by Christina Smith | Sep 15, 2014 | Blog, Inspiration, Renew Mind
CHIRP! The purpose of smoke alarms in our home is to let us know there is smoke hot enough, born from a fire, and that we need to get out! The alarms tell us to find safety, and that our lives are endangered. Their purpose is to save lives. So when a smoke alarm’s battery runs low, it lets us know that we need to change the battery with an annoying, inconsistent, “chirp!” That little chirp means, “If you don’t take care of this now, I’m just going to get more and more obnoxious. And if you fail to change my battery, I won’t be able to help you in case of an emergency.” In reference to our Thin Within journey of finding freedom from the control of food, there are situations (“fire”) that arise (like smoke rising), that sets off the “renewing-of-the-mind” alarm saying CHIRP!–YOU NEED TO RENEW YOUR MIND!
Last week, a smoke alarm in our house was chirping at me and letting me know its battery needed to be changed. The chirping sound is not something one can easily ignore. And the longer I put off changing the battery, the more often it chirped. I believe life has these same “chirps”, letting us know something needs to change or be recharged. From this chirping episode, the Lord showed me that there are “chirps” and alarms that go off in our life telling us that we need to change something. He showed me that there are things that tell me I need to stop and renew my mind.
Some of the “alarms” could be anything that trigger overeating or disorder in our eating. Maybe it’s after a stressful day and you just want to come home, grab the cookie jar, plop your feet up on your recliner, and shovel in the cookies. Maybe it’s finding out some upsetting news and you drive to the nearest fast-food drive-thru, knowing full-well that you are going to “super-size” and try to numb yourself with food. Maybe you put your jeans on and they are a little tighter than you remember and you feel tempted to try that new diet your friends were talking about. There are hundreds of things that can trigger our own personal out-of-order eating experience.
What kind of “smoke” sets off your alarm for needing to “recharge” or to renew your mind?
You aren’t hungry, but those brownies are screaming your name!! CHIRP!
You are at a “5”, but you really want another serving of salad from the buffet. CHIRP!
You ate an entire package of Oreos. CHIRP!
You want to eat your way through your emotions. CHIRP!
You weighed yourself and you gained. CHIRP!
You know what’s so cool about renewing our mind? Because, ultimately, it’s the LORD who does the work! Even recently, the Lord has been reminding me that I am transformed through HIS work, not me behaving better or making all of the perfect choices. It’s GOD! That revelation is oh so freeing!
Romans 12:2 says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
When you hear a CHIRP!, renew your mind! Grab your Bible, your truth cards, your journal, or get up and have a dance praise fest! Or use whatever tools or ways that work for you to put on God’s truth!
How about you? What’s setting off your “renewing-of-the-mind” alarm? Are you trying to overcome by your own strength and will-power? Christ said that we can do all things through His strength! Let’s strengthen our spiritual muscles by getting into His Word! Do you need to change your “battery” by renewing your mind?
by Christina Smith | Sep 12, 2014 | Blog, Inspiration, Renew Mind
Image courtesy of nongpimmy at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
We get so discouraged when we break a boundary. We eat when we aren’t hungry (zero). We blow past satisfaction (5). We bring out that “club of condemnation” one more time (sigh). But wait! STOP! Pause. Freeze it right there! Come a little closer to the screen. Yes, there. Now let me tell you a little secret (hands cupped over your ear): Failure leads to victory! Sorry, did I shout that into your ear instead of whispering. Sorry! I just get a little excited!
It’s true! It’s not about following your boundaries 100% all.of.the.time. It’s about going to God if you break your boundaries. We get so upset when we break our boundaries. We feel bad about ourselves. We think we will never be able to follow our boundaries. So then we overeat because we feel bad about ourselves. It’s like this vicious cycle that is perpetuated by our thoughts, beliefs, despair, thinking we will never be skinny anyway, so we might as well eat. Sound familiar?
But what would happen if we looked at every boundary breakage (aka failure) and renewed our mind instead? What if instead of feeling bad about ourselves and discouraged, we got really excited because we get to get closer to the Lord because of our failure?
I tell you what would happen: we would have victory!
I’ve seen it! I’ve experienced this! I’ve tasted it! When I break a boundary, I get so excited that I get to sit with Jesus and talk things over. Maybe I’m just an odd one…wait…I KNOW I’m an odd one! But really, I do get excited to renew my mind and bring all of my thoughts and feelings before the Lord. I love that as I am real with Him, He shows me His truth.
So how does this work? How does failure turn into victory?
