Is It Really Sin?

Is It Really Sin?

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Is overeating really sin?  Is that one extra bite rebellion against the Lord?

I really struggled with those questions.  It was one of the things in the Thin Within material that I had a hard time grasping.  To be honest, over the years, when I would get to about Day 7 in the Thin Within book, I wouldn’t be able to push through any further.  I really didn’t think I needed God’s forgiveness or grace when I took that one extra bite or overate.   I would think, “Come on!  It’s just food!  It’s just one extra bite!  What’s the big deal?  Doesn’t God have other things to be concerned about?  Why does this have to be so spiritual?”

And then my eyes were opened.

I had been praying about this and asking the Lord what His truth was about it in my life.  Then one evening, I really wanted to make popcorn to eat during a movie my husband and I were going to watch.  I knew I wasn’t hungry for the popcorn, but I just kept on thinking about it.  Finally, I decided I was going to make popcorn.  As I poured the freshly popped popcorn into a big wooden bowl, I heard the Holy Spirit gently ask me if I would not eat the popcorn since I wasn’t hungry.  And like an annoying fly buzzing around, I flicked that request off.  How could I resist now?  Oh, the delicious scent of hot-buttered popcorn!  And then, as I scooped some popcorn into my smaller bowl, the Holy Spirit asked me again if I would refrain from eating the popcorn.  Flick!  No thank you, I’m going to EAT this popcorn, thank you very much!  So I sat down, began the movie, and about 2/3 of the way through my bowl of popcorn the Holy Spirit asked again, gently, if I would stop eating since I wasn’t hungry.  Obediently, I put the bowl down and didn’t take one more bite.

He was so gentle.  I was so rebellious.  I lusted after that popcorn.  I hardened my heart against the Holy Spirit’s guidance.  I was like that Israelite demanding my way as I puttered around in the wilderness; just give me the leeks and onions!  I didn’t want God’s manna or His provision.  I wanted MY way in MY time!  In essence, I wanted to go back to that slavery.  Instead of deliverance and freedom, I wanted the easy way out.

Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. Hebrews 4:7b

I don’t want to harden my heart.  I want to love the Lord with all of my heart, mind and soul.  I don’t want to hold anything back.  I have to die to myself, to my fleshly, selfish desires in order to live for Him.

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.  Romans 13:14

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Matthew 22:37

 

And it was at that moment I realized that I am not honoring the Lord when I take that extra bite knowing I don’t need it or when I overeat.  I was placing food over Him.

This has been a hard truth to swallow.  I would rather not digest it.  I want to be in denial, but I clearly saw my rebellion that day when I hardened my heart.  I chose to fall into temptation—to sin.  Temptations will come, but I had a choice to make.  I chose to follow my flesh instead of following after the Spirit.  God provided a way out of the temptation, but I chose to take the other path.

When we are hungry, we eat.  Food is fuel for our body.  So what happens when we consistently go outside of God’s bounds of eating outside of hunger?  We gain weight, we feel stuffed, we don’t like the way we look or feel, etc.

Why would we need food outside of hunger?  What are we truly “hungry” for when we want to eat when we aren’t physically hungry?

I could replace that “hunger” with food, alcohol, sex, drugs, or any other substance or addiction, but it will never fulfill what I’m truly hungry for.  As Heidi says, only God can fill that God-size hole that needs Him in our heart.

Maybe you are reading this and you might think that this doesn’t make sense for you.  Maybe you feel that it’s legalistic to say one extra bite is sin.  I would encourage you to ask the Lord about this in your own life.  Ask Him to show you the truth about this for you.  Maybe you aren’t at that place in your journey where it’s clear.  Maybe the Lord is working on other areas right now.

Another thing I do is I check the motivation of my heart.  Something I think about often is something that is asked in the book Intuitive Eating: would I deny a bride and groom their bites of wedding cake after the cake cutting if they weren’t truly hungry?  It’s not their motive to indulge.  There have been times after a meal at a friend’s house where I’m not really hungry anymore, but I will eat a little serving of dessert.  I will check in with the Lord and there are times where He says that it’s ok, that my heart is in the right place.  But I really think this is something personal between you and the Lord.  This isn’t an excuse to eat whenever you feel like it.  It’s not to justify eating another bite when you know God is saying it’s time to stop.  You will know because the Holy Spirit will show you.

God is bringing me to a place of wanting to honor Him more and more with eating.  I want to glorify Him in all that I do.  My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.  I don’t want to follow after the flesh.  I don’t want to lust after food.  I don’t want to harden my heart.  I want to follow the Spirit and grow closer to Him.

 

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. Romans 8:5

 

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.  It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.  Titus 2:11-12

 If we do choose to purposely overeat, we can ask the Lord to forgive us.

“The surest way to return to the path of God’s provision is by repentance.  As we observe, we identify the truth about our behavior and agree with God that a correction is in order.  We then confess the truth we observe, and identify the faulty thinking and fleshly behaviors.  He further places with us a desire to make the godly correction.  This is repentance, and it results in returning to the path of God’s provision where we are filled with peace, joy, and rest” (Thin Within page 248-249).

