Failure: A Bible Study

Note: This Bible study is the continuation of a post at my other blog. Click on this link to get the post that goes with the study: Is Failure Inevitable?

How many years have you been struggling with this sin or bad habit?

How many years (or weeks) have you been diligent about applying truth to the lies that are fueling your habit?

On a scale of 1 to 10, how diligent have you been?

When you think of how long you’ve been renewing your mind compared to how long you’ve had this problem, is it realistic to expect 100% victory at this point? Why or why not?

Are You Tired of the Struggle?

I’m just so sick of the struggle. I feel like I’ve been fighting this battle my whole life and I’ll never get over it.

Those are the words of a dear woman in one of my Bible studies last week. She had been renewing her mind for about six months, had already experienced quite a bit of victory, and then slipped back into defeat for a few days.

She was frustrated and discouraged.

Can you relate to her? I remember feeling that way for more than twenty years, on and off, including the early days of renewing my mind about eating.

If this is how you’re feeling today, I want to encourage you. Here are a few questions that help me when I'm going through a tough battle. I'm hoping they'll help you, too:

1) Are you expecting it to be easy?

It’s natural to get caught up in unrealistic expectations for quick and easy success, but those expectations can get you down. Think of it this way: if you’ve been overeating for thirty years, you’ve got thirty years of lies to dig through on your way to recovery.

It’s going to take awhile to dig through all those lies.

If you’re tempted to get discouraged, think of a stock market chart. Even the best stocks out there never go up in a smooth, continuous line. It’s always up, then down, then up again. That’s how your battle with eating will be.

2) How long have you been using spiritual weapons to fight the battle?

The woman in my class had been fighting the battle for thirty years but she’d only been using spiritual weapons for six months. So in a sense, she’d really only been fighting the battle for six months. Remember 2 Corinthians 10:3-5? If it’s a spiritual battle, you need spiritual weapons to fight it. Thirty years of dieting isn’t the same as thirty years of fighting lies with truth.

3) How diligent have you been with your weapons?

Sometimes we think we’re working on a problem when we’re really just obsessing over a problem. Here’s a question I ask myself sometimes just to keep myself honest:

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much effort are you putting into renewing your mind?

I can tell you from experience that I see almost no change when my number is less than a 5, very little change when it’s less than an 8, and lots of change when it’s a 9 or a 10. So what do I do if I really want to change? I make it a 9 or 10.

4) How often are you using your weapons?

The more I work on issues in my own life, the more I realize: if I want to change, I need to renew my mind every time the issue comes up. Even if the issue comes up so often I’m sick to death of renewing my mind about it.

It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Not only because I’m breaking free from my obsessions, but also because I’m growing closer to the One who loves me and longs to show me the way to victory.

5) What are your motives?

I’m hesitant to include this last question because I think if we have the wrong motives, God shows us when we renew our minds. But it might be worth thinking about.

Here’s why: If we’re only going to God so He can make us skinny, He might not be inclined to change us. Why? Because if we feel like we have to have skinny, there's a good chance we're making an idol of skinny. And God doesn't want us to have any idols.

He knows that only in Him will we find lasting peace and joy. So He may decide to help us find peace and joy by not giving us skinny until we can handle it.

I hope these questions will encourage you to persevere in the battle even if you’re exhausted. I’m going through a battle of my own right now, not with food, but with some other things God wants me to give up.

Why don’t we press on together?

Instant Success?

Wouldn’t you love to have instant success in the area of emotional eating and weight loss? To lose all of your weight in just a few months without suffering and without ever once breaking your boundaries or feeling like a failure?

That would be so nice, but also so unlikely.

The fact is, we often have to fail over and over again before we get really good at something. And it’s the same with emotional eating. Even now after almost four years of being free from emotional eating, I still have times when I have to go back to the drawing board and start truth journaling again so I don’t go back to my old ways. That doesn’t mean I’m back in bondage whenever that happens. It just means I need to truth journal so I don’t go back into bondage.

My confidence isn’t in my success. My confidence is in God who sets me free and in a Bible that works. The truth sets me free. I just need to go back to it and apply it every time I fail. That’s what I was reminding myself of in this next truth journal entry.