Here’s an example: Evening was the most tempting time for me to want to overeat. I had a really hard time breaking the habit of eating outside of my boundaries in the evening. I would put my daughter to bed and then immediately I would make some popcorn or grab some sort of snack, and then eat it in front of the TV (distraction, mindless eating). It wouldn’t matter if I was hungry or not, that’s the habit I had developed over the years (and well before my daughter). I knew I wanted to change it, but I kept on doing it. I would feel so bad and would feel like I failed yet again. My solution (well, God’s solution) was that after I put my daughter to bed, I would sit and read through my truth cards, or I would answer a set of questions from I Deserve a Donut in my journal, and reading scriptures. I took that time to renew my mind. Change didn’t happen right away, but as I took the time each night to renew my mind, little by little, day by day, the Lord was transforming me, until one day I no longer had the urge to grab something to eat after putting my daughter to bed. And since then, I just wait until I’m hungry to have an evening snack. And sometimes I am not hungry for a snack, and I’m totally ok with that. That’s a huge change! Victory!
It wasn’t self-control. It wasn’t will-power. It was GOD who changed me! My part was being self-disciplined in taking the time to sit with Him and renew my mind.
Failure led to victory!
We try to change our outcome through our own strength. We think if we change our habit or behavior first, then our thoughts and beliefs will line up. But it’s actually the other way around. First, we have to change our thoughts and beliefs, and THEN we will change our habits and behavior. We tell ourselves that we will “do better next time.” We strive and put forth all of our own human effort to see change in our eating habits, but when we lean upon ourselves to make it happen, we will only become weak and tired. It’s God who helps us overcome. It’s not in our own strength. So each time we go to Him and repent after we’ve sinned, we are transformed more and more to His likeness. When we renew our mind after overeating, we are transformed.
I look at failure as opportunity to grow. I look at failure as practice.
It took Thomas Edison 1,000+ times before he had the invention of the light bulb “perfected”. Every failure led to victory. He didn’t give up. And just because we overate just now or last night, it doesn’t mean we smash all of the light bulbs and give up. It means we keep going forward. We renew our mind. We go to God. We think that because of failing to follow our boundaries, that we need new boundaries. Maybe you’ve been really trying your best to follow your boundaries of eating between hunger and satisfaction, but you keep overeating. Does that mean your boundaries don’t work? No way! It means it’s time to renew your mind. It’s time to go sit at the feet of Jesus and drink in His truth.
So the next time you are tempted to fail: go to Jesus. Renew your mind. The next time you break a boundary: seek His truth. And know that each time you do, you are one step closer to victory! Sweet, sweet victory!!
Would you like to know more about renewing your mind? There are so many great resources on this website and blog about doing just that. Do you have a set of truth cards? If not, you can learn more about it here. I also have recorded a set of my truth cards on a Sound Cloud file that you can find here. Do you have a set of questions to help aid you in renewing your mind such as Barb Raveling’s I Deserve a Donut? How else can we, at Thin Within, help to encourage you to renew your mind and see failure as victory?
by Christina Motley | Aug 8, 2014 | Blog, Inspiration, Renew Mind
It was going to be an incredibly busy day. I jumped out of bed after hitting the snooze button a couple of times, groggy and half asleep. It had been a late night for me what with helping Katherine finish up her history project, reading just one more story with Madeline, filling out an orchestra permission slip for Christopher and cleaning up a huge kitchen mess. Then I had to gather materials for my first and third grade groups, and yes – Grandma Lois needed her laundry folded and put away – she had called me from the top of the stairs, asking for her favorite pajamas. My husband had been exhausted from a long day at work and an evening of working through finances with his mother. It was hard to imagine a more overwhelming season of life as my head hit the pillow.
I showered and dressed for work in the pitch dark and ice cold of the winter and I was grateful for a few quiet minutes alone. I sat down with my journal and started to pray. Lord . . . how will I be able to get it all done today? I am so tired, there is so much to do, so much to take care of right now. I am so inadequate, so insecure, so unequipped. I need you!!! I had hoped for a song to pop into my head, or a Bible verse to jump out at me, or a voice to speak in my mind, but all was quiet. The room was as still as can be . . . I only heard the tick, tick, ticking of the clock. It was good to be still for just a moment. I knew what I had to do, what I had committed to do as many times as I could squeeze it in during my crazy, busy day. I needed to renew my mind in Christ. In the most quiet, patient, loving way I felt Jesus beckon me to come to Him and fill my mind with His truth.
