Chatting Tomorrow!
Join us for the Thin Within chat tomorrow, Tuesday 7/13 4-5pm Pacific Time. Go here to find out how. See you tomorrow at 4pm Pacific!
Sitting in the Feeling
Be still and know that I am God.
~ Psalm 46:10
Emotions are powerful. In the moment in which I am accosted by powerful feelings, sometimes the last thing I can fathom is to “Be still and know” that He is God.
But this choice in the moment is the hub around which my healing turns.
I can do anything with an act of my will–so can you!
With an act of my will, I can be polite to someone who I am not very pleased with–like the clerk in the check-out line. In fact, I can choose to cheer a smile right on to her face!
With an act of my will, I can move over into the “slow” lane and let the nasty man who is riding my bumper through the canyon have his way, even though I would rather slow down and pump my brakes. 🙂
With an act of my will, I can hug my family member who has allowed his emotions to get the better of him and embrace him in his craziness, resulting in a defusing of a potentially explosive situation–as well as some cherished “cuddle time.”
There are so many things I can do with an act of my will. By the power of God’s Spirit in me, I can choose in this moment what I will do, think, and say. With these choices, often come new feelings.
When my emotions rage, I can choose, with an act of my will NOT to go into the kitchen, but, instead to sit in a special place designated as my “time out” chair, or draw a bath…and I can, instead of allowing my emotions to send me flying into the arms and deception of food eaten when I am not physically hungry, to prayerfully evaluate “What is really going on here?”
I have come to a place of seeing that God calls me to sit in the feeling, in fact. To actually look straight at it and to…well…this may sound bizarre…welcome it. You see, I have a history of decades of running from my emotions, of not bringing them to the Lord, of short-circuiting his intentions in allowing situations in which I will be emotionally needy. Now, I see that he wants me to experience his sufficiency in all these kinds of situations. He is the Holy Way Maker, but in order to know what he desires for me to know by allowing experiences that strap me emotionally, I have to be willing to feel what I feel and wait for him. He will come.
1 “Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
2 After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.
3 Let us acknowledge the LORD;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.”
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.”
~ Hosea 6:1-3
Today, when emotions begin to assail me, I will be still and know that he is God. I will choose to recognize the feelings that I have. I will ask the Lord to show me what these emotions are about and I will choose, with an act of my will, to wait on him. I will not go into the kitchen, the refrigerator, the pantry or turn into the drive-through. I will choose, instead, to wait, to acknowledge the Lord and I will remember, with confidence, that “as surely as the sun rises, he will appear.” He will bring refreshment like the rain to a thirsty earth. I will wait on the Lord. I will wait. I will know Him.
How about you? Are you facing an emotionally challenging situation? What practical plans can you make so that you wait on the Lord instead of giving in to emotional eating?
Week 05 – Assignment Thin Within Book
Wow. I found week 4 really incredibly helpful. God is doing a new thing in me right now. I bet he is in you, too! I do feel like our momentum was derailed just a bit by our technical difficulties, but we appear to be back in business! So let’s keep moving! I seriously had a HUGE break-through this week! I am so excited!
This week’s assignment:
1.) Have you been keeping your list of the characteristics of God? How is it going? I would LOVE to see you post a list of what you have so far. I will be posting that as a separate question this week, I think, so please watch for it and chip in with some of yours! Continue to keep a cumulative list of all the characteristics of God and how he treats people.
2.) Enjoy the benefit of getting to know God even more and take the time to go over your list before you start your study time each day. Even if you just take 5 minutes and say back to him his attributes, you will experience his supernatural encouragement. This is the thing…when we lift him up, we get lifted up, too. I don’t get it, but I know it is true. So keep starting your study time with praise by using your attributes list! Has this been helpful for you? Tell us about it!
3.) Read and complete Days 8 and 9 – through page 93. Again, if you aren’t quite there, no worries. You can go any pace God so leads you, just keep on going! 🙂 Post when you get to it. Don’t worry and think you are “too far behind!” That is the enemy trying to get you off track and discouraged. Send him packing!
4.) Continue to add three things to your gratitude journal each day. If you struggle with doing this, ask the Lord to show you things you can be grateful for. This really can be transforming. So 5 minutes of praise (#2 above) and 5 minutes of gratitudes given to God and you have already started your time with ten minutes of the most worthy activities possible! 🙂 How do these activities, practiced regularly, affect you?
5.) We continue to be evaluating our beliefs this week. Have any of you done the truth journaling that we mentioned in our chat from last week? To see the transcript, click this link. In the FIND box, type in “truth journal” or scroll about half way down and you will see it there. Try this in the days ahead and let us know how it goes. Truth Journaling can be used *after* a mess up, but I prefer to use it before. If I do, I can cut off my stray beliefs at the pass beFORE they cause me to eat when I don’t need physical fuel!
6.) On page 78, you are asked about your beliefs about food, weight and eating. If you feel so inclined, please share with us what you discover. Especially as you look over the list on page 78 and 79. Which of those can you identify with?
7.) One of the things I love about chapter 8 is the “Planning for Trials” exercise. Take what you KNOW to be true of yourself and be pro-active! Plan to be different. This is “observe and correct” in action. If you know that you get tense and turn to food more when your cousin comes to visit and she is coming in two weeks, plan NOW. How will you deal with these feelings in a new, different, and godly way? Make a plan and stick with it! Let us know what God leads you to do!
