I did a post series back in June on “Renewing the Mind” and I believe that collection of posts is largely responsible for my silence here lately. I haven’t really had much I felt I could add to that message, so, aside from a few posts about exercise, I’ve been rather quiet…

…trying to decide what the purpose of this blog really is.

Followers have seen me promote one program after another and after four years of posts, I have come to realize the simplicity of what this blog was supposed to be about. It was actually in the title this whole time.

Brick by Brick: Tearing Down the Strongholds…

…if our strongholds reside primarily in our minds, why do we try to “fix” ourselves with external solutions? Because that’s the world’s answer and we believe it. So if that’s not the answer, how do we really accomplish tearing down the strongholds?

It’s simple, renewing your mind to the mind of Christ, because with each lie we take captive and make obedient to God’s Truth, a brick falls. This is the entire message of that series I did, so I won’t rehash it at this time (although I plan to write more about it).

Where this relates to releasing excess weight, I think Barb Raveling’s message is probably the simplest one yet. Her focus is primarily renewing your mind, but she doesn’t completely ignore the physical part of this thing. She addresses this with a little word called “boundaries”. Uh oh, sounds a little bit like the mantra of the “diet world”. But it isn’t.

If you struggle with making something an idol in your life, which I think by the looks of America’s waistline, most of us do… then it’s possible you need some boundaries in that area. Barb doesn’t tell us what boundaries to set, but readily admits that God may ask different people to set different food boundaries. Why different? Because eating isn’t a sin and because well, we aren’t all physically the same.

Plain and simple.

What those boundaries are could vary greatly from one individual to the next. And how do you find out what boundaries to select? Well, you ask God. He may, like the alcoholic or the allergic, tell you to completely avoid something. Or, He may tell you to follow a structured meal program. He may tell you to follow your hunger cues. She has some suggestions in the back of her books, but she doesn’t tell you what to choose. She even has a list of questions to ask yourself when trying to decide on what boundaries to follow.

But ultimately, that’s between you and God.

This brings me to a realization that has been a long time in the making. If my food boundaries can be so different from the ones God might want you to follow, does it really matter to anyone but me, which ones I go with? And yet, I’ve spent way too many words on “food” and what our boundaries “should” be.

It’s not about diets… or lack of diets… or any of that. In fact, I’ve come to see that there is one thing most diets, intuitive eating practices, nutrition recommendations, and allergen elimination lists have in common. They all set boundaries in place. Some of those boundaries are more strict than others, but they all involve boundaries.

I feel convicted that by constantly sharing with the blogosphere my “seemingly-ever-changing-over-the-past-four-years” boundaries, I am doing the very thing I did not set out to do with this blog. I’m making it ALL about the boundaries.

I will say that I feel a shift in focus has fully taken place. My food boundaries are my food boundaries. Your food boundaries are your food boundaries. The one thing we may share is the need for those boundaries.

If you need food boundaries, you probably already know it. What you may not know is how to stay within your boundaries. Sure, the world has their own version of this, but God is the originator of “think positive” or “change your thinking”.

He calls it “renewing your mind”.

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” ~Romans 12:2

With food boundaries, you can renew your mind to the mind of Christ about:

• The general keeping of your boundaries.
• Emotions that make you want to break your boundaries.
• Circumstances that make you want to break your boundaries.
• or Lies that make you want to break your boundaries.

This, my friends, is the shift in focus. Renewing your mind with God’s truth… that’s where transformation happens.