Recently I gained an important piece of understanding as to why I over eat at times. In our ThinWithin studies, we read about idols and sacrifices. I looked up some of the words in the verses and boy did I get an eye opener.
2 Chronicles 14 talks about the altar that was in the portico of the temple. The portico was a covered entryway outside the temple in front of the steps. Before one could go inside the temple, one would have to pass through the portico (where we get the word porch) and give a sacrifice upon the altar. It would either be to The Lord or to an idol. Those were, and still are, the only two choices.
The altar was always conspicuous and prominent, for all to see. It was a central place of celebration where others were privy to see one’s sacrifice. In fact, some even boasted for all to see the great sacrifice they made. Perhaps their idol was pride.
The portico is not the temple. It’s not where the Lord resides. It’s the gateway to the Lord, who is in the temple. He chose to save us and reside in our bodies and make his dwelling place within us. He knew how magnificent it would be. He chose to live in a manner that we might have intimate communion with Him at all times.
The altar is the place of sacrifice and celebration that stands erect to guard the entrance of our lives. The scriptures continue by instructing us to repair this altar. It is in disarray. How do we repair it? We start by mourning for our sin. We have worshipped idols in place of the true God. We turn from that practice and honestly admit our wrongs, asking for Gods help. This isn’t a one time event, but rather a daily occurance.
We begin to determine what it is that we have sacrificed so we can over eat? Was it our health, energy, body image, confidence, peace, joy, fellowship, intimacy, growth, trust or …
Here are my idols, Lord; comfort and fear, ease and shame, condemnation fear of rejection. All these I have bowed to and sacrificed to. Forgive me and cleanse me. I want to bow only to You and bring a worthy sacrifice to You, which is my own body.
It reads on to say that the next step is to tear down the idols, with courage. How does that work? How do we tear down comfort? We stop trusting in our own ways to find comfort. We stop looking to those ways to help us. We refuse to go back to our old ways and we turn to God. We bow only to Him from now on. When we falter, we begin again, returning to the altar to presesnt our body as a living sacrifice to God.
When we desire to go into our inner life, that secret place where God dwells with us, first we go into the portico and we make a sacrifice of our own ways, our own strength, our fears, shame and condemnation. We lay all of self on the altar. We celebrate and rejoice for all his mighty deeds and transformation. THEN we enter into the depths of our life in Christ. THEN we receive all God has for us. THEN He communes with us. Because all the idol worship and barriers have been torn down. Worship in spirit and truth has been rebuilt in its place. THEN we overcome. THEN we are changed by grace.
Each of us must go through our own portico to build an altar. It’s the way God made for us.
Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name.”
Perhaps you don’t have the same idols I once did. Perhaps you bring your sacrifice of food to some inner pain, or unfilled dreams, depression, impatience, pride, rejection, hopelessness.. . I suppose the list is endless. Sacrificing food to our idols keeps us in bondage because we aren’t able to reach the Lord. He’s waiting for us just inside the Temple.
We are all learning so much from ThinWithin about communing with God and being transformed. He is available to each of us. But it is imperative that we tear down the idols and enter the secret place in the temple to begin our rebuilding journey with God. He has a perfect plan.
How about you?
Can you identify with any of the idols Cathy mentioned? If yes, did that surprise you? Are you ready and willing to present your body as a sacrifice to God? Have you been able to get beyond the front porch of your own life? Do you have a sincere desire to experience real victory from your disordered eating?
Cathy lives in Lakemoor, IL, a suburb of Chicago, IL. She and her husband, Joe are empty nesters, not counting the three cats they adopted. They have a total of six children and nine grandchildren. She enjoys prayer walks and great fellowship. Reading and writing are still her favorite subjects.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
If you’ve been following the blog in the past 10 months (or even longer) or you are participating in the 2014 Thin Within Workbook Class, you have probably read or heard a lot about the importance of renewing our mind when it comes to changing the way we have been eating. And this week the workbook study is talking about God’s grace. Recently, the Lord has shown me something spectacular that I wanted to share.
I understood the importance of renewing my mind, which for me has meant taking time each day (at least once a day, if not twice), to read my truth cards. I’ve also been very slowly going through Barb Raveling’s book, Taste For Truth, which is all about renewing our minds when it comes to our weight loss journey. I understood why I needed to renew my mind in a proactive way (before the temptation to overeat), but what I was having a hard time understanding was how to renew my mind after I’ve overeaten.
