Week 09 – Assignment Thin Within Book

by Heidi Bylsma | Aug 8, 2010 | Blog

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.

Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook #1 Details

by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 24, 2010 | Blog

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:  

1. Workbook #1
2. The Temple Toolkit
3. The Memory Challenge Cards (click on the image to see a large version and click again to see it magnified further):

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:

• Lesson material – This is dense written material that you will read to glean the concepts that we are teaching or reviewing during the week. I usually recommend about an hour spent with this, highlighting, asterisking, and looking up the verses in my own bible. I may even write comments in the margin or, if I am leading a group, questions to be sure to ask participants.

• Each of the reading portions of the lesson are divided into these segments:

• Introduction – a brief overview of the week’s focus
• Spiritual Information – the relationship this material has to the Scriptures
• Physiological Information – the “mechanics” — what you can actually do to make additional changes in your eating to honor the Lord
• Integration – How it all works together

• Exercises – Don’t worry! These aren’t calisthenics! LOL! They are basically guided daily quiet times. 🙂 Each week includes “exercises” for each day of the week. Days six and seven are optional and a bit “lighter.” Days one through five include the following sections:

• Going Deeper – This relates some aspect of the lesson you have read to your life
• Bible Study – This shows how Scripture illustrates or illuminates the principles taught in the lesson
• Knowing God By Heart – One of the best parts, this is a study of the attributes of God. We have found that the way a participant views God impacts how she will view food, herself, her body, as well as her willingness (or not) to surrender this aspect of her life to the Lord for His purposes.
• Getting Practical – These are suggestions for putting some of the mechanics of the program into practice
• Memory Challenge – Hiding God’s Word in our hearts will enable us to be reminded of our commitment to him when we are weak! Memorizing scripture is extremely helpful for renewing our mind and changing our thinking!

• Review of the Week – This provides a space where you can summarize what God has shown you or questions and thoughts you have had. This section is especially helpful when you meet with others in a group setting. 🙂

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

1. Hope
2. My Body–God’s Temple
3. Identity in Christ
4. Celebration of God’s Grace, Part One
5. Restoration
6. Counting the Cost
7. The Fight of Faith
8. Celebration of God’s Grace, Part Two
9. Building Godly Boundaries
10. Forgiveness
11. Prayer
12. Celebration of God’s Grace, Part Three

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:

1. Pray
2. Get permission from anyone that you need to in order to have your class
3. Publicize your class. There are resources available here.
   
4. Check in here or at the TW forums to let us know that you have a live class that will be participating
5. Order your materials!
6. Keep praying! 🙂

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!

Week 06 – Assignment Thin Within Book

by Heidi Bylsma | Jul 18, 2010 | Blog

This week will require more reading than previously, as we will be reading chapters 10, 11, and 12 in the Thin Within book.

This week’s assignment:

1.) Check in! Post here at some point this week and give us a status update! You are being prayed for and about and even if you feel like you aren’t getting the “food thing” together, God IS at work! He IS doing a new thing. You may not see it, but can you believe him for it? 🙂

2.) Continue your list of God’s attributes.

3.) Take time each day to praise God for some of the attributes on your list. This is an act of faith. Even if you haven’t experienced him in the way His Word says He IS, you can, in faith say, “God I know your Word says you are the HEALER. I anticipate that you are MY healer, that you ARE healing ME! Show me this in my life, Lord! Thank you that, by faith, I can know it is true! I choose to walk in that truth today!“

4.) What are some things you have added to your gratitude journal lately? Why not take time for a Praise-Fest of your own and go back over all of them at once as a prayer to God? Do this out loud when you can do so without feeling embarrassed and overheard! LOL! Or maybe that would be a GOOD thing! 🙂 Keep on adding things to your gratitude journal.

5.) Read and complete Days 10, 11, and 12 – through page 130. Be sure to be prayerful as you go, give yourself the time to finish all the material without rushing. If you *do* feel like you need to linger longer with a concept, give yourself grace to do so! Nothing about our schedule is cold and fast. 🙂

6.) Chapter 10 opens with this question: “Today, will you choose to ‘press on’ rather than spend time reliving your defeats, or even your successes? Today, will you choose to continue to allow God to renew, restore, refresh, and remake you? He brings glorious wonder from what we think are defeats.” What is your answer to this? It might be good to write this question down in your journal (or copy and paste it) each day and answer it. 🙂

7.) Chapter 10 speaks about failure. As you read this material, prayerfully consider if you agree with it. Continue to jot down anything you are reminded about the attributes of God.

8.) At the bottom of page 101, there are some questions to ask yourself. Try this and let us know how it impacts you!

9.) Continue to add to your “Fat Machinery Log.” Did God reveal anything new during the past week?

10.)  Chapter 11 begins to focus us on developing discernment. Please keep in mind that this doesn’t mean we leave freedom behind! Not at all! Freedom remains the foundation! Can you identify with the attitude behind the statement “This is my body and I can do with it what I please” ? How so? What is God calling you to do, say, think, feel?

11. ) Complete the activity on page 113. Did God reveal anything to you about the lies you have been believing? (This reminds me of our discussion about truth journaling…have you been doing that? If not, how about giving it a try? If so, can you post and let us know how it is going?)

12.) Chapter 12 evaluates further the lies we believe and the value of replacing lies with truth. It is very easy along the path of God’s provision to hop back on to the path of my performance. It usually begins with a subtle lie or shading of the truth. This chapter encourages us to really evaluate our thinking and to be circumspect so as not to allow ourselves to become focused again on our performance. We do this in two ways, typically: 1. We are proud of how well we are doing and want the world to see our new body and how great it looks in the next size down. or 2. We are ashamed of how poorly we are doing and want to quit altogether. The truth is, whether we are releasing weight or not, God is doing a work in our hearts and we want to keep submitting to that process! Grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness.

13.) Turn to page 125-127 and read this list out loud. Even better if you can stand in front of a mirror and  read it as if you were giving a speech to someone (yourself!). The statements here come from Scripture. Do you believe them? Ask God to help you to trade the lies you have been believing for his truth. The challenges we face with weight, food, self-loathing are truly a battle of the mind. What will we choose to believe? We will live out of our beliefs.

14.) Join us at one of our chats this week! Or visit a different venue to offer encouragement to others. (You can find them all at our God Is Doing a New Thing website).

God IS doing a new thing! He IS! 🙂

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? 🙂

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!