Day 146 – 7/23/06

I’m feeling defeated today. I’ve been trying to change myself by will power again, not with the truth. Plus I’ve been putting perfectionist standards on myself. Condemning myself when I fail.

This is a stronghold – it requires spiritual weapons of prayer and carrying my thought captive. Getting up and using will power and positive attitude is not going to cut it!

I need to go back to journaling when I eat for a non-hunger or non-meal reason. Back to the basics. Plus meditate on Scripture. Remember, I can’t do it by getting up and starting anew. Only the truth will change me.

Renewing of the Mind Challenge

I’m sitting here by the fire this morning wondering how everyone is doing today. The holiday season is officially over now and the kids are back in school. Many of you are probably thinking, “Good—life will get back to normal today.”

I still have my Christmas tree up—in fact I’m looking at it right now all lit up—and my older boys are still home for Christmas vacation, so life isn’t back to normal yet here, but I like it this way. I love having all the kids home.

Still, it’s time to get back to work today. I’ll be working again on my new Bible study and forcing myself to go back to my writing schedule.

The first Monday of the new year is a good time for beginnings, and today I’d like to present you with a renewing of the mind challenge. What I’d like you to try is five days of truth journaling, Scripture prayers, or one of the other mind renewing practices in Freedom from Emotional Eating.

If you’re having problems sticking to your eating boundaries, you may want to place your efforts toward trying to stick to your boundaries. If you’re already doing that, I would try working on one of your negative emotions.

Here are some pointers for you if you’re going to work on sticking to your boundaries:

1. Print out some lie/truth charts right away or get a notebook handy. Find a pen and put everything in a place where it’s easy to get to when you need to journal. You can find a larger version of the lie/truth chart that’s in the book at www.truthwaypress.com in the sample content area.

2. Make a commitment to journal every time you eat something out of your boundaries, and I mean every time—even if it’s just one lick of the spoon.

3. Make a rule that you have to truth journal before you can eat anything else.

4. Truth journal even if you’re already planning to break your boundaries again the minute you’re done truth journaling.

5. Don’t beat yourself up even if you break your boundaries ten times during the day—but you should have ten truth journal entries to show for your ten boundary breaks. I would also intersperse those truth journal entries with Scripture prayers which you could even write out.

6. Do this for five solid days even if it doesn’t seem to be making a difference.

Here are some pointers for you if you had been sticking to your boundaries faithfully before Christmas but you’ve been doing terrible since:

1. Do all the things I just mentioned in the previous section.

2. In addition, you’ll need to truth journal your feelings of failure and your fear of continuing to fail.

3. Every time you feel like you will never get over this problem, journal those thoughts. This is a necessary part of the process. I don’t think you can break free from emotional eating without going through the fear of failure stage. It usually hits more than once and it’s often accompanied by failure. You’ll need to use the truth to combat all those lies that tell you you’ll never get over this problem!

4. Be willing to accept that your failure has made you gain some of your weight back if that’s what has happened. Weight isn’t everything, but following God is. Ask yourself, how does God see this situation you’re in? How are you seeing the situation? Adjust your thinking so it matches His.

5. Recognize that this is a trial and know that God can use this trial to bring you closer to Him and make you more like Him if you go to Him for help. If you have Freedom from Emotional Eating, go back to the chapter on trials and rework it with your present trial of eating failure in mind. Make a list of all the things God could do in your life if you were to keep going to Him for help with this trial.

6. Steep yourself in the Word. Spend as much time with God as possible. Remember that life is about loving God and loving others. Answer this question in your journal: How can I love God best in this situation of struggling with food? How can I love my neighbors best in this situation? In the overall scheme of life does a five or ten pound Christmas weight gain make that much difference? How would God want me to move on from here?

I’m going to have to give the pointers for working on the emotions in my next post because I need to get to work on writing before I lose my momentum. I’ll be praying for all of you this week.

Perfectionism and Emotional Eating

Christmas isn’t easy for emotional and obsessive eaters. I don’t know how many Christmases I’ve stuffed myself so full of goodies that by the time New Year’s rolled around, I weighed five or ten pounds more than I weighed at Thanksgiving just five weeks earlier.

