I will post more later, but this week’s assignment (tentatively!) is to pray through and complete chapters 5, 6, and 7 in the Thin Within book.
Please continue to keep your list of attributes of God and how he relates to people as asserted by the authors. Feel free, too, to add to it when you read the scriptures, of course!
Take time to use your list or part of your list to praise God for Who He is and how He relates to you.
Post here about what you experience! I would love to see it!
Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom. – Song of Solomon 2:15
Foxes are omnivores–they eat all kinds of things. They will eat rodents…which can be a GOOD thing, but they also eat fruit, berries, grasses and may even dig to reach tender roots or shoots of new plants.
Imagine your life, my life…and the new habits we are hoping to sow–what we think about, what we do, what we believe–as a vineyard. The vineyard is vulnerable, tender, young. We haven’t had much time to establish these new habits…these new plants. There is a promise of a fruitful future as we continue to “work the soil” of our hearts. There is hope and yet the work is hard so early on.
Have there been “little foxes” running through your life trying to spoil the work that God is doing as you partner with him in the tending of your vineyard?
What kinds of things act as foxes in your life right now, today, during the past week?
The past two days have been challenging for me! I am not sure why! I woke up on Friday morning with a declaration, “I don’t FEEL like trying to be godly any more! I am DONE!” What is up with that? 🙂 I couldn’t even blame hormones!
Actually, that thought of “I don’t FEEL like trying to be godly any more,” wasn’t just a “little fox,” but was like a huge bear! I needed to nip it in the bud immediately! Because I didn’t catch that fox, it wreaked havoc on Friday and Saturday. Nothing blatantly evil…but just making its way through my life, here and there…all day long…pulling up, as it were, the godly thoughts and behaviors I was attempting to sow–the root of a tender heart–I was trying to cultivate to the Lord–any hope of fruit that was evidence of a life given to God.
I am behind in my reading…I hope some of you can use the extra time to catch up. This coming week, the assignment will be to read and work through chapters 5, 6, and 7…more on that tomorrow, but I did want you to know where I was with the reading.
Today, I think I will ask the Lord to help with the damage left from the indiscretions of the last two days…it doesn’t have to be really blatant. The “little” foxes can do plenty of damage with constant peck pecking at the roots and tender shoots of my life…I need the Lord, the Master Gardener to get this “vineyard” back in shape again.
Time to wait on the Lord…
For your consideration:
1.) What “little foxes” are assaulting your “vineyard?”
2.) What can you do to “catch” the little foxes?
3.) What can you do to more adequately care for, nurture and protect your young “vineyard” of thoughts and behaviors that will glorify God relative to food, eating, body image and all the other related things?
The battle is not “of the bulge.” It is more pervasive than that! The battle we fight is for our minds.
While trying to focus on God, maintaining godly goals, applying principles such as the Keys to Conscious Eating in Thin Within…we find ourselves with thoughts being fixed on … US!
We fight condemning self-talk as we continue on this path. In fact, we may struggle with thinking about ourselves CONSTANTLY. “Am I at a zero?” “Is this what 3 feels like? Or is this 5?” “Can I really eat this and not gain weight?” “This didn’t work for me before, why do I think it will now?” “Will I really lose weight?” “This is going to take forever!” Then we answer some of our questions with any host of me-oriented answers, “No, it won’t work…nothing ever ‘sticks’…why would that change now?” or “Yes, look at me go! I can feel the weight melt off me already!” or “I am going to look GREAT!” or “I wonder if those jeans fit now!” or “I will hop on the scale again (even though I just did 32 minutes ago) and see if I have lost or gained any more weight!”
ME ME ME…
Even if we have “self-talk” that is positive and upbeat…we are sowing a habit that is about ME. I know this from experience. It does NOT serve us well or the goal of becoming Christ-like! If we don’t nip this habit of being SELF-focused in the bud, it will bite us in our ever shrinking rears later. I know this. BELIEVE ME! Even if you release all your extra weight, but have sown the habit of thinking about yourself all the time, God will allow you to find that place of thinness…empty in your soul. He wants your heart. Let us not sell our souls in exchange for thinness.
