Hi, Everyone. I hope you can join us for the real-time chat we will have this evening. 5-6pm Pacific Time, 7-8pm Central Time, and 8-9pm Eastern time. Visit this link http://www.thinwithin.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2256 for instructions. Please join us as we talk about the impact forgiveness has on our lives and on our Thin Within journeys.
This week we are reading and completing the material in chapters 19 and 20. This material can be LIFE CHANGING! It has been for me!
But it may require a lot of time…even more than a week. That’s ok. Just hang in there and work slowly through it.
God is doing a new thing!!!
This week’s assignment:
1.) Please continue your list of God’s attributes.
This list must be getting pretty long by now! 🙂 I would love to know what aspects of God you have found most precious during the past two months. In what way has God revealed himself to you?
2.) Please take time each day to praise God for some of the attributes on your list.
3.) Keep adding to your gratitude journal. I would love to hear what God is doing through the practice of keeping a gratitude journal. Share it with us if you feel so led. You can do that here, on Facebook, or at the Thin Within forums (which is even better!).
4.) Read and complete day 19 and 20. – all reading and activities through page 218. Now is not the time to give up! Even if you are a bit behind…hang in there!
5.) We are our own worst critics. The very grace that Jesus died to extend to us, we refuse to extend to ourselves. We are so bent (very often) on our performance. Jesus never uses our performance for a standard for his acceptance of us. In fact, Romans 5:8 says that he chose to demonstrate his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Jesus died for us–to win us–to purchase us. Before we had a single Godward thought, he declared us before the foundation of the earth to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he adopted us! All because he receives glory from it somehow. Isn’t this amazing? This is the gospel! As you read chapter 19, PLUNGE in! Ask yourself as you read “Do I believe this to the depths of my being?” If not, ask yourself if you don’t believe it because it is NOT the truth (in which case, please tell me so I can pass the information on to Judy and Arthur Halliday!) or do you not believe it because the enemy has convinced you to believe lies? We are still rebuilding our foundation…to be sure that it is THE WORD OF TRUTH! 🙂 Journal about these thoughts.
6.) What do you have the most difficulty receiving God’s forgiveness for? What do you have the most difficulty forgiving yourself for? Journal these things–what they are, how they have affected you. Then write across the top of each page of your journal where you have written about this:
7.) As you complete the activities on page 197-199, refuse to be subjugated by a spirit of condemnation. The enemy is alive and real and wants to cause you to take this exercise and find condemnation instead of the very freedom that God intends. Don’t let the enemy have his way. Be watchful and know that your great Lord, King of the Universe, loves you and is the victor. He has made you more than a conqueror in Christ. If it helps, use the affirmations on pages 125-127 to combat any feelings of despair. Those statements are based on the TRUTH of scripture! Many of us have believed lies for years and the process of being transformed from within requires the renewing of our minds as we have been learning! If you feel so led, tell us about what you experience as you progress through chapter 19 and the activities listed here or in the book.
Hi, everyone.
For those who couldn’t or didn’t want to watch my “infomercial” 🙂 about the Thin Within workbook, I thought I would share with you here, some of the features of the resources that Thin Within offers, specifically highlighting the Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook Kit #1.
The first kit is the most comprehensive and comes with three pieces:
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| The contents of Kit #1 |
First, the workbook itself, is a spiral bound volume that has material for 12 weeks of study. To download a sample of the material, visit this link. The download is an Adobe Reader (.pdf) file of Week One – “Hope.” After you download it, print it and take a week to try it out! 🙂
Each week consists of the following:
In addition to these resources in the workbook, there is an extensive Introduction at the beginning and Appendices in the back, providing a great deal of material that will support you on your journey.
But wait! There’s more! 🙂 (Couldn’t resist saying that!) Not only do you get the Workbook, but when you purchase the first kit, you also get the Temple Toolkit. This is a resource that offers a place for you to log your own journey throughout each day during the full twelve weeks. As you progress through the material, the pages change to match what you have learned in the workbook. Let me show you what I mean.
The first image below shows Days 25-28. Click on the image to see a larger version and then click again to see FULL size what these pages look like in the temple toolkit:
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| Days 25, 26, 27, 28 in the Temple Toolkit |
As you progress through the workbook and new material is introduced, the Temple Toolkit changes, too:
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| Days 49, 50, 51, and 52 in Temple Toolkit |
Again, click on the image above and then click again on the bigger image to see it full size. You will see new tools have been added.
Of course all of the tools are optional as you go through the 12-week workbook. If you have come out of a background of excessive charting and graphing, you may only want to use the journaling pages. Or, as time goes on, you may experience freedom with one tool and not another. The Lord will lead each person individually. Some have freedom to use all the tools, charts and graphs.
By the time you are closer to the end of the first twelve weeks, you will have been introduced to all of the tools. Note how the material in the toolkit has evolved:
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| Days 77, 78, 79 and 80 in Temple Toolkit |
Again, “Wait! There’s more!” 🙂 When you order the first kit, you get not only the Workbook, the Temple Toolkit that changes as you go through the material, but you also get the Memory Challenge and Temptation Buster Cards:
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| Memory Challenge and Temptation Buster Cards |
Again, click on the image above and the larger image, to get a full size view of what these include. You cut them up and can carry them with you so that Thin Within isn’t just a bible study that you begin in the morning and leave behind the rest of the day. These resources are very supportive in helping you to keep the principles that God is leading you to embrace and apply with you throughout the day.