I can still remember driving west on I-90 after marrying my husband in North Dakota 27 Christmases ago and throwing cookies out the window as we drove along because it was the only way I could keep myself from eating all of them in one big shot as we headed back to Montana.

Eating too many Christmas cookies isn’t good for our health, our figures, or our morale, but we make a bad situation worse when we take an extra step and condemn ourselves for eating them. My guess is that there are more than a few of you out there who are now beating yourselves up because you didn’t eat perfectly this holiday season!

So I decided to write a post today about perfectionism and emotional eating. I'm hoping you'll read this and stop beating yourself up if that's what you're doing - because perfectionism will hurt your efforts to break free from emotional eating.

Here are just a few of the areas where perfectionism kicks in to slow down our progress in breaking free from emotional eating:

1. Wanting a PERFECT body.

The lie we believe here is that the only thing that’s acceptable is a skinny body. Is this true? Of course not! If life is about loving God and loving others, then it’s loving God and loving others that makes us acceptable, not being skinny. Not to mention the fact that God accepts us “as is.” He doesn’t demand that we shape up before He's willing to love us.

Believing we need to be skinny to be acceptable will actually hurt our weight loss efforts because it leads to self-condemnation when we break our boundaries. “Well, I’ll never be skinny anyway after all that food,” we think, “so I might as well just eat this and this and this.” And then we go all out in the eating department, which of course, is counter-productive to losing weight.

If we instead focus on the truth that life is about loving God and others, it won’t be such a big deal if we break our boundaries. God is far more merciful and gracious than a world who demands physical perfection. He won’t beat us up because we eat too much, but He will want us to have the right attitude about food and our bodies. So He’ll be hoping we come to Him and to His Word so we can see both food and ourselves through His eyes.

2. Trusting in the PERFECT boundaries.

The lie we believe here is that “if we can just find the right set of boundaries it will be easy to control our eating and/or lose weight.” So we try new diets and new boundaries, just waiting for the right one to come along that will make us lose weight and keep it off.

The problem is that unless we radically change the way we think about food, people, and life, we’ll eventually go back to our old ways of handling life’s problems with food, and we’ll gain our weight back—no matter what program we used to lose the weight in the first place.

The boundaries are a good framework for eating, and I believe they’re necessary for the emotional eater, but we’ll never have enough will power to make ourselves stick to our boundaries until we change the way we think about food.

3. Expecting life and people to be PERFECT.

If we expect life and people to be perfect, we’ll eat when they’re not. At least, we will if we’re emotional eaters. Developing a lifestyle of gratefulness, grace, and dependence on God will help us do away with a good share of those negative emotions that make us feel like eating in the first place.

4. Relying on PERFECT foods.

It’s easy to get in the habit of thinking we deserve to eat well, and that if we only eat what our body really wants to eat—the perfect food, in other words—we won’t feel like overeating.

While this might be true for people who have never turned to food for emotional reasons, it’s usually not true for the emotional and obsessive eater, because it’s often not taste and hunger that’s driving us to eat.

5. Condemning ourselves when we don’t follow our boundaries PERFECTLY.

This is a biggie. I might as well eat because . . . I will never get over this because . . . I am such a failure because . . . I will always be overweight because . . . All of these sentences can be answered with the same phrase— because “I broke my boundaries.”

But the truth is that it would be an absolute miracle if we could break free from emotional eating without breaking our boundaries time and time again. And I mean that literally.

God doesn’t normally choose to solve our problems with a one-time magic swipe of His hand. Instead, He allows us to go through trials, leaning on Him for strength, truth, and wisdom because He can teach us more by having us lean on Him than He can by doing everything for us.

Failure paves a good share of the pathway to success. But failure only leads to success when we step from failure toward God. Our normal operating mode is to step from failure to the refrigerator.

I did that for years, but it wasn’t until I was willing to make the sacrifice of taking the time to renew my mind that I began to experience significant change. God used the truth to transform me. My next blog post will be a renewing the mind challenge to you to start the new year off right!

