In yesterday’s post, we looked at how we often fight God as he tries to rescue us.
Today, let’s roll up our sleeves and do a bit of bible study.
In Genesis 19, we read of a daring rescue. Two angels arrive at Lot’s home in Sodom with a mission. The city will be destroyed, but God’s heart of compassion is moved for Lot and his family. While Lot and his family members move their feet, doing that to which they are called to ensure their rescue, one is lost. Lot’s wife could have experienced freedom, but couldn’t release the past. Her reticence to release what was behind put a swift end to her life. Her feet may have moved the right direction, but her heart was stuck in the past…
Read Genesis 19:14-17,26:
14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the LORD is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
15 With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”
16 When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the LORD was merciful to them. 17 As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”
26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
Why do you think Lot’s wife looked back?
What might this say about her heart?
To all appearances, Lot’s wife was doing what was required. She was moving physically in the right direction. But, apparently, her heart was unwilling to be torn from the familiar, even though the familiar was dreadfully evil. She was going through the motions of obedience with a heart stuck in unwillingness. The price was high.
Describe a situation when you were compelled to do something regarding your eating, eating disorder, or to get your body into a certain condition and discovered that, while you went through the motions, your heart wasn’t in it.
What were the short-term results?
What were the long-term results?
Read Philippians 3:7-14:
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Even as the darkness of the former kingdom falls behind and the hero leads the way to victory, the adventure has yet to reach its conclusion. There is the happily ever after yet ahead. We haven’t “arrived” even once the physical rescue is complete!
From the passage above (especially verses 12 and following), describe Paul’s current condition and intention. Two are done for you (you can tell what the other answers are by the word “I” in front of each or implied in front of each):
From these verses, how is Apostle Paul’s heart in Philippians 3 different from the heart of Lot’s wife?
Rewrite Philippians 3:14 in a journal you use for your Thin Within journey. Use your own language, paraphrasing it to capture the theme of “happily ever after.”
Please read Matthew 16:24,25
24Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
Lot’s wife was called to chase hard after God. In order to do that, however, she had to be willing to let go, to lose her life. Doing so would offer new life—a life that held great promise.
Paul counted his previous life rubbish compared to that which Christ offered yet ahead.
Are you willing to consider all your dieting books, counters, scales (including the bathroom scale) rubbish? Are you willing to deny yourself the use of that which is familiar in exchange for the freedom that the Lord offers ahead of you if you will follow His leading? Journal your thoughts.
We may be called to a long, circuitous route of wandering through the desert to learn the lessons that our Savior has for us, but we can trust that every minute will be worth it. He calls us to leave whatever is behind us, and follow Him, wherever He may lead us.
It is true that our Savior calls us not to merely stand off as a spectator and be a fan, cheering him on as he saves the day. No! Instead, he calls us to follow him, but to do so, we must count our past—even our “good,” dieting pasts, practices that we consider reliable—as rubbish, take up our cross, the vehicle through which death may come, and follow Him. If we cling to what we have known, to the life that has been, we will actually continue in the slow death we have been living. If we let go of what has come before, release our hold on our coping mechanisms, obsessions, and bad habits, we will find Life!
When the pain of where we have been over-rides the pain of what may be, we will release our hold on what we have known in favor of going forward into uncharted territory. As long as we aren’t quite that uncomfortable with our predicament, however, we won’t trust the Lord with the journey he has in mind to take us up and out. In fact, this may be one reason why God allows us to “hit bottom.” He wants us to see the futility of clinging so tightly to that which snuffs life out of us.
When we finally release our hold on that which we have held so dear, trust him that it is these very things that are denying us the life we long for, it is then that our arms are able to open wide to embrace his very best…and that is what he has in mind—the very best.
What About You?
How does God want you to respond to the truth you studied today?
Half of the image above was photoshopped by someone at iStockPhoto. Which is beauty? Which is untouched? Who is to say what the standard of beauty is.
