Kim Johnson has won the final copy of the Thin Within book!
Congratulations, Kim. Thank you all for participating. (Does this mean you won’t comment any more? LOL! I hope not. I love getting feedback!)
I may be giving more books away half way through our study (end of July or beginning of August). Keep an eye out!
Welcome to our Study of Thin Within! We are using the Thin Within book by Arthur and Judy Halliday published in 2002 (or later is fine, too).
If you haven’t yet, please take some time to look over the first pages in the book, including the Table of Contents, Acknowledgments, and About the Authors sections. To see the optional assignment with questions for this section, please go here.
Before you begin your reading each day, I want to encourage you to pray that God will help you to be sensitive to His leading and what His Spirit may choose to say to you. Many find Thin Within difficult because they discover conviction where they enjoyed a lack of awareness before. 🙂 Please know that God never intends for us to be condemned. He intends for godly conviction to bring change and he provides His Holy Spirit for those who have confessed Christ to enable us to obey him.
To be in the best place to emotionally and spiritually receive what the Lord intends through this study, you will want to have plenty of time to be still, to have your bible handy, and your journal.
ASSIGNMENT: This week, please prayerfully (I sound like a broken record!) read and “do:”
These sections go through page 14, so please read all of the book through page 14. PLEASE mark in your book, write notes in the margins, answer the questions, look up the bible verses mentioned.
Try to pace yourself through the material so that you can really absorb it as you go.
As you read and write in your book :-), please also do the following:
You will add to this list for the next 12 weeks. Please don’t consider this optional. 🙂 This is fundamental and will play a LARGE part in making *this* time different for you! 🙂
Consider memorizing Zephaniah 3:17 or Isaiah 43:18, 19. Journal about what the verse you select means to you personally and how it relates to this journey at this point in time.
Questions for Pondering, Prayer and Consideration:
Introduction and Before You Begin
As you read the Introduction, take a moment to pause midway down
the pages (xiii). You will see the statement “You will experience an
invitation whispered to your soul from God–an invitation to enter
in, to draw nearer, to plunge deeper, to experience more fully the
joy and abundant living that He intends for you.” Do you hear the
invitation yet? Be sure to take a moment to still your heart long
enough so that if the invitation is whispered, you can hear it. You
may want to journal a response to this question or a prayer to God
welcoming Him to speak!
In the Introduction, there is a prayer on page xv. Can you
identify with this prayer at all? How so? If not, consider writing a
prayer that *does* reflect how you feel as you begin this journey.
In the Before you Begin section, as you complete the survey, what thoughts or insights do you have? Please take time to prayerfully be still in the presence of God and ask him to learn from the past, but to have the strength not to stay in the past. In Isaiah 43:18 he challenges you to forget what is in the past, but he *does* want you to learn from it so you can grow in Him.
Day 1
Are there ways that you rely on your performance to win the love of others or of God? (page 3) Explain.
What did you learn about yourself and how you eat and think from the “My Current Relationship with Food” exercise (pages 6, 7).
Which of the Keys to Conscious Eating are you most likely to resist or struggle with? Why? What can you do to plan for success? (pages 8-11)
Please feel free to use the comments section to respond if you like, or start your own blog. If you would like us to visit your blog, be sure to give us the link!
Lord, please be with these precious ones as they launch into this new study. Lord, some of us have read this book multiple times. But you are a God who is eager to perform a new thing. Please remove our “Been there done that” attitudes if we have them. Help us to believe Great things of our Great God and know that you have promised to perfect that which you have begun (Philippians 1:6). Thank you, Lord.
Devotional ~ Thin Within Study Week 01
In what do you find strength?
Upon what is your heart set? For what do you long?
While the world promises us that joy and fulfillment are found in the perfect body, God’s Word promises us that we are blessed when we look to Him for our strength–when we set our hearts on moving forward in Him.
If we are honest, many of us may have been obsessed – pursuing thinness – that is the pilgrimage we have invested the most time, thought, prayer, and, perhaps, money in. I confess that I have struggled with this, too, even after “all this time!” It doesn’t help that air-brushed images of bodies-too-perfect-to-be-real issue accusations everywhere we turn. Even as some Christians equate “fellowship” with all-you-can-eat meals in the fellowship hall, other godly, bible-knowing friends or family consider our size reflective of our spiritual (im)maturity. How can we win? It seems defeating, doesn’t it?