We want to train our minds and hearts for godliness, instead. We want to sow habits that will exalt the Lord!
Keep praising Him for His attributes, his provision, His grace, His love…any thoughts of self, trade them, replace them with thoughts of “Oh, God! How GREAT you are!” “I need YOU so much!” “Thank you for all YOU do and are!” “Thank you that YOU are bread for my hungry heart!”
This is important…vital. THIS is the Path of God’s Provision. It is paved with stones of God-exaltation!
Hi. If you have just joined us, we are studying Thin Within, by Arthur and Judy Halliday. This week’s assignment is to prayerfully study, read, complete chapters 3, 4, and 5. Chapter 5 is a BIGGEE…a potentially pivotal point. So we may linger there for a few days. I hope those of you joining in now will not feel burdened to “catch up!” It is more important to take as long as you need soaking in the material and allowing the Lord to bring it home to your heart in His special way. It took me the better part of 5 YEARS to honestly get through chapter 5 the last time through. LOL!
As we read, there are two on-going assignments we have:
1.) Keep a list (add to it all the time!) of God’s attributes and the way he relates to you, His child as asserted by the authors and/or through His Word or other sources. (Extra Credit: Use this list to pray by praising God for the specific attributes and traits you discover about Him.)
2.) Keep focusing on the LORD.
These two “assignments” dovetail. The key is, you do NOT want to make this be about SELF! That is what diets do…put all the focus and attention on SELF and how “bad” or “good” we do or *are*…typically with the scale being our judge. We know how these end…badly, with self-condemnation.
Even if you have gone through the TW material before, I challenge you…let the Lord ALONE be your focus!!!! It makes the difference we need. He is our strength. He is our deliverance, he is our hope. He is our…well…our everything!
Another thing I have challenged you with is to throw out your bathroom scale and dare to believe God that he can work in you this summer without the crutch of a man-made bathroom scale. So often we go to the scale to get approval! He has created your body to be reliable, so you can depend on the hunger scale as described in the Thin Within book–a way of describing the God-given cues of physical hunger and satisfaction. If you eat between 0 and 5, you will land at your God-given weight. I believe it! I know it! Who cares what number that is on a man-made bathroom scale!
Whew! As you can see, we are really doing a lot already! If we could hold steady just with these things for now without any additional reading we would really be experiencing some major life transformations!
Add the reading to it and VOOMBA! What a prescription for life change and metamorphosis, inside and out!
I guess, truthfully, this is what chapter four is about anyhow. Will you choose the Path of My Performance, filled with self condemnation, resentment, performance or the Path of God’s Provision, with His joy, His peace, His will, His way, His liberty? The book explains this in an awesome way (if I DO say so! LOL!).
Most important of all, however, is the in-depth description of one of the most crucial concepts in the Thin Within book–Observation and Correction. Please oh PLEASE be sure to read pages 36-38 (and the rest of the chapter) really carefully.
In summary, observation and correction can be described like this:
Observation is choosing to dispassionately evaluate my behavior. For instance, I was emotional upon receiving some difficult news. I went to the fridge and without considering my hunger numbers, proceeded to eat a hot fudge sundae. Obviously, this behavior is not congruent with my goal of eating 0 to 5 and surrendering all of my eating to the Lord, allowing his Spirit to guide me so that I might glorify him with my eating and drinking.
Upon reflection of my behavior, I can: 1.) beat myself up (this is NOT what we want to do!) – “I KNEW I would never be free! I say I want to be free and look at what I do first thing…how can I keep visiting the blog site and interacting with others there!? I am such a hypocrite! What must my husband think, since he SAW me inhale all that ice cream!”