I showered and dressed for work in the pitch dark and ice cold of the winter and I was grateful for a few quiet minutes alone. I sat down with my journal and started to pray. Lord . . . how will I be able to get it all done today? I am so tired, there is so much to do, so much to take care of right now. I am so inadequate, so insecure, so unequipped. I need you!!! I had hoped for a song to pop into my head, or a Bible verse to jump out at me, or a voice to speak in my mind, but all was quiet. The room was as still as can be . . . I only heard the tick, tick, ticking of the clock. It was good to be still for just a moment. I knew what I had to do, what I had committed to do as many times as I could squeeze it in during my crazy, busy day. I needed to renew my mind in Christ. In the most quiet, patient, loving way I felt Jesus beckon me to come to Him and fill my mind with His truth.
I had been entrenched in emotional eating my entire adult life. I had popped chocolate chips like pills, snuck through drive thrus on the way to a destination, eaten bowls of ice cream late at night, baked cookies for the neighbors so that I could eat half of the dough in the bowl, and eaten chips and salsa until I had to unbutton my pants . . . I had been a seasoned emotional eater for at least 30 years, and no one knew it. After having my third child almost 9 years ago and weighing more than I had ever weighed I remember thinking, well now at least I have the excuse of being in my late 30’s and having been pregnant three times! I told everyone, myself included, that I had tried everything there was to try – every diet, every type of exercise, every book to work through, every weight loss group – and I just couldn’t get the weight off no matter what. This was the thorn in my side that I would just have to deal with for the rest of my life, I thought. I remember desperately looking through the photo albums in my mom’s cabinet, hoping to find that all of the women on my side of the family were overweight. They were, and I was able to tell myself that this was a matter of genetics and there was nothing I could do.
So, back to the cold, winter morning! As I resolved to renew my mind I looked out the window and noticed that tiny, shimmering snowflakes were falling from the sky. It was a magical moment, and I felt God’s touch on my heart. Just a few weeks before, in my desperation, utter frustration with myself and despair I had decided to give the principles of Thin Within a try one more time. I had been almost ready to give up . . . but not quite. Something was different this time. At first I was able to follow my boundaries just minutes at a time, then several hours at a time, and now I was completely surprised to find that I could even go a half a day without breaking my boundaries. Dinner time was a huge challenge for me. I would begin preparing dinner with slight hunger, nibble during the preparation, sit down to dinner not really hungry at all and then eat a regular size meal to end up way past full. Some days I would stuff in dessert after that because after all, I had already messed the whole thing up, right? But things were changing . . . yes, something was really different this time.
I had a short praise fest with God, read through some truth cards and surrendered my crazy, busy day to the Lord. Then I spent about a minute going through my day in my mind and preparing myself for the challenges with eating ahead. Should I stop and get a mocha on the way to work? I’m not hungry at all for breakfast this morning, should I take something along with me and eat it during recess? What if my favorite donuts are in the lounge today? I will be having a celebration party with my Kindergarten group today, will I be hungry when I pass out the graham crackers and grapes? There will undoubtedly be chocolates passed around during the staff meeting after school, what should I do about that? When I get home after school the kids will be hungry as always for snacks. Should I join them? What if I am not hungry? What will I be making for dinner tonight? What if I don’t nibble before dinner, then have an extra small portion of spaghetti and save room for a couple of oreos to eat with the family?
I walked through my busy day intentionally interacting with His truth for me, and thanking Him whenever I had the chance . . . at my desk in the morning while preparing materials, in the bathroom during recess, in the hallway on the way to pick up my next group, on my way home from picking up my middle schoolers in the car. This wasn’t easy! It was hard work to focus on God’s truth for me all day long, and I really did not have the time. But it was GOOD work. It felt good, and right, and before I knew it hours and hours were going by in which I had stuck to my boundaries. Wow!
So, what is different this time? My focus! I have completely changed my focus and for the first time in my life, and all of the things I have tried to change my heart in this thorn in my side of emotional eating – something really IS different. My heart is changing and I am so grateful. I am deliberately, systematically, relentlessly, creatively finding the time to renew my mind with God’s truth so often during each day that I am finally starting to crowd out the lies and untruths that have held me back and paralyzed me in this area of my life for so long. What is true for me right now, Lord, in this very situation? God will show you if you ask. He will show you in the most loving, understanding, gentle way, and then He will wink at you, or smile at you, or wrap His arms around you and remind you how much He loves you. These are some of the most precious moments I have ever had with my Savior, and I wouldn’t trade them for all the baked potatos, oreo cookies and chicken sandwiches in the world!
