Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook #1 Details

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!