“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
So there we have it! We were warned about TROUBLE right there in John 16:33! And yet, I continue to be shocked and surprised at the amount of trouble that can roll into my life on any given day. I love trouble free days, but seriously, with a job, kids, a husband, and other forms of frequent human interaction, those days are very rare.
Now for the most part, I can just shake off trouble, forgive the people involved, and keep focusing on the big picture. However, from time to time I get those days where my own weakness (in body or mind) collides head-to-head with some “trouble”, and I’m just fed-up with all the drama. Then, if I let these troubles fester for more than two seconds without taking it to God, I can find myself nose-diving into a full fledged pity-party. To these parties I usually invite only three guests: Self-pity, Discontentment, and Unforgiveness.
During these times I am so grateful for a handful of trusted girl friends! They will allow me to vent, without judging me or judging the other people involved. And afterwards they will gently point me in the right direction… the path of forgiveness that leads me back to intimacy with Christ. When I’m finally ready to lay down my long list of rights and whisper “Okay I will forgive…” PEACE comes rushing back into my life and I remember again… TROUBLE IS PART OF MY PROCESS…
Sarah Young explains this so well in her book Jesus Calling:
“MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE PROBLEMS IN YOUR LIFE. Though many things feel random and wrong, remember that I am sovereign over everything. I can fit everything into a pattern for good, but only to the extend that you trust Me. Every problem can teach you something, transforming you little by little into the masterpiece I created you to be. The very same problem can become a stumbling block over which you fall , if you react with distrust and defiance. The choice is up to you, and you will have to choose many times each day whether to trust Me or defy Me.
The best way to befriend your problems is to thank Me for them. This simple act opens your mind to the possibility of benefits flowing from your difficulties. You can even give persistent problems nicknames, helping you to approach them with familiarity rather than with dread. The next step is to introduce them to Me, enabling Me to embrace them in my loving Presence. I will not necessarily remove your problems, but My wisdom is sufficient to bring good out of every one of them.”
So Sarah gives us TWO clues here, straight from the Bible:
- TRUST GOD THAT HE CAN USE TROUBLE FOR GOOD IN YOUR LIFE
- START THANKING HIM FOR YOUR TROUBLE!
I honestly found THANKFULNESS to be one of the GREATEST WEAPONS against attacks of the enemy in my life. I recently found myself so drained by enemy attacks (Ephesians 6) and trials (James 1:2-3) when a friend suggested I make a THANK YOU list of all the things God has done the past year in this ministry and in my life. What a difference it made! It didn’t change any of my troubles or stopped the attacks per se, BUT IT CHANGED MY OUTLOOK AND ATTITUDE!
So, my fellow sister in this world where we are having much trouble, I want to gently encourage you to make your own THANK YOU LIST when things get tough. Also ask God to give you a few good friends you can trust during those times when you are weak and need some support and direction. God uses people to keep our arms up and show His love to us in a very real way!
Please don’t isolate yourself any longer. If you don’t have any friends, start reaching out. Join a women’s Bible study or get involved in a small group for women at your church. It will take some time to establish deep friendships, but start today by taking small steps forward, it will enrich your life in ways you never imagined!
Please allow me to give a shout-out here today to my friends who love me warts and all! You know who you are and I thank God for you, every day of my life!
In His amazing love!
Heleen
Resources for you
Click on the image below to learn more about the 12 Week Online Program: Women Struggling with Food
Read my story. Click on the image below to download my ebook: God will I ever be free?
Appetite for Freedom WORKBOOK and DVD. Great resource for small groups or for individual use.
Click on the image below to find out more
Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago at 2:04 pm. Add a comment
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain:
faith,
hope
and love.
But the greatest of these is LOVE.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-13 (Today’s New International Version)
Does the above passage make you uncomfortable?
Does it strike you as something you will never be able to do?
I agree, it’s much like the passage in Proverbs 31, it sets a standard that is very hard to come by.
You might come away from this passage with a feeling of hopelessness.
Who can love like this?
We want to love like this, but honestly, even on a good day we might only get as far as being patient and kind.
Actually, the love described in this passage refers to AGAPE love.
We don’t have it, but we need it.
We can’t produce this kind of love, but God can give it to us.
Not only can He help you to love your husband, boyfriend, child, or friend in this way, but even the person who pushes your buttons, and yes, even your enemy.
