Heleen

About runaway trains and rescue boats

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Does your life sometimes feel like a runaway train? The feeling that you desperately need to get off, but it’s impossible because the train is not stopping for anything? Modern high speed train

I was on a runaway train for quite some time, in fact only now, here at the end of 2015, do I feel that I can simply breathe again.

Almost two years ago I started the tedious process of getting licensed as a counselor in my state, and almost immediately as I set foot on campus the drama in my life started. Not so much because of college, even though the work is time consuming and stress producing, but other things that I had no control over were happening all around me.

I wrote here on my blog about my Dad’s sudden passing which shook me so much harder than I could ever imagine. Around the same time some issues surfaced in my family that made me seriously question the depth of my faith and my love for others. When I also experienced a health scare and found myself bursting into tears at the drop of a hat I knew it was time to get help.

I told my counselor about the runaway train that is impossible to stop and he said something that I want to share with you: “Somewhere on that train, there is a cart, a dining room with soft lighting, good food, and classical music. A space  where you could just sit, rest, and dine in peace. You don’t have to get off the train, or wait for it to stop, you just need to find that space…”

I needed some godly counsel and medication, but I especially needed the reminder that Jesus was and always will be my Prince of Peace, my place of quiet in the midst of the storm. I needed a reminder that GOD IS ALWAYS WITH ME, through the water and the fire. When I had nothing to give and all my spiritual disciplines flew out the window, when I had trouble getting through any given day let alone do the things I “should have been doing”… He was with me anyway.

Another amazing thing I found in the midst of the darkness was a lifeboat! I have once heard someone make the analogy of  “the lifeboat of thankfulness” and this thought came back to me in some of my darkest moments. When I felt the waves crashing all around me alone in the doctor’s waiting room, hearing about my Dad in the middle of the night, or laying in bed overwhelmed by thoughts of doubt and fear, I took the jump! I leaped into that lifeboat and started thanking God for the breath in my lungs, the people around me who loved me, the gas in my car, the good talks I had with my Dad, and all the things I took for granted… and almost without fail I would feel the peace of God spill over into my heart and mind.

Maybe you need a quiet dining cart today, or maybe you are in need of a lifeboat right this minute because you find yourself in the eye of the storm. I want to urge you that while this storm is raging  you don’t need to be brave and strong, but instead you can take the hands of others around you and most importantly cling to HIS hand.  God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is right there with you. He is your rock and your hiding place my dear friend.

I believe Mandisa said it best…

 

Don’t Wimp Out – Eyes on Jesus!

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I have a love/hate thing going on with this quote from Beth Moore: “Have the courage to live under the strain and pain to be part of a better story. A larger story. Don’t wimp out. Only pain can bring change”

I love it because it’s so true, but I also don’t like it, for the same reason. Why does only pain bring change? Why do we only “get it” down in the pit of despair,  never on the mountaintop? I guess it’s one of those”wait till heaven to find out” kind of questions, but I want to talk some more with you about the “wimping out” part…

What is going on in your life today that makes you just want to WIMP OUT?

Are you in terrible financial trouble? Is your marriage a source of great pain an turmoil? What about those teenage children, are they breaking your heart? How are you doing with your food struggles these days? Are you maybe hiding out, avoiding people, and crying yourself to sleep again every night because of the terrible grip this thing has on your life? How are your relationships with your family, friends, or colleagues at work?

Let me stop for a minute here, take a deep breath with you, and say… I’m so sorry about the strain and pain of your story…

We can many times see the benefit of a trial in retrospect. That wonderful clear headed time when we can look back and reflect that “yes indeed God did use this to change me” or  “I can now see how God works everything for good for those who love Him”. The problem is when we are right there smack in the middle of the arena with the devil, the people who hurt us, the addictions we’re fighting, or sometimes the whole caboodle. In that place where there is only sweat, tears, and blood we just want to WIMP OUT, and honestly, who can blame us?

