this old, fermented dough, I must choose to allow the exposing to be public, too, just as all my other claims have been public. I wish FIRST would splash this across their double page insert…:-(
Well…er…maybe not.
God, in his tenderness, chose to expose the truth in my life quietly. He is gentle that way (well, often times). He has, however, called to me to step into the light with it. He covers me — saturates me — with grace. He wraps me in a blanket. He redeems all the years the locusts have eaten. NOTHING is so great, so horrible as to stand between me and the love of God.
In fact, Psalm 3: 3,4 says:
But you are a shield around me, O LORD; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head. To the LORD I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.
Selah
Yes, Lord. You are my shield. You bestow glory. You do not cast shame on me. You lift my head, instead. I cry to you. I thank you that You answer, Lord. I choose to “*selah,” Lord. Amen.
* Selah means pause, rest, or think about it.
** I want my dear blog reading friends to know that the above has been in process since Saturday. I have placed it here, but even so, it is an “observation.” The “correction” has begun as well. I now have a daily accountability partner. This is vital for me at this time. I celebrate that the Lord continues to do a NEW new thing! 🙂
Some folks think that Thin Within is just about eating whatever you want…cookies, candies, cakes, YUM! And that is that for the rest of my life! If I am hungry, have a chocolate fest! Once I am no longer hungry, I stop eating. YIPPEE!
Right?
Wrong!
Thin Within is about learning to lean on the Lord and obey HIS guidance. We are free from all diet rules and laws! YES! That is a wonderful thing! But I get to obey HIS voice as HE leads me specifically!
This video, though rather silly since two of my horses put in an appearance (uninvited), explains the three phases of Thin Within.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
– Psalm 42:7
Stormie Omartian’s book, The Prayer That Changes Everything, has ministered to my heart a great deal. I want to share the prayer found on pages 128 and 129 in it’s entirety. It is my prayer that it reaches into the deep places of your heart as it does mine.
O Lord, I worship You and praise You as Immanuel, my God who is with me. I long for more of You. I seek after You and thirst for You like water in a dry land. I want to stand under the gentle waterfall of Your Spirit and feel the soothing mist of Your love showering over me. I want to be immersed in the center of the flow of Your Spirit. I want to be close enough to You to feel Your heartbeat. You are the only answer to the emptiness I feel when I am not with You. The fullness of Your being is what I crave. The intimacy of embrace is what I long for. I know there is nothing or no one in the world that can do for me what You do. I want to feel Your presence in my life in a new and powerful way. You are far and above anything on earth I might long for. You are all I desire.
Just being with You changes everything in me. Longing for you makes me long to be free of anything that would draw my attention away. Lord, I draw close to You this day. Thank You that You promise to draw close to me. With You I am never alone. I love Your holiness, Lord. I love Your beauty. With joy I draw water from the wells of Your salvation (Isaiah 12:3).
Thank You that You have chosen to be with Your people. I am grateful that I don’t have to strive to be with You, I only have to long to be with You. Help me to make You the first place I run to when I have longings in my heart. I don’t want to waste time turning to other things that will never satisfy the need I have for intimacy with You. My soul waits for You, Lord (Psalm 33:20).
I am currently working on Beth Moore’s Stepping Up: A Journey Through the Psalmsof Ascent bible study. This study is already ministering a lot to my heart even though I am only in week two.
I want to share some of what has encouraged me. From the Holman Christian Standard Bible, Psalm 123 reads as follows:
Looking for God’s Favor A song of ascents.
1 I lift my eyes to You,
the One enthroned in heaven.
2 Like a servant’s eyes on His master’s hand,
like a servant girl’s eyes on her mistress’s hand,
so our eyes are on the LORD our God
until He shows us favor.
3 Show us favor, LORD, show us favor,
for we’ve had more than enough contempt.
4 We’ve had more than enough
scorn from the arrogant
[and] contempt from the proud.
This psalm encouraged and challenged me. First, can you relate (as I can) to the statement of the psalmist, “We’ve had more than enough contempt. We’ve had more than enough scorn from the arrogant and contempt from the proud.”
When I was heavy, I felt this all the time. I felt the contempt of men, children, and even women. I was treated differently than I am now. Sure, some might say that it was all in my mind, but whether it was or not, I *felt* it. I felt like I was treated differently because of being overweight — obese.