I sang “Jesus Loves You” to my youngest daughter in the darkness of the night and kissed her goodnight. She was the last one, the other two were already asleep and my husband was snoring, book in hand. In my exhaustion I made lunches for the next day, finished up the dishes, called in a prescription for my mother in law, put Madeline’s homework in her backpack, threw in a load of laundry, paid a few bills and collapsed on the couch. I closed my eyes and took a minute to think about the day. Lord, Lord! I made it! I had a couple of missteps with my boundaries, but overall I surrendered my food to you today and held it with open hands. A lovely feeling of victory surged through my body and I smiled for a whole minute. I invited Jesus to sit down with me on the couch and we enjoyed the moment together. It had started to snow again and there was a chill in the air. But my Savior was warming me with His presence, and it was the best feeling in the world.
“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for me?” Jeremiah 32:27
“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Phillipians 1:6
“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.” 1 Corinthians 6:12
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:a
What about you? Do you often feel that you are too busy to do the work of renewing your mind? Have you tried preparing for your day by thinking through how you might eat in certain situations? What might happen if you renew your mind with God’s amazing truth several times a day? I challenge you to try it . . . “taste” and see that God is good!!!
by Christina Smith | Aug 6, 2014 | Blog, Renew Mind
A few weeks ago, the Lord told me to “starve the skinny idol”. This was shortly after He showed me that I had made “skinny” an idol in my life. It was quite shocking news! Me? Serving an idol? Yup!
I dreamed of having “rock hard abs” or “flat abs”. I had envisioned myself looking like Denise Austen or other exercise gurus. I sought after it. I deemed myself too flabby and went on a quest to “live the dream”. Well, that so-called dream became my master.
“That other person, idea, or dream is your master, and it takes you over without your being aware of it.”*
That’s exactly what happened to me. I lived and breathed this desire to have a certain look. I wanted to be strong and to be at a certain weight. If there was a book about it, I read it. If there was a diet to help me live out my dream, I tried it or at least considered it. I joined a fitness forum online so I could discuss this dream. I counted calories. I tracked points. I stopped eating certain foods. I tried to eat only raw foods. And on and on and on.
I made skinny my “functional god”.
“They’re trapped, they’re deceived, and they’re miserable because they made a functional god of something or someone other than the one true living God.”*
I thought, when I am skinny, I will be happy. I wouldn’t be satisfied until I lost a certain amount of weight or looked a certain way. But even when I lost the desired weight, I thought, “How about 5 more pounds?” You see, the enemy loves that we serve the skinny idol, or any idol for that matter. He wants us to feel like we are never enough. So I thought if I tried a different method, diet, technique, workout program, etc., that then I would have what I wanted. Sure, I asked God for help, but “God won’t help us chase our idols.”*
My heart was set on being skinny. “Idolatry is who or what you worship, what you long for, what your heart is set on.”* And the sad thing is that back in the day, when I started on this quest, I was completely fine the way I was. I believed the lies of the enemy that I needed to be more or less. I didn’t think I was good enough where I was; so without realizing it, I built up my altar and started serving the skinny idol.
This is a photo of me from 2005, when I thought I needed to lose weight:
Oh how I wish I could go back to that young lady (myself) and tell myself that I was fine and to STOP obsessing. I wish I could go back and tell her the truth. I know different ones in my life did try, but I wasn’t convinced. I really thought something was wrong with me because I didn’t have rock-hard abs. I remember asking my husband to take pictures of me when I was sitting down so I could see if my stomach stuck out and rolled out as I was imagining it to be (it wasn’t). The funny thing is, after having two babies, and looking back, those abs look great! Ha!
So when the Lord revealed this idol to me about a month ago, I started to sort of panic. I have served this idol and it has served me. It’s been my familiar friend, my companion, my security blanket all of these years. It’s what I could obsess over; and boy, have I obsessed! “It’s hard [to demolish the idol], not only because they don’t want to leave, but also because we don’t really want to lose them.”* Exactly!
This idol has kept me “fixed”. It’s like a drug. I feel “high” when I focus on the things that feed this idol: like thinking about starting a new diet. “We may experience initial relief, so then we cling to them, making them the objects of our desire. As these objects grow in importance, our behavior becomes habitual and we can no longer satisfy or relieve our needs in healthy ways. Even if we want to break free, we find ourselves enslaved.”** I have looked to my idol to fulfill me; but only God can fulfill me.