This week we look at that a bit. I am excited!
BUT…
…I worked my patootie off editing a video for you for this week’s session and then inadvertently deleted it…so I have to give it up. So sorry. I just can’t seem to figure out how to recover it. So here are my notes from my video…
This is a GREAT lesson this week! We will get to DIVE in and invite God to help us to KNOW FULL WELL that we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Let’s seek His will, His heart, His mind, His truth about our bodies, shall we? We want to pray: Lord, help me to know full well that I am fearfully and wonderfully made!
The authors redefine “Body Beautiful,” reminding us that our bodies are wonderful inventions that hug needy friends and family members, carry us, kiss a special someone, serve those in need, nurse babies, etc. If we could really believe that these things are what define “body beautiful,” I think we would break free of some destructive lies that hinder our freedom!
These are lies that are perpetuated by the media. Have a look at the Dove video called, Evolution:
The truth is, the perfect body doesn’t exist! It is PhotoShopped! We want to be able to love our bodies–the wonderful creations that God has given us, but in order to do that, we may have to go about it in a round-about way. We may have to get to know our God better. As we get to know him, we will love him more and more and begin to see that he has created our bodies in a truly marvelous way. One of the best ways to get to know God is with a God List (I have shared this here at the blog numerous times, but I really believe strongly that this is SO helpful, so I will keep mentioning it!). As you begin to love God more and more, you see that what he creates is wonderful and trustworthy and amazing…and that means YOUR body!
We are in week 4 of our HEAL study this week. So you may be wondering “How do I know what my ‘natural, God-given size’ is supposed to be?” The authors mentioned it briefly early on, but I want to highlight it again. Here is the definition of YOUR personally unique natural God-given size! Ready?
Your natural, God-given size is the size you become
when you
eat according to
God’s parameters for you–hunger and satisfaction.
When you do that, you will “land on”
and
maintain
the size you are intended
by your Creator to be.
What is so awesome about this, is that there is no need for a bathroom scale ever again! Use the hunger scale and you won’t need a bathroom scale! You just keep at this 0 to 5 eating and you will become the size you are supposed to be and you will live there. No fuss! No muss! No obsession! This really IS freedom. Never having to worry about the content of your food ever again. Never having to live in fear about the “weigh in” ever again. Sure, your size may vary a bit, but you will know that eating 0 to 5 a bit more faithfully will restore that healthy size once again.
It is SO worth pursuing this! Honest! 🙂 This is ONE thing I really DO know! 🙂
Spend some time asking the Lord to show you what your “Body Vision Statement” should be. Then, dare to write it down! 🙂 On Friday, you can share it with us. 🙂 (If you want…)
Do you still need an accountability partner? Visit the Accountability page and pick someone that you feel God is leading you to possibly reach out to. Email me and I will forward your request to her. You may want to consider a second and a third option in case the person that you select first has a partner already. But after you email me, I will shoot your request to the person you have asked about. If you don’t hear anything, it is possible that they haven’t checked their email…you can shoot me the name of another person and we can keep trying until we get you linked up. Something this important is WORTH persevering about, ok? 🙂
If you have an accountability partner, it may be worthwhile to check in and evaluate how your accountability is going. Do you need more frequent check-ins? Less frequent? Is it taking too much of your time and you are concerned? Are you LOVING it? 🙂 You may want to open a dialog to tweak your partnership so it can be even more effective. I honestly believe that if you want an accountability partner, there is no reason that you should be without. A bunch of you are celebrating the value of being partners! Let’s do this for everyone!
This week, consider prayerfully what a godly approach to activity (exercise) might be for you. You might want to try Dance Praise (I just did a search and “Digital Praise” seems to be out of business, but you can still get Dance Praise from various vendors, I think). It is a “game” for the computer that includes a mat and Christian dance music in a video-game like approach similar to “Dance Dance Revolution.” What are some activities that you enjoy to move your body?