Remember the disciples out on the boat? They had the Lord of lords right there in the boat with them, but their eyes were on the storm, and they were freaking out! Peter had the same experience while walking on the water, only one thing could help him and save Him in that place of fear and terror, HE HAD TO FIX HIS EYES ON JESUS!

Let me encourage you today to fix your eyes on Jesus again. I know everything in you just wants to quit, run, hide, or give up… but there is another way. It’s in your room, with the door locked, on your face at the feet of the ONLY ONE WHO CAN SAVE YOU!

Pushing through this terrible pain, anger, or loneliness WITH YOUR EYES FIXED ON JESUS, will indeed bring you into a bigger story: HIS STORY for your life. In fact, many times our trials result in the very thing we’ve been asking God for years: A surrendered heart so that we can run free from the chains that bind us. A heart that truly loves Jesus above all else and that WANTS TO seek first the Kingdom of God.

I’m inviting you to fix your eyes again on Jesus as the Bible commands in Hebrews 12:2. Let Him into your moments, especially those weak moments, so that the PRINCE OF PEACE can reign over your life once again. 

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” John 15; 5-10

Your sister in Jesus
Heleen

Do You Fear Rejection?

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I was desperately afraid of rejection for the biggest part of my life. I was rejected early on for not being pretty enough, not quiet enough, and definitely not skinny enough. I was rejected by peers, boyfriends, and family members in both big and small ways. However, the most important rejection was one I was not even consciously aware of: I REJECTED MYSELF COMPLETELY.

The fear of rejection became the driving force behind my vow to avoid rejection at all cost. I remade my appearance to the best of my ability,  and surrounded myself with “safe” people who would or could not easily reject me; mainly people with wounds, obsessions, and weaknesses of their own. I also made sure that I became irreplaceable in the lives of these friends, so they would never want to leave me. Through manipulation and lies I kept this all alive. I pleased, begged, fought, over committed myself, did things I hated, smiled when I wanted to cry, stayed awake when I wanted to sleep, had long talks when I had nothing more to say, bribed, gave advice, bent over backwards, and last but certainly not least,  rescued everyone around me.

God saw all of this of course, and placed ever so strategically four little beings in my life who would challenge my authenticity from the start. They grew up way too fast, and as young adults refused  to any longer be coerced into Mom’s perfection and people pleasing. They wanted to spread their  wings and fly, and they especially wanted to love me on their own terms. So I felt again the stabbing pain of rejection that I carefully tried to dodged for so long. I cried before God, tried to think and rethink the situation, made a new plan, did everything I knew to keep the relationship intact, and yet, there was nothing for me to do, except feel the searing pain of rejection…

Finally after allowing God to untangle my heart from the huge mess of being tangled up with other people, I asked the question that needed asking a long time ago: Why am I so terribly afraid of rejection?

His voice was clear and the message so simple: You have to stop rejecting yourself. You have to start loving the girl I made, and give her some room to grow and live. You have to let Her breathe and start pleasing her God instead of people. Other people are fickle. The ones who love you today might reject you tomorrow, but through the years, and all of your life, you have YOU an ME.

This was the verse that spoke to my heart and reminded me that God has never rejected me, not even once…

I took you from the ends of the earth,
 from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, ‘You are my servant’;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Isaiah 41:9-10

What about you dear friend?
Are you terribly afraid of rejection?
Has it maybe been the driving force behind so many decisions and actions in your life?
Is fear of rejection maybe at the root of your desire to be thin at all cost?
Is your obsession to please others maybe driving you to the numbing effect of food?
Have you rejected yourself and as a result need to soothe the pain with food?

If we reject ourselves, then other people’s rejection is just too much for us to bear. If we criticize and hate ourselves, then other people’s criticism drive us over the edge, and many times make us reach for a substance to soothe the pain. It is when we are secure in our God and truly accept ourselves that we can handle what others throw at us; the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I implore you to open your heart before the King of kings if you also fear rejection. Fear is from the enemy. Repent and allow God to flush out that fear and fill your heart with His incredible love and acceptance.