I’ve often asked myself why I would give into this idol, this addiction. When I look back to when I erected this idol, there were a lot of things in my life that I felt were spinning out of control. Relationships were changing. Boundaries had to be placed. There was a lot of emotional uneasiness. Looking back, I am beginning to see that instead of depending on God completely, I began to place trust in this idol to help me through. I grasped onto anything that felt solid at the time to hold me up.
Now that He’s revealed this idol to me, I’m accountable to tear it down. In 1st and 2nd Chronicles, it talks about how there would be a new king on the throne and it would say if that king demolished the high places and idol altars or not. Kings built, tore down, and built them up again. I want this idol to come down for good and not ever be built up again. I’m starting to see that it comes down to 2 choices: either I can trust God or I can trust the “golden calves” of the skinny idol. I can serve God or “mammon”, but I cannot serve both.
I didn’t trust God to take care of this area of my life. Oh, I would claim He was leading me (which I think He did at times–to turn away from the idol), but I did NOT want to give up the control of this area of my life. It’s ridiculous because idols only hurt us. “We think they’re more predictable than God is, and they keep us in the driver’s seat.”* Oh yes, I have told God to move over plenty of times. I’m driving! I will get my rock-hard abs no matter what! Trust God? Whatever!
I didn’t want to wait on God. “And so we turn to idols, often just to remove the uneasy feeling of waiting and depending on God.”* I think a lie I have believed is, “God won’t help me, so I will do this myself. He probably just wants me to be fat.” Yeah…not cool! “We are anxious about our idols. We think, “What if I don’t get what I want? What if I lose it?”” I held on dearly to what I wanted because I was afraid God wouldn’t give it to me in my way and in my time. Truth is, God is more concerned about my heart than my outward appearance. Of course He wants us healthy and at our God-given weight, BUT He wants my heart. He is a jealous God. He doesn’t want us bowing down to any other gods. And I certainly made a god, an idol, out of skinny.
“Addiction and disordered eating end and dependence begins when we stop relying on our own will to get what we want and begin trusting God to give us what he knows we need.”**
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be slim, but it’s not ok when it’s ruling my life.
I want the guarantee that I will never be overweight again and that I will lose the “fluff” if I am going to follow God’s ways. But the thing is–nothing in this life is a guarantee! Only God is unshakable and unchangeable. He is our only guarantee.
So what it all boils down to is this–is God enough for me? If I never release another pound, is He enough? If I never have rock-hard abs, is He enough? Yes, yes, yes!!
What does it mean to “starve the skinny idol”? That’s something I’ve been asking the Lord and learning about. When you starve something, you don’t give it anything that will keep it alive, not even a crumb. So what’s kept this idol alive in my life? I can name a few things: obsessing over food, researching food and diets, being fixated on my body, reading anything that brings on the obsession, etc. So by starving the idol, that means not doing any of those things. And it also means changing my focus. We were all meant to serve God and have a relationship with Him. There is a yearning in every person’s heart for Him. But we find things that become “functional gods” to us. I want to serve God. I want to give Him all of my heart, mind and soul. I don’t want to give anymore of my time, heart, mind, or soul to “skinny”. My focus needs to get back onto Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, my Deliverer!
So as I’ve been working on taking down this idol and demolishing it, the idol has tried to remake itself in my life using what I listed above. And the areas this idol has served me has been tricky to pin down at times and it seems like it has 1,000 lives. I wrote this in my journal, “I have to ask God for help if I’m going to spot them, pin them down, and kill them as fast as they appear.”
“Whenever we erect and bow down to an idol, we displace our dependency on God. We struggle to stay at the center of it all through willpower, manipulating people, doing everything in our own strength, trying to look just right, and falsely believing that we are in charge of our life. We think we can do anything through willpower, even control our addictions, but the blessed gift of addiction is that it fails us. If we are honest with ourselves, we eventually reach a point where we must admit we can’t go on like this; that we are out of control. It is God who allows us to see the futility of placing our hope and trust in the false idols of our own making. Then he helps us discover and articulate the aching, unfulfilled emptiness at the core of our being and invites us to take the first step toward God-centered healing.”**
And that’s the thing, I was placing my dependency on this idol, not on God. I thought if I could just control my eating, that then I would get what I wanted. But what I truly needed was the Lord. I’m coming to realize that if there’s an idol, an addiction, or something is just plain wrong, that’s an indication that something within me needs more of God.