Gratitude has been life-changing for me. This, too, is covered a bit this week. I would love to see everyone here create an online gratitude blog! We could share them with one another and be not only a dynamic supportive community like we currently are, but one of the most grateful communities online, too! My gratitude blog is found here (I need to update it more frequently!). I have found that when I practice gratitude daily, my ME oriented mentality can’t thrive! MY food, MY body, MY way, MY will just has no where to rest when I am thanking God for HIS gifts, HIS will, HIS way. Truly, it is really hard to reach for more food than my body needs when I take the posture of humility that gratitude requires. Try it and see what you think!
I am eager to see what you add to the Body Beautiful Checklist!
Also, develop your affirmations in the “Challenge” on page 74.
Memorize 1 Corinthians 6:19,20. God will use this verse and crucial moments to encourage you to offer yourself to God in humble devotion and worship as HIS property!
I dunno, but this lady looks nutty like I feel today. I saw this picture and there was something about it that screamed “ME!” Can you relate? For me, it is because of…well…have a look at this video (if you dare). It is more of a rant than a teaching video. Truly…it is Heidi letting her hair down if you will. SCARY.
See why I said I am this woman? She looks like she is prepared to travel. Like she is putting a lid on all her emotions…but they are ready to surface at any given moment. I need TRUTH to put my feet on the ground! I need TRUTH to keep me from freaking out when I travel at all, let alone for 16 days. I need TRUTH to keep me from letting my emotions run amok with me!
So, as I prepare this post ahead of time, I am preparing my mind for action–for obedience. Right now, as you read this, I am in New York. If you watched the video, you know how I feel about this! LOL! But I am preparing now (while I am still home writing this) for obedience. I am speaking TRUTH to my spirit daily as I prepare for the trip and the emotions and other stuff that all go with traveling!
Daily – I will wake up each morning to have a quiet time and first on my list after warming to Jesus’ welcome to the day will be to use My Affirmations about 0 to 5 eating list to renew my mind.
Because this list travels with me everywhere via Evernote, I will also pull it out mid-morning (before lunch) and mid-afternoon as a reminder about what is really important to me.
I will remind myself that vacations are a wonderful time to train myself to keep my boundaries no matter what happens in life. Life will be filled with all kinds of challenges and opportunities. I want to train myself for godliness, for obedience and that I can “celebrate” with means other than food and overeating!
I plan to shoot an email to my accountability partner each day that I have internet access.
I will ask God daily to open my eyes to His Wonders so that I might keep track in my gratitude blog. If internet access isn’t available, I will use my 1000 Gifts app on my phone to take pictures of the gifts God brings my way. It is pretty tough to give in to “entitlement” or “justification” eating (what typically travels with me on vacations) if I foster a humble spirit grateful to God for all his gifts and blessings!
What strategies will you plan to use when you next go on vacation or have a holiday? Mother’s Day and Memorial Day are coming up. What challenges might face you and what will you do to plan for victory? How will you make provision for obedience?
Emotional Eating Barb encourages us to make use of Renewing Your Mind Tools that she has at her website so that we can overcome the temptation to eat out of emotions. I have included that link here. Barb has written a full-length workbook called Freedom From Emotional Eating. While it is from a dieting perspective, I found it valuable when I went through it a few years ago. Please, though, if you are struggling with the dieting mentality, don’t run out and order this now. There is time later! But if you feel you have some distance and space from the dieting mentality and feel somewhat confident that your 0 to 5 boundaries won’t be derailed in favor of counting calories or points any time soon, then by all means, order her book!
Many of us are habitual…can I say this…drama queens! Ok, maybe you aren’t, but I know I have been. God is really working on training me to diffuse the drama rather than INFUSE the drama (with extra fuel). It is really helping! The video was just an example of a mild version of how dramatic I can be! Crazy, huh?
The truth is…TRUTH MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.
At the heart of emotional eating one simple truth diffuses my tendency to go to food:
Food won’t meet the need of my heart.