Keep Your Eyes on the Goal: Part 3

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need to be reminded that the race I’m running is the one that leads to Jesus Christ. It’s so easy to make decisions based on other things—what will be most fun, what will be easiest, or even what will require the least amount of sacrifice.

We tend to handle our eating decisions the same way. If our main goal in life is to have fun, then it will be hard to control our eating because limiting ourselves isn’t fun. If our main goal in life is to be skinny, then we’ll have to worry about eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia. If our goal in life is to both indulge ourselves and be skinny, then we’ll drive ourselves crazy because those aren’t compatible goals.

What we need to do, with both life and eating, is to run the right race, or should I say the right races, because I think there are two different kinds of races we run in the right race category.

First, we run the race of our relationship with God. Our goal with this race is to keep Him first in our lives. In that race we need boundaries that will keep food from becoming either a controlling force or an idol.

Those boundaries will be different for each person depending on their eating weaknesses. In my own life the boundaries of three meals and one snack a day helped, but there was a season when I also had to give up sweets because I felt they were controlling me. I talked about that in Freedom from Emotional Eating.

The second type of race I see us running is the individual trial race. If you look at Hebrews 11, those saints each had different things God had called them to—and because of the nature of their calling they had different weights they had to throw off.

Take Noah for example. He would have had to throw off the weight of worrying about what people thought of him in order to build the ark. I imagine he would have had to put up with a lot of ridicule. Moses would have had to throw off the temptation to live the fun and easy life in order to do a job he wasn’t crazy about doing—leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses had to keep his eyes on his ultimate goal, God, so he could have the purpose and strength to do the unpleasant task before him.

We too have things God wants us to do even though they may not seem very big compared to the Hebrews 11 people. We also have things that get in the way of what God has called us to do. Food may be one of those things.

To look at boundaries this way, we might ask ourselves: what is God calling us to do with our lives, and what boundaries would help us run that race well? This will be different for each one of us, and it will probably change as we walk through life.

It could be that food doesn’t even factor into your individual race. I was surprised to discover that it did factor into mine. One of the races God has called me to run is the race of writing for Him. And when I get to a sticky part of writing and don’t know what to do (which happens a lot), my first impulse is to go get something to eat, preferably something sweet. God, of course, would rather see me turn to Him whenever I have problems writing.

I had to ask myself, “Are sweets a weight in my life?” My answer was yes. So I went back to my old boundaries—even though I don’t need to lose weight, even though food doesn’t control me, and even though food isn’t an idol—I decided to go back to the boundaries I talked about in my Bible study. Sweets only on social occasions, holidays and out of town trips. Fruit based sweets anytime.

And you know what? I’m finally at a point in my life where I didn’t mind giving them up. It wasn’t really a big sacrifice. That’s kind of exciting.

Breaking free from emotional eating is a process, a messy, disorderly process. You start out consumed with food. The first sign of success is usually the ending of binges. The second sign is usually being able to stick to your boundaries. Then comes moderation within the boundaries. And I’m thinking the last stage is when you don’t really care too much about food.

That doesn’t mean you progress through the process in a smooth, orderly, failure-free way. On the contrary, the process is riddled with failure. It’s easy to get discouraged when you see yourself sliding back a step. It will be far less discouraging, though, when you remember the real race you're running. It’s not the race that leads to a number on the scale. It’s the race that leads to God. The number on the scale is just a side benefit.

I already blew it. I might as well eat.

I already blew it. I might as well eat.

How often have I said those words to myself? Maybe about a million times? When you think of it, though, it's a crazy thing to say. And a surprising thing to say, as well. After all, my mom taught me "two wrongs don't make a right." So why do I think eating is a good response to having already eaten too much?

To be honest, I'm not sure. Part of me wonders if it isn't the perfectionistic black and white side of me punishing the inept, can't-seem-to-get-it-all-together side of me.

At any rate, I'll try to journal it.

Belief: I already blew it.

Truth: At what point have I blown it - when I've eaten one bite outside of my boundaries, 20 bites outside my boundaries, or 100 bites outside my boundaries? Blowing it is a relative term. I can either look at what I've eaten and say, Well, at least I didn't eat more than this. It would be a victory to stop here. or I can look at what I've eaten and say, I can't believe I ate that much. What was I thinking? I'm such a loser! I'll never change. I think it would be far healthier and far more beneficial for me to look at it from the first standpoint.