We win when we look to the Lord and HIS strength!
The “Valley of Baca” mentioned in Psalm 84 above can also be translated “Valley of Tears” or “Valley of Weeping.” I love that this passage promises that God himself will change my tears into a place of verdant fertility. My very tears will be as springs, mixing with autumn rains to create life-giving pools. Yes, this is a place where even my heartache and weakness will be turned to strength, echoing Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 12:9: that “My [God’s] grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
And also Isaiah 43:18, 19:
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.
God takes the streams that have been our tears, the very heartache that we have experienced and the source of all of the pain – whether it is recent like feeling shame about eating too much an hour ago or the pain of our childhood if we were obese and made fun of and left out – ALL of it. He takes it all and transforms it, redeems it all … and these streams of tears water the dry ground of our hearts—a NEW THING! Oh, I praise Him!
Consider this as we launch our study of the Thin Within book (as my friend, Julie, has reminded me):
And, as someone else has said:
Have you gotten to the place where staying the same hurts more than change? Are you ready to choose change? Even if when it is painful?
I won’t lie to you or sugar-coat things: The road ahead will not be easy. It is simple in many ways, but NOT easy. In fact, if it seems easy, be careful…it could be the *lasting* work hasn’t really begun.
Ask the Lord to show you: What is your heart set on now?
I want to challenge each of us to let go of the “THINNESS” goal. Even “Good Health” as a goal seems righteous and noble, but many of us choose to call the same old idol of thinness by this other name – “good health” — so we can feel justified with what really boils down to the same pursuit. Jesus told us in Matthew 6 to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, then things like food, clothes, and the like will fall into place.
What if you, what if I, this time, were to pursue a stout heart, filled to overflowing with all that God can offer us? What if we were to feast on the Lord and his bounty? What if we acted like He is the most profound, most complete, most satisfying, most wonderful goal we could pursue?
What if, instead of beginning this pilgrimage as a walk of woe-is-me deprivation, we were, instead, to think of it totally differently…as an opportunity to indulge freely, fully, completely in the bounty supplied by our gracious heavenly Father?
Sure, we may want to lose weight, but most of us know how to do that and some of us have lost hundreds of pounds over the years.
But our hearts weren’t completely healed.
What we want to do *this* time is get to the heart of the matter. We want to satisfy the longing, urge, emptiness, or need that has kept us turning to food even while our hearts have ached at the challenges we face by doing so. Some of us even have health issues related to our body size. Yet we can’t figure out why we don’t just *stop* eating so much.
We are on a pilgrimage. Not a pilgrimage to be thin, but a pilgrimage to be His—more given away to God, more dedicated to His purposes, more able to experience all He has in mind for us. That is the true pilgrimage we are on. As we pursue Him, other goals will be realized in His way and in His time—or changed completely, if need be. Given the depths of our struggle with food and our body images, we need the Lord God to be our strength. Sisters, we are blessed when we are at the end of ourselves and God alone is our strength! This journey we are on will show us that in vivid detail.
Lord, please help each one of us to know you in a new, deeper, more complete way. I pray that we might find you totally satisfying and not ever be tempted to turn to anything else. Lord, may this be a pilgrimage, a quest, to know you more, rather than to become thin. No matter what others around us say, no matter, even, what the Thin Within book may say, I pray that we would wrap our hearts and minds around you as our only goal, our very great reward. Please do a totally new thing in us. I trust, Lord, that as we feast on you, as we allow our hearts to become “stouter,” you will do your work in your time on our physical bodies. May we trust you and the timing you choose. Help us not to miss what you want most. Lord, we may want to be thin, but you want us to be yours. May we be given away more completely to you today. In the precious Name of Jesus, Amen.
How have you pursued thinness previously? Are you ready to forget the former things, such as dieting or weight-loss successes and “failures?” God is doing a new thing right now. What can you do today to pursue a “stout heart?”
