by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 29, 2009 | Blog
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!
More tomorrow!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 27, 2009 | Blog
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! 🙂
I am praying for you today!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 26, 2009 | Blog
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!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 20, 2009 | Blog
I woke up this morning…first thing on my mind was the fact that today is our pastor’s last Sunday. God has called him to leave.
As sadness and regret began to well up within me, I found God challenging me immediately to choose joy. To me, this means, praising and thanking God for His blessings and His character. I wrote about that here this morning.
When I showed up for worship team practice at 8:30 this morning and Pastor Tony(the pastor of worship and youth ministries) asked me how I was doing, I smiled genuinely and said “I am choosing joy!” He asked me to explain…Rationally, I figure if the scriptures say “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4), or “Count it all joy when you encounter various trials” (James 1:2), or “Be joyful always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16), then I must have some sway over my own ability to be joyful. If that is the case, then HOW do I choose joy?
I believe gratitude is the path to joy. Setting aside my choice to grumble or complain…and choosing instead to praise him and thank him…well, it does something to my soul. Deep inside something changes.
For over a year, I have kept a gratitude blog. Well, that isn’t accurate. I haven’t “kept” it up to date at all! I can’t help but wonder if this doesn’t reflect a heart that hasn’t been practicing gratitude. If I haven’t been practicing gratitude, I dare say, I have likely been practicing something else…like griping and complaining…or elevating MY will, MY desires, MY problems above everything else. I really wonder what I have been magnifying! Whatever I magnify is what will fill my vision. If I magnify God, HE fills my vision. If I magnify something else…well, that is what will fill my vision and seem SO huge.
Today, this has been proven. I have been filled with joy as I have practiced gratitude. My husband may have left to go out of town, my pastor may be leaving, my presentation of special music at church less than what I had hoped it would be vocally :-), but I have joy. I praise him! I give thanks for a voice that can sing at all, for a job for my husband that provides for us, for Pastor Mike having 11 years at Cool Community Church!
In the past, I have found that when I practice forgiveness and gratitude, so much of what drives me to ungodly choices–including eating outside of 0 and 5–disappears.
I think these are the basics I need to return to. Again. 🙂 Truly, gratitude is the path to joy. When I am joyful in the Lord, I don’t look to other things to make me happy. It really works.
by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 18, 2009 | Blog
Day 16 in the Thin Within book by Arthur and Judy Halliday provides opportunity to review the godly goals that were set on Day 3. As I look at how diligently I am pursuing these godly goals–the goals that I am convinced that God led me to establish at the beginning of our study–I am convicted that I am not giving the Lord my best. Not even my second best.
I am tempted to beat myself up over this. But the book reminds me that I can just observe and correct. Adjust things. Make changes:
No self-condemnation or wagging of fingers. No demerits. You can experience forgiveness, freedom, correction, and grace every step of the way. Thin Within, page 161
So here is where I want to call us on our tendency. If you are anything like me, if you are half way through a book or a program and haven’t even begun to realize your goals, it is a HUGE temptation to just scrap the entire thing–to quit, to bail.
“Forget it! I am failing, so why bother trying? I could never accomplish my goals by the end of the book/program/whatever now!”
“This is a waste to keep going!”
Is this godly thinking, though?
No. God IS at work. He IS completing that which He has begun. Physical results aside, he is tilling the soil of our hearts, planting new teaching, reminding us of things that we have known before and so on.
To quit because we haven’t started to make physical progress is to cave in to a dieting mentality.
Let’s remember that God isn’t about our body…he is about something deeper that, when surrendered, will translate into changes in our physical bodies. But for now, perseverance at this important time WILL make a difference! It is part of that marble jar again. The jar fills up with each moment that we return to Him with an “I blew it tonight, Lord, but I offer myself to you afresh. Please take me…make me yours…” He receives that with applause and marbles tossed with joy into the jar!
Remember that His grace was never intended to be merely a pardon for past, present, and future sins. His grace is also a provision for your daily, moment-by-moment needs. Invite Him to infuse your life, enabling you to have insight, wisdom, discernment, and power to live according to His best for you. Thin Within, page 162
The Significant Times Exercise on pages 164-166 may seem extreme. I urge you to prayerfully go through this if you haven’t already. Even though I have done this exercise so many times, God was faithful to give me a new insight, even today. Every one of my four most significant times memories had a direct affect on my body or how I viewed my body at the time. I do believe that these moments in history were where I learned to cope with things inappropriately and resorted to eating for one reason or another.
This certainly encourages me that I am not nuts! There are reasons that I struggle as I do. I don’t use this as an excuse for sin, but as a way of understanding myself and all that I must take to the Lord as I pray through my struggles to give God my eating.
Like Amanda, we too can take hold of God’s hand and experience His grace and healing. He will turn even painful things to purposeful things–in fact He is glorified in doing so. Pray that God will help you to see your part as he sees it–as redeemable. It is so comforting to know that God does not waste anything in our lives. He uses everything to shape and mold us into His likeness. Thin Within, page 168
God is going to show us His redemption of all the years the locusts have eaten. Rather than give up or throwing in the towel, let’s fix our eyes on Him again and look to Him for HIS solution, His will, His way.
If you haven’t been generating your list of God’s attributes and taking time to praise Him for His character, today is a great day to begin that practice again. I know I need to.
If you haven’t yet done the “Perfect Meal” exercise in chapter 15, try to fit that into your life today, too! Tell us about it here!