So here's my truth: Thank God I didn't blow it as badly as I could have blown it. Stopping at this point and not going any further would be an incredible victory.

Belief: I might as well keep eating.

Truth: Since eating is a spiritual issue for me (because it used to be an idol in my life), this is a dangerous thing for me to say. It's like saying, Okay, I've already done what God doesn't want me to do, so I'm just going to plan a day of sin and enjoy it. I'll wait until tomorrow to live for God. When I look at it that way, I feel sick. No, I don't want to keep eating. I want to stop as soon as possible because I want to honor God in everything I do.

Here's my truth: The sooner I start living for God, the better.

Does It Ever Get Easy?

Do you ever wonder if you’ll struggle with food for the rest of your life? I know I used to feel like that. Eating seemed to be that one thing in life I would never be able to get a handle on. I didn’t control food—it controlled me.

I know many of you who read this blog feel the same way I used to feel. You wonder if you’ll ever get over it, and you’re tired of the battle. It’s hard to keep pressing on when you fail time after time after time.

Of course, Monday mornings are always hopeful. That’s the traditional day to start the new program, right? We eat all weekend with the idea that we’ll be good “starting Monday.”

But Monday never lasts. By Thursday or Friday (if we last that long), it’s back to the same old story—breaking our boundaries, feeling discouraged, and wanting to give up.

Here’s the interesting thing. Since we have a tendency to handle life’s problems with food, our natural inclination is to handle the problem of trying to stick to our eating boundaries the same way. When it’s hard, we eat! Of course, that breaks the boundaries and leads to the feeling that we’ll never get over the problem.

So what’s the answer? Are we stuck in an endless circle of failure and discouragement? No, a thousand times no! The answer is God. He can set us free from anything. He’s the Creator of the universe. He can move mountains. Of course, He can set us free from emotional eating.

What we need to do is study His Word to find out how He sets people free. What does God use to change behavior? Let’s look at Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. When He prayed this prayer, He knew He wouldn’t be around much longer, and He was praying for the ones He was leaving behind.

In John 17:15 Jesus is telling the Father, “I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.” This could also be translated “keep them out of evil.”

He goes on to say how this is accomplished in verse 17, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” The Greek word for “in” that’s used here has an essence of “by means of.” We are sanctified and kept from evil by means of the truth.

In other words, we don’t change our behavior by getting up Monday morning and saying, “This week is going to be different! This week I’m going to stick with my plan!” No, we’re changed by the truth.

Remember, it’s not about the boundaries. It’s not about the plan. It’s about truth—and truth comes from God and His Word.

Food no longer controls me, but it’s not because of any brilliant displays of self-control and determination on my part. It was an incredibly difficult battle to change the way I responded to life. It often felt like I was limping along barely able to make progress.

When I felt that old urge to pull myself up by the bootstraps and “wait ‘til Monday,” I had to tell myself, “No, that’s not the way it works. It’s the truth that will set me free. I need to spend more time with God today. I need to cling to His word. I need to carry my thoughts captive to Him.” And that’s what set me free.

It’s also what keeps me free. When I feel tempted to go back to my old ways, I pull out my trusty lie-truth charts and start filling them out again. As I write the truth, I see my desires change before my eyes.

The Bible is a life-changing, joy-giving book. I’m amazed by its brilliance and transformed by it’s wisdom. This Monday morning, I encourage you to look for the solution to emotional eating in its pages—and not in another program!

Hopelessness

Have you ever felt hopeless when it comes to your eating issues? I felt that way for years, and I’ve had many other women tell me they felt the same way. You fail over and over again, and it’s hard to believe you’ll ever break free of it.

I’ve been truth journaling for eight years now, and God has used it to help me break free from worry, resentment, discontentment, living up to the expectations of others, and emotional eating. By far, the hardest one of those to deal with was the emotional eating. In fact, if God hadn’t given me success in some of those other areas first, I don’t know if I would have believed that it was possible to also experience success with emotional eating.

I’m having the same struggle now with procrastination. That also seems to be a huge one to break free from—at least it is for me.

