Many people have shared in our class Facebook group that they are seeing evidence that God is doing a new thing. One way is through the Body Awareness (Mirror Mirror) Activity that we did last week on Day Three. Class participants shared that they had breakthroughs in how they feel about their bodies. If you haven’t yet done this activity, please don’t put it off. It IS hard, yes, but prayerfully invite God to help you through it. In fact, Lesson 2’s webinar, includes my walking us through it. I hope you find it helpful! The Hallidays have included it in nearly every book and workbook that Thin Within has created, so it is clear that they feel, after helping people since 1975…this is important!
This week we turn our attention to a very vital area for renewing our minds with truth. I hope you have your spiral deck of index cards and pen ready. (Some of our class members are using colored pens and artwork to create compelling — and fun! — cards.) We are going to look at our Identity in Christ. So often we get our sense of value, purpose, and identity from our performance at the various roles we have in life. We will see what God’s thoughts are on this subject this week. When we begin to think God’s thoughts after him about who we are most fundamentally, all kinds of things are possible!
Video Questions:
1. What will happen as we begin to think God’s thoughts after him (renew our minds with truth) about our identity?
2. From 02:29 to 03:28 I share a list of who you are in Christ. Which of these are most meaningful to you personally? Why? Do you believe that this is who you are? Why or why not? Make a truth card that tells you that you *are* that! This week, read your cards out loud. Here is the Who I Am in Christ list that I read from on the video.
3. Failure is something that you ______. It is not something that you ______.
4. Failure does not need to be an __________________. Failure can be the best _____________ that we’ve got going.
5. How can the tool of Observation and Correction help you turn failure into victory?
6. I speak about “falling off the horse” and “getting back on again.” What does that look like, practically speaking, on this Thin Within journey?
7. What makes you “worthy” of Heaven? How does this apply to our Thin Within journeys?
8. If you believed you were more than a conqueror, how might that affect how you live and the choices you would make?
9. What are you telling yourself about who you are? Are you telling yourself the truth?
10. Of the lies I mention at the end, which can you identify with the most?
Renewing the Mind – Pressing On
NOTE: Don’t be overwhelmed by the material in this part of the “assignment” each week. This section is here to give you ideas for renewing your mind. Maybe just pick ONE thing and try it out each week. Thinking differently about food, our bodies, our God, life is vital if we want changes that will last!
What are strategies you are currently using to renew your mind so that you believe the things we are studying? We don’t typically lack knowledge. We lack BELIEF! So speaking the truths from our lessons into our souls again and again will serve us well if we want to see our beliefs change. Remember, this progression?:
Beliefs –> Actions –> Patterns –> Fruit
If we don’t feel like there is fruit in our lives that concurs with our godly goals, then we want to back up. What patterns are in our lives? Back up a bit further to see what actions or choices are we making in the moment. Remembering that moment upon moment is what our lives (patterns) are based on, we see that choices are fueled by our beliefs. So, if we don’t like the fruit in our lives or are convicted that this isn’t honoring to God, we must go back to our beliefs and begin to work with our own minds, hearts, and souls to change what we believe. We can do this by telling ourselves the truth repeatedly. Here is a short list of ways to do that:
1. Music – Christian music does a great job of this. Secular music, not necessarily so much. “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” is not going to help you to live like “More than a Conqueror!” For ideas for a Renew Your Mind Play list visit this post or this set of posts.
2. Truth Cards – Make ’em, Read ’em, Recite ’em, Record ’em, LISTEN to ’em! Yes! You can use your computer (most laptops are equipped to make audio recordings) or your device to record yourself reading your truth cards. Then, you can listen to them with your earphones or your blue tooth. Even if you “aren’t in the mood” to read them, you can passively have them playing through your head throughout the day or while you vacuum, prepare a meal, go grocery shopping. It is a great way of having the truth saturate your thinking.
3. JOURNAL through a set of questions in Barb Raveling’s I Deserve a Donut and Other Lies that Make You Eat or the I Deserve a Donut app. I do believe journaling these questions at least once makes all the difference in getting the material into your heart. After journaling a set, you can pull truths from them in statements to add to your truth cards. Then, in the future, when you know you are struggling with worry, insecurity, or annoyance (for instance) you will be more able to benefit from using the questions by thinking through them. Journaling won’t always be necessary, but I do suggest it at first. (I journal a set of her questions at least once a day even though I have been doing this a long time!)