I will never forget being late for a connecting flight once…it was a small little “puddle jumper” from one airport to another about an hour away. As I climbed aboard (I mean this was a SMALL plane with only two seats on one side and one on the other), I felt the eyes of all looking at me like: “Now the plane will surely list to one side. Put her on the side with only one seat! She will balance out the side with two!” There was one man in particular, whose scrutinizing gaze reduced me to nothing. Why I gave him that power is beyond me. The memory is still with me (obviously).
I have had enough of that sort of contempt.
Even as I was reminded of this, I was encouraged by the words of the psalm. In those moments when I feel like the target of assaults–from the enemy, from strangers, from people I love and know…on what will I choose to focus my attention?What will I invite to fill my vision?
Right now, with all that confronts you, confronts me, with all the demands made of us, to what are we looking? Upon what am I choosing to focus? Is it the trial? Is it the circumstance? Is it the person and the way I feel wounded by them? Or is it how little food I get to eat if I really want to release weight–or keep the weight off? Am I focused on the things that bother me? Do I make provision for my flesh by choosing to fill my gaze with things that will cultivate discontentment and resentment?
This psalm has an answer to a question that I may not even know I am asking.
Who is it that is over all? Who is in charge? Who is truly on the throne? My YHWH, LORD, God Almighty, I AM is in heaven. He is on the throne. As the song goes, He is God alone. In verse one, the psalmist declares “I lift my eyes to YOU…” His gaze had to be lifted from what was facing him, the contempt being shown him, the circumstances that overwhelmed him. But the one choosing to do the lifting, the shifting of the gaze is him. I must choose to do the same.
I have a choice. I can choose to focus on what it is that has my shorts in a bunch, the insults, the contempt, the trial, the person blocking my goal or disappointing me somehow, or I can LIFT my eyes and look to God. As I focus on HIM, all the other things fade in significance. This is a principle that is so true and it has been revolutionary for me personally as I have walked this path. It is very much related to humility and to gratitude. If I insist on being the focus of my life, or if I insist on focusing on all the things I am bothered by in my life, it will change everything how I perceive what comes next, or seems to.
Beth Moore points out in the lesson on this psalm that: WhereI look affects—->
WhatI hear, which affects—->
What I feel, which affects—->
What I expect…
I would add that what I expect then affects what I experience.
No, I don’t believe in the “power of positive thinking,” but I do believe that what I expect affects where I look in the next moment…and paints it accordingly. What I expect affects what I experience, which, unless I stop the cycle, will affect where I look and what I hear…and so on. It is a cycle!
I want to break this cycle. I don’t want to focus on “my problems” and perpetuate a bad attitude which seems to perpetuate trials, which perpetuates my fixating on the trials and on and on. I will break the cycle by choosing to focus on the LORD who is ON THE THRONE. He IS sovereign. He IS good. He IS sufficient. He IS loving. He IS gracious…
When I choose to foster gratitude and praise the Lord, I am doing this. I am breaking the cycle. I am choosing where I look, which affects what I hear, which affects how I feel (WHOO HOO! When I think on, look to and praise the Lord, my feelings change!), which affects what I expect and what I experience! WHOO HOO!
At the Thin Within forums, someone posted that she had a new realization strike her. That she is ignoring God when she overeats. This strikes me as profound, too. I am so glad she had the courage to share!
I could REALLY identify with this.
God often uses my horses to teach me things. Harley is my very sensitive horse. He loves to GO! I try not to do anything with his face or with my legs unless I really MEAN it. Like lightly touching on the reins (he doesn’t even have a bit in his mouth) means something to him. Touching a thigh to one side and lifting the other…it means something.
I noticed last week when i was riding him that he had become “duller” to what I “said” in my cues. This was disappointing to me. I *want* him responsive to me, while dulled to other things to a degree (like a balloon that blows by on the wind).
Sometimes, it is nice to “desensitize” a horse to some things…like tarps, plastic bags and so on. You slowly saturate them with whatever it is (like plastic bags) and give them experiences that are positive with the item that formerly concerned them so that they ultimately aren’t bothered by it any more. They become insensitive to it. Or non-challant.
Some riders do this without realizing it with their cues. I wondered last week when I rode Harley and he was so dull if I had, in effect, taught him to ignore my “voice.”