And knowing that God has forgiven us as we repent, we can continue on our journey of honoring Him.  There’s no need to beat ourselves up with the club of condemnation.  You don’t have to eat with the attitude of, “Well, I messed up, I guess I will just eat whatever I want, whenever I want the rest of the day.”  This isn’t a diet we’ve gotten off track with or have eaten up all of our daily calories, points, fat grams, carbohydrates, etc.  This is observing that we’ve overeaten, repenting, and then continuing on the path of God’s provision.  And then you just wait until you are hungry again to eat.  I find this so refreshing!

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.  Romans 8:1

There are times I find myself being tempted to eat when I’m not hungry.  I’m learning to ask God for help during those times.  And He is always willing.  We can call upon Him!

 I will love You, O Lord, my strength.  The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.  I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies.  Psalm 18:1-2

How about you?

Where do you find your thoughts when you think about overeating or one extra bite as sin?  I want to encourage you to ask the Lord what this looks like for you.  Are you eating because you are trying to fulfill a hunger only God can fill?  Do you find yourself lusting after food and eating with a rebellious attitude?  Ask the Lord to show you: He will!  And He won’t just stop there, He will show you how you can turn your eyes from lust to fixing your eyes upon Jesus!

Written by: Christina

The True Source of Healing

Image Source: iStockPhoto

Image Source: iStockPhoto


Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.

– Jeremiah 17:14

In Mark chapter 5, Jesus is surrounded by a mob of people. In the midst of the crowd is a woman “who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years” (verse 25). She had tried just about everything and everyone.

In Mark 5:26 we see “She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.”

In her ailment, she had looked for healing everywhere that she could think of. She had spent all of her money and yet, ironically, she had suffered more and actually gotten worse.

Have you ever felt this way? The more you sought help and freedom from overweight and overeating, the more diets you experienced, and the more you knew, maybe even the more doctors you went to about this, the more found yourself actually in bondage to food, the thoughts of food, the lust for food and the inhaling of food when you weren’t hungry?

I have. After a year in the 1990s with a popular weight loss program, losing 100 pounds with a very strict diet and obsessive exercise, training for three marathons, studying to become a certified personal exercise trainer, I found myself with a worsened “heart condition.” Like the bleeding woman, I had looked to anyone and everything for healing *other* than the One who could truly offer it. My heart was attached to—obsessed with—food.

The incredible thing is, God can take these “failures” and our desperation and actually use it all. This bleeding woman had become so convinced that the only source for healing left for her was Jesus, that she knew that if she just *touched* his clothing, she could be healed! Now that is faith! Jesus sought her out. He wanted to see this woman face to face—not because he didn’t know who she was. He knew. He was God, after all. But he wanted to speak to her personally. In Mark 5:34, we are told what he says to this woman after she was healed: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

What marvelous words. These words He longs to speak to us! This very healing he longs to impart to us. Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! – Isaiah 30:18

But who are we looking to for our healing from this tendency to eat more than we need to sustain our bodies? Are we looking to Him? Truly? Are we seeking His healing? Or are we seeking the healing through any number of other methods? Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. – Ps. 107:19-20

If He heals us, it isn’t at the expense of our souls. When the Lord saves us, we truly are saved. Let us turn to Him, focus on Him, praise Him with our lives. In that place we, too, will experience the rush of power into our lives that sets us free from our suffering!

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. – Hebrews 12:2

Lord, I choose to come to you today for the healing I need. I need to be healed of my tendency to turn to food to process my emotions. Conversely, I know sometimes I replace overeating with restricting and I turn to dieting to “save” me—as a functional Messiah of sorts. I choose to reject this tendency, Lord. Instead of either unhealthy approach, I want to view food as fuel and be set free from extra weight and over-eating. I want to be set free from needless restricting. I know you alone can work these changes in me. I come to you, Jesus. Amen.

Wind In Your Wings

Image Source: iStock Photo

Image Source: iStock Photo

God is crazy about you!

Psalm 45:10-11 says:

Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear:
Forget your people and your father’s house. 

 The king is enthralled by your beauty;
honor him, for he is your lord. 

Do you feel like you enthrall the King of Kings with your beauty? He speaks this truth on the pages of His eternal Word—but do you, like many of us, have difficulty believing it?

Many of us have come to Thin Within or to this blog because of something external we want to change—our eating habits, our weight due to our eating habits, or something similar. We may not feel beautiful at all.

Some of us may be visiting this website because we have heard that Thin Within isn’t merely about externals–and that there is some new content and you want to experience the newness, freshness and freedom! You may even be fed up with focusing on externals and long for something that will encourage your *heart*.

Maybe you are just sick of the dieting treadmill!

Let me be frank. My goal at this blog and in my coaching ministry isn’t that you be a gorgeous, thin, creature that commands the attention and envy of every man and woman on the planet! It isn’t even that you be physically healthy, though that is a wonderful goal.

Frankly, my goal is to support you as you continue to grow in beauty from the inside out. I love seeing a life turned upside down with the power of praising our God and I KNOW that this has a direct impact on how we view food, our bodies and our eating!

