Wow…no matter how often I go through this material, God always brings it home in a new way.
I spent a lot of time going through chapter 20 and the things God revealed to me are HUGE. I want to, again, encourage all of us to take as long as it takes to prayerfully wade through what is there.
God is faithful and he will show us blessings for being willing to do so! I know it! I have experienced it!
My prayers are with each of you as you specifically, completely go through the wounds you have in your life, now and in the past, and choose very intentionally to release each offender to God by forgiveness.
I hope you will post here how God uses this experience!
If you are continuing with us through the Thin Within book by Judy and Arthur Halliday, this week we will only focus on two chapters because the material is so dense.
Please read chapters 20 and 21 this week and complete all the exercises in these chapters.
Give yourself plenty of time–especially for chapter 20. It is vital material.
Again, I can’t overstress the value of forgiveness in overcoming tendencies to overeat. Please prayerfully immerse yourself in time with the Lord, His Word, and this material this week. If you aren’t at chapter 20 yet, no worries. Please feel free to go the pace that GOD leads. You can still respond on the blog if you like or keep your own blog to record your observations.
Additionally, you may want to consider these things: 1. Is there a Thin Within tool (such as the observation and correction chart, flesh machinery log, food log, or hunger graph) that you can incorporate into your life this week for added accountability?
2. If you have never considered it before, you may want to consider an accountability partner. This blog entry mentions how to consider selecting an accountability partner. An AP can pray for you, help you to keep focused on what is important and be valuable for all sorts of things–not just your Thin Within journey. Please prayerfully consider it!
3. Please keep on generating a list of God’s attributes and his behavior toward you, His child.
4. Take time to practice gratitude statements to the Lord.
5. Praise God for some of the attributes on your list of God’s attributes.
Let’s hunker down and refocus. We still have about a month left to complete the book. This is plenty of time for us to accomplish the godly goals that he set for us. When the book was written it was intended that it be a 30 day book! Can you imagine? 🙂 That would mean we would have had only 10 days left. But the pace we are going affords us about 30 more days! We have as much time for the rest of the material as was intended for the entire book! So, we can DO this! 🙂
Forgiveness has transformed my life…not merely the amazing gift of forgiveness that God has extended to me through the cross because of Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of my sins, but in the ongoing provision and power that I have experienced.
I will share more about some of this when we study chapter 20 in the Thin Within book by Arthur and Judy Halliday this week, but today, I focus a bit more on the principles at the heart of chapter 19.
My 17 year old son, Daniel, has an extremely tender conscience. He frequently asks others for forgiveness (a good thing, certainly)…to a point where I have felt the need to caution him to really evaluate if it is the accusing voice of the Enemy that insists he needs to do this or the comforting, yet convicting voice of the Holy Spirit. (Some of what he asks forgiveness for is hard to really grasp, as it seems so trivial outwardly.)
The last time we discussed this, he confessed that he has a hard time believing that God forgives him for the many things he has done wrong and continues to do wrong.
I realized that this is so often the case for me–for us as humans.
I think we tend to believe we can “out sin” the grace of God! But the fact is, the forgiveness that God extends to me, to you, to my precious son, is boundless. It is endless and His Word speaks to this. Many of us know 1 John 1:9, but let’s have a closer look at it today:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Do we believe the Lord? Do we believe what He says in 1 John 1:9? Or do we just quote it without thinking about what it says? HIS FAITHFULNESS requires, HIS JUSTICE requires that he forgive!
But let’s not stop there…HIS FAITHFULNESS and HIS JUSTICE require that when we do confess, He purifies us from all unrighteousness.
This isn’t about me convincing him that I deserve to be forgiven! This isn’t about me proving that I am sorry. This is about HIS CHARACTER. The character of God, Who He Is requires some things…payment for sin is one of them because He is Holy, but in light of that perfect, complete payment for our sins (in Jesus) which the Father has provided and deemed sufficient, when we DO confess He has promised to forgive and purify us from ALL unrighteousness.
If you confess, you then stand before him PERFECTLY RIGHTEOUS, cleansed.
Do you believe Him? Do I?
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Corinthians 5:21
I ask again: Do you believe Him? Do I?
I apologize if my redundancy is tiresome, but let me explain why this is so important to being healed of eating disorders, whether overeating, bulimia, anorexia, an unhealthy body image, and all of the many things that plagues so many of us.
If we don’t believe that God forgives us in Christ, we tend to take our insistence that we haven’t “made the mark” as a badge of shame. Shame perpetuates the cycle of addiction and sin. Truly, there is NO way to escape when we are entrenched in shame.
If forgiveness is what opens wide the prison doors, then shame is what those prison doors are made of.
Embracing–believing–that God has forgiven me RIGHT NOW, no matter how many times I have repeated the same offense, blows the door off the prison cell. In fact, I would be willing to guess (from my own experience with myself and others) that if we struggle with the same sin again and again, no matter what it is, it could be that, at the heart, is a belief that even when we have confessed before, we aren’t really forgiven.
If not that, then it is a refusal to forgive ourselves.
Who do we really feel we are? Rotten, no good sinners? Or saints, saved by God’s amazing grace who struggle with our flesh to surrender to God and not to sin? What we believe about ourselves will most assuredly affect how we behave.
When we fail to forgive ourselves, we are claiming that Christ’s torture, death and resurrection were not sufficient. We claim to have a higher standard than God! This is a lie and slams God’s character! He says in 1 John 1:9 that He is faithful to forgive us and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness!