And then one night last week I had one of those moments of eating way more than my body needed. I stopped immediately after the incident and sat down with my journal, truth cards, and my iPhone that has Barb Raveling’s app ‘I Deserve a Donut’ and also the new Thin Within app. The first thing I did was I wrote to the Lord in my journal, telling Him about what happened, asking Him to forgive me, and asking Him for help. I also wrote down how my body felt after eating too much. I also noted that I hadn’t spent time earlier that day renewing my mind. Then I wrote down the reason I don’t like overeating. I opened the section on Barb’s app about regret, which I hadn’t noticed before. It fit perfectly to how I was feeling and what I was thinking. I answered the questions in my head and read through the scriptures. And then I went to the Thin Within app and wrote down some of the scriptures in my journal that were under ‘failure’. Those scriptures were:
The Lord is good and does what is right; he shows the proper path to those who go astray. Psalm 25:8
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:26
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. Isaiah 43:18-19
After I spent time renewing my mind after I felt like I had failed, I no longer felt like a failure, and I no longer carried this regret or condemnation. I felt renewed in my mind and like I was back right where I needed to be. Praise the Lord! It was such an encouragement to see how God worked in all of that, and all I had to do was take the time to sit in His presence. I’m so thankful for His mercy and grace!
I believe it was a day or two after that incident that I read something really refreshing from Barb’s Taste for Truth book. She said, “You are not set free by following your boundaries perfectly. You’re set free by the renewing of your mind. Failure is an opportunity to renew your mind once again.” That REALLY spoke to me! I even wrote it in my truth cards. And in my own words I wrote this:
I am set free because of what God does when I renew my mind.
I am set free because I renew my mind.
I follow my boundaries because I renew my mind.
This has given me a whole new outlook on failure. I don’t have to look at failure as an “oh well, I failed, I guess I might as well eat” or beat myself over the head with the club of condemnation. I can now look at failure as yet another reason I can renew my mind! I will overcome by going to God each time I fail. I come to Him, He helps me, I am set free, and then I can move forward.
I had a moment today and after I sat down and renewed my mind. The Lord met me and again, I was able to move forward with no regrets and with His amazing peace. I feel like I’ve found this key to overcoming and I’m just so excited! I will renew my mind about this as long as it needs to take, even if I have to fill journal upon journal. I am not going to give up! I know there is power in the Word of God! I will stand upon the Rock of Christ Jesus! He is helping me and through Him I am victorious! Amen!
How about you?
What do you think would happen if you spent time renewing your mind after you feel like you’ve failed? I truly believe that each time we go to God and renew our mind after we’ve eaten outside of our boundaries that we are going to one day find that we are no longer going to give in to the temptation to overeat. It won’t even be an issue anymore. I look at taking the time to renew my mind as part of the victory! The Lord wants us to come to Him after we’ve had a “moment”; He wants to meet with us and fill us with His truth and love!
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9
Eating is the main issue in my life that I have to be very heavily reliant on God with because of the struggle I have had with food. I have to rely on God for strength to overcome these issues. The key is surrender and to keep renewing my mind.
I have to be honest and say that when I “want” to and when I “choose” to be out of control with my eating, I back off from my relationship with God. YIKES! That is scary. That causes serious issues with complacency in my walk with God.
Food is the issue that I need His help the most with, but when I am not willing to change, I try to keep it hidden from God which is completely crazy! My track record shows that to be the case though. It reminds me of Adam and Eve covering their nakedness from God when they had eaten the forbidden fruit.
Genesis 3: 10 (NIV) He answered,
“I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
YEP that’s me to a tee…hiding from God when I choose to be out of boundaries with my food. (Out of boundaries for me is out of control, eating what I want when I want it and you can’t tell me NO or I might just throw a grown up temper tantrum! And of course binge eating…yuck..sad but true).
Have you seen this paragraph from Thin Within Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook Series, page B-4?
“Our God is unchanging. He has always dealt with His people with mercy and grace. Even in the garden when Adam and Eve were given only one directive, which they broke, God Himself provided the first ‘sacrifice’ by slaying the animals for the skins which their clothing would be made.”
So basically this tells me that I need to STOP! Go to God! He is not mean!!! (Note: Making a God List will really help you see God the way He should be seen.)
I am ready for a LIFELONG CHANGE!