No matter why you are here or what your expectations may be, you can rest assured that our God and King is a God of surprises—he can meet you and far exceed your hopes and dreams.  The story he desires to live out with you can be a glorious testimony of this fact.

You may have your sights set on something extremely concrete or a very tangible goal, “I must gain enough weight to be 110 pounds,” or “I simply have to weigh less than 200 pounds!” or “I need to fit into that size 7 dress by my 20 year high-school reunion!” We have all kinds of folks that visit this blog.

You may know that at the heart of your struggle is an addiction that has its coils wrapped around you like a snake constricting its prey prior to devouring it.  You may feel devoured…constricted, captured and snared. (Please know that a #1 truth is that Jesus has paid for our freedom. He HAS done it. He HAS won it. We get to walk it out!)

Regardless of your thoughts about where you currently find yourself, there is One who comes to rescue you from the dominion of darkness. He may lead you on a more circuitous route than what you have in mind. You can trust that He will only lead you where you need to go. Nothing will be wasted. His ways are beyond fathoming. He has in mind much discovery for you as you get to know Him better, get to know yourself better, and participate as the tale is penned, as the dance commences, as the journey unfolds.

You can rest assured this will be exactly what you need—no more, no less.

You may feel like you have been in this position before. If you have had enough of Mondays, “fresh starts,” new beginnings, and “this-time-it-will-be-different”s, then you are right where you need to be!

What About You?

Can you take an inventory? What do you DREAM of? What do you hope to become? Dare you write it on a page? Dare you bring it before the King of Kings, the Creator of the Universe, who gives birth to our dreams? While it is true that he sometimes allows a dream to die even as he ignites a new dream within us—HIS dream in us—we are safe with Him, sharing with Him what we long for.

Why not take some time today and write down what you long for? Hope for? Dream of?  No one needs to see it.

Once you do this, sit with the Lord with the page open before Him and offer it to him. Invite him to see your dreams. Welcome him to either make them come true or replace them with his wonderful desire for you so that you can dare to dream God-shaped dreams for your future.

If you would like, you can share with us here how you feel about this exercise.

Three Fears To Hurdle NOW! :-)

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

As you launch into this leg of your journey, there may be three fears or doubts that assault you. If you are like most of us, maybe you can relate to these. Hope there is something here that can encourage you!

Let’s not let doubt win. Instead, let’s submit our thinking, our doubts and fears, to the Philippians 4:8 test:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble,

whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent

or praiseworthy—think about such things.

– Philippians 4:8

If you find yourself thinking things that are not serving the godly goals you have established (and I mention some of those thoughts, doubts, and fears in this video), subject them to this test: Is this thought true, noble, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy? If not, REJECT the thought!

We demolish arguments and every pretension

that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,

and we take captive every thought

to make it obedient to Christ.

– 2 Corinthians 10:5

This is what we are doing! We are replacing thoughts that are not God’s thoughts with His thoughts. How does God think about whatever it is you are thinking about? What does He think about your attempts to apply these principles? What does He think about the doubts that people may verbalize to you? What does He think about the process of eating 0 to 5 for landing on a healthy weight and maintaining it all your life long?

What do you think? 🙂

What doubts have you been facing as you begin this leg of your journey?

Vulnerable…Is This YOUR Will, Lord?

I feel like the Lord wants me to show you…a friend with whom I feel some strange connection…my journals. Granted, not every single word of every single page…and probably not in order or with sense…but, well, there is something that the Lord wants someone to see.

I posted earlier today with joviality. Then I did a lesson that is wonderfully compatible with Thin Within–The Lord’s Table. Today’s lesson was on repentance. Oh…it was well-written and powerful and while the teaching is not new to me, the Lord used it to convict me powerfully afresh.

I can’t pretend I understand the connection with that and the journals. but here are two pages…you will have to go off the blog site to see them large enough to read…I hope that this vulnerability isn’t for naught. If God can take these tattered, shattered, broken pieces of my life from the past and use them to draw others…oh, Lord…so be it!

The first is from Feb. 9, 1999. Click on it to see the page full size from Photo Bucket. The second is the facing page of the journal, written a couple of weeks later.




One friend asked me…what message do I share NOW. Is it the SAME as the one in the journal? Goodness. I hope it is clear from even a casual browsing in my blog here, that the message I share NOW, almost 10 years after these were written…THERE IS HOPE! GOD IS DOING A NEW THING…in YOU, reader…EVEN NOW! I share these journal pages because they show that I have been there. In fact, I was there for years. We don’t have to stay there.

What is the way out? I believe it is moment by moment, surrendering to the Lord. In the moment, taking captive our thoughts, our actions, our beliefs…and asking HIM to BE Lord in our minds that he will be Lord in what we CHOOSE to do NOW.

As Christians, we have the freedom to choose to say no to sin in the moment. When I wrote the journal pages that you see, I didn’t believe the significance of the moment. I was bogged down in all or nothing…and nothing was all I had…

What a weary traveler I was…for years.