4. Set your timer to check in with God and recite a truth that is meaningful to you from memory. Visit this page to see what I mean.
Trade Book Assignment – To Be Completed by January 27th
Here is Study Guide Week 3 of the yet-unpublished Thin Within Book Study Guide. I would love to get your feedback if you are using this material. Is it worth publishing? 🙂
Workbook Assignment – To Be Completed by January 27th
2. Complete the exercises for Lesson 3 on pages B40-B44. Use your discretion about the optional exercises on pages B45-B46. Next Monday before the webinar, respond to the Review questions on page B47.
**Note** Did you know that I post a question each day at our Workbook Study Facebook Group? Come on over and discuss what you are discovering there. Feel free to post what God is doing in your life, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, too. Our class is releasing weight and strongholds!
3. Continue to add to your “God List.” Can you add 10 things this week? Or more? I would love to hear what you are adding!
4. Have one Praise Fest this week (or more!) and share about it with us here.
5. Use the entries for Day 15 through Day 21 in the Temple Toolkit. This week, the Thin Within Food Log is added to the choices of tools for you to use if you like. This is optional. Many of us do not have the freedom to use the Thin Within food log at this time. That is perfectly ok. Ask the Lord if he would have you use it or not. Do what He says. If you do choose to use it, remember that it isn’t a weigh and measure sort of log. It is just for added accountability for your hunger numbers primarily. It can also be very helpful to write down how you felt while eating. I write really small when I use this tool since I generally eat more than four times each day. Don’t be limited by the lines! If you want a larger place to write, download this copy of the Thin Within Food_Log. Again, please do not feel like you have to use this tool. Some of us are so fresh out of dieting that to do this might throw us back into our old dieting ways. That is NOT what we want! If you have the Thin Within app, you can use the Food Log tool included in it, if you like. You can send it to your accountability partner, straight from the app!
6. Evaluate how it is going with eating at 0. Are you eating at 0 more often than not? Have you found 5? Many find it helpful at first to use the boundaries of “Hungry? or Not Hungry?” instead of 0 to 5 and all the in-between numbers. Do what works for you. Are you experiencing freedom with your selection of food choices or are you still categorizing foods into categories from your dieting days? (“Junk food,” “healthy food,”, etc.) Ask the Lord to help you experience freedom from your dieting past, if so–Renew Your Mind! 🙂 If you need convincing, list to 7 Reasons To Ditch Dieting Forever.
7. Interact here in the comments or at the Facebook group.
How About You?
How did the second week of our journey go for you? What is God impressing upon your heart? What questions do you have at this point? How can we best serve and encourage you?
What are you anticipating as you go forward into this week? God IS DOING a new thing!
Has your sense of this truth been cultivated this past week–as never before? I hope so!
Are you renewing your mind with the truths gleaned from the class Facebook page, the lessons, the Sound Cloud or YouTube files available for you? The blog has boatloads of information for you, too.
Onward we go to plunge deeply into one of the most amazing truths that is found on the pages of Scripture–that you are God’s chosen dwelling place on this planet.
I share a bit about that in this video:
Video Questions:
1. Can you identify with the lie that I mention is common (00:43)? How so?
2. What was the price that God paid for you to be his dwelling place?
3. What are three truths about you from this video that you can renew your mind with this week?
4. How might really believing that your body is God’s temple now affect you?
5. What is the significance of the fact that my body is not my own? (5:30)
6. What is a fundamental belief (actually a lie) that we tend to hold? (6:39)
7. How can you, practically speaking, renew your mind?
8. Consider adding some of the truths in this video to your deck of truth cards as mentioned in 09:10. Which ones will you add to your deck?
9. How will you use your truth cards this week? (What times of day, how many cards, etc.)
10. What are the 5 truths that summarize (12:00) the video?
Renewing the Mind – Pressing On
Last week, we began the process of renewing our minds. Romans 12:2 tells us we are transformed not by gritting our teeth and eating between physical hunger and physical satisfaction. That is all well and good, but if that is all we do, we will revert to old behaviors when the first trial or stressful situation hits.
