5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.
Psalm 84:5-7
I asked anyone who wants to join us to consider journalling answers to the questions in this post and also, if you are new to this blog and want to participate, you can answer yesterday’s questions found here…take them to the Lord and wait on Him for the answers.
Whatever your level of participation…please don’t use this as a standard for your performance and approval by God! If you don’t come to the blog each day, that is ok. If you journal some or all of the questions or none of them…that is ok. Let your experience be driven by God and know that He loves you perfectly. You please him–right now. If you are in Christ, God has not only forgiven you, but attributed all of Christ’s righteousness to you!!! You are 100% acceptable to him whether you “do it all” or just do a “drive by” every so often.
I just want to challenge you to go with God’s intentions for you most of all. There will be no demerits for “not doing everything just so” and also no gold stars for doing it all “perfectly.” 🙂 Just be with the Lord in this. Experience his presence–he delights over you with singing! Listen for his voice! Wait for him. Don’t let this study be another way to silence the voice of your heart…we do that with bible studies as readily as we do it with food… let us allow this to be an authentic journey where we bring to him our heart cries and expect HIM to answer!
One thing that I read yesterday morning challenged me…how often to I forsake the good because I refuse to allow myself to let go and do something that isn’t *”perfect?”* For instance, if I want to write a book and get started on it…but it isn’t “perfect” enough so I shelve it…who is to say that God’s “good” isn’t being done because of my insistence for perfection? The same can happen to us as we start (or REstart) this journey. I refuse to let my performance (or what *I* think is my performance) dictate my sense of worth or success. I hope you will join me in this refusal!
On to the pre-study study… 🙂 Do if you choose. 🙂
1. Re-read verse 6 above from Psalm 84. The “Valley of Baca” may be literally translated “valley of weeping.” What does this valley of weeping become when our strength is found in the Lord? What significance do you find in the valley of weeping being transformed into a place of “springs” or “pools” (which, by the way, can also be translated “blessings!”)??
2. Read Isaiah 41:18-20 in your bible. Note the result of pools in the wasteland or springs in the desert. How might this apply to your life as you sojourn toward that which God has for you?
3. According to Isaiah 41:20, for what purpose will God accomplish this?
Back to Psalm 84 written above…
Fill in these blanks: “They go from ________________ to _______________.”
For your consideration: This word for “strength” found twice in verse 7 doesn’t mean the same thing as “strength” in verse 5. It refers to the Hebrew word, chayil, which means “strength, efficiency, wealth.” As we travel on this path, there may be a valley of weeping, but from those tears will come fertile pools and springs giving life to our parched hearts. Our Lord will take our tears and cause us to go from “wealth to wealth” or “riches to riches.” We may experience weeping, but on this pilgrimage we can also experience much abundance and joy. We will find ourselves that much closer to arriving before our God in Zion–the place of promise!
Again, I want to reiterate…don’t get hung up on whether you do this thing perfectly. That was what kept me from hanging in there for so long. I finally let go of that standard and God met me! Think of it this way…if you have been a mom or an aunt or a best friend of someone with a baby…when that baby begins to try to walk, do you turn your back if the steps are faltering? If s/he can’t take off right away? Absolutely not! You delight in seeing any efforts taken…one step, clinging to a couch…flopping down onto his/her bottom and you giggle with glee! I think God is like that as we earnestly strive to grow, change, and take babysteps forward. He knows we don’t have the ability to take off running right away…but our hearts are turned toward the TRY. He loves our try. Yoda of Star Wars infamy may have said “Do or not do, there is no TRY” but that is NOT OUR GOD. Our God rewards the try and delights in our hearts turning to Him.
Allow yourself to learn and grow. You will NEVER pass THIS way again…God WILL grow you, even if you feel like, at the end of the summer, you still aren’t running like you think you “should” be. If you ask your Master, he will smile and say, “Ah, but she is trying to walk…and her heart delights me…”
Feel free to respond here at the blog to these ideas and the questions above. I am thrilled to have you join me. Tomorrow I will likely post my own responses to the questions I have posted here the past three days…
I am SO excited! GOD IS AT WORK! Do you sense it? 😀
NOTE: Some of the material that I have used for the pre-study study entries here at the blog come from a Thin Within study that is available from the Thin Within company. It is something that I helped to write years ago and doesn’t get much use, so thought I would bring in some of the material from that…I hope you enjoy it. I may use some of that material along the way. If you want the study, it is available from Thin Within…their toll free number…just ask for the printed copy of the Thin Within book study guide. It isn’t bound, but is printed and available for $3, I believe. The toll free number is 877-729-8932.