Let us choose NOT to embrace shame, but let us confess our sins…ask God to show them all to us and go through them one by one and then confess just as strongly:
“Thank you God that you see me as holy and righteous in your sight. You have forgiven me. I stand as one cleansed of ALL unrighteousness right now.”
This is the way we will STOP seeing ourselves as “rebellious gluttons.” When we continue to view ourselves as “rebellious gluttons” (or any other self-debasing label) we tend to live like that is what we are. When we believe God that we stand before Him as righteous children, we tend to live like that is what we are. The TRUTH is that we ARE righteous children in his sight if we have embraced the cross of Christ on our behalf. (If we haven’t done that, then please do so! God wants a relationship with you personally…and he provides this through Jesus!)
If you haven’t yet worked through the material in chapter 19, please don’t skip it. Sequester yourself away where you won’t be interrupted and beg God to help you believe Him–that He forgives you and cleanses you of ALL unrighteousness. Then ask Him to help you to forgive yourself very specifically for anything that you think you may yet be resenting yourself for.
This is vital.
And please don’t assume this is a once for all process. We need to practice this daily…when I have a moment where I have given in to indiscretion, given way to my flesh, I quickly (without letting any time go by) confess again…both my sin and my praise and knowledge that as I confess, God forgives me and cleanses me.
This is the way we are to walk…applying His grace in the present moment…the power, pardon and provision for all that we need to believe that we have been redeemed and we are being sanctified!
I want to give all who visit this blog and who are reading the Thin Within book by Arthur and Judy Halliday time to soak in chapter 19 if you are studying with us. Truly, forgiveness has been the hub of my journey–the driving force around which my life has been turning and being transformed. I don’t want to gloss over the significance of this for others–for you. It is deep and penetrating.
So, if you are anything like me, I believe forgiveness is at the root of what can transform you, too.
I believe that many of us are caught in cycles of sin-repent-sin-repent because of shame. We think we will never change. We believe that our capacity to sin is, in effect, more powerful than God’s capacity to change us. We then lose hope. Without hope, we remain stuck! Somehow, we have to get out of that place so that we believe God. He says he is transforming us. My choices don’t somehow tie God’s hands. He is in the business of transforming lives. So confessing my sin to God, receiving His forgiveness, confessing that I know He forgives me and then forgiving myself is vital. I couldn’t overstate this. PLEASE don’t blow this off!
Yes, he wants my cooperation. But he can work even a willingness into me. So, rather than speaking about this chapter right now in detail, I just want to tell you…if you really want to have this time be different for you, if you want to break free forever from the junk that keeps you binging, purging, overeating, compromising, hating yourself…(if you can relate to this at all), you have to have to have to (please!!!) work through chapter 19, pray through it, journal through it, whatever it takes to honestly do it. Forgiveness is vital to your next steps forward. I really believe it.
So, what do you believe? Which is more powerful: your sin? Or God’s ability to overcome your sin?
Please take time to prayerfully ask God to show you if you are willing to allow Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross be sufficient for you so that you might forgive yourself. Let the shame go. Whether it is the shame from one of the “Significant Times” experiences in chapter 16 or shame from 10 minutes ago (yelling at your kids, resenting a lady at church, or plowing through a bag of Oreos)…God IS doing a new thing in you right now. You have never been where you are right this moment. Take this moment captive for him (remember the marble jar!) and let Him wash you with the grace of His forgiveness. Believe Him. Let the shame go…as far as the east is from the west…
In chapter 18, we are offered a challenge to begin to prayerfully exercise discernment. This can actually be a lot of fun! While we are free to enjoy any food we want when we are hungry, sometimes our bodies respond best to some foods than they do to others. This little video demonstrates (well, sort of) what I have found about my body over the years:
Obviously, godly boundaries are much more involved than merely what foods fit into “Pleaser,” “Teaser,” “Whole Body Pleaser,” and “Total Reject” categories. But this is a great application of this principle.
In reading this chapter again, I became aware of how I have been settling for a lot of Teasers lately!
1.) Recommit to finishing the summer with us–even if you feel you haven’t made ANY progress!
2.) Do the perfect meal exercise from day 15.
3.) Spend some time practicing gratitude! Even better if you start a gratitude blog!
4.) Continue to add to your list of attributes of God.
5.) Take time each day (5 minutes?) to praise Him for His attributes and the things you are filled with gratitude for.
6.) This week, how about waiting until you are at a 0 each time you eat? Ok, a week seems like a long time. How about today…or your next meal. Can you wait for 0 for your next meal? 🙂
7.) If you feel so led, try using the hunger graph as presented in chapter 17 of the book–or try using one of the other tools and let us know how it works. Again, ask God first. He may lead you NOT to use the tools. That is great. But some of us he DOES lead us to use the tools for a season here or there. Let us know what you experience.
8.) Chapters 18 and 19 are worthy of a slow go through. So this week, we will work prayerfully through chapter 18 and chapter 19. I anticipate you may have some questions or comments. Please please feel free to use the blog here for discussion. I feel like we have lost our momentum. Let’s tell Satan what to do with the spirit of discouragement and apathy that he may be trying to spread. Let’s trade our sorrow for the joy of the Lord and our spirit of despair for a garment of praise! Let’s choose joy! 🙂
Are you still with me? (Or, with me again? :-))
I would love to see a roll call! Let us know you are with us!