Your sister in Christ
Heleen

RESOURCES

Click here for professional counseling services in Oregon

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

The Miracle of a Soft Heart

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So happy to finally get back to blogging. A long stretch of influenza and some unrelenting coughing caused me to take a two week break from the webinars. However, it seems that a person can actually cough and type without too much effort, so I thought I would write to you ladies instead.

2013 has been a memorable year for my family and I. Not because of great milestones I’m afraid, but because of deep valleys and a great miracle along the way. So today seemed like a good day to tell you about it…

For a while now I’ve been observing a heart of stone in one of my loved ones. It breaks my heart over and over again, to see someone once so filled with love and zeal for the Lord now so bitter, angry, and stumbling around in the dark. I have talked, cried, prayed, fought, begged, and pleaded with God for months, and then finally I stopped. It might have looked like surrender on the outside, and I even uttered the intention of surrender to a few friends, but only God knew what really happened… my heart became hard as well.

It’s amazing how gradually this can happen. Over a period of time we start relying on our own efforts again. We start making plans for our food struggle, our lost loved ones, or our circumstances. We start trusting in those plans, and when they inevitably fail, we become discourage, angry, bitter, and numb…

You may know exactly what I’m talking about. We can not deny the fruit of a hard heart. According to Luke 6:45 “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” My mouth was clearly speaking what my heart was full of. I’m especially referring to that anger, strife, bitterness,  complaining, fault finding, nagging, controlling, manipulating, and gossiping that goes on behind closed doors. Sometimes the crust around our hearts become so hard that  this even spills over into public places, but for the most part our hard heart shows best when our guard is down, in our own homes.

The most DANGEROUS thing about a hard heart is that the cracked and barren landscape provides the ideal place for the enemy to hammer in some hooks of evil desires that fuels idolatry. If you’ve worked through my program before, you will know that I’m referring to desires such as the insatiable desire for food, a skinny body, fame, money, the approval of people, or any other thing  that we absolute MUST HAVE . (See James 1:13-15)

It took months (why does it always take me so long to get a clue!), but I finally got to the end of my running, and I cautiously stepped into His presence. Yes, at first I waited with hands wringing, heart pounding, and no patience at all. But I stuck it out. I put worship music on, started up a Bible study without much enthusiasm, listened to Andrew Murray’s Absolute Surrender on tape, kept quoting this verse in Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know“, and I waited…

After a few days of this the crust around my heart started cracking slowly, and finally, I found myself weeping like a little baby, because I SAW!! How could I not see this before? I saw how I’ve allowed the sin of others to harden my heart. I saw how I’ve grieved the Holy Spirit, and how I started relying again on my own plans.  I wept tears of sorrow, repentance, and forgiveness.  His Word not only washed me clean, but the Holy Spirit started soaking the soil of my heart, like a steady autumn rain. And then, ever so gently, He started removing every hook of idolatry and evil desire, and plowed the soil so the seed of His Word can grow.

Oh my dearest friend, there is nothing like a heart that has been softened by the Holy Spirit. IT IS A TRUE MIRACLE! No human can do it, or even imagine it. When the Holy Spirit softens your heart it flows out of your mouth and your pores! You can not contain the love and the joy, and you stand amazed at the peace in the midst of terrible circumstances!

A soft heart desires more soaking, cleaning, and plowing in God’s presence. You don’t need to coax it!

A soft heart never hold hooks of idolatry or evil desires for long. The ground is simply too soft for anything but the Word of God to take root. 

The miracle of a soft heart is available for all God’s children. He wants to wash you clean in the water of His Word, and the Holy Spirit is ready to minister to you, helping you to turn your back on the things that grieve Him.