The lie is that the idol will make us happy, that it will fuel us. But the truth is that we cannot live on substitutes. My heart will “never be satisfied apart from God in Christ Jesus.”* Only God can satisfy. Substitutes never satisfy. The skinny idol just made me lust for more, more, more. And I was left wanting more.
This is like Paul, in Philippians chapter 4, saying, I will be content whether well-fed or hungry. It’s choosing to be content. It’s getting to that place, that no matter what, we are satisfied in God alone and that He is enough.
Something else I wrote in my journal was this: Going to an idol instead of God is committing spiritual adultery. Ouch!
After the Lord revealed truth to me about this idol in my heart, I realized that I needed a plan to starve this idol and to renew my mind, because there were literally days where “skinny” was on my mind consistently all throughout the day. I didn’t know how to pinpoint the thoughts and take them captive to the obedience of Christ. And so I figured that starting somewhere is better than doing nothing. Part of my plan (and what I’ve been doing) is putting my focus more on Christ. I’m reading through the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and I’ve been reading Galatians over and over again. It’s been awesome! I wake up and instead of thinking about “skinny”, I get so excited to be in the Word and to get to know Jesus more. I’ve also been reading my truth cards more often. I also picked out sets of questions from the I Deserve a Donut app by Barb Raveling to answer in my journal: which has been extremely helpful in renewing my mind (the sets of questions I’ve been using are: Discontentment, Greed & Lust, Envy, Insecurity: Feeling Inadequate, Insecurity: Living Up to Expectations, Insecurity: People Pleasing, and Insecurity: Self-Condemnation). And when I look in the mirror and feel any sense of dissatisfaction, I thank the Lord for my body. Through all of this, and putting my focus on Christ, I have noticed that I’m no longer focused on skinny like I once was. Praise God!
I still have work to do. There are times I’m tempted to go on a diet to have my “guarantee”, so I have to keep pressing on and looking to the Lord and His truth. This is a journey. We learn and grow every day.
How about you? Have you made skinny an idol in your life? Have you served the scale or the food? Where do you turn when the going gets tough? Are you clinging to a “functional God” or the one true living God? Ask the Lord to search your heart and He will show you. If you are afraid you won’t like what you see, know that He is there to forgive as we repent, and He is there to help to get us where we need to be. He will help us follow Him, but He won’t help us chase our idols.
P.S. You can hear more about what God has revealed to me in this Sound Cloud file I recorded:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/160296439″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]
*Quoted from Gospel Treason by Brad Bigney
** Quoted from Hunger Within by Arthur & Judy Halliday (chapter 6)
by Christina Smith | May 28, 2014 | Blog, Inspiration, Renew Mind
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Hi everyone!
I have so many things on my heart that I want to share with you, but since I have “mom brain”, I’m having a hard time collecting some of those thoughts. But I want to write something. Anything! So I thought I would take some time to encourage you.
No matter how long you’ve been on this journey, God is STILL faithful! He watches over His word to perform it! He will NEVER leave us nor forsake us! Oh…and He LOVES us!
I know some of you are discouraged. You’ve been trying. You feel like giving up. You just don’t know how to make this all work. And some of you are down right ANGRY because you feel like you are a failure–or possibly because you may feel like God has failed you. You have spent many tears, crying out to God to just help you release the weight, to help you overcome your food addiction, to make all of this easy.
Can I tell you something?
Lean in closely…I’m about to tell you a tidbit of truth that has literally changed my life…
God wants to transform you!
He wants to help you! He wants to deliver you! He wants to help you overcome!
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:2
We don’t overcome by following our boundaries perfectly. It’s clinging to God’s Word. It’s spending time with Him. That’s how we are transformed. It’s not our own work. It’s His work. Our part is spending time with Him.
I have seen a HUGE change in my life in the area of food and body image because of what God has done and all it took was me taking the time to renew my mind. What does it look like to renew my mind? For me, it means reading my truth cards at least once a day. Usually that takes place in the morning along with reading my Bible. And then each time I felt like breaking a boundary, I sat down with my journal and ‘I Deserve a Donut’ app (or book) by Barb Raveling. I would write out the questions and answers. If I was in a hurry, I would just read the questions and answer them in my head or out loud. If I was journaling, I would write down a few of the scriptures that really stood out to me. And I still do this when needed.
I believe each time I took the time to renew my mind that the Lord was transforming me. And WOW, I’m so amazed at what He has done! I will share more about that later, but for now I want to encourage you in your own journey.
Don’t give up!
Keep your eyes on Jesus!
Keep renewing your mind!