This is what I want:
INTIMACY WITH GOD & Peace with Food and my body (His temple), and to be at my natural God-given intended size;
To see God for who He is (absolutely awesome!) and to see myself how He sees me.
When I stay in 0 to 5, hunger to satisfaction, eating and spend/invest time in prayer and renewing my mind with the Word and various, reputable resources (i.e. Soundcloud, here at the blog, Thin Within materials, Barb Raveling’s “I Deserve a Donut” and “Taste for Truth”), I feel like a person who has been set free from prison or captivity.
I knew how to do this 0 to 5 thing. I knew exactly how to do it and had fantastic intentions for this past year, BUT I just couldn’t bring myself to follow through, to renew my mind or to stay between hunger and satisfaction. I even knew, based on my past experiences, that I had the key to remove the shackles, but I just could not/would not do it! Why? It reminds me of Romans 7:15 that states:
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
I really wanted change, but not badly enough to put any REAL, LASTING effort into it. I wasn’t ready to lay my lover of food down. Boy does that sound bad! It reminds me of Hosea.
When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him,
“Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her,
for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.”
Hosea 1:2
I was promiscuous with my idol of food and I didn’t really want to let it go even though I knew that I would feel better, look better, and ultimately have the peace and joy that comes from eating that way and drawing close to God. But look at this. God is my Redeemer!
The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” So I bought her for fifteen shekels[a] of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.” Hosea 3:1-3
Thank God for being my Redeemer. I didn’t feel worth redeeming, but do you think Hosea’s wife was “worthy” of being redeemed or that she felt worthy? Maybe it is hard for us to understand, but God sees us so differently than we see ourselves.
Hosea 14: 4 says “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.”
In the Thin Within Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook Series, page B-5, it says:
“As we cease from running and respond to God’s outstretched arms, we experience the joy of His presence as we choose to say yes to His will for us. He brings the captive out of captivity and restores us to a “land” of hope and promise. We are transformed from within by the renewing of our mind according to the Word of God.”
DO YOU WANT THE MAJOR KEY TO LASTING CHANGE?
Here it is.
RENEW YOUR MIND!
It is so vital to renew your mind. Not only should 0 to 5 eating be our weight release/maintenance tool, but renewing of the mind should be our maintenance tool too.
Hosea 13:6 says “When I fed them, they were satisfied;
when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”
God is satisfying me with 0 to 5, but I don’t want to get prideful or cocky about that. I have before! I stopped renewing my mind before and the end result was not a good one. BUT THERE IS HOPE! God is doing a new thing. I have laid the shackles down. I feel so free! I have over 100 lbs to get rid of, but I am not focused on that. I long for intimacy with God and to be restored to a healthy relationship with food and my body.
SURRENDER – that was my 1st step. Will you surrender today? Trust me…it’s worth it!
What About You?
Do you ever struggle with being willing to change? Are you ready to make a lifelong commitment to not only 0 to 5 eating, but also to renewing your mind? If not, what is stopping you? Have you surrendered to God instead of using your own strength? Let’s start today walking out a life of surrender to God, committing to eating 0 to 5, and renewing your mind. We can do this!
Adriane lives in NC with her husband, Shawn, and 3 kids, Marissa (10), Allie (8) and Judah (2). Adriane is involved in children’s ministry and also loves to co-lead worship with her husband.
Last week’s study of our Identity in Christ provided so much great material for our deck of truth cards. I hope you added some new cards to your deck and are reveling in the wonder of who GOD says you are! If you haven’t yet seen it, this Who I Am in Christ document is filled with wonderfully rich truth gleaned from the Scriptures!
The recording of our webinar where we wrapped up Lesson 3, Identity in Christ, can be found here. I will share the discussion questions for the webinar as soon as they are available. You will probably want Tina’s Power Point Slides in pdf format to have in front of you while you listen. 🙂
Now, we CELEBRATE that wonderful NEW thing that God is clearly doing! His grace is an ocean and we are ALL sinking! We are covered, saturated, and floating in an ocean of grace. So far removed from our sin, condemnation is something so foreign to our God’s way of relating to us, “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense” is free though it cost Jesus everything.
Here is this week’s video:
Video Questions:
1. How is Thin Within different from dieting relative to this subject of “Grace?”
2. God’s intent is that I would _p___________ the __g_________ to myself every day. What are ways you can do that?
3. How can you identity with 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10?
4. Some people are delivered and never experience a struggle with food and eating again. (I don’t know that I have ever met someone like this, but I am sure they exist.) What is the more likely type of healing that most of us will experience?