In preparation for our Thin Within book study, I just wanted to share with you all what my plan will be. It may adjust in the weeks ahead. 🙂
I will share two posts with you this Monday. The first will be a devotional/commentary sort of post. It will be related to the Thin Within book, but those who don’t have the book or who aren’t doing the study, I hope will be encouraged by it, too. If you *are* doing the study, please be sure to read it as it will give insight into my philosophy and where we are going. Sometimes these will also have a thought that I gleaned from my study. When I have done the live groups before, I found the Lord leading me with an over-arching theme for the week that seemed to tie the chapters we read together.
The second post will be the assignment. I will clearly mark these. If you aren’t going through the study, this is the post that will not be as likely to offer you something to sink your teeth into.
I will post late Sunday night since some of you are on Eastern time and I am here in California. I don’t want to hinder you from getting going on what is next each Monday. 🙂
Hope this makes sense!
Some internet “appointments” are every bit as divinely inspired as “real life” ones. So, when I ended up at http://got2havefaith.wordpress.com a few days ago, I knew God had directed me there. I instantly thought of all of you and knew I had to ask blogger, Jeri Stunkard, about sharing her post with you all.
Jeri describes herself this way:
I am a mother to 2 beautiful daughters (ages 8 and 3) and wife for almost 14 years. I am an Ozark country girl living in the big city of Denver, Colorado…a hillbilly in the city. When I am not playing taxi driver, entertainment coordinator or top chef to my family I am working full-time as a graphic designer. I love to read (mostly biographies), travel, and document my families adventures through digiscrapbooking. I document my life, which is an ever changing journey in faith, love and the spirit that guides me.
I pray that this post from Jeri blesses you as much as it does me! Be sure to visit her blog.
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Who Are You Going to Listen To? © Jeri Stunkard
According to Him…I am beautiful, unique & perfect whether I wear as size 20 or size 2, I was created by a master artist (the same artist who created everything in this world), happiness isn’t found in a can of Slimfast or a bottle of Xenadrin; it’s found in His grace.
According to them…My face has wrinkles, my hips are too wide & I have stretch marks, I should nip it, tuck it, plump it, lift it, lipo it, and/or fill it to obtain your idea of beauty.
According to Him…He is more concerned about the beauty in my heart & spirit rather than my body, He took special care to create me…so handle His creation with care, He wants me to be unique, original, myself and to be real.
According to them…My body is a sexual object, it can be used to sell anything from clothes, to cars, to coffee, to shampoo, my breasts are for your sexual enjoyment and fantasies therefore, you don’t want to see me feeding may baby in public with them, even if that is what they were created for!
Today little girls as young as 7 are on diets… Today young girls are “sexing it up” to sell their pop albums… Today young women never feel good enough in their own skin because they are trying to live up to the perfect airbrushed images on the cover of a magazine…
Today I want my daughters to know that they are perfect just the way they are…they are who they were meant to be.
Trying to be something we are not is telling Him that He didn’t do a good job creating us to begin with. In the end His opinion is the only one that matters. Girls, you are beautiful & bright & strong, no matter what “they” say. Because He says so. In the end I would rather my girls listen to Him rather than them. I wish I had been listening a long time ago.
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What can you to today to affirm that you believe God, that you have been formed by His loving hands? How can you cooperate with his desire to renew your mind and your thinking so that you no longer believe what the voices of magazines and advertisers tell you, but embrace, instead, what your loving Heavenly Father says is true?
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Don’t forget! We have one more book giveaway. Win a copy of the Thin Within book. Post a comment here and your name will be entered in the random drawing. Winner will be chosen Sunday night, June 13th.
Be sure to join us for our Thin Within book study beginning June 14th!
Hi, Everyone.
DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!!
The excitement is building across the internet (aren’t I dramatic? :-)) as the Thin Within study commences Monday, June 14th, at a variety of venues! I am thrilled to see so many people participating and raring to go.
If you want to get a jump start, please feel free to read the following before Monday (You may want to be sure you have a journal at the ready…and your Bible, too!):
This study is going on at a number of venues across the internet. The Lord reaches out to each of us where we are! He sees us in our need and bridges any gap. So whether you are a Facebooker or a TW forum participant or a SparkPeople person…whatever it might be, God is wooing YOU! 🙂
Right now, these are the “places” on the web where the study may be experienced at some level–if you have friends who tend to prefer any of these venues over another, please let them know! They can join us at any of these options! What the study becomes at each venue will be up to the Lord and how he uses those who “show up” at each!