The thing God keeps showing me over and over again, though, is that you have to change the way you think to be successful. I can't just keep trying to force myself to do the things on my to-do list everyday and expect to overcome procrastination. Instead, I need to change the way I think about work, and see it from God's point of view.

Transformation starts on the inside and radiates out. And it’s often just as hard to make yourself work on that inner transformation as it is to make yourself go to the gym (which I have to admit, I don't make myself do).

I’ve often felt like there’s a brick wall in front of me when it comes to certain areas of my life—that it seems almost impossible to even make myself work on the problem.

My only hope is going to God for help and to His Word for strength. If it’s too hard to truth journal, I pray Scripture. For some reason, that seems less intimidating.

What we need to remember in these struggles is that we're in the midst of a spiritual battle. If we're Christians, we have an enemy, and he doesn't want us to break free from the things that control us.

Battles aren't pleasant, and they're not easy. The soldier has to be prepared, and he has to use the right weapons if he wants to succeed.

Today, I encourage you to take up the Word of God and use it in this fight. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it seems hopeless at times . . . but life isn’t always what it seems, is it?

Stop Beating Yourself Up!

Let me ask you something. What usually goes through your mind after a bout with emotional eating? Do you immediately go to God and try to see the situation from His point of view, or are you more likely to just react and leave God out of the picture?

Let’s look at some of our common responses to eating failures and see what motivates these responses and where each one leads:

1. Beat yourself up (figuratively). I can’t believe I ate the whole thing. I’m such a failure. I’ll never get over this problem.

Where does this response come from? Is it remorse because you went to food for your emotional needs, or is it regret that this will really set you back in your weight loss efforts? At least for me, it was usually the latter. God doesn't condemn me for messing up, but the world does condemn me for being overweight, and it was the world I was more concerned with.

We have to be careful to remember that this isn't really about the weight. What it's really about is a life dedicated to food that needs to be dedicated to God.

Worrying about the weight often distracts us from going to God for help with the problem. Why? Because we're so busy condemning ourselves about the weight, that we're not looking to God to see how He feels about it.

To be honest, I think Satan is happy with the fact that we're so obsessed with our weight. Look at Revelation 12:9-10. Satan is the accuser of the saints. Why does he accuse us? Because it works! If we’re busy beating ourselves up, where are our eyes? Are they on the truth that sets us free or are they on the lies that enslave?

God doesn’t condemn us. Look at Romans 8:1 and John 8:1-11. He loves us and not only that He understands what we’re going through, because Jesus was tempted in all things Himself when He lived on earth (Hebrews 4:15-16).

Condemnation leads to discouragement and hopelessness and often depression. This isn’t God’s way!

2. Rebel. You know what? I’m sick to death of these stupid boundaries. Besides, isn’t it a little legalistic to say I have to have boundaries anyway? Having rules just makes me want to break them!

Remember Eve and Satan in the Garden of Eden? The first thing Satan did was try to get Eve to think that God’s rule about the tree was ridiculous. Eve listened and must have agreed. She broke the rule. What she didn’t realize was that the rule was protecting her. Life would have been better for Eve if she had followed the rules.

It’s popular in our culture to say we shouldn’t have to follow anyone else’s rules. Rules restrict. Rules enslave. Having rules just makes us want to break them.

If this is true, then we shouldn’t have any problems once we give up the rules. In other words, if it’s the rules that make us want to overeat, all we have to do is get rid of the rules, and the desire to overeat will disappear. If only life were that easy.

No, if God thought rules were bad, He wouldn’t have given us the Ten Commandments. However, He does want us to be more than rule followers. He’s looking for hearts that want to follow Him, not just hearts that want to follow the rules. Remember Romans 12:1-2? We develop hearts that want to follow Him through the renewing of our minds. Each breaking of the “rules” gives us an opportunity to renew our minds.

3. Escape. Go to sleep, watch a movie, get caught up in a good book—anything to make you forget how much you just ate.

I think this response is generated in large part by our desire to have easy lives. We don’t want to go through the hassles of having to deal with this weight issue over and over again. We just want to be through with it.