If you are joining us for our journey through the Thin Within book, you may want to get a journal so you can respond to the Lord and all he shows you. It is a wonderful way to chronicle your journey. I use a spiral bound notebook and pen to write down my prayers, thoughts, bible verses or things that strike me as I go through the book. You may want to do the same.
Of course, you can also use a blog to do basically the same thing–though my journal has thoughts that are private in it…obviously, an online blog is visible to the world.
Regardless of the tools you choose to take with you for our trek, there is adventure ahead. I really believe this with all my heart.
The psalmist anticipates the same!
5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.
Psalm 84:5-7
As the Lord leads you in the time between now and Monday, June 1st (or whenever you will be starting your study of the Thin Within book), take some time to prayerfully journal your responses to the questions I have posed here .
Additionally, let’s focus a bit on a couple of the verses mentioned above. Please respond to the following:
1. A “pilgrimage” implies a place of departure and a chosen destination (with lots of things to experience in between!). Ask God to show you a truthful description of where you currently find yourself…that place from which you wish to depart…what you want to leave behind you. (Please do NOT use this to bash yourself. If it would help, ask God to phrase it as if it were HIS words to you!…a love letter to you challenging you about the “land” you will leave behind…what it represents, what is there…) You can use the comments section here to answer, if you like, but I do encourage you to have a record of your thoughts in your personal possession–not just here at this blog site lost over time as tiny little bytes on the World Wide Web!
2. According to the passage above, what does God’s Word say about the person who sets their heart on moving forward with Him?
For your consideration: The word “blessed” is a word that can actually mean “enjoying spiritual happiness and favor of God.” God desires for us to have a happiness that bubbles up from deep within us! If we focus on the Lord and HIS strength, rather than our own strength or failures, we will experience this joy and happiness that is captured in the word “blessed!”
3. Respond to these thoughts.
4. Don’t miss it…where will we find our strength? How does this differ from your past experiences?
For your consideration: In Psalm 84:5-7, the word “strength” appears three times. The first time it is used to refer to strength that is found in the Lord. This is the Hebrew word “oz,” meaning “strength, might, fortress, stronghold.” We will hide ourselves in the Lord for protection, refreshment and nourishment. We will shed other strongholds in favor of Him! He is our strength!
More on this passage tomorrow…we haven’t yet begun our study, but I do want to lay some adequate groundwork for any who may be “chomping at the bit” to get started! I will be journaling right along with you. Again, feel free to respond here at the blog if you like–best in a condensed version of whatever you are journaling about or talking to God about in your time with him.
Whether you have stumbled upon this blog for the first time right now or have been a regular visitor, whether you are going to plunge into our summer study of the Thin Within book starting June 1st or won’t…what is it you want? What is it I want? What do you hope to get from studying the bible, walking with God, reading Thin Within, visiting this blog?
I am asking myself…why will I read/study the book, Thin Within, again? What am I hoping for? What do I want this time?
Maybe more importantly, what am I willing to do, say, give, be in order to experience it? Is there a goal I have? What do I think is really holding me back from realizing it?
One thing I know…my answers won’t be just about food, my body or weight…”Skinniness” is NOT next to “godliness!” I want to be totally free from judging myself or others from external appearances.
Another question I have for myself and for you before we launch our study (and I do hope you will answer these questions) is…what if I sense I have “failed” within say the first two weeks of our study? Am I willing to withhold judgment and to press on anyhow? Am I willing to consider my commitment to this process a more noble goal than other goals I might choose? The Christian life is nothing if not a process. That is what sanctification is all about…progressively becoming more and more Christ like!
I don’t want to buy in to Satan’s lie that if I don’t perform thus and so, then I am a failure, so I may as well quit. NO WAY. I urge you to be aware of this temptation before we ever get started. Commit this summer to being willing to learn whatever God shows you in whatever way he chooses to show you and I will do the same. Maybe you will release weight, maybe you won’t.
But will we–will you–choose to believe God that the process is worth it?