5. God’s grace is a pardon, provision, a constant _p_________, and the p____________ to say no to sin. (03:25)
6. Where does the sense of failure come from that I bring into Thin Within? (03:35)
7. God takes __f__________ and __r______________s it. (04:29)
8. What does grace give us? (04:55)
9. How is Observation and Correction a tool of grace?
10. (06:32-07:19) What are some strategies mentioned that you can employ when you struggle with obeying the Lord?
11. (07:50) What are two tools that I challenge you to dive into this week? How can you try to carve time out for this?
Renewing the Mind – Pressing On
Select one new way of renewing your mind this week. Will it be to journal through some of the questions in I Deserve a Donut? I have been at this imperfectly since 1999 and I still feel like I need to renew my mind at least once each day. Barb’s book is one of my favorite ways of doing this!
At our class’ private Facebook group page, some of the members have been posting pictures of their truth cards. They are absolutely wonderful! You could use some of the ideas there (or come up with your own) and add to your spiral bound deck of index cards. What do you do with the cards? Read through at least 5 of them each day…out loud.We can act differently, but we won’t sustain the behavior changes until we learn to think differently! Renewing our minds (Romans 12:2) is a great way of doing that.
If you need more ideas for renewing your mind, click on this search here at the Thin Within blog.
Trade Book Assignment – To Be Completed by February 3rd.
Here is Study Guide Week 4. I hope you are encouraged as you make your way through the material.
Workbook Assignment – To Be Completed by February 3rd.
1. Read, highlight, mark Lesson 4, Celebration of God’s Grace, Part One, on pages B48-B53 or listen to the audio file of Lesson 4 at Sound Cloud. Discuss it here in the comments section below this post or at our Class Facebook Group.
2. Complete the exercises for Lesson 4 on pages B54-B60. Next Monday before the webinar, respond to the Review questions on page B-61.
3. Continue to add to your “God List.” Can you add 10 things this week? What is your favorite attribute of God that you have added to your list so far?
4. Have a Praise Fest this week when you are tempted to break your boundaries. Share with us how doing so affected you.
5. Use the entries for Day 16 through Day 28 in the Temple Toolkit. Continue to ask the Lord if you should use the Thin Within Food Log, remaining sensitive to HIS leading about this. You can also consider a modified use of it by just recording your hunger numbers. Again, this is optional.
6. Memorize Jeremiah 29:11 this week. Personalize it and add it to your truth cards. “God has plans for me. God plans to prosper me and not to harm me. He plans to give me a hope and a good future.”
7. If you haven’t already, you probably soon will experience a shift in how emotionally sensitive you are. If so, know that this is perfectly normal. We aren’t numbing ourselves with food any more. Emotions we didn’t even know we felt will surface. Ask the Lord to help you process them in a manner that honors him and demonstrates respect for your body, His temple!
How About You?
How is the journey going? What questions do you have? Is there any way that you can offer just a bit more of your heart to the Lord in this?
Many people have shared in our class Facebook group that they are seeing evidence that God is doing a new thing. One way is through the Body Awareness (Mirror Mirror) Activity that we did last week on Day Three. Class participants shared that they had breakthroughs in how they feel about their bodies. If you haven’t yet done this activity, please don’t put it off. It IS hard, yes, but prayerfully invite God to help you through it. In fact, Lesson 2’s webinar, includes my walking us through it. I hope you find it helpful! The Hallidays have included it in nearly every book and workbook that Thin Within has created, so it is clear that they feel, after helping people since 1975…this is important!
This week we turn our attention to a very vital area for renewing our minds with truth. I hope you have your spiral deck of index cards and pen ready. (Some of our class members are using colored pens and artwork to create compelling — and fun! — cards.) We are going to look at our Identity in Christ. So often we get our sense of value, purpose, and identity from our performance at the various roles we have in life. We will see what God’s thoughts are on this subject this week. When we begin to think God’s thoughts after him about who we are most fundamentally, all kinds of things are possible!
Video Questions:
1. What will happen as we begin to think God’s thoughts after him (renew our minds with truth) about our identity?
2. From 02:29 to 03:28 I share a list of who you are in Christ. Which of these are most meaningful to you personally? Why? Do you believe that this is who you are? Why or why not? Make a truth card that tells you that you *are* that! This week, read your cards out loud. Here is the Who I Am in Christ list that I read from on the video.