Does escape really help us break free from emotional eating though? Are we happy when we escape? No, of course not. It’s always there in the back of our minds bothering us. We haven’t really solved the problem by escaping.

4. Bring your thoughts captive to the truth. Try to remember what you were thinking when you broke your boundaries. Write it down and replace the lies with the truth. Pray some Scripture. See the situation from God’s point of view.

This isn’t a common response, and it’s not an easy response—but I’m hoping it becomes your habitual response! In my next post, I’ll walk you through how this would look in an actual situation.

Running the Race

There’s no way I could run a marathon in eight weeks, even if I really wanted to. Why? Because I’m not a runner. Not only am I not a runner, I don’t even like to run.

It would take me far more than eight weeks to develop the discipline to run on a regular basis, much less the stamina to run 26 miles. I’d only be setting myself up for failure if I set out to complete the process in eight weeks.

It’s the same with emotional eating—you can’t expect to conquer it in eight weeks if you’re not used to doing what it takes to gain victory.

What I’d like to do today is compare a person setting out to run a marathon with a person setting out to gain freedom from emotional eating. Both goals require lots of effort and work, and both goals will require different amounts of time depending on the individual’s starting point.

I’ve listed below six possible starting points for a person setting out to run a marathon.

1. Couch potatoes
2. Casual exercisers
3. Regular Exercisers
4. Casual Runners
5. Faithful runners
6. Marathon runners

I think it’s obvious that the further up the list you are, the less time it would take to prepare for a marathon.It would be almost impossible for me to run a marathon in eight weeks, because not only am I in the casual exerciser category, I have no desire to do the things I’d need to do to move up to the marathon runner category.

Sure, I’d like to be in shape enough to run a marathon, but I wouldn’t be crazy about all the work required to get there. I’d either have to move very slowly so I developed that desire, or I’d have to have someone hold me accountable to doing even the things I had no desire for.

It’s the same way with breaking free from emotional eating—the further up the “list” you are, the easier it will be to gain freedom. Let’s see what a list might look like for breaking free from emotional eating.

1. Couch potato
• Never has quiet times.

2. Casual exerciser
• Has an occasional quiet time or may have a short little devotion each day.

3. Regular Exerciser
• Has an intimate relationship with God and enjoys regular times with Him each day.

4. Casual Runner
• A person who has an intimate walk with God, plus uses God’s Word at least every once in awhile to break bad habits or strongholds. (This could be through truth journaling, Scripture prayers, specific Bible study, etc.)

5. Faithful runner
• A Christian who has an intimate walk with God and is using God’s Word on a regular basis to break bad habits and strongholds.

6. Marathon runner
• A person who is applying God’s Word on a regular basis to break the stronghold of emotional eating.

Now here’s the problem. None of us would expect to run a marathon if we only read books about marathons and went on runs occasionally. We’d expect that we’d have to train and suffer for it, right?

But when it comes to so many other things in our lives, we expect it to be easy, and then get discouraged and give up when it’s not. It’s the same way with emotional eating. If you’re back at the first or second stage in your relationship with God, it’s going to be hard to make yourself spend the time required to break free from emotional eating. That’s okay, though, as long as you don’t expect results without the work.

You may just want to work on doing the Bible study right now and skip the truth journaling. Whatever you do, don’t expect yourself to move from the #1 to #6 in a few weeks. You’ll only get discouraged and want to give up.

When I started working on emotional eating, I was already at level five—and it was still hard. I’m not trying to discourage you—I just want to help you dispel the myth that it’s going to be easy.

If you’re gung ho for the whole process, go for it—the more time you spend with God the better. The more time you spend truth journaling and praying through Scripture the better. You will definitely change faster if you put more time into the process.

But if you’re like me with running, you may not be capable of adding Bible study, Scripture prayers, and truth journaling to your life all at the same time. You may need an accountability partner just to get yourself to do your Bible study.

Remember, God is a God full of grace and mercy and strength. He’s not the perfectionist father waiting to yell at you as soon as you mess up, but He's also not the laid back dad that says, "Sure, do whatever you want - as long as you're happy, that's the main thing."

He does want you to keep moving forward. Go slowly if you need to, but keep going. Because that’s the only way you’ll get where you want to go.

