Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My daughter enjoys watching the movie The Jungle Book.  Every once in awhile she will ask me to play the Bare Necessities song that Baloo sings after meeting Moglie.  One day we were listening to the song, when suddenly it hit me, it’s really true!  We only need the bare necessities of life!

What are the bare necessities?  Food, shelter, clothing?  Maybe there are additional things like companionship.  Water?  I’m sure we can all think of what those bare necessities are in our life.

So how does this pertain to our Thin Within journey?

I can tell you what it means for me.  I learned this the hard way this past week.

The last year has been incredible.  The Lord has helped me overcome so much.  Through Christ, I have seen victory after victory.  There have been bumps along the way, but all of a sudden, this past week, I stumbled and fell on my face.  And I ate dirt.  And as Heidi just talked about, I got back on the horse, and then fell off again and ate more dirt.  And then I felt like the last time I fell off the horse that the horse dragged me through a manure pit.  Ever been there?  Yeah…so instead of just brushing the dirt off myself, this time I had to get a hose and spray off the grime.

But I’m back on the horse again. 🙂

So what happened?  I started to get panicky and tried to create ways to be more in control.  Instead of just eating 0-5 and staying within my boundaries (my bare necessities of my Thin Within journey), I decided to keep a food journal of what I was eating and give myself a check-mark if I ate 0-5 (which, is totally ok if you are led to do this–I was not).  AND then I thought that I should limit certain kinds of foods.  I really thought this was the Lord’s idea, but looking back, it was NOT.  And maybe He allowed it to prove to me that my ideas are not the greatest ideas.  Ha!  Instead of being helpful, it brought me back to my dieting and restrictive days.  The first couple of days were fine, but then I slowly started to see myself deteriorate into this rut of restriction.  This is not a good place for me.  I started to obsess.   And that’s when I really began to eat some dirt.  I wasn’t staying within the basics.

The Lord has shown me that I need to keep things simple.  It’s those bare necessities of my Thin Within journey that are what He wants for me.  If I go outside of that I find myself trying to control and be obsessed.  And then the mental weight becomes heavy and suddenly I’m burdened down like I was back in my dieting days.  There’s only a few things that the Lord would like me to focus on in this journey.  Those are my bare necessities.

Christ has come to give us life, and life in abundance.  The enemy has come to steal, kill and destroy–his focus is death.  (John 10:10)  Christ wants us to live simply.  The enemy wants to complicate things, burden us down, and confuse us.  Christ wants us to walk by faith.  The enemy wants us to walk by sight.

Walking by faith is not always easy.  When I follow the Holy Spirit’s leading with my eating, I’m trusting in Him and putting my faith in Him.  I think what happened is that I was starting to doubt, so I wanted to help things a bit by gathering some control.  Well, I gathered “control” all right and licked up some dirt!  If anything, I was out of control.

Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all of your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.  Proverbs 3:5-6

I will choose to trust Him.  I am choosing to acknowledge Him before each meal and I’m inviting the Holy Spirit to guide me in my eating.  And He certainly meets with me when I do so.

So today I’m letting go of those extra, non-essential things.  They aren’t necessary.  They complicate things.  They make me greedy and discontent.  I’m going back to the simplicity I found in the beginning–through Christ–not my own strength or works.  Christ’s burden is light , but I started carrying a heavy burden that I brought upon myself.  And apparently the horse I’m riding didn’t care for that extra weight.  And the last time I got bucked off, I left that extra weight on the ground.  Praise God!

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).

I really want to encourage you in your own Thin Within journey.  Maybe this has been part of the struggle for you.  Maybe you’ve been focused on too many things.  Is God calling you to simplicity–to get back to the basics of eating between hunger and satisfaction?  Your bare necessities could be a combination or just a couple of these things:

• Spending time in the Word
• Truth Journaling
• Creating and reading truth cards
• Adding to your God List
• Praise and worship
• Journaling
• Bible study
• Renewing your mind
• Inviting the Holy  Spirit into each eating experience
• Being accountable to your accountability partner

Maybe there’s something that is essential for you that I haven’t listed, but you KNOW that it’s something the Lord has asked you to do.  Those are all great things, but sometimes God only calls us to focus on a couple of things.

Something the Lord has been showing me is that He will provide my needs.  Christ says in Matthew 6:25, “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”  He doesn’t want us focused on food or what we are going to eat.  He’s going to take care of those basic needs, but our part is trusting Him and following His leading.

He’s also been showing me that if I am doing more than He is calling me to do, that I will start to lean on my own abilities and strengths–and I will become greedy.  Ouch!  If you are taking “too much thought” about what you will eat, how you will lose the weight, etc., then maybe it’s time to step back and re-assess your focus.  It could be time to simplify.  And really, this journey is about growing closer to the Lord and keeping food in it’s proper place, so it could be simply that He just wants you to read the pure Word of God.

But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19

 How about you?

Are you carrying burdens that you were never meant to carry?  Are you living by faith and not by sight in your Thin Within journey?  Are you trying to control things instead of just trusting in the Lord?  What are your bare necessities for this journey?  For me, it’s been reading my truth cards, reading the Word, truth journaling, renewing my mind, and going through a Bible study.  It may look different for you.  The Lord will show you.  And if you are carrying too heavy of a load, you will know.