Instead, we are transformed by the renewing of ourminds. I mentioned in Lesson 1’s video that we would be going through the workbook this time with a different focus. I hope you have been using Barb Raveling’s book, I Deserve A Donut and Other Lies That Make You Eat or the iTunes app by the same name. These resources, though optional, are indispensable. If you don’t have it yet, please get the workbook kit, Rebuilding God’s Temple.
Trade Book Assignment – To Be Completed by January 20th
Again, from the deep dark recesses of my hard drive 🙂 , I bring to you this week’s Thin Within Book Study Guide (Lesson 2) for those unable to get a workbook.
Workbook Assignment – To Be Completed by January 20th
1. Read, highlight, mark Lesson 2 on pages B18 – B22 or listen to the audio file of Lesson 2 at Sound Cloud. Discuss it here in the comments section below this post or at our Class Private Facebook Group Page.
2. Complete the exercises for Lesson 2 on pages B24-B28. Use your discretion about the optional exercises on pages B29-B30.
3. Continue to add to your “God List.” Here is a sample beginning of a God List. Here is a video about it if you have some extra time (I did share the link last week here and on the FB page):
4. Use your God List to have a “Praise Fest” or “Praise Feast.” Find out more about that here. You can find a playlist of PraiseFests here.
5. Use the entries for Day 7 through Day 14 in the Temple Toolkit. You can use it to write your praise-fest down or to write down the attributes of God that you are aware of that day. Some people prefer to use their journals instead of the Temple Toolkit. That’s fine, too, of course!
6. Have a look at this file: Renew Mind – Class Affirmations These are a list of some of the things our class members have said…TRUTHS that they are using to replace lies they have been believing for far too long. You can write these and other things like them on your spiral bound set of index cards. (I hope you have gotten some index cards by now and are using them!)
7. Continue to eat when you are hungry. Select any food you desire. Some of you are ready to begin to discern which foods make you feel energized! That’s great! We consider those “Whole Body Pleasers” and we will talk more about those later. If you know your body feels best when you eat beneficial foods, then enjoy!
8. This week, try to hone in on what a “5” is for you. If the entire hunger scale thing feels too complicated or difficult or confusing, please just use this simple test: Hungry? Not hungry? Eat when the answer to the first quest is yes and stop eating (or don’t start) when the answer to the second question is yes. This may simplify it enough to make it doable.
9. Interact here in the comments or at the Facebook group. I would love to hear what God is doing in your life. What new thing are you seeing in your life emotionally, spiritually, or physically? Won’t you give God glory and share it with us?
How About You?
How did the first week of our journey go for you? What is God impressing upon your heart? What questions do you have at this point? How can we best serve and encourage you?
And we are OFF! Let this year be LIT up with the HOPE that comes from letting Jesus do what he does so well…redeem, transform, and love. Let’s let him redeem us and the years the locusts have eaten. Let’s let him transform us from the inside out and let him love on us. We will open ourselves to the whole kitten-kaboodle! Let’s RUN the RACE!
Yesterday we had our first webinar. Find the recording for the webinar here. If you are a group leader, here are the Orientation/Intro Webinar Group Questions. Thank you to Allison Mitchell for writing them for us this week!
Here are some thoughts I have about this upcoming study overall and the focus we will have. Also, I share some thoughts about this first lesson on HOPE:
Video Questions:
1. Do you have a desire for transformation like I mention in the video?
2. What are the three things that will saturate our study of the workbook together?
3. What unique experiences, wisdom, and support do you have this time as you go through the workbook?
4. What “Little t” truths do you need to TRUMP with God’s “Big T” truths?
5. What would you like to see God call into being into your life?
6. Take a few moments to pray and ask God to show you what lies you might be believing that are standing in the way of you experiencing the hope that he intends for you to experience.
Introductory Thoughts About Renewing of the Mind
What we think/believe will drive our choices or actions. Our actions will establish a pattern. Our patterns will reap fruit. What fruit do we see in our lives that we might like changed? Let’s trade lies for truth, so we will begin to believe differently. The truth we believe will affect our choices and behavior. Our new choices and behaviors will establish new patterns in our lives. And the new fruit we long for will become evident over time!