2.) go into denial “That really wasn’t so bad…I *was* really wounded, after all…”
or
3.) dispassionately recognize that this behavior doesn’t agree with my godly goals. “Lord, I could have run to you with my emotions. Instead I ate my way through the ice cream and hot fudge.”
Notice with the third option, there is no condemnation. This demonstrates an accurate handling of the word of truth (see Romans 8:1).
So, as described in chapter 4 of Thin Within, I recognize this behavior as being outside of God’s will for me and not in agreement with my godly goals and I do so without a truckload of emotion. What next?
Simply…I make a plan for change–called “correction.”
For example: “I will establish a boundary. The kitchen is off limits when I have received news on the phone, in the mail, or via email. Before I go to the pantry or the fridge, I will take time to pray, acknowledging the difficulty of the news I have received. I will intentionally WAIT and choose NOT to eat, looking to the Lord first to satisfy my wounded heart. Then, if HE leads me to eat out of true physical hunger, I will choose something that feeds my body in a positive way, as a spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1,2).”
Other examples… Observation: I overate in the car driving home from work. Correction: I will not eat in the car, but will stop and eat, focusing on giving glory and thanks to God for my food.
Observation: I eat too much when I go to Chinese Buffet. Correction: For a short season I will not go to the buffet. In a few weeks, after I have developed a greater sense of commitment in the face of temptation, I will try again.
or…
When I go to the buffet, I will take my own tiny plate and have a boundary of eating only one plate full of food…no food overlapping the edges, no food touching another food. (I know a TW participant who did this…she asked the managers ahead of time and they even gave her a discount since she wasn’t going to eat very much!)
Observation is agreeing with God…or confession.
Correction is planning for change, turning a new direction…or repentance.
It is GRACE filled…it isn’t a tool of condemnation at all.
I will say it again…
We can not hate/condemn ourselves into positive change!
With Observation and Correction, with The Path of God’s Provision, the focus is on the Lord and what HE wants…what he wants is to be our sufficiency. He doesn’t condemn you for looking to food in a moment instead of to Him. He asks you to declare the truth, yes “I blew it!”…and then, with grace, he says, “Go and leave the sin behind…” Jesus came with grace and truth both…not just truth…not just grace. (See John 1.)
He loves you, approves of you, welcomes you…he does NOT condemn you! So why condemn yourself! That isn’t Christ-like. No matter what your goal is from day 3, being more like Jesus should trump all the others. Condemnation has no place in a heart that wants to be like Jesus! God sent his son into the world NOT to condemn the world, but to save the world THROUGH Him! (John 3:17 I think it is…)
So, which path are you on? What can you do to switch to the Path of God’s Provision?
Can you look back over your day and make 3 observations and 3 godly corrections? I know you can!
Get used to using this tool, applying it with grace, inviting God to help you with your thinking, and you will experience a freedom from condemnation AND freedom from behaviors that derail your godly goals!
Goals are godly ONLY when they do not have the power to direct my steps. Only God should direct my steps. Only HE defines my worth and value and He has decided I am worth the universe to Him.
As wonderful as our goals may be…and as eager as God may be to show us his amazing proficiency to do all of these things and more…he will NOT allow goals to usurp his leadership in our lives.
Let us not allow the goal to become an idol.
It IS a challenge to have goals while maintaining our focus on the Lord…If at any point we feel our focus slipping off of him on this journey together, we want to stop and ask Him to fill our vision with Him and Him alone. The goals are NOT worth forsaking our focus.
As I approached chapter 3 in Thin Within, I continued my running list of God’s attributes and the way he relates to me, His child. Praising Him for these truths sooo lifts my spirit and starts my day with my focus where it belongs…on Him! I only read, studied and prayed my way through the bottom of page 31.