We don’t want to just accumulate head knowledge, but then leave it behind for the rest of the day! We want to ACT on what we learn in our times of study and in God’s Word!
I realize that $45 is not a “bargain price” for a workbook alone, but I trust you will feel like it is worth it. This material includes three months of workbook material and exercises, as well as the Temple Toolkit which would probably cost $20 for something like that (if you could find such a thing!) separately. (It isn’t sold separately at Thin Within, so this is hypothetical!) Truthfully, with the money you save by eating less food :-), you will be able to afford a kit for yourself and a best friend, too! (Ok, so now I am taking my infomercial over the top…hope you are bearing with me! LOL! But it IS true!)
Thin Within isn’t a big company. No one pulls in a big salary. The proceeds from sales of the workbook go to cover the costs of producing these materials, keeping the Thin Within website functioning, other expenses (like the phone!), and small stipends for some of the Thin Within team members. So while the cost of $45 may seem steep, it isn’t padding anyone’s pocket. I am sure you will be pleased with the quality of the materials you receive. (Boy, do I ever sound like an advertisement today. Sorry about that! I just really believe in this material and am eager for the word to spread!)
If you decide that you want to lead a group we have resources available for you including video clips, leader resources, and a page at the Thin Within website that offers all kinds of ideas for running your orientation and weekly meetings. Not only that, but Judy Halliday and the Thin Within team are even now working on a printed leader manual that will be available (Lord willing!) in time for you to run your fall Thin Within groups through the workbook kit #1.
One additional piece of information that many are unaware of is that there are 3 additional workbooks, each covering 12 weeks. The material is designed so that if you run a group and have people who have gone through workbook #1 before, they can do workbook #2 or #3 or #4, even while you lead through workbook #1. Each of the workbooks are presented in 12 weekly themes that parallel each other. These are the themes for all four of the workbooks:
No matter if you have people in your group who have never before participated in Thin Within or, three time veterans, when your group is on week five, everyone will be studying, reviewing, learning about the theme of Restoration. This helps prevent the material from becoming stale! It is a great system that allows people of all experience levels to enjoy a group together, studying and reviewing together.
This fall, I plan to lead a live group through this material as well. I would love to hear from you. Prayerfully consider it. Then, request permission from your pastor, elders or women’s ministry leadership if you need to do so for leading a live group. Then, by August 30th, 2010, check in here (or the Thin Within forums and let me know what you are planning to do! You don’t have to “register” your groups, but if you do when you call Joe and Pam Donaldson at Thin Within 1-877-729-8932 (9:00am-5:00pm Eastern) to make your order, I believe they will send you additional leader resources. Let them know that you are planning on participating with Heidi’s online leading of the class, but that you have a LIVE group that will be joining you. I will be explaining this more in August.
For now, if you want to participate, here is what I recommend:
I plan on having my first group session a week ahead of what I recommend for the rest of the folks. I will post here an informal video and written suggestions, giving you ideas about what you can do each week to lead your group. I got this idea from Beth Moore’s Living Proof Blog. A couple of summers ago, she did this with ladies going through a bible study written by another author.
Our study will be more intensive–most of us are ready for that once fall has arrived! I do recommend that you plan to meet each week, but if you can’t, then every other week is certainly better than nothing! You will have to adapt how you use the materials to suit your group the best.
The suggested dates for you (but feel free to adjust and adapt as needed) are:
Orientation the week of September 12
Week One the week of September 19
We will continue through the holiday season, taking a week off here and there.
We will have our grand finale just after the New Year, with a wrap up of all we have learned and “Where Do We Go From Here” session.
Some of you may want to continue leading groups into Workbook #2 or do another #1 so that new folks who want to start the New Year with weight loss (like so many do) have a place to go.
It isn’t too early to start thinking about this now!
More to come in the days ahead!
Have you ever been startled, as if from sleep, to “awaken” at the bottom of a carton of ice cream or an empty cookie bag? You didn’t even see it coming, but somehow you binged your way through most of a half gallon of “Tin Roof Sundae” ice cream. What now?
Or, perhaps, out for Mexican food, you were physically hungry and planned to eat within godly parameters. After enjoying chips and queso, however, by the time your meal arrived you weren’t hungry any more and you ate half your meal anyhow. Each bite threw an accusation your way. What next?
What we choose to do with the moments that follow is vital!
So often, when faced with these or similar scenarios, we pull out what Thin Within calls “the club of condemnation” and beat ourselves up. The very things we need–comfort and forgiveness–are the very things we deny ourselves. When we refuse to rest in the grace that Jesus purchased for us with his life, his heart is grieved every bit as much or more than the thing we did that caused our shame in the first place. He created us for so much more than the shame we embrace when we find ourselves in a place of sin. In fact, when he died on the cross, he took on all the sin and shame. He doesn’t intend for us to wallow in shame now.