You can select the level of involvement that you can manage. As time goes on, if you have to pick just ONE thing to do each day, I would recommend that you invest time in journaling through one set of questions in Barb Raveling’s I Deserve a Donut book or app each day. I believe that time invested doing this will reap HUGE rewards!
Trade Book Assignment –to be completed by January 13th
If you are using the Thin Within book (paperback or hardcover) published 2002 or 2005, I have pulled out from the deep dark recesses of my hard drive(s) a draft of a Thin Within Book Study Guide that, as yet, is unpublished. I provide it to you with a caveat…please be kind! lol! It isn’t publishable… Use it at your own risk ;-), but know that it was created with love. I provide the TW Study Guide Intro and TW Study Guide Week 1 documents, but please know they don’t match what we will do with the workbook study. I think it will be good, anyhow! It has you doing 5 chapters each week, so you will be done sooner than the workbook if you go at that pace, but hang out with us. 🙂 Also, you might still want to do the assignment below, #s 4, 6-10. You don’t have to have a workbook to do those.
Workbook Assignment – to be completed by January 13th [[Note: I know that many of us struggle with perfectionism and a condemning spirit. This is a chance to break out of that. I give you WAY more to do in any given week than is reasonable to do. So, do NOT expect to do it all! That would be impossible! Extend grace. Practice godliness by releasing perfectionism…Do what you can and be ok with that. PROMISE me! :-)) Consider all the possibilities like a “buffet.” Choose what looks best to you and let the rest go this time. There is always another day to try another tool!
1. Read through the introductory material in the Thin Within workbook, pp. A5-A11.
2. Read, highlight, mark Lesson 1 on pages B3 – B8 or listen to the audio file of Lesson 1 at Sound Cloud. Discuss it here in the comments section below this post or at our Class Private Facebook Group Page.
3. Complete one section of “exercises” each day. For instance, today, Tuesday, you could complete Day One on page B9-B10. Tomorrow, Wednesday, you could complete Day Two on page B11. Thursday, complete B12…and so on. When you come to the optional exercises, use your discretion. You can catch up on one of the other days or do some of the other optional activities.
4. For extra power in this process…begin now to each day keep a running list of any of God’s attributes, his characteristics, how he relates to or treats people that you find in your reading of the workbook or Scriptures. I suggest keeping this running list in a section of your journal (or inside the cover of your workbook) as you will add to it over the course of weeks and months! It helps if you include the reference. Check out this post to learn more about what I call “The God List.” (If anyone comes up with a better name, please PLEASE tell me! LOL!) If you would rather have it electronically, I have found software like Evernote is a great place to keep my God List as it syncs between all my devices and I have it handy ANY time I want or need it. I suggest adding at least two or three (or more) to your God List each day. You will be glad you did as we get further on. The extra few minutes will be an investment. 🙂 Here is more information about the God List.
5. This week, use Days 1-7 in the Temple Tool Kit. If you would rather, keep your notes in your journal. I like using a regular journal as there is more space to write.
6. Record any thoughts—LIES—that you discover pop into your head such as:
“Why bother doing this? It will never work.”
Or “You have done this before and you never keep the weight off.”
Or “This approach may work for everyone else, but it won’t for you.”
Or “I am SUCH a failure!”
And so on. When you discover a thought that contributes to thoughts of defeat, flush it out into the open and ask God to show you HIS thoughts about whatever it is. For instance, regarding the above:
“With the support and prayers of all the group members, with a new focus on this material, this WILL work!”
Or “God is doing a NEW thing and he will give me what I need to succeed AND to walk in victory.”
Or “God created my body reliably and he will show me that this way of releasing weight is effective for me, too. It is a God-sized work, true, but he is AT work doing it right now!”
Or “God will use this failure to teach me what doesn’t work and to give me strategies for victory!”
7. Make liberal use of the Sound Cloud files and You Tube videos. They are there for you to help you. Please enjoy. Download. Put them on your devices, carry them with you. God wants to saturate your thinking with the TRUTH about this journey!
8. Commit to relishing eating ANY food you desire once your stomach is empty…at a perfect “0.” Serve yourself less food. Start by halving your portions this week. If you sense physical satisfaction — a “5” coming before you are done eating, ask God to give you strength to stop eating. You get to eat again the very next time you are hungry! NO deprivation here!
