Treasuring God More Than Food

Treasuring God More Than Food

Now that I’m on track, I’m realizing how much my relationship with food has changed. Food was able to stifle any feelings I had, and it did so quickly by numbing the pain.

God doesn’t work that way, so that has taken some getting used to. It’s very different. I’m learning how to be patient.

I’m no longer spacing out every day, nor running to food for comfort anymore. Therefore my emotions are rising up. I’m running to God, knowing that He is not an instant god, like food.

Keeping food in its proper place in my life is different too. Food was never designed for what I put it in my life for.

I am letting God do what only He can do; He can handle it and is a better God to me than food could EVER be.

By exchanging my food idol for God, after I’ve had food on the throne of my heart, I’m learning to have a much better relationship with God, my Creator, who knew me in my mother’s womb.

 

 

I was listening to TD Jakes and he was talking about “having misery with the miracle.” The miracle for me is to have food in its proper place; the misery is the feelings that are now creeping up.

When it feels like something is missing, I have to exchange the false comfort that I felt with food for the real Comforter.

Satan offers us a counterfeit comfort, which was food for me. God offers the real comfort of peace and joy and gives us the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, which is totally real!

So now I’m asking God to fill me up!

 

Job 23:12 says,

“I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.”

We cannot have one without the other. The miracle is releasing weight; the misery is eating less and waiting for zero. But I can honor God doing it. And being that living sacrifice and living a fasted lifestyle are what makes it worthwhile.

It’s incredible to have an unclogged mind…  to not have to think about food 24/7…  to leave room enough to hear the voice of God.

It’s a joy to fulfill His purpose for my life and I am grateful for it!

 


 

 

 


 

Wanda Walker

(See her bio below.)

 

Starving the Skinny Idol

Starving the Skinny Idol

Matthew2237b

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:

DCP_2705

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)

 

Idolatry in the Life of the Believer – Dr. Charles Stanley

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Direct my footsteps according to your word; let no sin rule over me.

– Psalm 119:133 (NIV)

The definition I have been using of an idol is anything or anyone that I give the right or privilege to direct my steps–to impact my decisions. This may be somewhat vague–too vague to be helpful.

So, I have turned to an expert! Charles Stanley has a great podcast about Idols in the Life of the Believer. I found it on YouTube. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVg8RU92SMs&w=640&h=480

Some highlights for me as I went through this for the third time:

God wants to reign supreme in my life. He will accept no challenges and no competitors for  His Lordship. The only way to keep idols out of my life is to keep up to date with what influences are present in my life is. Is it really  and only Christ? Is it pure obedience to him?

Or are there other things that influence me, challenge me, that I have to say, “God, well, yes, but…”

God says NO competition, no challengers, no competitors to your devotion and love to me.” We have to lay it down.

The only way to know how to deal with idols in our life is to ask ourselves the question of if I am willing to lay it down. With no anticipation and no promise of the future return, but am I willing to give it, no matter what. That’s hard. It depends on our value of that thing or person, relationship or whatever it may be, as to whether we are able to say, “Yes, Lord. Yes, whatever you want in my life, you are welcome to it.” It’s easy to say that, but it’s difficult to give it up.

God says he must reign supreme, absolutely in our lives. No competition in my life.

Questions posed by Dr. Stanley:

1. Are you walking in God’s plan for your life?

2. Is there anything that moves you in such a fashion that you would choose it over God? Is it more influential than God in certain situations.

3. Are you willing to lay it down and to trust him for his very best?

Don’t rationalize that “surely God wouldn’t want that…” If he puts his finger on it, we want to give it up. We will be richer by far for laying it down.

How does this connect with eating, overeating, “thinness,” and other issues that you struggle with? What is God calling you to lay down so that he may have supreme rulership in your life?

Do You Have an Idol? Guest Post

My friend, Barb Raveling, wrote this blog post for her own blog and it appeared on Tuesday at her website. I asked her if I could share it with you. She modified the 2nd day in the Idolatry chapter in her printed workbook, Freedom From Emotional Eating.

HEAL Group Session 3 will be shared tomorrow here at the blog.

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shape of thin woman

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

I still remember the words of a successful agent at a writer’s conference: “Money changes people. I’ve only met a couple of Christian writers who haven’t been negatively affected by success.”

That’s a little scary.

Everyone tells us to pursue our dreams, but no one tells us to make sure we keep God first while pursuing them.

I’ve only been blogging for a little over a year this time around, but it didn’t take long to see how easy it would be to make writing an idol.

Living the American Dream

If you’re pursuing a goal, you know what I mean. It’s easy to become consumed by it.

And while the goal itself might be wonderful–a way to love God and others–it still has the potential to mess us up. If we’re not careful, it will lead us away from God.

God has convicted me that this is something I need to work on in my own life once again, so I thought I might as well blog about it! Future posts will deal with how to break free from idolatry. But before we can break free, we need to know what our idols are.