Come into HIS PRESENCE today. I’m begging you to not wait any longer. Living with a hard heart is the worst kind of agony. I know you may feel NOTHING. You may come hesitantly, like I did. You may need to quote Jeremiah 33:3 for a while as you keep waiting in faith.  God alone knows how much soaking you need dear sister, so allow Him to take His time to do a perfect miracle in you. YOU JUST NEED TO COME TO HIM AND WAIT IN HIS PRESENCE, JUST AS YOU ARE…

I’m praying during this Holiday Season that each person who reads this and needs the miracle of a soft heart will come to Jesus and be changed in His presence! 

2 Corinthians 3:16-18
But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

In His Amazing Love
Heleen

 

Resources for you

Click here for professional counseling services in Oregon

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

Warning: You will have trouble!

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“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

 

Zumba Baby!

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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:

Click here for professional counseling services in Oregon

Don’t let a binge ruin your life

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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 here for professional counseling services in Oregon

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

 

Are you running from God?

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I’m asking this questions ONLY because I’ve found myself in those running shoes (the kind that runs from the only One who can save me) quite a few times in my life.

Why in the world do we do that? We know better! Most of us have gone around this mountain before, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when all is said and done, there’s ONLY GOD, nothing else compares, and no one else can save us from ourselves.

Nonetheless, when we’re back in the clutches of pride and denial we tend to keep running, even though we know we’re going the wrong way. Through the years I came to recognize that when I’m running, SIN is present, and like my very distant ancestors, Adam and Eve, I’m trying to hide it from an all-knowing-all-seeing God. Also, I may be running because I’m reluctant to give it up. Frankly, I may still love that sin and I’m afraid that God will pluck it from my hand if I came too close to Him.

How about you? Do you find yourself binging mindlessly while trying to hide it from others and God (by avoiding Him)? Are you keeping yourself busy every moment of every day while ignoring the voice of the Holy Spirit? Have you put all your trust, time, and money into a food program and now the old familiar conflict between eating and being skinny is back? Are you shopping, working, and going out with friends to distract yourself from the emptiness inside?  Are you purging, restricting food, and going to the gym for hours? Are you avoiding people, spending long hours in front of the TV, or mindlessly surfing the internet? Are you running…?

Listen, there is no condemnation from this girl, I really do understand. It’s an age old master plan of our enemy. We get lured in with a single prideful thought of “surely I can handle it” and before we know it we are occupying a deep pit and we can not hoist ourselves out with all the will-power in the world. You may be somewhere in between where you have not picked up your Bible in weeks; maybe you have not prayed for a few months; maybe you have a very short fuse these days and you start to feel resentment and anger towards those “hypocrites” at church; maybe you wish you had your own personal island, away from all mankind. These are all warning signs that you are running on empty, and you are running in the wrong direction.

Maybe you didn’t run far, and all you need to do is turn around to that warm cup of coffee and Bible study that you’ve neglected to pick up for a few days. On the other hand, you may have run so far that you have no clue how to get back. You may not have the slightest desire to pick up the Bible, and prayer might be the last thing on your mind. You may be looking for something “substantial” and “real” to fix your situation, and the spiritual things I talk about may seem nice, but not really helpful to you.

I want to assure you today, through humbling trial and error, that freedom from food struggles is ONLY found in a real relationship with Jesus. Actually freedom from any bondage, healing for any brokenness, and basically everything we need for living on this earth is wrapped up in relationship with Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to say that Jesus is to be “used” as a magic wand to fix all of our problems and turn our lives into a fairytale. If this was true then only the people with problems needed Jesus, right? No, Jesus is not a crutch, He is everything!  I’m talking about a RELATIONSHIP that can see you through the deepest waters and the biggest fires of your life (Isaiah 43:2), yet this relationship is so much more…even if you have everything this world could offer, you will not be okay without it.

Never mind how far you’ve wandered off: If you stop running and come before God in true repentance, you can step back into relationship with Jesus RIGHT NOW.