Have you ever been naturally good at a sport, like tennis or golf and never been taught at all by anyone professionally? Then you go to take your first lesson so you can improve and the professional tells you that s/he will have to start you from scratch…in effect rebuild your stroke from the ground up? In order to get better, you will have to get worse first? This isn’t uncommon. Sometimes we have to get to a place where things look worse before they look better. As God shows us the many ways we cling to things other than Him (including food), we may find ourselves clinging all the more…But hang in there with the process. Trust him that HE IS DOING a new thing–even if the process looks ugly for a bit. We may have to look worse…maybe even feel like we are losing a few rounds first–before it gets better.
Feel free to comment on these thoughts in the comments section. This blog is for you all! 🙂
What DO you want? What ARE you willing to do to get it? How willing are you to experience a process that looks very different from what you expect…? Even if it is ugly? 🙂
On June 1st, I plan to start a study of the Thin Within book (2003 or later edition). I have gone through it a bunch…so it is sometimes hard to imagine that God may yet have something “new” there for me. I know that it is arrogance that says I “know” it all. LOL!
Here is an invitation…a video invitation for you… 😀 Scary thought, but I may do this throughout our study of the book.
So, I ask any/all of you…if you would like to go through the Thin Within book with me here at the blog, feel free to grab a copy by June 1st. Even if you get your own copy a bit later than the 1st, I won’t go through it in 30 days–it will probably take me all summer. You can call Thin Within directly at 877-729-8932 and they will send it right out to you. I think it is $12. You may be able to get it cheaper on Amazon, but the shipping is likely to take longer.
So, that said, if any of you would like, feel free to join me. You can use the “comments” section of the blog to post your thoughts and ideas, questions, comments, praises, concerns, prayer requests and prayers.
And if you come to this blog entry months after it has been posted, you can still participate. When someone makes a comment to the blog–even an entry I posted months before–I get sent a notification about it. I will gladly respond. Don’t feel left out!
God has something new He IS DOING in YOU (and in me!)–even now!
To those of you reading and following in real time, will you do me a favor and pray that God will make the new thing he is doing in each of us obvious? That we may have eyes to perceive it? He says it springs up! I am eager for the adventure he has ahead.
Join me! 🙂
If you plan to do so, feel free to comment here. I would LOVE to know who will be participating! I may add little “video” thoughts as we go…just for fun. 🙂
Here is my (personal) biggest challenge on a superficial (yet deep at the same time…) level…to make my way through this material WITHOUT using a bathroom scale at all! I believe the Lord would have that for me! I also want to have an open heart. Since God involved me in the writing of the Thin Within book (what an amazing display of his grace AND his sense of humor), it can be really easy for me to be “jaded” if I am not wary. So if you will pray for me about this…I would welcome it. I know that I have NOT “arrived.” Until my feet are lifted from the dust of this earth and planted on Heavenly streets of gold, I know that I will continue to be formed, shaped, refined and CONVICTED, changed, corrected, rebuked by our gentle Shepherd. I welcome that now. I need that.
Anyhow, I will pray for you. Please pray for me and plan to get your own copy of the Thin Within book (2003 or later edition) by Arthur and Judy Halliday so you can write in it as you go.
My friend, Bob, made this video after I requested it. It just seems to capture what is going on in my life. I celebrate! (And no…the preview photo isn’t me! LOL!)
In our world, we hear the message loud and clear all the time: Thinner is better.
So, then, how can someone lose a bunch of weight, keep it off for a year and gain some back and be happy? And be ok? And have it be the right thing?
Everywhere we look, even in our Christian circles, it is conveyed to us: Weight Gain can’t possibly be a good thing…and it definitely isn’t the godlything. :-/
I have news for you! It can TOO be godly! Weight gain can be a good thing! I have this on good authority! 🙂
While I know there will be times when I will struggle with this, and Lord knows I certainly have during the past 6 months, God has been at work inside me, through me, in spite of me. I am at so much more peace with myself and my size than I ever imagined. And I am also at peace with food and with God about all of it! (Sunday mornings do tend to wreak havoc with it a bit, but even the past couple of Sundays have been miraculously peaceful…thank you, Lord!)
I have given Him my heart in this.
That counts for something BIG! He has been doing a HUGE work in me.
God IS doing a new thing!
Strongholds and idols galore have crashed to the ground. They have been busted apart! Three years ago, I never would have imagined I would be where I am today…free. Just because I have disappointed people who have followed my story by gaining some weight back, doesn’t mean that the story has had an ungodly, sad, or failed ending! I stand here today testifying that right now, as I am TODAY, I am a testimony of God’s grace and his amazing rescue!