I’ve been talking about the idolatry of a goal, but there are a million different potential idols out there: recreation, exercise, work, the Internet, relationships, approval of others, excitement, television, food, and avoiding conflict, just to name a few.

Here are a few questions to help you determine whether or not you have any idols:

Do You Have an Idol? – Quiz

1. What do you feel like you have to have to be happy?

2. What do you think about in the middle of the night or when you first wake up in the morning?

3. What do you spend a lot of time on each day?

4.  What do you worry about?

5. What would you have a hard time giving up for a month?

6. What do you do when you’re depressed or stressed out?

7. What do you do to avoid doing the things you don’t want to do?

8.  In what areas of your life, do you experience your greatest struggles?

9. Where do your feelings of self worth come from?

10. What do you escape to when you’re having a hard time in life?

11. What do people tell you that you spend too much time on?

12. What do you hide from others?

13. What do you talk about too much?

14. What could you not live without?

When you finish answering the questions, glance back over your answers. Do you see anything popping up more than once on the list? The more often you see it on your list, the more likely it’s an idol.

If you’d like to work on getting rid of that idol, join me for future blog posts.

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I love how practical Barb is. She does a great job at tackling bad habits, ways of thinking, and doing something about them to bring them under Christ’s submission. She is extremely effective at teaching us how to do this, too. I hope you will put her website in your favorites.

Now, let’s bring her questions home to where we are here at this blog, shall we? 🙂 Ask God to give you courage.

Is there any chance that “getting thin” has become an idol in your life? If you were going to help Barb 🙂 write her next blog post about this subject, what would you do to address the possibility that the goal of being thin might be an idol?

I am eager to hear from you. 🙂

Year in Review and Hopes for 2007

This is long!

I suppose it is more for me than for anyone to really read! LOL! I hope that saying it here will build in some accountability. I have an accountability partner. I will forward this to her as well.

2006 was a challenging year for me in many ways. I spent most of it wallowing in my sin…Truthfully, I worried myself almost sick about my health, having gained a bunch of weight…That is until a lady who owned a christian horsewomen’s list invited me to join her list and then discovered my involvement with Thin Within in the past (by looking at my websites)…She asked me to lead her group through a study of the TW material! None of them had ever been exposed to Thin Within or any other hunger/satisfied program. It was a wonderful month with those ladies, as they were always discovering new things…just God revealing stuff to them! It was so refreshing and sure was motivating! Our paths had to part all too soon.

God sure used that lady to jumpstart me! 😀

To reinforce what He was planning to do…to make sure I didn’t MISS it (as I am prone to do), the Lord lovingly, but very pointedly asked me what I felt really was the difference between MY family torn apart by MY death due to health complications (due to rebellious, willful obesity and the indulging of MY flesh) and some “normal American” family torn apart by a husband and father’s addiction to pornography and HIS indulgence of HIS flesh. YIKES! That comparison by the Spirit of God really penetrated my hard heart.

So the last 6 weeks of 2006, God removed just over 20 pounds from my body and revealed so many things to me–Wow….He walked with me in intimacy and showed me, once again, that His grace knows no bounds, that His mercies are new every morning…no…every MOMENT. He showed me that pride has GOT TO BE PUT TO DEATH and that it is insidious in my life…and it rears its ugly, self-protecting head at almost every turn! BLEAH!

I came out of 2006 understanding that God is God and I am not– even if my son is autistic, my youngest horse is permanently lame, and my mother is driving me nuts. 🙂 This is progress in a big way. It isn’t measurable by most peoples’ standards, but I shout Hallelujah! God has brought me far! Thank you Lord….I bow before you.

Ladies, I don’t have the freedom like many of you do to graph, chart, log and journal. In 1995 and 1996 I counted everything and logged everything and charted it, too. I did it on paper and on the computer. I put signs on the wall and on the fridge. I counted fat grams, protein grams, carbohydrate grams, made sure they were in a specific proportion for every meal percentage-wise. I graphed my intake and my weight and compared the relationship between the two. (I even graphed that!) I was always looking for new ways of graphing and charting!

I logged strength training repetitions, sets, and weights, fat percentages in my body when hydrostatically weighed. I logged my run miles/locations/type of workouts/races and other carido workouts, making sure I often did two a day to compensate for some of the secrets I tried to keep from myself and my logs. I compared calorie intake with projected calorie expenditure.

I came out of those years thinner and fitter than I had ever been in my entire life…and…more totally chained to food and in bondage to compulsive exercise than ever before, as well. I was obsessed. In my case, I missed the idol I had erected. Although my eating was disordered before, it was WAY disordered by then. Food was still an enemy…I was NOT at peace with my body, even though it was fit! I found a way to control the food…and control my exercise….presto.