It’s as simple as asking.
Maybe you will have to ask a few times and keep asking every time you find yourself head on with a certain person, behavior, or offense. But don’t let that keep you from asking.
Go ahead, next time you find yourself all out of love, ASK!
Maybe something like this:
“Lord, I have no love in my heart right now, but I realize how important love is to you. Please give me love in my heart for this person. Your love that overrules my own feelings and offenses”
How do you get a constant flow of this Agape love in your life?
Read John 15 again. According to this passage there is only one way that we can have fruit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) in our lives and that is to “abide in the Vine” or “have a close relationship with Jesus”
(my translation)
You have nothing to lose you know… when you love you always win!
Have a wonderful Valentines Day ladies!
There is someone who is in desperate need of your love you know…
It could be romantic love:) or it could be love of a very different kind…
Love,
Heleen
Resources for you
Click on the image below to learn more about the 12 Week Online Program: Women Struggling with Food
Read my story. Click on the image below to download my ebook: God will I ever be free?
Appetite for Freedom WORKBOOK and DVD. Great resource for small groups or for individual use.
Click on the image below to find out more
Posted 3 months ago at 10:29 am. Add a comment
I wanted to give a big shout-out to all of my faithful readers: Thank you so much for reading my very infrequent posts during 2012!
It was indeed a year to remember, so please forgive me if I spend a moment reminiscing…
My second son, Terrance, graduated from high school and started Bible College. My little girl started first grade and I took up the challenge of homeschooling her and my 13 year old son again this year. My husband started up a new business outside the family home, and we also celebrated 20 years of marriage just recently on 12/12/12.
As many of you might have seen and heard, God also opened huge doors for my ministry this year. I had an opportunity to record small group material, Appetite for Freedom, which changed the whole face and even name of my ministry. What you may not know though is that ALL OF IT was ONE INCREDIBLE MIRACLE RIDE! I can still not even believe that it all happened in one year!
I have had it on my heart for a long time to create material that ladies could use in small group setting. I have even had several churches, universities, and healing ministries ask me about this in years past, but never seemed to have the finances or resources to pull off the publication of a book and a professionally recorded DVD. Then my husband and I started attending a small group at our church in 2011 for businesses. Through a series of events, including a challenge from our church for small groups to reach out to the community, this small group that we’ve just joined offered to help us raise the funds and gather the resources to take my ministry to the next level. It came as such an answer to prayer and from such an unsuspected source, that we just knew it had to be God. I am still so amazed at how God has forged friendships in our lives during this past year and poured out His provision in the most amazing way. Some of my friends (old and new) heard about the door that God has opened and they started adding their resources to the project in ways that I could never imagined or even thought about. As the project unfolded I had ladies take me to buy outfits for the recordings at stores I’ve only dreamed of shopping at. Other of my friends volunteered to help edit my book, babysit my children, prepare meals for my family, lead tables, attend the recordings, bring flowers, lend me jewelry, pray for me, counsel me, the list goes on. It was simply a miracle ride which I will forever be SO GRATEFUL for!
We went out during the last stretch of 2012 with a bang when the book was published and the videos were released. What a year!
However, you surely know that so far I have only painted one side of the picture. I have not experienced so much stress in a 12 month period in all of my life. Just showing up that first night for the DVD recordings almost gave me a heart attack. I found myself hiding in the bathroom, unwilling to come out. I would probably never have recorded a word if God didn’t somehow got me out of there and planted me behind that podium. It was easily one of the most difficult things I had to do, and it stretched and grew me in every way possible. Every single thing that I have ever taught was being tested in my life. I didn’t just preach about things, I lived it! There is nothing like stress to bring all of your worst characteristics to the surface and shake out everything that is not real in your life. I can assure you that in 2012 I’ve experienced financial difficulty, marriage problems, problems with my kids like I’ve never had before, and an overwhelming desire to just take the easy way out and EAT!
I’m so grateful to God that He pulled me through! I have learned for sure that nothing in life that is truly worth having comes without a fight. I am so incredible grateful for every prayer that went up for me and my family, and for those who are still praying for us. We are being held up by the everlasting arms of God! I know that none of the pain or anguish was for nothing, because this fight is for FREEDOM IN JESUS. I’m so excited to see what God is going to do in the lives of ladies who need to experience the love and freedom that comes by living in close relationship with Jesus.