Before I go ANY further, I want want WANT you to know how I feel about the “goal setting” activity. THIS IS IMPORTANT! 🙂 Thus, the additional video:
Giving Glory to God is the foundational purpose for your life. (Thin Within, page 28)
Note what is NOT the foundational purpose–that of being THIN! Or of weighing 135 lbs … Or a million other things that we might tend to chase after!
If we allow God to form and shape our character, we will become more like Jesus… (Thin Within, page 28)
Truly, this should be our #1 goal and the goal through which everything else is sifted! If goals that we set and our response to our behavior about these goals keep us from becoming more like the Lord, then we have to do some serious adjustment either of our goals, how we are thinking about them, or all of the above.
Therefore, I URGE you, I BEG you…do NOT make your physical goal a number on the scale! My goal is worded this way on page 31…as I shared in the video:
“After praying about it and inviting Him to indicate His will to me, my goal for [the end of the summer] is to be able to have more wiggle room in my Levis jeans (which are currently tight). I want to be able to move in them, work in them, ride horses in them without being goosed or rubbed raw.”
This is my physical goal regarding my size. It is NOT a weight. It is not even a “size”…it is “this pair of jeans will fit this way…” more than that.
If you feel like God wants to really shrink you down in size a lot by the end of the summer, then I encourage you to word your goal differently, too. “…my goal is to be…able to sit in the airplane seat in September without a seat belt extender…” or “…to be able to shop for clothes in Nordstrom’s instead of ‘Big and Beautiful’ stores” or… “to be able to sit in the chairs at the dentist office in August, without feeling the sides pressing in on my hips uncomfortably…”
See what I mean? 🙂 PLEASE ask God if he would have you do the same. Tell us about it here, ok? 🙂
PLEASE DO NOT USE THE BATHROOM SCALE AT ALL!!! I know this is radical, but you know how I have been singing the song “Focus on the Lord Focus on the Lord?” The scale is THE BEST WAY TO STOP FOCUSING on the LORD and to focus on yourself and your supposed performance! PLEASE DON’T GO THERE! You and I both have done that before and has it served us well? NO!
For the summer, will you PLEASE do something radical? Ask a best friend to keep your bathroom scale in the garage at her house and not to give it back to you until September? Or, better, throw it away?
PLEASE!
Judy Halliday likes to say that if we put as much effort into hearkening our God-given signals on the God-given HUNGER SCALE as we do on the man-made bathroom scale, we would release any excess weight and have lives of peace and joy! The scale is a tool of condemnation and can you condemn yourself into positive change? NO WAY!
Oh, my…I really am making a BIG deal about this. I mean it!!!!! In fact, I meet with my accountability partner in just about a half an hour…I am going to walk my talk and do that very thing…ask her to take my scale and lock it in her trunk!!! I don’t want it back!
Hi, everyone! Wow! We are hitting the trail running…or it seems that way to me. Let’s see how it works this week if we have as a very tentative goal, that of reading and working through three chapters–chapters 3, 4, and 5. I think this is a bit ambitious for me personally…but let’s see what happens! Let’s each go at the pace God directs us personally!
Here is the video for this week. I apologize that it is about 5 minutes long. I get excited about this stuff…
As you read chapters 3, 4, and 5 (or whatever the Lord leads), please do the following:
Keep adding to your list of attributes of God and the way he relates to you, His child.
Take time daily (or more often) to pray praises to Him and thanking him for these attributes on your list, asking him to make them more real to you. (I give an example of this in the video.) Praising and worshiping him in faith even if you struggle feeling the reality of these things makes a HUGE difference in our perspective and our walk on this journey (for our entire lives!)
Keep asking HIM about which “tools” mentioned in the book you should use right now. The tools can be tools of grace, but some of us need some more distance from dieting charts and graphs before we can use them that way. Just keep asking Him.