I don’t want to be that way with the Lord. I never want to become dull to his “cues.” I want “lightness” and “softness” in my responsiveness. My trainer speaks of how when I barely lift the rein, the response of the horse and his *thought* is to be “Yes? What are we going to do?”
Well, I want to be that way with the Lord. If he even HINTS at something that he wants from me, I want to be there with a “Speak, Lord, I am listening.” Or a “Yes? What are we going to do? What do you want of me?”
I love it when God uses my horses to teach me something.
This photo shows a group of us at a horse clinic working with desensitizing a horse that was worried about lots of things. By the time we were done with a long series of steps (gradually desensitizing him) he wasn’t worried about the umbrella, plastic flag or the chair. He no longer heard their “voices.” May we never grow dull to the voice of the Lord.
Mike Cleveland, in Lesson 60 of Setting Captives Free – The Cross: Finding Life in Jesus’ Death says:
Yes, there are “trials of many kinds” that believers face (James 1:2). Yes, there are hardships to be endured as discipline (Hebrews 12:7). Yes, our days are few and full of trouble (Job 14:1). Yes, we have enemies on every side (Judges 8:34). Yet, through it all, we are encouraged to celebrate a feast of deliverance. In the midst of our trials and troubles, we are exhorted to look to the cross and relish the accomplishments of it. While enduring our hardships in this world, we are commanded to celebrate the payment of our debt and the completion of our salvation. While fighting in every battle with the enemy of our souls, we are to rejoice in the defeat of this enemy, which happened at the cross. =======
Amen!
Again, I am reminded that as I choose to do this, it affects my perspective. Having a higher, loftier, praising perspective affects how I see what happens next and how I experience it.
My heart feels numb. I think I am vulnerable these days–gosh, when am I NOT vulnerable? The expectations I have placed on my body (and on my kids’ bodies!) lately has been quite extreme. We have a TON of hard work to do here around the place. It is definitely taking a toll on my body. I find myself tired, fatigued and with the emotional cat-fights with my son, I am worn down…Daniel may be a young prayer warrior, but he is resistant to lifting a FINGER to do any work if it makes him break a sweat! Sheesh!
I read back over my testimony that I have here at the blog. It always floors me that anyone would want to read such a long testimony. I have been taught to keep testimonies short. SEVEN pages isn’t short! (I think it is actually about 16 pages if one were to print it out!)
I just re-read it wondering…”What is going wrong with me, Lord?”
There it is…in the testimony. From part seven:
If I find my eating is back in “I can TOO eat what I want WHEN I want!” mode, then I know to look only as far as these questions: 1. Is there someone I need to forgive? 2. Am I striving against God being God? Have I allowed arrogance and pride to raise their ugly heads yet again? 3. Am I practicing a life of humble dependence and gratitude? Truly, these questions have been foundational for me in making headway since November 2006. They were like the missing piece of the puzzle that caused things to begin to “click.” But by now you know that none of this came easily. In addition, knowing without a doubt that this moment matters has also been crucial—knowing that God can take a heart offered to Him in a moment and do amazing things with it!!! Even if it is offered only in this moment! The choice I make right now is critical. Minimizing it is making a choice. I must make the choice that is intentional because let me tell ya…the enemy is very intentional about every single moment in our lives! I want to be equally–MORE–intentional in resisting the enemy’s influence in my life. Wow…those last words…the enemy is VERY intentional about each moment in my life. So I had better be. This “vulnerabilty”…well, there is no way I can allow it to go on. I must do what needs doing to nip it in the bud. I must get the rest I need. I must sit at the Lord’s feet to have my soul restored. I must pray and surrender again and again and yet again. I must choose to be grateful and to foster a humble heart IN EACH MOMENT.
If I don’t have plans for this moment of my life, I am sure Satan DOES and he will be more than happy to “fill in” for me…eek…
Now a great theologian has definitely said it better than I ever could. Here it is! This is AWESOME! This blog entry by John Piper hits the issue that I have been singing about! WHOO HOO! (I guess I needed it this morning, too.)
He showed me what I have often done…replacing the object of my devotion. This may sound so silly, but he showed me what it would be like if the music that was playing was sung to what I sometimes focus on, sometimes surrender to–as if the music was sung to the pizza, or the chocolate muffin, or the hot fudge sundae…Picture it with me…
