The Blessing of Grace – Observation and Correction

by Heidi Bylsma | Jun 16, 2010 | Blog

The sun is waking the world. Nestled in your armchair, bible open in your lap, God’s presence is palpable. You truly sense him delighting over you with singing just as scripture says in Zephaniah 3:17. What a treat to begin the day this way! The Word speaks to you afresh.

You launch into a new day, filled with great intentions and anticipation. You purpose resolutely to glorify God with your eating and drinking today, in response to the exhortation issued in 1 Corinthians 10:31.

As the day continues, however, the fire in your heart, kindled in the early hour spent sitting at the feet of your Savior, cools. 

By mid-day, all your great intentions have fallen by the wayside. You hadn’t even realized you were eating. “How could this have happened?” A pass through the breakroom at work at 1pm (or the kitchen at home before picking the kids up from school) and your “failure” seemed sealed.

The voice of condemnation follows you around like a familiar companion, taunting you with lies that seem so believable. You have been here many times before. Discouraged, the accusations of the Enemy come thick and fast: “You will never change.” “You are destined to always overeat.” “You thought you could change…HA!” “So much for a ‘New Thing!'”

How did this happen?

And, more importantly, what do you do now?

Many of us have the self-condemnation routine down pretty well. Now it is time to BUCK that system!

At moments like this, rather than be taken captive by runaway thoughts, we must take these thoughts captive and subject them to the scrutiny of Scripture. We reject the temptation to allow our feelings–or even our own experience–to determine fact. Truth is defined by our great and marvelous Savior, Jesus Christ. It is not, nor will it ever be, determined by our feelings or experience. Truth is truth. We want to renew our mind in it.

So, even if you have eaten past a 5 for the 100th time in a row, or even if you haven’t waited for hunger again, no matter what it is, let’s allow this to be a stepping stone out of a pit of despair instead of one more brick blockading our progress forward.

In Thin Within, we are taught a biblical application of confession and repentance. Thin Within refers to this as the Observation and Correction tool. Whether you have the Thin Within book or not, are studying with us or not, you can try this, too!

Any time I have made a choice that isn’t in line with my godly goals or God’s will for me, I dispassionately step out of the picture for a moment and observe. Prayerfully ask God to help you to see things apart from emotion. (Even if I am SO disappointed again that I haven’t lived according to my intentions…let’s not go there. Set that aside!)

I imagine my actions of the previous hour or day displayed on a TV screen as if it was someone else’s life and evaluate: “What actions led to the action that I now regret?” It might be mindlessly wandering into the break room or the tiredness I felt mid-day and not having a plan prepared for dealing with it. It might be having had one more conflict with the neighbor next door over my dog barking and the agitation I felt in response to that. Simply observe the events that led up to the experience of overeating. This is the observation part of the Observation and Correction tool.

Observation is done best when, as you do it, you speak to God about what you discover. The bible calls this confession. You are agreeing with God about the facts of what happened. There need not be a lot of fanfare. It may break your heart, certainly, but right now, try to look at the facts. We tend to emotionally charge things or to somehow think that true change happens when we cry more tears over the thing we wish we hadn’t done. This may not be the case.

In fact, often, we stop there. We confess to God and then we proceed to knock ourselves over the head repeatedly for not being different. We may work ourselves into tears over it, but here is the thing–we stop short of making godly correction–plans for what to do differently next time–which is what repentance really is! Repentance is changing our behavior.

So, rather than begin the downward spiral of beating yourself up, let’s take this a step further. Prayerfully ask the Lord to show you what you can do differently in the future so that you are mindful and willing to respond to your body’s satisfied signals. As you have considered what led to your overeating, now replay the tape in your mind inserting a different set of choices. What will you do differently next time?

It might be to choose not to enter the breakroom at work (where a bounteous supply of snack foods are always set out on the counter) after lunch is over. Or you might plan next time to go to bed an hour earlier so that you aren’t as likely to have weakened resolve by mid-day. You might plan to take 15 minutes to pray for your neighbor immediately after the next altercation and establish a boundary that you won’t walk through the kitchen for any purpose between the hours of 1 and 4.

The key here is to make a plan to change. Scripture refers to this as repentance. Repentance is not feeling bad about my sin. It is planning to change. It is fully intending to be different with a plan for this change in mind.

This is appropriating God’s grace! His grace is intended to be a moment-by-moment provision for my need including my response to sin or disappointment. As I observe my behavior dispassionately and refrain from the habit of indulging myself in self-deprecation, as I move past this place to making godly correction, I rest in God’s grace and experience it afresh. I ask him for strength to help me to act on the changes and then I “break camp and move on.” He doesn’t want me camping at this place where I feel like a failure. He called me to cast off such labels.

How about you? Think about the last time you didn’t live according to your godly goal of eating between 0 and 5–what led up to the behavior? What corrections can you plan for the future so that you do something different? Will you? 🙂

Final Book Give-away Winner!

by Heidi Bylsma | Jun 14, 2010 | Blog

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!

Assignment Week 01 Thin Within Book Study

by Heidi Bylsma | Jun 14, 2010 | Blog

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:”

• Introduction
• Before You Begin
• Day One.

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.

Let’s Indulge and Get STOUT Hearts!

by Heidi Bylsma | Jun 14, 2010 | Blog

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?”

Logistics

by Heidi Bylsma | Jun 12, 2010 | Blog

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!

Who Are You Going to Listen To?

by Heidi Bylsma | Jun 11, 2010 | Blog

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!