Invite HIM into your eating. If you make eating a time of fellowship with the Lord, I believe that the keys to conscious eating will (super)naturally become a part of it…for instance, if you say, “Lord, thank you for this food…thank you for providing tasty fuel when my body needs it,” you are likely to get a check in your spirit if you are NOT at a “0” yet! Ask the Lord to help you to get to know your body’s physical signals and then use what you learn to praise and exalt GOD, not the food, not the “good job” you are doing This is HUGE! It made all the difference in the world for me and will again! 🙂
As you consider each bite of the food and the swallow of the beverages you choose, again, focus your attention on and praise the Lord. Tell him how wonderful the tastes and textures are and then ask him to help you not to eat more than you NEED. I like to “offer” back the last couple of bites of any food I have been enjoying. Even if I took a very small portion, I can give back something to him. Typically, I have found that giving up those couple of bites doesn’t keep me from a comfortable “5”…and it sure helps to curb my tendency to be greedy. It is one way I keep my flesh in check, I guess (but it isn’t a law!) The fact is, I can get more to eat if, in 20 minutes I still feel hungry. I feel like I am most in the heart of God’s will when I delight in HIS creativity, HIS provision during my meals…It is ALL about HIM! 🙂
Remember most of all…if you focus on HIM and HIS greatness, you will experience a satisfaction in your soul that NOTHING else can touch! There are *reasons* we are drawn to food when we aren’t physically hungry and, often, at the heart of all of these reasons is a big emptiness that God alone can satisfy. If we develop an ability to focus on Him, praise Him, pray to Him, we will find that those things that lure us to food when we aren’t physically hungry will fade! Honestly! Not only that, but a lot of other challenges in our lives will fall into their rightful place. It is the “Seek first His righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well” principle again!
If you have time and feel led, I do hope you will post here what God shows you in your time with Him. Or post the link toyour blog entry if you are doing it that way. I don’t want to miss any of it!
We are studying the book, Thin Within, by Arthur and Judy Halliday. Come on along and join us! We are doing 2 or 3 chapters each week…so you have time to get the book and dive right in. Even if you don’t do the chapters at the same time that I post here about them, you can read whenever it suits you and join in here at any time. These blog entries aren’t going anywhere. In fact, if you go way back to the beginning of this blog, you will see my study of this book from November and December of 2006! 🙂 Still there! The internet is an amazing thing.
As you read (past tense) or read (present/future tense) chapter 2, I urge you to continue your list of God’s attributes.
Everything depends on our understanding of Who He is… (page 18, Thin Within)
Before I share my continued list, let me ask you…WHY is understanding Who God is so important to our journey? Why do you think the authors make this a focus? Why do I keep harping 🙂 on it here at the blog?
So, here is my continued list…along with some other quotes I want to highlight:
God ordained that I would be here now.
All the challenges and wonders that life offers, he knows about.
Nothing about my life is hidden from him.
As I was writing these things down, I was prompted by God to share with you that I definitely see myself as running from God…or running from something. I am doing this by being far too busy and over committed. I have written about this before. But I see that I need desperately to BE STILL AND KNOW that HE is GOD! In the past week, I have been reverting to old coping mechanisms and while diet soda consumption hasn’t returned to my life, I still have been depending on caffeine to get me jump started again! I share this by way of confession. It only took 4 days of not getting enough sleep and presto…here I am…So, by admitting this struggle here, I want to add to my accountability…and, perhaps, solicit prayer. It is important to me that I not just treat the symptoms…but get to the heart. To do that, I will have to be still. I have structured my life so that I feel like I can’t be still. This isn’t ok…so I have some difficult choices to make. Do I believe what I have said here and what I read in Thin Within and the Word of God about God’s character?
God is love
God is creative
God created me uniquely and very specifically
All of creation (including me) speaks of His wondrous glory
His divine imagination thought of you in eternity past and He created you especially for this space and time. All of creation, including you, speaks of his wondrous glory. (page 19, Thin Within)
He created the starry host and vast oceans.
He wants me to know Him.
He wants me to be authentic before Him <–this is what I am running from, at least in part! Go figure! :-/
God loves me.