Broken Boundaries

It’s never more important to remember we’re in a spiritual battle than when we’ve just broken the boundaries big-time and feel like giving up. Listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5:

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 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.

In other words, getting out of bed the Monday after Thanksgiving with a new resolve to stick to my diet this time (!) is not going to solve the problem. Chances are, I’ll break it again by the end of the week if not by the end of the day. Why? Because strongholds can’t be destroyed with determination, self-control, and diets.

What does the passage say? We break strongholds by destroying the ways of thinking that aren’t in line with the truth and bringing our thoughts captive to Jesus Christ.

That means, first of all, that we need to cling to God and His Word if we want to experience success. That’s where we’re going to discover what the right thoughts are. In addition, we need to examine our thoughts to see which ones need to be taken captive. Why don’t we do that together?

The Lies of Broken Boundaries

1. I can’t do it.
Truth: I can’t do it easily, I can’t do it without failing from time to time, and I can’t do it if I only use the weapons of the world. However, if I continue to take my thoughts captive to the truth and rely on God’s strength and the power of His Word, He will break this stronghold in my life.

2. It’s too hard.
Truth: Hard things aren’t necessarily bad things, and I can do all things through Him who gives me strength(Philippians 4:13).

3. This will be like all the other times.
Truth: This will only be like all the other times if I don’t use my divine weapons.

4. This doesn’t work.
Truth: This doesn’t work overnight. It takes time for the truth to kick in. If I replace the same lie with the same truth day after day after day, one day I’ll hear the truth as soon as I hear the lie. And one day I won’t even hear the lie. That's when I'll know that it works.

5. I’m going to gain my weight back.
Truth: If I continue to use divine weapons to fight this stronghold, eventually I’ll lose weight and keep it off. In the meantime, I need to have a little talk with those “Hollywood” thoughts that are running through my mind. It’s presumptuous for anyone to tell me I need to look a certain way to be acceptable, when God tells me that looks don’t matter, and I’m acceptable as I am. (This may be another area of my mind that needs to be renewed!)


I hope you ate within your boundaries this Thanksgiving, but if you didn't, don't beat yourself up. Carry your thoughts captive to Christ and keep pressing on. Think of it this way - it's the truth that sets you free . . . and each breaking of the boundaries is a perfect opportunity to learn a little more truth.

Incessant Forward Motion

Have you ever started a new weight loss program and thought, “This is the answer to all my troubles”?

The program sounds good, it’s easy to follow, and you think it might just work. So you begin. Things are going well, you’re sticking to the boundaries, and you’re even losing weight.

Then one day—BAM—you eat too much . . . way too much. You lose a little bit of confidence, but you keep going. Then out of the blue comes another bad day . . . and another . . . and another.

It’s easy to start thinking, “This program doesn’t work. It’s too hard. I just can’t do it.” And it’s easy to give up.

In Hebrews 12:1-2, Paul gives us these words of advice, “Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us and run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.”

Have you ever thought of your struggle with emotional eating as a race that needs to be run? We want that race to be a sprint—a fast and furious effort that’s over with quickly. Unfortunately, it’s more like a marathon. It goes on and on and on, and we get tired of running.

My husband actually likes to run, and several years ago he entered a race called the Imogene Pass Run. The race course started in Ouray, Colorado, went up over the top of 13,120 foot high Imogene Pass, and then ended 17.1 miles later at the finish line in Telluride, Colorado.

One of the main pieces of advice the race organizers gave the runners was this: no matter how tired you are, keep going. They called it IFM—incessant forward motion. You might have to walk, you might have to limp, you might have to crawl, but as long as you keep moving in the right direction, eventually you’re going to finish the race.

I’ll be talking more about this race in another post, but for now I want you to focus on IFM—incessant forward motion. When it seems like the “race” is too hard—when you’re eating outside your boundaries right and left, and you feel like giving up—that’s when you need to keep moving forward.

Fill out your lie-truth chart. Do your Bible study. Pray through Scripture.

Renew your mind even when it seems like it’s not working, because one day the truth will kick in. And when that happens, you’ll believe the truth . . . and the truth will set you free.