Once each week, I will post assignments, supplementary content, questions for discussion and the like. I will do this at each venue, basically copying and pasting so that each venue gets the same material. The responses will be varied because the participants will be varied. If one venue doesn’t seem rich enough or deep enough for you, try another!
These are the locations:
My blog (right here). While it is a bit difficult to discuss the material at the blog like we can on a forum or in a Yahoo or Facebook group, we can nevertheless try to do so in the comments. Feel free to subscribe to the blog to have updates e-mailed to you as well as be sure to subscribe to the comments so you get follow up comments to anything *you* post! The drawback to subscribing in the RSS feed, of course, is that if I post additional content not specifically related to the study of the book, you will get that content as well. Another drawback, perhaps, to the blog is that there isn’t much privacy. Anyone can see comments made during our discussion.
Truly TW Yahoo Group provides opportunities for people to have discussion comments go directly to their email if they like. When discussions are lively, however, this can mean a larger volume of email. If you choose this venue, you can set your email “message rules” for the discussion emails to land in a folder of their own to help keep things sorted for you. Or, you can just visit the Yahoo site to see the messages posted and never receive an email. The limitations of using our TrulyTW Yahoo group require that videos that I might use will be dependent on an external link. I think that is the primary drawback. The Yahoo group does offer an opportunity to make something more private as only those who sign up for the group will see the posts and you can send a comment to a person’s private email if that is necessary. Be sure to register for the group ahead of time. 🙂
Thin Within Facebook Page – This is a great option for those who like Facebook. It includes the option to embed videos, share photos, discussion, etc. I find it best for short conversations, though, not for interactions at length. It is a “semi-private” option. Less private than the Yahoo Group, but not as public as the blog. Be sure to get an account ahead of time.
Official Thin Within Forum – This is a great opportunity to interact with people in a larger community. When you visit the forums to participate in the book study, you may also see many many other discussions you can benefit from–all about Thin Within, the programs, books, and process! You have to register with the forum administrator (I am one!) and comments in the book discussion are viewable by *anyone*…not just forum members. So it is as “non-private” as any of the options. A big benefit to this location is this venue offers the most comprehensive resources for this journey! 🙂
Spark People Thin Within Spark Team – Those of us who have a history of misusing graphs and charts–of being obsessed–may feel best when we guard ourselves from a site like SparkPeople. It is a diet-fanatic’s dream with graphs, charts galore… I have established a Spark Team for Thin Within so that if anyone wants to break free from the dieting treadmill, there is an option there. I will post my comments and discussion questions at this site. This is the most limited, I think, of all the venues. Any videos or supplementary content will have to be clicked on and taken to an external site. You have to be a member of SparkPeople to become a part of the team.
I would like to encourage anyone who really believes that God is doing a new thing (and we KNOW he is!) to set up a blog and start blogging! Once you do that, please share the link with us here! I would love to see what God is up to in your life! Each day you blog, just post in the comments section if you like giving us the link! That would be awesome!
To summarize, I will post once each week (and possibly some other content during the week) at all of these venues. However, if there is a video to embed that will happen here and at the Facebook page. Links will be provided at the other locations. Go with caution to the sites. It is always tricky to visit YouTube directly. I much prefer embedding the links to avoid stumbling upon inappropriate content often found at YouTube.
Comments are welcome at any of the venues, of course! I hope this isn’t too confusing. Just pick your favorite venue and dive in on Monday June 14th. Show up whenever you can. Post questions, comments, responses.
Additionally, I will offer at least 6 opportunities for anyone who is able to gather at the Thin Within website chat area for a one hour chat to ask questions, get and offer support. I will post days, times, and details about how to do that in the days ahead,
Anyhow, looking forward to seeing everyone on Monday as we launch our study!
This little girl is wise beyond her years. What she shares in this video is really at the root of so much. I hope you enjoy!
How would having faith like Bailee change you, your eating, your living, your view of yourself, your view of God? What can you do today to allow God to renew your mind and transform your thinking?