Thank you so much for each and everyone of you ladies who prayed for me, loved me, and supported me this past year. Thank you Jesus for never leaving me and for continuing to use this humble broken vessel. I am, and will be, forever grateful…
A most blessed 2013 to you beautiful women of God and your families!
In His Everlasting Love
Heleen
Click on the image below to learn more about the 12 Week Online Program: Women Struggling with Food
Read my story. Click on the image below to download my ebook: God will I ever be free?
Appetite for Freedom WORKBOOK and DVD. Great resource for small groups or for individual use.
Click on the image below to find out more
Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago at 9:37 pm. Add a comment
I’m breaking out of my tightly sealed exercise box! I’ve had enough and I’m breaking out! After seeing some of my friends embark on all sorts of exercise adventures this summer, and actually enjoying it, I knew it was time for my box to go. I’ve been feeling less motivated to get on the elliptical or go for a walk as the days went by, and I knew something had to give.
A few weeks back a friend casually mentioned Zumba. Why didn’t anybody tell me about this before? It seems like everyone on the planet knows about it except me. When I mention it enthusiastically to others, they shrug it off with a “Oh yeah, so-and-so does it” or “Yeah, I do it”. Now for the few of you out there who are as uninformed as I; it’s a class that combines all kinds of dancing from all over the world with loud music, and it promises to be super duper fun. In fact the slogan at zumba.com reads “Zumba, join the party!”
So I sort of checked it out, and kept procrastinating for a few weeks before I finally mustered up the courage and went to a class. It was very awkward, as all first classes go, but lucky for me we had the most popular, prettiest, fittest, (and I’m sure youngest) instructor that evening, and oh my goodness, was she at her best! I had no idea what I was doing, my body absolutely refused to move in the way she proposed we move our bodies. I looked like a yard stick surrounded by spaghetti bodies. So I did the only thing I could do: I started laughing and I didn’t stop for 60 minutes. I laughed and I sweat and before I knew it the hour was over. I probably needed a good laugh more than I needed exercise, because I couldn’t stop talking about it that evening, and Tony looked on in amusement as I tried to demonstrate some of the moves. Needless to say, I had fun, and I could hardly move the next morning, which meant it actually worked (while I was laughing!) I’m going back for sure and I’m taking some girlfriends with me (they just don’t know it yet:)
Now my point with all this ranting is not to advertise Zumba or even slightly suggest that you may have the same experience. My goal is simply to inspire you again to THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. Better yet, pray that God will show you something outside your box. Remember, IT’S NOT ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS. You have to break your back and almost kill yourself to really get weight loss results with exercise. No, it’s SO MUCH MORE! Exercise truly bumps us into that upward cycle that I always talk about. It reminds us that we actually have limbs that can move, and that we’re not nearly as old as we thought we were. In fact, exercise, at any weight, can make you feel less self conscious and more in touch with your body. It gives depression a serious kick in the behind, and it makes you want to take care of your body. Another huge plus point for me is the motivational factor when I find myself surrounded by a group of women. I recognize that others, same age and weight as me, are confident in their own skin JUST THE WAY THEY ARE. It also hugely motivate me to see other ladies twice my age maintaining a healthy body by showing up at that class every week, come rain or sunshine.
Some of my non-athletic friends, who also struggle with food, astonished me when they broke out of their boxes in the past. One friend joined a rowing team and became super fit and toned while LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT! Another friend started cycling with her husband, after vowing that she will never do it, and now she is showing him a thing or two. I have a friend who started horse back riding, and another joined a women’s softball team and she’s having the time of her life. All of these ladies have not merely started exercising, they have changed their lives! God has showed them what to do to get them into an upward cycle of living healthy, eating right, having confidence, spending more time with God, and being the best women they can be.
What about you? You are a princess of the King you know. He has good plans for you according to His Word, and there is no reason that you have to live inside a box or keep doing something that you absolutely hate. Let’s be honest about this, if we hate the exercise we set out to do, we’re not going to continue doing it. This totally defeat the purpose, because as you and I both know, in our struggle with food CONSISTENCY IS EVERYTHING.
So what can you do consistently, that you can also enjoy? I don’t have the answer to that, and maybe you don’t even know right now, but God has a storeroom jam-packed with ideas that will fit you like a glove. Why not ask Him?