3. Failure is something that you ______. It is not something that you ______.
4. Failure does not need to be an __________________. Failure can be the best _____________ that we’ve got going.
5. How can the tool of Observation and Correction help you turn failure into victory?
6. I speak about “falling off the horse” and “getting back on again.” What does that look like, practically speaking, on this Thin Within journey?
7. What makes you “worthy” of Heaven? How does this apply to our Thin Within journeys?
8. If you believed you were more than a conqueror, how might that affect how you live and the choices you would make?
9. What are you telling yourself about who you are? Are you telling yourself the truth?
10. Of the lies I mention at the end, which can you identify with the most?
Renewing the Mind – Pressing On
NOTE: Don’t be overwhelmed by the material in this part of the “assignment” each week. This section is here to give you ideas for renewing your mind. Maybe just pick ONE thing and try it out each week. Thinking differently about food, our bodies, our God, life is vital if we want changes that will last!
What are strategies you are currently using to renew your mind so that you believe the things we are studying? We don’t typically lack knowledge. We lack BELIEF! So speaking the truths from our lessons into our souls again and again will serve us well if we want to see our beliefs change. Remember, this progression?:
Beliefs –> Actions –> Patterns –> Fruit
If we don’t feel like there is fruit in our lives that concurs with our godly goals, then we want to back up. What patterns are in our lives? Back up a bit further to see what actions or choices are we making in the moment. Remembering that moment upon moment is what our lives (patterns) are based on, we see that choices are fueled by our beliefs. So, if we don’t like the fruit in our lives or are convicted that this isn’t honoring to God, we must go back to our beliefs and begin to work with our own minds, hearts, and souls to change what we believe. We can do this by telling ourselves the truth repeatedly. Here is a short list of ways to do that:
1. Music – Christian music does a great job of this. Secular music, not necessarily so much. “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” is not going to help you to live like “More than a Conqueror!” For ideas for a Renew Your Mind Play list visit this post or this set of posts.
2. Truth Cards – Make ’em, Read ’em, Recite ’em, Record ’em, LISTEN to ’em! Yes! You can use your computer (most laptops are equipped to make audio recordings) or your device to record yourself reading your truth cards. Then, you can listen to them with your earphones or your blue tooth. Even if you “aren’t in the mood” to read them, you can passively have them playing through your head throughout the day or while you vacuum, prepare a meal, go grocery shopping. It is a great way of having the truth saturate your thinking.
3. JOURNAL through a set of questions in Barb Raveling’s I Deserve a Donut and Other Lies that Make You Eat or the I Deserve a Donut app. I do believe journaling these questions at least once makes all the difference in getting the material into your heart. After journaling a set, you can pull truths from them in statements to add to your truth cards. Then, in the future, when you know you are struggling with worry, insecurity, or annoyance (for instance) you will be more able to benefit from using the questions by thinking through them. Journaling won’t always be necessary, but I do suggest it at first. (I journal a set of her questions at least once a day even though I have been doing this a long time!)
4. Set your timer to check in with God and recite a truth that is meaningful to you from memory. Visit this page to see what I mean.
Trade Book Assignment – To Be Completed by January 27th
Here is Study Guide Week 3 of the yet-unpublished Thin Within Book Study Guide. I would love to get your feedback if you are using this material. Is it worth publishing? 🙂
Workbook Assignment – To Be Completed by January 27th
2. Complete the exercises for Lesson 3 on pages B40-B44. Use your discretion about the optional exercises on pages B45-B46. Next Monday before the webinar, respond to the Review questions on page B47.
**Note** Did you know that I post a question each day at our Workbook Study Facebook Group? Come on over and discuss what you are discovering there. Feel free to post what God is doing in your life, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, too. Our class is releasing weight and strongholds!
3. Continue to add to your “God List.” Can you add 10 things this week? Or more? I would love to hear what you are adding!
4. Have one Praise Fest this week (or more!) and share about it with us here.
5. Use the entries for Day 15 through Day 21 in the Temple Toolkit. This week, the Thin Within Food Log is added to the choices of tools for you to use if you like. This is optional. Many of us do not have the freedom to use the Thin Within food log at this time. That is perfectly ok. Ask the Lord if he would have you use it or not. Do what He says. If you do choose to use it, remember that it isn’t a weigh and measure sort of log. It is just for added accountability for your hunger numbers primarily. It can also be very helpful to write down how you felt while eating. I write really small when I use this tool since I generally eat more than four times each day. Don’t be limited by the lines! If you want a larger place to write, download this copy of the Thin Within Food_Log. Again, please do not feel like you have to use this tool. Some of us are so fresh out of dieting that to do this might throw us back into our old dieting ways. That is NOT what we want! If you have the Thin Within app, you can use the Food Log tool included in it, if you like. You can send it to your accountability partner, straight from the app!