When I went to my first Weigh Down meeting in spring of 1997, the ladies there scoffed at my presence there…I was thin…looked pretty good for a mom with two young kids. They didn’t get it…it was my heart. My heart was suffocating with the idol that lived there…and my thoughts, my plans, my family’s life totally revolved around it.

That wasn’t freedom! I was NOT free! I looked it on the outside, but the idol threw back its head and laughed at my presumption!

So……all that to say…I can’t even use the Thin Within graphs and charts. They are too much like the chains of my past. So I don’t. God has asked me not to return to that. Most people probably don’t have a problem like that. I have always been a slow student! LOL! I think it is great that many can journal and graph and log. He has shown me that, for me…and only for me…to do so wouldn’t help His cause in my life. I guess this is my disclaimer! LOL! My goals sound nebulous and UNmeasurable. But God will show me when it works. He certainly did during these past months.

I have to tell you, I have to resist the logs and charts for all I am worth. I found an old “Penguin Brigade” log book that I had never used…saved it…and I put it on my dresser, thinking I would begin to log again. YIKES! I can’t! I still can’t! I can feel the weakness….I am SOOOO tempted!

So….

For 2007, here are my nebulous goals. LOL!

I desire to see myself get to my God-given size and stay there so that by next January, I can be a group leader for TW. If God calls me to it sooner, great. I am willing. But I feel this strong leading right now that after all my practice at unfaithfulness, He would like to give me an opportunity to practice listening to his voice in each moment for a good solid year. 🙂 It has to do with credibility. When we moved up here and started attending a church here, I was humiliated and ashamed when someone approached me and said, “Hey, your name….I have seen your name in a book I have been reading…haven’t I?” They were reading Thin Within and I wanted to hide under the furniture! I felt like I was such a blight on His name and on the good name of Thin Within!….I know that God isn’t about shame…that is why I have shared these things here, but as for leading a TW group at my church…I feel that I must have credibility with the ladies who know me and who might choose to be a part. So that is one goal.

Additionally, I would like to reach my God-given size by May. This is a HUGE God-sized goal. I would like to release another 30 or so pounds…if God says more is needed or less is fine, then I am ok with that. Selfishly, perhaps, my reason for wanting to get there that soon is because I want my horses to carry less weight when things dry out enough to ride them this late spring or early summer. When I am too heavy, I worry about how they feel. Then I get fearful that if they hurt at all when they carry me that they may object (this can result in bucking! LOL!) (To see my tales visit http://rocklinheidi.bravejournal.com) …and I may get hurt! So it all works together to help me be less fearful and them happier about things. Specifically, I want to ride Dodger, my mustang, by late spring early summer. He is built like a small tank, but he is my smallest horse at about 13.3 hands and 800 pounds (he needs to “release” weight, too!).

(Please visit his special video with my autistic son at http://bylsma.spiritofequus.com/vid/dodgerdaniel.wmv They were in the Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover’s Soul Volume 2 and also are featured at the BLM website if you are interested! I am a proud mamma of my two redheads–though the video has footage about 3 years old in it! LOL! And you can see in the video that I needed to release weight even then…and I gained even MORE weight after that!)

Anyhow, Harley will be going to a trainer this spring. I am concerned about being too heavy for him. He is quite athletic, but hasn’t had practice carrying a heavy load since his first training. He has carried me some, but always been troubled about it. I hope that the trainer will prepare him for at least the weight I will be then. I know this all probably sounds silly.

I hope to also be fit enough that my core body strength enables me to be a *good* rider. It requires a lot of a person to be a *good* rider. I only hope to trailride, but I still want to gel with the movement of my horses so they are comfortable (and I will be, as well). This requires fitness. Some folks think that if you ride horses you don’t have to be fit! Well, the horses know the difference! LOL!

Another goal for this year is to fully investigate agility with my new dog. I have to be able to run and move for this. We start our first pre-agility class next week. I have watched handlers with their dogs and those folks do have to sprint around quite a bit. I hope to be able to do that. I would like to go far enough with her to try one competition. This relates to my weight-releasing and fitness goals!

While it isn’t a goal, I am toying with the idea of running a bit, too…For now, I will continue to do my “Dance Praise.” I am having a blast and being edified while getting an awesome workout. I hope to continue to do that 4 or more times each week for an hour or so each time. It is just too much fun!

This time next year (January 1, 2008), I hope to have walked with God more faithfully in 2007 and grown in knowing Him more intimately. I hope to be involved in a ministry again that I know is of God…I recently bailed out of all ministry. I would love it if I could do TW and/or a horsewomen’s biblestudy group. I miss leading a bible study…

Another thing that I really think the Lord wants me to do is to develop three of my friendships. I have three friends in mind and things have gone by the wayside a bit…busy-ness of life. I think, too, my shame caused me to hide out a lot more…hard to get to know folks when you are hiding!

Ok…all from me for now.

Blessed New Year, All!