We were made to move ladies. According to the Bible exercise is of some use, not as important as taking care of our spiritual well-being mind you, but it is still an important part of our allover make-up. In fact, it can be instrumental in helping us take back our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
Please tell us how you are breaking out of your own exercise box these days. You never know how God can use your testimony to help another lady break out of her box, and as a result start spiraling upward out of her struggle with food.
Love you ladies, and hope to see some of you at Zumba:)
Heleen
Resources for You:
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago at 11:42 am. Add a comment
I have been getting a few heart breaking emails lately from ladies who have lost some weight on programs and now find themselves back in the clutches of binging and purging. If you’ve deprived your body, or yearned for certain addictive food (because you still need to deal with the idol in your heart) then you might find yourself binging again at some point (even after months or years of eating right).
A binge is fertile ground for the enemy to come sow lies of shame and guilt. In that place we may start to believe that we can not recover from this binge, or that we might as well give up, or that our only option is to turn again to dangerous methods (starvation, purging, etc). I’ve re-posted this post here for you because it speaks of a way to become victorious over those binges and it has helped me and other ladies be victorious in this area.
Please read this post to encourage you that we all fall, but THOSE WHO GET UP, refuse to listen to the enemy, and carry on, find victory.
How do you prevent a Binge from turning into a whole day (or month) of overeating?
A friend asked this question on our forum, and I realized that it is a very common question that I might best answer here on my blog.
Of course it would be best to not binge at all. However, preventing a binge is easier said than done. If you are on a journey of finding healing for the root issues behind your eating disorder, you might not quite be at the place where you recognize the early signs of a binge (starting in the thoughts and emotions) and thus find yourself still binging from time to time.
You can easily undo all the progress you’ve made with one lousy binge! So how do you keep a binge from taking over your life?
The answer lies in TURNING YOUR BACK ON PERFECTION FOR GOOD!
In Week 10 of my 12 Week Online Program for women with food struggles I speak about the huge link between Perfectionism and Eating Disorders. If you have strong perfectionist tendencies then you might have a very difficult time trying to break away from binging. The reason: You want to have a 100% perfect day or NOTHING – No middle ground.
In order to find healing in this struggle and to BREAK THE POWER OF THE BINGE, our focus has to shift. We have to ask the Holy Spirit DAILY (maybe even hourly) to help us shift our focus from:
WEIGHT LOSS to HEALTH
AND
24 HOURS OF PERFECTION to A YEAR OF HEALTH
So what am I trying to say?
If you can change your focus (only with the help of God of course) to not see your life in 24 hour compartments of “today-I-will-have-a-perfect-day” but rather view your progress over a period of a year, you will not be so devastated by a binge. As soon as a binge loses it’s power over you, it will start fading into the background of your life, until you don’t binge anymore.
We are so scared of those binges because it makes us spiral down. But if we remember every day that a 90% successful day will give us a 90% month, which in turn will give us a 90% year, things will start to change.
Do you realize that if you throw every binge in the 10% “failure-basket” and just get on with doing the 90% of healthy eating, exercise, rest, and drinking a lot of water YOU WILL HAVE AN AMAZING YEAR? You will be healthy, stronger, peaceful and yes some weight loss will be on the agenda.
However, if you keep having “100% success days” and “100% failure days” (the days when you binge and just keep eating because you’ve already “failed”) then you either end up at the same place after a year, or worse…
Ask God today to help you change your focus FOR GOOD! A binge has no power over you if you know exactly where to “file” it and remember that it’s just a drop in your big sea of 365 days!
Don’t wait for January ladies, start asking God now for that CHANGE OF FOCUS AND CHANGE OF HEART. Even if you don’t do everything perfect (like eat some pumpkin pie), if you start focusing on ways to get yourself healthy 90% of the time, you’ll feel peace return to your life!
Lots of Love to all of you beautiful women of God!
Heleen
Resources for you
Click on the image below to learn more about the 12 Week Online Program: Women Struggling with Food
Read my story. Click on the image below to download my ebook: God will I ever be free?
Appetite for Freedom WORKBOOK and DVD. Great resource for small groups or for individual use.
Click on the image below to find out more
Posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago at 8:31 am. 3 comments
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