8.) Chapter 9 is part 2 of the same theme. Evaluating the impact of difficult situations on your beliefs and behavior can be incredibly helpful. What do you learn from this chapter? Does the exercise on page 89 help you in any way? If you need some input from others, prayerfully consider sharing with us in the comments.
9.) Consider coming to a chat this week to talk about emotional eating. Or visit another venue and participate. Visit our special God Is Doing A New Thing website to find links to all the venues and other information that might be helpful. This week we will be chatting on Tuesday from 4-5pm Pacific Time and Saturday night from 7-8pm Pacific Time. I hope you can join us!
10.) Are you using any of the TW tools? How is that going? Is it time for you to prayerfully consider leaving one tool behind and trying another one instead? Are you finding your focus is still on my weight, my food, my eating? Or is it on God? 🙂
11.) One more tool that might be helpful to you is the Thin Within e-newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Hey! I am planning for the fall already! I hope you will join me in considering prayerfully what God would have you to do. I am praying about studying through the workbook available at Thin Within. It is my hope that as we study here at the blog, some of you (if not all) will guide live groups through the workbook, too! We can do it together! I am just in the praying phase right now, but thought maybe we could all have live groups and sort of connect here each week about how that is going and to get and give support. Just a thought!
I will be posting a “video review” of the workbook here as well as doing some give-aways in August! You won’t want to miss that! The workbooks are GREAT and come with the “temple toolkit” and a scripture memory resource as well. It is a $45 value that I will be giving away here during August. 🙂
Let’s renew our commitment to keep in touch this week, ok? 🙂
Technical Difficulties
We are experiencing “technical difficulties.” The module that I installed here at the blog for the commenting and that we have been enjoying for the past three weeks or so is now telling Kim and I that we aren’t the administrators for the account. That means that if you type up a comment to a blog post or to another comment, we aren’t notified about it. If we log in to look at comments to approve them, we are told we can’t do that! 🙁
I wonder if the enemy is mad that we were having such blessed discussion and exchange. I sort of think so. You know, the enemy is real. Jesus spoke about him a lot and Paul certainly did in his letters to the churches. If we think he doesn’t care about this issue in our lives we are wrong. We must put on the full armor of God and take our stand against the devil’s schemes, just as it says in Ephesians 6!
Think about it…if you could break free–really free–from this issue, it would be evident to all the people that you know. God’s glory would be proclaimed and the enemy would be rendered impotent. Not something he will accept easily.
Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world, though! Isn’t that an awesome truth? We don’t need to fear the enemy, but we do need to be aware of him. This battle isn’t just with [our] flesh and blood. Instead we war with spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Fortunately, we have weapons that are not of this world, too.
We take captive our thoughts and subject them to obedience to Christ, one moment at a time, one thought at a time.
So…all that to say, I have written to IntenseDebate support in the hopes that they will fix things. In the meantime, I am just going to pray against this. Keep on posting your comments and once we get things figured out, Kim and I will approve all the comments and we will be back in business.
God wants us to persevere! In ALL respects!
Trick Question – There is NO Size that is “Holy”
In the previous blog post, I asked “What size is Holy?”
Truthfully, it was a trick question. I have allowed the question to linger there and thought I would offer some thoughts about it now.
Jesus attributes his holiness to me. He who knew no sin became sin for me so that in him, I might become the righteousness of God. I have been attributed with his righteousness, his holiness. Ephesians 1 says that he chose me before the foundation of the earth to be holy and blameless in his sight. Holiness is something God attributes to me because of Jesus.
Yet, holiness is a choice, too, as I say no to the flesh and yes to the Spirit, one moment at a time, one choice at at time. I live as one set apart for him.
But no…there is no size that, by definition, is holy.
So often we judge people by externals! We think the pastor who is speaking isn’t quite “godly enough” because he has a “weight problem.” Not sure we have any business judging his size as a “weight problem” and I am positive we can’t judge him as lacking in “godliness” because of his size. But do we do this?
I know that many of us who have been involved in Christian “diet” or weight programs, connect our size with our walks with God. We may not do it on purpose, but we do it, sure enough. We somehow think that if we are losing weight or at our “goal weight” we are “walking with the Lord” and if we are gaining or staying the same that we are “in sin” or something else. This may not be true. Only our hearts and the Holy Spirit can testify to whether this is true or not. Our size can’t. Our shape can’t.
While it is true that, for most people, when we listen to the Lord and eat according to the physical cues of hunger and satisfaction, we will arrive at a size that the Lord chooses, it may not be a size or shape that we have in our heads. It is, in fact, incidental.
God doesn’t call us to be thin. He calls us to be his.
This means, giving myself clear away to him in my choices. This is living that “set apart” life for God that is holiness at it’s core. Let’s stop judging ourselves (and others) and stop attributing to God attitudes about our *size* that he doesn’t have!
It was a “trick question.” 🙂 Glad you girls saw through that.
What size is Holy?
Joan Rudloff said this to us here in the comments and I have been giving it a lot of thought and prayer:
“What size is Holy?”
What do you think? Is there a size that is “holy” or a size that is not holy? Upon what do you base your answer?
Where is holiness found relative to food eating and my body issues?
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Note: Come chat with us this morning at 10-11am Pacific Time. This link tells you how! Come, even if you can only stay a few minutes–just come! 🙂
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