To those who think that “Heidi used to be an example of success on Thin Within. Now she is just like everyone else who has tried it. She has failed. She has gained weight back…”
I say this…
HEY! Listen up! I was outside of God’s will being owned by the strongholds of diet soda and caffeine, a certain size body and the scale! I clung to the scale to prove I had value and worth to “justify” that I was TOO still godly! GOOD GRIEF! No! Don’t buy this lie! I went to the scale for my worth…even though I hid that fact from many I talked with on the Thin Within forums, in person, and in email. (I wasn’t completely honest…I really WAS owned by the scale…even more than I realized at the time…) And I constantly had a diet soda in my hand…CONSTANTLY. That is bondage! That isn’t godliness.
I was obsessed by my body, my looks, my clothes and stifled by fear that everything upon which I was fixated would vanish.
Please hear me, my blog family. 🙂 You are dear to me! Know this! While my “Super Duper Thin Within Woman” cape is torn and my crown tarnished ;-), while I have fallen from a pedestal in many ways…this weight gain is NOT indicative of any of that. FAR FROM IT!
In fact, get this…I believe that this weight is actually an award of victory…that pronounces that God is king over areas of my life that were not surrendered to him while I was struggling to maintain such a low weight on my frame.
Please know this, too….I enjoy DAILY accountability with a partner who is one of the best gifts God has ever given me. My goal continues to be to honor the Lord and glorify him with my eating and drinking every moment of the day. I shoot for 0 to 5 eating–and am not perfect, but I continue to live out the patterns I have established over the last two and a half years.
And I stay off the scale. COMPLETELY.
Additionally, I am gloriously free from caffeine headaches if I don’t have soda constantly…I can honestly say, THIS IS A GIFT FROM GOD!
My friends…this IS that to which God has called me! I am enjoying experiencing the reality of his promises!
It is hard to post this so blatantly. I mean…someone would ask…”If you are so free, then why the weight gain?” Well, I have to say it again…the size I was before was NOT God’s “natural God-given size” for me! Why would I want to do whatever it takes to be something he doesn’t call me to be? Caffeine is a drug! How would people feel if I had taken amphetamines to be thin and finally admitted it!? They would likely feel compassion for my admission and celebrate my “coming clean” –they might even understand the weight gain, perhaps.
Why not in this case?
I am convinced that my “natural God-given size” is closer to where I am than where I was. And it is ok! I have gone ahead and purchased new jeans in one size up…and have gotten out some of my old clothes that I had celebrated putting away…I now celebrate that I feel ok about needing another size.
I am ok with this. I mean, if I still need to feel good about things, I can look at it this way…I have released 80-85 pounds and a truckload of strongholds. God has worked this in me.
I am praising him! I hope you will praise him along with me!
I have this tendency to think that I can’t allow myself to listen to the longings of my heart. I have learned so well to stuff them down. One bible teacher has said that she begs God to give her such holy desires that she can allow herself to run with her longings…to indulge that which surfaces without hesitation! I think that is a great prayer!
John Eldredge in Walking With God makes an excellent point. God sometimes allows our longings to surface…actually causes something to cross our path that triggers a desire. We can stifle it (not usually a good idea), or ask God about it. The entire book is about welcoming God into everyday moments of life.
For instance, I see a woman and her beautiful horse down at the arena. They are like music together. Poetry in motion. She rides bareback and bridleless and my eyes well up with tears at such a beautiful partnership. What’s more, this isn’t merely about beautiful mechanical movement together. There is a softness in horse and rider that speaks of something so beyond just “moving” without tack. As the lady dismounts, it is evident that the horse just adores her and she him. They not only DO together, they ARE together. It stirs something in my heart. Something deep.
I will miss it if I begin to think I need to work with my horses more to get this and that is the answer to the longing I feel. There is something that is deep inside all right, but it is so much more than having an almost magical relationship with my horses. What is deeper? What is really beneath all of this?
John Eldredge says:
More often than not, this awakening of desire is an invitation from God to seek what we’ve given up as lost, an invitation to try again… (Walking with God, page 187)
In fact, what is at the heart of most of my longings?
What God uses to awaken desire is not necessarily what we long for. The things “in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things…are good images of what we desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself.” They are not what we are longing for. (Walking with God, page 187)
The point is, when we see desire or longing surface, instead of pondering how we can get the thing that we think it is about or instead of shoving the desire down, we can sit with God in it…and ask him, “God, what is this about? What do you have for me in this? What is your intention in allowing this longing, this desire to surface? I don’t want to miss what you have for me in it.”
