In fact, whatever the addiction, bad habit, or temptation…we often try to stop thinking about whatever it is just so we can be FREE!
But the more we try to STOP thinking about these things, the more we actually think about them. The more we feel ensnared.
Let me illustrate the point this way:
Do NOT think about a pink elephant.
(I know, I have used this illustration before…just work with me! LOL!).
Seriously…do NOT think about a pink elephant. NO PINK ELEPHANT thinking!
What are you thinking about?
Chances are, you are thinking about a pink elephant!
This is true with our eating. When we are trying not to give in to eating a hot fudge sundae when we aren’t hungry, the more we try not to think about it, the more we think about it, until we are overcome and we give in.
So, my theory (and one that has worked for me and others in the classes I have led) is that if we intentionally change what we are thinking about, we will experience the victory we long for.
Not only that, but if heart hunger is really what is luring me to food, then it seems like I need to feed my heart with heart FOOD to experience satisfaction.
Changing my focus from me and what *I* want and to the LORD is a great way of dealing with all of this! By focusing on the Lord, I stop thinking about pink elephants and hot fudge sundaes. 🙂 By focusing on the Lord, my heart is filled up on what it longs for…intimacy with God.
This is what the “God List” is for. It is to take the focus OFF of ME and on to God and to fill my heart up on what it really is missing…intimacy with God. God has placed a heart hunger within me to draw me to HIM. If I keep on feeding this heart hunger with physical food, not only will my heart continue to starve for what it was created to long for, but I will get BIGGER (physically). This starves my heart and over-feeds my body!
If you want to know more about the God List, view this video.
More on the God List and what to do with it next week! 🙂
So many of us who struggle with food and eating (and body) issues, if we are asked “Where is your focus?” would have to answer honestly, “On my food.” “On my body.” “On my weight.” “On my clothes.” Etc.
There is a common denominator here. Do you see what it is?
ME.
I believe that moving our focus off of ourselves and on to God is transformational. Here is a video that offers a tool to help us do this practically.
So, will you start your God List today?
It can make all the difference–honest!
Which attributes of God will you start with?
How about if you turn to Jeremiah 32:17, 19-21 to start with? What attributes of God do you see there? How does he treat human beings according to this passage?
I have already been so encouraged by the time I have spent learning or reviewing God’s attributes and “behaviors” that I thought I would share some of this with you.
I know some who land on this blog have done a Search Engine search for “mini bible study” so here is one that I hope encourages those web wanderers that land here and also for those of you who are traveling this Thin Within journey along with me–which is really nothing other than the road toward increasing Christ-likeness!
1. Open your bible to Psalm 145 or use this link to land on it at Bible Gateway in the New International Version.
2. Read prayerfully and slowly, listing everything that God does or is from this chapter of scripture. Include writing the verse reference next to it. The first two that I got from this are done below:
God is my King (vs. 1) (Note: I can deepen this study by writing out under this point what this means to me…what it means for God to be King.)
God is praise worthy (vs. 1, 2, 3)
And so on…Your turn! Complete the list throughout the entire psalm.
3. List the things that psalmist says HE will do or others who see God as He is will do!
4. Go back through your list and do what it says! In faith, pray thanking God for these things. For example:
God thank you that you are my King, that you are the one before whom I bow, that you are worthy of all praise and devotion.
Even if you don’t *feel* like these things are true, His Word says it, so they are true. Praying them back to God has an amazing ability to do wonderful things in our lives. We get lifted up when we lift HIM up.
5. If you struggle with a repetitive sinful behavior such as overeating, bulimia, anorexia, sexual strongholds, spending, hiding in online chat groups, forums, etc., and you know that God is calling YOU to live the abundant life of rising above all of this, how can doing what we did in questions 1 through 4 above help in some way? Invite God right now to show you.
In other words, what does doing the above have to do with fighting the tendency to over-eat or releasing extra weight?
I hope that you discover these very things as you do this activity.
** For extra study and enjoyment of God and His Word, do the same with any of the Psalms. To get you started: Psalm 63, and Psalm 73:23-28
*** PLEASE post a comment here if you like telling me and others who visit how God uses this in your life, insights you glean, etc. Others can be ministered to through YOU! 🙂
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
– Psalm 42:7
Stormie Omartian’s book, The Prayer That Changes Everything, has ministered to my heart a great deal. I want to share the prayer found on pages 128 and 129 in it’s entirety. It is my prayer that it reaches into the deep places of your heart as it does mine.
O Lord, I worship You and praise You as Immanuel, my God who is with me. I long for more of You. I seek after You and thirst for You like water in a dry land. I want to stand under the gentle waterfall of Your Spirit and feel the soothing mist of Your love showering over me. I want to be immersed in the center of the flow of Your Spirit. I want to be close enough to You to feel Your heartbeat. You are the only answer to the emptiness I feel when I am not with You. The fullness of Your being is what I crave. The intimacy of embrace is what I long for. I know there is nothing or no one in the world that can do for me what You do. I want to feel Your presence in my life in a new and powerful way. You are far and above anything on earth I might long for. You are all I desire.