9. Most of all…keep on praying! Pray that God will help you arrive at your natural God-given size, that you will break free from the stronghold that food has on you, that you will renew your mind so that you think differently about food, your body, eating, and the victory that God has won for you! Thinking differently will result in different actions resulting in different fruit! And maybe most of all…pray that you will have a wonderfully refreshing new intimacy with your Savior and Lord. 🙂
10. If you want to supercharge the transformation, renewing your mind will be paramount. I am personally making sure I do something twice each day to renew my mind. If you aren’t sure what that might look like, then journaling through a set of Barb’s questions in her I Deserve a Donut book or app is just the ticket. This is a great complement to our study of the Thin Within book!
How About You?
Check in! How are you feeling about beginning this journey? I would LOVE to hear from you here.
Note: If you have just stumbled upon this blog and this post and you like the idea of breaking free from dieting, fear-based exercise and the obsession that has so often been our practice to break free of extra weight, sign up for our Thin Within workbook study email list. It isn’t too late to dive on in! This page tells more about it.
There are so many exciting changes ahead relative to God is Doing a New Thing and the Thin Within ministries! I am so excited to roll out each one by one. But let me just tease you a bit with that for now and get to the point of this post!
We may just be beginning the 2013 holiday season, but it isn’t too early to think ahead to January and that time when so many of us want to start fresh (though, truly we can start fresh EACH day—we don’t need to wait!).
In January 2014, I will be leading an online Thin Within group studying the Thin Within workbook material. The first orientation meeting will be Monday, January 6th. The class will wrap up Monday, April 7th, 2014. Posts will be accessible here at the blog for discussion, but we will also have a “live” online meeting each week on Mondays, from 4:30-5:30pm Pacific Time. The web url will be made available each week to those who sign up and who provide their email addresses to me for that purpose.
Here are some details about the Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook Kit #1. If you have done this workbook before, you can still join the weekly chats January 6 – April 7 and work through *any* of the Thin Within workbooks as they are all designed so that they all have the same lesson topics each week.
The first kit is the most comprehensive and comes with three pieces:
Workbook #1
The Temple Toolkit
The Memory Challenge Cards (click on the image to see a large version and some images you can 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’s unit 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 doto 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 optionalas 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 of us individually. Some have freedom to use all the tools, charts and graphs. Some have the freedom not to.
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.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says.
Anyone who listens to the word
but does not do what it says
is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and,
after looking at himself,
goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
~ James 1:22-24
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!
$40 includes three months of workbook material and exercises, as well as the Temple Toolkit and a set of Scripture Memory Cards, one verse for each week. There is no additional cost to participate in the class at this time.
Did you knowthat there are 3 additional workbooks, each covering 12 weeks? The material is designed so that people who have gone through workbook #1 before, can do workbook #2 or #3 or #4, even while most in the group use 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:
Hope
My Body–God’s Temple
Identity in Christ
Celebration of God’s Grace, Part One
Restoration
Counting the Cost
The Fight of Faith
Celebration of God’s Grace, Part Two
Building Godly Boundaries
Forgiveness
Prayer
Celebration of God’s Grace, Part Three
When the 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.
Workbooks #2, 3 and 4 cost about $25 each.
To order materials, call Thin Within 1-877-729-8932 (9:00am-5:00pm Eastern) or visit this link at Amazon.
To sign up for the class starting in January 2014, visit this link and fill out the form. This email list will only be for the class information.
The group I will be leading starting January 6, 2014 is an “open” group. You can join the chat at any time. There will be more details to come—but if you want to get the information sent directly to you, please sign up to be on the class email list. Hope you can join us!
How About You?
Do you need and want support? Now is your chance. I will probably not be leading another class through the workbook in 2014. Sign up today and purchase your materials! 🙂
Want to lead a group? If you want to live dangerously :-), you can lead a Thin Within group. The best way to do this is to plan to use the material here at the blog and the videos will be created along the way. Plan to join us for the discussions here, the videos, and the class sessions on Monday. Then, following the Monday classes, you can meet with your own group of people live and in person to lead them through the material using the resources provided to you by your own participation in the online class! By the time class time rolls around for us online each Monday, you will have all the material under your belt and be ready to teach it yourself! I would love to know if this interests you! 🙂
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