Are there practical tools that you use to help you be focused, to really put into action your intentions to change your eating, thinking, and living?
The Thin Within “Observations and Corrections” chart is one of the tools that many Thin Within participants use.
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 will take longer to go through the Thin Within book than the 30 days intended, it might be helpful to have copies of this page to record the Keys to Conscious Eating that you apply. (This chart is in the book at the end of each chapter, too.)
Something that is important before we get rolling though…I want to be sure to say now and I will say it again and again…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 want to get a jump start or have them ready, here they are! 🙂
I recommend praying about what God would have you to do.
As we prepare for this study together, what are you willing to do to make new discoveries and to make changes in your thinking and in your living? How far are you willing to go? What typically holds you back? How can you be sure that nothing holds you back this time from learning all that the Lord has for you in the weeks ahead? 🙂
“I don’t know how you do all you do!”
Compliments like these cause me to evaluate if I unwittingly parade “all I do” around specifically so I can get accolades from others. I hope not!
The truth is, I don’t do *any* of the many things I do well. (Even now, a part of me wants to list them all for you, so you can know what I mean. The other part of me–the suspicious part of me–thinks this would merely be a perverse attempt to win yet more accolades and encouragement…so I will restrain myself!)
What if my busyness (something that is celebrated and respected in our culture) is just another way to keep from being in the present moment?
What if God wants me to be still and know that he is God?
Be still and know that I am not?
What if he wants me to be still to tell me the truth about a few things?
Gosh, even the thought makes me squeamish. For some reason, I don’t want to hear that he wants me to…well…to change. To sacrifice. To be.
Instead, I have become comfortable in…
…in what? In whatever place this is?
God will speak to this people, 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.
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.
~ Isaiah 28: 11b-13
” Those that will not hear the comfortable voice of God’s word shall be made to hear the dreadful voice of his rod.” *
I am caught in a conundrum. I run from the very rest to which he calls, and in my running, I churn inside, yet I continue to run from the rest to which he calls…it is a cycle. My busyness is just a ruse to avoid the
He wants to quiet me with his love. Zephaniah 3:17 breathes encouragement to me. This agitated state I am in sends off red flares. I am about ready to jump out of my skin.
Even in my “quiet” times, I am far from quiet. I run around from one bible verse to another, marking this passage and that, studying, acquiring knowledge. “Do and do. Do and do. Rule on rule. Rule on rule. Here a little, there a little.”
And, yet, I “massage” my conscience: “Wow! Look at all I have learned in Leviticus. Who would have thought that Leviticus would so richly enhance my understanding of the gospel!”
It sounds really good, ya know? Doesn’t that make me sound super-spiritual to you? :-/
Hold everything.
Stop.
What am I running from? I have some ideas. I keep pointing to all the things that I do that prove I am a “good” girl…and, again, God says:
“I don’t want you to be ‘good,” I want you to be mine.”
This is about so much more than weight and food. God just uses food and weight to grab my attention. He uses my struggle as my thorn in my flesh to keep me clinging to him.
Perhaps if I would cease using busyness as a “drug of choice” and got still with Him…really still, there might be some healing. Some deep cleansing to the depths of my being.
How about you? Is busyness a way of avoiding a true encounter with the Living God? What are you running from? What can you do to stop and rest in his arms?
Oh, Lord, I confess my tendency to get caught up in “here a little, there a little, do and do, rule and rule…” It is so exhausting. I confess that I am running from you. Lord, I don’t even know why, really. You have said “Let the weary rest.” Oh! How I long for that rest, Lord. I pray that you will help me respond to your voice, to forsake the worldly rewards of busyness–and the accompanying agitation–and really rest in your presence. Lord, I want to hear what you have to say to me…Word of God speak…I choose to listen. Make it so, Lord. In the precious Name of Jesus, Amen.
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Ann Kroeker is our winner! Ann, please send me your snail mail address and I will send you the book, priority mail! Send your address to heidi [at] heidi bylsma [dot] com.
Thanks.
One more chance to win! Comment this week to be entered in the final drawing!
Thanks everyone for the great dialog. I am enjoying getting to know you all better.
Join us at the Thin Within Academy where you can sign up for our online courses as they become available.