God reveals himself.
He will meet and surpass any great expectations I have of Him
He is trustworthy.
He meets me when I am honest.
God is compassionate and gracious
God is slow to anger (please, let’s take note of this! :-))
God is abounding in love and faithfulness
So what on EARTH does any of this have to do with my NEED, DESIRE, EARNESTNESS, QUEST to lose weight????? 🙂 I am so glad you asked!!!
…God…wants to be your constant companion on your journey to healing and wholeness. (page 20, Thin Within)
If you think of God as a Cosmic Killjoy, you won’t likely want to depend on him on this journey. If you think of Him as angry and mean…you are likely to feel stomped on when you have a misstep or “blow it” in some way. The truth is, our God LOVES you as you are. He doesn’t operate the way so many of us think or have been taught! We want to know him as he really is.
God is gracious, loving and good. (Did you see this in chapter 2?) 🙂
God is wise.
Here is one connection between why we want to know God better and our desire to see changes in our physical bodies…
Since your body is one of God’s masterpieces (and since God is all of these things that we have been listing), it can be trusted. (page 20, Thin Within)
But, again, I want to reiterate…if we continue to focus on ME ME ME, we will miss it. We really will. So the most important reason that I will continue to shout from the rooftops that we must FOCUS on the Lord is because He is most concerned about the state of our hearts, not the size of the clothes we wear. He knows that when our hearts belong to him, everything else will fall into His perfect order and place in our lives and isn’t that we want, after all?
Getting back to chapter two, then, we now turn to some of the practical aspects of Thin Within relative to food and eating.
God is trustworthy. God made my body. Therefore, my body is trustworthy…I need to learn to listen to the God-given cues of hunger and satisfaction.
When I do this, simply put, I glorify and honor the God of this universe (I esteem his creation and exalt Him as wise and wonderful!) and I respect myself in a way that he desires.
Over the next few months, you and I will get to know these masterpieces that the Lord has made, our bodies. Instead of fixating on them, though, we will do it with a Godward focus. We will ask HIM questions we have. We will praise HIM when we experience a breakthrough. We will depend on HIS strength, not our own. We will not give in to the temptation to beat ourselves up. That is NOT His will and grieves His tender Father’s heart. (How do you feel when you hear your child say, “I was SO stupid!”)
I urge you to prayerfully read pages 20-23 where the physiological aspects of this process are discussed. Please don’t allow this to become a diet for you by fixating on this.
To honor God, who walks with us, and who leads and directs us, we need to honor the unique and amazing body He has made especially for each of us.
I loved reading (again) the quote from Isaiah 40 on the top of page 25…God doesn’t beat me up when I am weary (as I am now). He doesn’t have one ounce of disapproval in his heart…instead, he gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Oh Lord, I am so weary and so weak right now. THANK you that I can run to you…you have promised not a “holy beating,” but to give me strength and to increase my power. You love me and accept me as I am and hope for loftier things for me than that which I settle for. Help me to run to you, to wait for you, to hope in you. To cease the striving…to trust the body you have given me. When it says it needs rest, to rest…when it needs food, to eat, when it needs water, to indulge heartily! Thank you for all your provisions. In the precious name of Jesus…Amen.
Hey, folks…this may be entry number 2 for today, but this is a quickie. If any of you would like to, you can download this pdf file of an Observation and Correction chart and print it out any day you choose to use it. Since we aren’t going through the book in 30 days and some of you might like to have these to record the Keys to Conscious Eating that you apply, I thought I would share this link. (They are in the book at the end of each chapter, too.)
Remember…charts and graphs are NOT things you NEED to do unless GOD says! Some of us find ourselves getting caught back in a legalistic dieting mentality when we try things like this…If that is the case for you, this might be a season that you don’t want to use these charts…it is ok!
But for those of you who the Lord may be leading to use this, there it is for your benefit as he leads! 🙂