Admittedly, this is risky…he may let me sit a while with the question hanging in the air between us.
When I do anything other than extend this invitation to God, it–the desire and longing that I have felt–most assuredly will work against me…either turn me toward something that will become an addiction, a false pacifier, or the deadening of my heart or all of the above.
There is something deep going on here. I sense it. Right now, I am at peace with things more than I have been in a long while. I have to admit, though, I wonder if it isn’t cyclical! If in a couple of weeks, I will be churning just as much as I was a week ago. The nature of my blog postings could cause anyone a serious case of whiplash, I am sure! 🙂
But right now, today, I am optimistic. I see the longings, the desires, the misplaced indulgences as indicators that God is up to something big in my life…
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.
Walking with God by John Eldredge is an amazing book. The workbook makes it a wonderful experience to walk through the book…pondering, praying, considering, asking God, learning to listen.
He brings up many truths that penetrate. God has used it to bring home once again things that he has been wanting me to wrap my brain around.
In his entry called “Unmet Longings” he says:
To bury the deep longings of our hearts is not a good thing. Doing so begins to shut our hearts down and then we fall into that “get on with life” mentality. For me, that means bearing down and working. Getting things done. But my passion slowly fades away, and life recedes from me. I cannot bring to my work the zest I once did, so even my work suffers. Because my heart is suffering. It’s like a form of slow starvation. If your body doesn’t get what it needs, you can run for a while without it. But slowly the erosion begins to manifest itself. You get tired, your muscles ache, or you start having headaches or a thousand other symptoms. You need nourishment.
The heart is like that. Thank God, we cannot force it down forever. Hurting, it begins to insist on some attention. Now we can either listen to these rumblings and let our hearts surface so that we bring them to God, or we can give in to some addiction. The starving heart won’t be ignored forever. Some promise of life comes along and boom–we find ourselves in the kitchen closet taking down a quart of ice cream…
Walking With God page 185
This reminds me of what the Hallidays said in Silent Hunger, also published as Thin Again and Get Thin Stay Thin. Our hearts are hungry. It is a silent hunger, but it longs to be heard, recognized, and satisfied. If we don’t listen to it, if we don’t feed it in an appropriate way, it will raise its head and demand feeding…and we may throw it some “bone”… sooner or later, we must bring it to God. We must sit with the emptiness and wait on the Lord.
This is a common theme in my life right now. To be willing to wait. Wait. Wait…Wait on the Lord.
Often, God even awakens the desire in our hearts…so that we might recognize it is there…more on that tomorrow…
I have planned a few times to post, but just haven’t carved out the time to do it. I am back to the tyranny of a fragmented life. I think I do this when I am in pain…over commit, overextend…and when I am just tired of feeling. It is so noble (or so it seems), so honorable…to be “busy.” I mean what kind of person isn’t busy? Someone who is lazy? Someone who doesn’t have purpose in life?
Lies.
Maybe the person who isn’t “busy” is someone who is allowing God to establish her priorities.
He says that his commands are not burdensome. Maybe if I feel like life is a burden it is a HINT that I am doing that which is outside his will or not depending on his strength to do what *is* his will. Duh!
I need to declare a sabbath rest for myself. He calls…
Isaiah 28:12-13 says: to whom he said, “This is the resting place, let the weary rest”; and, “This is the place of repose”— but they would not listen.
13 So then, the word of the LORD to them will become: Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there— so that they will go and fall backward, be injured and snared and captured.
Hmm…sounds like there is a fail safe. He calls me to rest. If I don’t listen, life–even doing what I assume is God’s will for me–becomes a huge burden…a list of dos and don’t…and I will fall.
What’s this have to do with eating? Tons. There is something deeper here. Why the busy-ness? Why do I over-fill my days? Why do I keep saying yes to new projects? Why? Why is it so obvious I am running from something? What is the something I am running from? Why do I run?
What if I am still in my pain, in my need and God lets me feel it longer than I want? What if he doesn’t show up? Will my faith handle that? Will I still trust him? Will I still believe that he will heal?
When will I finally be free of all this introspection that feels so horribly self-centered and myopic? What comes first? My healing? Or focusing in something else? I keep hoping it is the focusing on something else.
Malachi 4:2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.