Just being with You changes everything in me. Longing for you makes me long to be free of anything that would draw my attention away. Lord, I draw close to You this day. Thank You that You promise to draw close to me. With You I am never alone. I love Your holiness, Lord. I love Your beauty. With joy I draw water from the wells of Your salvation (Isaiah 12:3).
Thank You that You have chosen to be with Your people. I am grateful that I don’t have to strive to be with You, I only have to long to be with You. Help me to make You the first place I run to when I have longings in my heart. I don’t want to waste time turning to other things that will never satisfy the need I have for intimacy with You. My soul waits for You, Lord (Psalm 33:20).
I am currently working on Beth Moore’s Stepping Up: A Journey Through the Psalmsof Ascent bible study. This study is already ministering a lot to my heart even though I am only in week two.
I want to share some of what has encouraged me. From the Holman Christian Standard Bible, Psalm 123 reads as follows:
Looking for God’s Favor A song of ascents.
1 I lift my eyes to You,
the One enthroned in heaven.
2 Like a servant’s eyes on His master’s hand,
like a servant girl’s eyes on her mistress’s hand,
so our eyes are on the LORD our God
until He shows us favor.
3 Show us favor, LORD, show us favor,
for we’ve had more than enough contempt.
4 We’ve had more than enough
scorn from the arrogant
[and] contempt from the proud.
This psalm encouraged and challenged me. First, can you relate (as I can) to the statement of the psalmist, “We’ve had more than enough contempt. We’ve had more than enough scorn from the arrogant and contempt from the proud.”
When I was heavy, I felt this all the time. I felt the contempt of men, children, and even women. I was treated differently than I am now. Sure, some might say that it was all in my mind, but whether it was or not, I *felt* it. I felt like I was treated differently because of being overweight — obese.
I will never forget being late for a connecting flight once…it was a small little “puddle jumper” from one airport to another about an hour away. As I climbed aboard (I mean this was a SMALL plane with only two seats on one side and one on the other), I felt the eyes of all looking at me like: “Now the plane will surely list to one side. Put her on the side with only one seat! She will balance out the side with two!” There was one man in particular, whose scrutinizing gaze reduced me to nothing. Why I gave him that power is beyond me. The memory is still with me (obviously).
I have had enough of that sort of contempt.
Even as I was reminded of this, I was encouraged by the words of the psalm. In those moments when I feel like the target of assaults–from the enemy, from strangers, from people I love and know…on what will I choose to focus my attention?What will I invite to fill my vision?
Right now, with all that confronts you, confronts me, with all the demands made of us, to what are we looking? Upon what am I choosing to focus? Is it the trial? Is it the circumstance? Is it the person and the way I feel wounded by them? Or is it how little food I get to eat if I really want to release weight–or keep the weight off? Am I focused on the things that bother me? Do I make provision for my flesh by choosing to fill my gaze with things that will cultivate discontentment and resentment?
This psalm has an answer to a question that I may not even know I am asking.
Who is it that is over all? Who is in charge? Who is truly on the throne? My YHWH, LORD, God Almighty, I AM is in heaven. He is on the throne. As the song goes, He is God alone. In verse one, the psalmist declares “I lift my eyes to YOU…” His gaze had to be lifted from what was facing him, the contempt being shown him, the circumstances that overwhelmed him. But the one choosing to do the lifting, the shifting of the gaze is him. I must choose to do the same.
I have a choice. I can choose to focus on what it is that has my shorts in a bunch, the insults, the contempt, the trial, the person blocking my goal or disappointing me somehow, or I can LIFT my eyes and look to God. As I focus on HIM, all the other things fade in significance. This is a principle that is so true and it has been revolutionary for me personally as I have walked this path. It is very much related to humility and to gratitude. If I insist on being the focus of my life, or if I insist on focusing on all the things I am bothered by in my life, it will change everything how I perceive what comes next, or seems to.
Beth Moore points out in the lesson on this psalm that: WhereI look affects—->
WhatI hear, which affects—->
What I feel, which affects—->
What I expect…
I would add that what I expect then affects what I experience.
No, I don’t believe in the “power of positive thinking,” but I do believe that what I expect affects where I look in the next moment…and paints it accordingly. What I expect affects what I experience, which, unless I stop the cycle, will affect where I look and what I hear…and so on. It is a cycle!
I want to break this cycle. I don’t want to focus on “my problems” and perpetuate a bad attitude which seems to perpetuate trials, which perpetuates my fixating on the trials and on and on. I will break the cycle by choosing to focus on the LORD who is ON THE THRONE. He IS sovereign. He IS good. He IS sufficient. He IS loving. He IS gracious…
When I choose to foster gratitude and praise the Lord, I am doing this. I am breaking the cycle. I am choosing where I look, which affects what I hear, which affects how I feel (WHOO HOO! When I think on, look to and praise the Lord, my feelings change!), which affects what I expect and what I experience! WHOO HOO!
