Sometimes it is good to talk too much. Well, most of the time it isn’t. A fool is known by the abundance of her words…and…better to keep one’s mouth shut and have them wonder if I am a fool than to open my mouth and remove all doubt…and all of that! LOL!

But when it comes to my most recent descent into “That Place” (what I call living with an attitude and not submitting myself to the Lord in my choices), being a woman of WAY too many words has actually been a good thing.

Why is that?

Well, it seems like no matter where I turn, my own words, used to try to encourage other people, face me. In some ways, they have mocked me…but once I get over that notion (which isn’t what the Lord intends, but IS what Satan intends, of course!), I can receive what I think the LORD wants me to from the words that I have previously prayerfully offered to others. Funny how that is. God is amazing how he can do that.

Hello? Like for instance “Take this moment captive for the Lord!” “Don’t minimize the importance of THIS moment!” “God IS doing a new thing…even now!” and so on. The thing that has been going around in my head the most, it seems is that a moment of indiscretion–even an hour of indiscretion–while I don’t want ANY time that I am not surrendered to the Lord of course…well, even an hour of inappropriate–SINFUL–eating does NOT wipe out a full day of surrendering to the Lord!

In the past, back in the diet days, it sure did. You know, when you allot yourself so many calories each day…like say 1500, it sure seemed as though even if you had resisted the urge to eat all day long, if you “blew it” at night with a hot fudge sundae, then you would write off the entire day and say, “Well, I blew my diet today, I may as well just forget it.” The caloric amount was all that mattered. The heart choice to resist wasn’t valued.

With Thin Within, the HEART is the focus! So if I spend 23 hours taking captive my thoughts for the Lord and surrendering to His tender love, mercy, grace and will, THAT IS HUGE! (I love that 7 or 8 of those are when I am sleeping, but I tell ya…I COUNT THEM! LOL!). If only ONE hour is spent “blowing it”…that is NOTHING in comparison. All those other moments and hours are an investment in a transformed heart and life!

This is the thought that has encouraged me the past few days.

I think this is one reason why what the scale says isn’t the point of this. I know in my heart of hearts if I have lived a surrendered life and honored God with my body, my heart, my mind, my choices. So if the scale is up when I know I have been walking hand in hand with the Lord, then I know it is a quirky thing going on–maybe a test of my faith, in fact. If the scale is down when I know I have been living serving myself and my appetites (not physical hunger, but taste bud hunger or something else), then I can’t delight in that…in a way, this too is a test. Will I allow the scale to bring me a sense of satisfaction when the Lord is calling me to more?

Man-made bathroom scales are tricky things. Weighing every day is NOT a good thing! Like Judy Halliday says (or this is what I remember of what she has said)–if we spent as much time and energy focusing on the God-made hunger scale of eating 0 to 5, eating between the parameters of hunger and satisfaction, instead of the man-made bathroom scale, the extra weight on our body would likely slide right off!

So many things about this approach–Thin Within–dong things the way God directs, are OPPOSITE of what the world would say. The world says we MUST use the man-made bathroom scale to evaluate how we are doing on our “diet.” God says to trust him and hearken to his voice, letting go of any food outside of hunger/satisfaction parameters. He says to trust him that He is at work in our hearts, minds AND our bodies!

The world says we can’t eat this or that! It is “off” the “diet!” We can’t possibly be thin if we eat that! God says, I have made your body reliably…it isn’t the food that is the problem, it is the heart that wants more than the body needs to sustain life!

The world says that if you have an hour of bingeing behavior, then you have ruined the day and you may as well just forget the day and throw all caution to the wind–restart the diet tomorrow. God says observe and correct, take THIS moment captive. Each moment matters…all the moments we spent surrendering can NOT be negated or neutralized by an hour of sin.

I have seen that in the past week or more, that my mind has wandered all over the place and the world is sooooo ready to receive me back. YUCK! I choose to reject the thoughts of the world in this. I choose Christ. I choose freedom.