6. Evaluate how it is going with eating at 0. Are you eating at 0 more often than not? Have you found 5? Many find it helpful at first to use the boundaries of “Hungry? or Not Hungry?” instead of 0 to 5 and all the in-between numbers. Do what works for you. Are you experiencing freedom with your selection of food choices or are you still categorizing foods into categories from your dieting days? (“Junk food,” “healthy food,”, etc.) Ask the Lord to help you experience freedom from your dieting past, if so–Renew Your Mind! 🙂 If you need convincing, list to 7 Reasons To Ditch Dieting Forever.
7. Interact here in the comments or at the Facebook group.
How About You?
How did the second week of our journey go for you? What is God impressing upon your heart? What questions do you have at this point? How can we best serve and encourage you?
What are you anticipating as you go forward into this week? God IS DOING a new thing!
Last year, I joined a weekly Bible study at a local church. On the first day, I sat in the lecture hall and waited excitedly to receive my study book and instructions. I was (not pleasantly) surprised that the very first thing to happen was not an introduction of the leaders. Instead, the words to a song appeared on the screen in the front of the room and everyone stood to sing….without accompaniment. “Oh, this is not good”, I thought. See, I love music and I love to sing – in private! I have been self conscious of my singing voice since I was a child. And I really thought that I would not like this aspect of the Bible study – at all. In addition to my lack of confidence in singing, I also was not a huge fan of praise music. I enjoyed the music during Sunday worship, but I would choose almost any other kind of music or talk radio while driving.
Well, within a month, God had changed my heart so much about music that it is now one of my favorite things about my time in the Bible study. I started downloading the songs I liked and I began to listen to praise music in the car. The Bible study leader’s favorite song that year was “The Voice of Truth” by Casting Crowns. This song became my anthem as I participated in the Renewing of the Mind study with Heidi last March.
Per her recommendation, I created a Renewing of the Mind playlist on my phone/ipod that continues to grow. I have found that the melodies and words get stuck not only in my head, but in my heart as well. I listen to my list as I prepare meals, exercise, drive, and sometimes as I get ready for the day.
Is it strange to think of music as a way to renew our minds? Here’s how I see it. Much of Christian music is based on scripture. When I am listening to the words or singing along:
1) I am praying God’s Word to Him. We are told “so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)
2) My mind is hearing the Truth of God’s Word, learning about His character, and absorbing how He relates to His people.
3) The words of scripture, the Truth, are settling in my heart. I am marinating in and meditating on His Word. “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. “(Psalm 119:11)
4) I can use the Truths from music during a time of temptation. It is sometimes easier to call up the Truth in music than something I have memorized without music. Think about all of the things in school you learned set to a tune – the alphabet, continents song, my daughter learned about igneous rock set to the Addams family song! In temptation, I use many tools – Truth cards, the Bible, prayer, getting on my knees, TW scripture cards, and music.
“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. “(2 Cor 10:1)
5) It is a form of worship. Think of singing songs about and to God as a “God List” set to music. Again, it reminds us of God’s character and His relationship with us.
How About You?
I’d love to see us share the songs that we enjoy and the ones that help us in our journey with the Lord.
Your favorites may include gospel, hymnals, Southern gospel, current praise, or even secular music that speaks to you of God. I’ll start. ☺
Voice of Truth by Casting Crowns,
I Have a Song, Christ in Me, really anything by Shannon Wexelberg
Whom Shall I Fear, Our God, The Name of Jesus by Chris Tomlin
True Things, Your Hands, All I Need (many others) by JJ Heller (folksy)
In Christ Alone feat Kristian Stanfill
Born Again by Third Day
Amazing Grace/My Chains are Gone, You are Holy by Michael Smith
Cathy lives in Lakemoor, IL, a suburb of Chicago, IL. She and her husband, Joe are empty nesters, not counting the three cats they adopted. They have a total of six children and nine grandchildren. She enjoys prayer walks and great fellowship. Reading and writing are still her favorite subjects.