Last year, I studied the book Search for Significance by Robert S. McGee. He speaks about the affects of shame:
Shame usually results in guilt and self-deprecation, but it can also lead us to search for God and his answers. Our inner, undeniable need for personal significance was created to make us search for Him. He alone can fulfill our deep need. In Him, we find peace, acceptance, and love. The Search for Significance, p. 101 (emphasis mine)
When I trespass God’s boundaries for me, those “what then” moments can be spent the way he desires–redeeming what came before! He intends to use the very sin and “gunk” that I think makes me so awful in his sight to draw me even closer to his heart. When I overeat (again) or head to food when I am not hungry and fail to stop it before “damage” is done, in the “what now?” moment, I can choose to turn to him and experience his peace, acceptance and love.
I wonder…why don’t I? Why do I insist on living as if he counts all my sin against me? Why do I act as if the cross never happened and Jesus didn’t pay for my sin and shame? Why do I wallow in shame?
We often behave in a manner that is consistent with our perception of ourselves…seeing ourselves through the eyes of shame usually results in a pessimistic outlook on life and a lifestyle of destructive behavior. The Search for Significance, p. 102 (Emphasis mine.)
“Destructive behavior”…like repeatedly engaging in poor choices followed by self-condemnation!
When I allow shame to go unchallenged in my life, it has a way of seeping in to all the cracks and crevices, pervading every aspect of who I am, almost defining me if I let it. When I first realize that I have allowed myself to go down a path away from God’s best for me–when I ask, “What now?”–I want the answer to be to stop, confess, and repent or, to use a Thin Within term, observe (dispassionately) and correct (more about this after we start our study of the book on June 14). I don’t want shame to define moments that follow! When I feel shame, I tend to make more shameful choices. Shame doesn’t belong in the child of God!
Instead, I want to break free from this cycle completely, exercising the freedom purchased for me by Christ. Instead, I will live free from shame controlling me or my decisions. I will reject shame, which looks backward, and I will reject all of the things it represents in my life. I will embrace grace which embraces Christ in the now and looks forward to that for which Christ Jesus lay hold of me.
I choose to keep short accounts today. If I do find myself having eaten more than I should have (or snapping at the kids a bit more harshly, or having missed an opportunity to speak the truth to a pre-Christian neighbor), the “What next?” question will be answered with “observe and correct,” confess and repent. I will reject allowing my indiscretion in the past hour, day, month, or decade to define me.
How about you? Have you allowed shame to have a say in your life? What can you do to expose it and reject it? God calls us to press on and move forward!
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NOTE: Don’t forget, we continue to have a random drawing for a free copy of Thin Within! Comment to be entered in the drawing. The next winner will be selected late Sunday evening.
I don’t mean “God doesn’t matter,” because of course He does!
What I do mean is, He doesn’t count sins.
Do you believe that?
Or do you think: “I have stuffed my face again. I know this time God has had it with me. It is only a matter of time before he says ‘That’s it. No more. I am through with you!’ “
If you are convinced that you can out-sin God’s love and kindness (which leads us to repentance), then ask Him to help you believe Psalm 32:2 a which says:
You see? God doesn’t count.
He can out-love, out-forgive, out-kindness anything you can possibly throw at him.
He doesn’t stand up in heaven with a tablet, making a list and checking it twice to see if you have been naughty or nice and, suddenly, do a second take…
….Oh no!! Horrors of horrors!
“No! That sin, right there…that one sin…is one too many! No more forgiveness. No more pardon! No more kindness. No more long suffering! I count one too many sins for ________ .” (Insert your own name there…)
That just won’t happen, thankfully.
Further on in Psalm 32, we read:
King David knew what it was like to struggle with starting a day with good intentions–to begin again, and again, and again–only to cave in to temptation. Instead of hiding from God, though, he typically acknowledged his sin, confessing his wrong to the Lord.
And, God forgave.
David moved on.
Jesus paid an exorbitant price so that forgiveness could be constantly, freely extended to you and to me–no matter how many sins. If we believe that God “has had it” with us, then we suck the life right out of the cross of Christ, saying the death Jesus died has its limits. That it isn’t sufficient.
Do we really want to say that?
Let’s believe! God doesn’t count. When we begin again, we really do begin again–fresh start, clean slate.
First John says God is love and 1 Corinthians 13 says that love keeps no record of wrongs done. So, I have to figure, then, God doesn’t keep a record of wrongs.
No, God doesn’t count.
Do you feel like you have “let God down?” Are you worried that God will “give up” on you? Can you choose to believe him–that he says he doesn’t count your sins against you? What can you do right now to walk in that truth?
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Don’t forget we are having a drawing for a Thin Within book by Arthur and Judy Halliday. Each Monday morning until June 14th, I will announce one winner. Your name is entered when you post a relevant comment here at the blog. I draw one name randomly from those that commented the previous week. It’s that simple and you can enter multiple times!
Join us at the Thin Within Academy where you can sign up for our online courses as they become available.