It just won’t.
What strategies will you use to diffuse emotions that might lead you to look for comfort in food? Please share with us any victories you have experienced recently and/or any questions or even prayer requests you have about an upcoming potential situation.
—-
Note: This is our final day of the “Ditch Your Scale” Challenge. Some of us bailed early. Some of us bailed mid-way through. Some of us made it all the way through. No matter what, let’s celebrate that GOD IS DOING A NEW THING and prayerfully ask him to show us the importance we place on the bathroom scale. If we are living according to His leading, eating 0 to 5 as he directs us, do we really need to be concerned with our weight? The truth is, we will land on a healthy size and stay there…without worrying about keeping ourselves “honest” with the bathroom scale. Just a thought. Would love to hear from you about this. 🙂
In a little over two weeks, we will begin our new study using a book called HEAL – Healthy Eating & Abundant Living by Allie Marie Smith and Judy Wardell Halliday. Whether you are new to Thin Within or a veteran, this material will meet you where you are. Allie and Judy have provided a fresh approach for a younger generation and even though many of us are not in that “younger generation” necessarily (I know that I’m not!), I have found that most of us face similar challenges. In fact, often the challenges we faced when we were in college are the same or similar to the ones we face now!
My initial announcement about this study may be found at this link. Feel free to have a look. To purchase the book so you are ready to go, you can visit Amazon and that link is here.
For the study, we will continue to make use of the principles we have been using during Barb Raveling’s Weight Loss Bible Study. I will encourage you to renew your mind and to truth journal.
Here is how it will work…(I think! LOL!)
Each Monday, I will post a video that gives a preview of the week’s material. In this video, I will mention the assignment–highlighted also in the day’s post. There are six chapters in the book, so one chapter a week will be what we go through. When you get your book, get familiar with it.
Then, through the week, I will post content here at the blog that you can use whether your in the study or not. Even if you aren’t in the study, the material here will be intended to support and encourage you. If you are going through the study, it is my intention that the material I post at the blog will supplement and complement the study of the HEAL book. This has been my intention with the Weight Loss Bible Study, too. That way, whether you are plunging in with the study or not, you will find content here that supports you!
The section in the chapters marked “For Group Study” will be woven throughout the blog during the week–but, again, even if you aren’t doing the study, you can participate in that and be encouraged by it!
On Fridays or Saturdays, I hope to wrap up the week’s study with a summary.
Our study will conclude about the second week in June (if I have it calculated correctly). I hope you will join us!
What questions do you have about the study? Feel free to ask here–chances are if you have a question someone else does too!
Day 3 of our Ditch Your Scale Challenge: What promises of God are you “standing on” instead of standing on the bathroom scale? 🙂
This week, we deal with two really important challenges to our 0 to 5 eating boundaries:
“Yummy Food Eating” – when the food is there and it is “yummy” and we want it, so there! (Yep, it really is that simple sometimes!)
and
“Bad Scale Eating” – when I get on the bathroom scale and am depressed that I didn’t get away with eating outside of my boundaries or jubilant that I did or am disappointed by unrealized expectations and want to eat to celebrate or medicate (depending).
Can you relate to either of these causes for eating?
So jump on over to Barb’s blog and do Days 13 and 14.
Below are my thoughts on “Yummy Food Eating” outside of our 0 and 5 boundary.
(As always, if you are an email subscriber to the blog, the video doesn’t show up. Please come to the blog to see the video! Thanks.)
This week continue with your renewing of the mind goal. I would LOVE to hear how this is going for you. Are you discovering that you are changing the way you are thinking by being proactive about what thoughts you will allow your mind to dwell on? Is it time to recommit to renewing your mind each day or more than once each day? I know it is for me!
Please complete Day 13 and 14 (links above the video). More to come this week on these topics.
Please share with us here any questions or thoughts you may have.
What can you do to be proactive about the temptation that “yummy foods” offer you?