Unfortunately many Christians still downplay the sin that surrounds a struggle with food. We pretend it’s not that big a deal to put food, starvation, or purging in the place of God. We put a band-aid on it with a quick diet or we call it a fast, when we’re really sinning and running from our only Savior.

I pray today, as you read this, that you will be stopped in your tracks. I pray that the Holy Spirit will shine His spotlight on the sin of pride and idolatry, and that you will no longer try to hide it, but start to hate that sin in your life. Only true sorrow for the SIN not the SYMPTOMS bring lasting change to our hearts and  lives. I’m praying that God will show you the difference today, and that you will fall to your knees before Him, next to me, and return to the One who gave His life for you and I.

I wrote an ebook “God will I ever be free?’ a few years ago on the subject of surrender and based it on the verse in James 4:7 “Submit to God, resist the enemy, and he will flee from you”. In Beth Moore’s latest Bible study, James, Mercy Triumphs, she has the following to say about this verse:

  • God knows everything about you and every matter concerning you. Nothing is hidden from His sight. So submit to God.
  • He is always looking out for your ultimate good and takes your hurts personally. So submit to God.
  • He is holy and worthy and incapable of abusing His divine authority over you. So submit to god.
  • He knows when your motive was right but your mouth messed up. So submit to God.
  • He knows exactly how to work terrible into good. So submit to God.
  • He loves you completely and unconditionally and will never let you go. So submit to God.
  • He knows the well-deliberated plan for your life and how all things must fall into place for you to fulfill your destiny. So submit to God.
  • He will never put to shame those who trust in Him. So submit to God.

She ends this segment with the following words: “The Devil is trying to steal from you and destroy you and make it look like it was all your idea. So girlfriend, submit to God.”

All I can do is shout a big AMEN! to all the above.

 

In your struggle with food something needs to change: Your heart, your mind, and your attitude, yes! But maybe there are also physiological problems such as depression or hormonal imbalances; it may be that you need to find healing from past hurts by working with a counselor, or maybe you need to forgive and learn to make changes to your current relationships to move out of the pit of food struggles. WHATEVER THE CASE MIGHT BE, JESUS HAS THE ANSWERS! If you step into relationship with Him, He will lead you every step of the way. Take the first step today, submit to God.

Please read my free eBook if you are ready to submit: “God will I ever be free?”

Love you ladies
Heleen

 

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Do you need a miracle?

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According to Oxford dictionaries a miracle is …”an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency”

There are some areas in our lives where we just KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt, that we have NOTHING and we are in need of an “extraordinary and welcome event” that is beyond our human strength or even understanding. I know we don’t always get the miracles that we pray for, and we most certainly don’t always receive them in our time frame.  However, let me boost your faith a little today to keep asking and reaching for your miracle. God still has the final say in our lives, but even by surrendering our struggles to His divine intervention and time table, we receive peace and hope to carry on.

Please read this post I’ve written a while back, to inspire you to keep reaching for your miracle.

 

What’s going on in your life?

  • Do you need a miracle of healing in your body?
  • Do you need God to perform a miracle in your marriage or your finances?
  • How about a miracle of deliverance from food, alcohol, pornography, drugs, shopping, TV, internet, or gossip?
  • Maybe you are unable to bring any change to a very difficult relationships in your life, and you need a miracle to just keep on forgiving and loving that person…

 

Let me say this: IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT IT IS, OUR GOD IS BIGGER!!!

God is calling you, just as you are. You might be dealing with incredible pain, shame, or anxiety at this very moment. You might have just eaten so much food that you are in physical pain. Maybe you just purged and you feel shame hanging like a cloak around your shoulders. You may be angry and at your wits end with a relationship, or in a pit of pain because of ongoing stress and anxiety in your life. Maybe you are past all these feelings and you just feel a great numbness inside of you…

Seriously, God is waiting for you! He saw everything you did and everything you’re going through, and He is waiting and calling…

The voices of condemnation, guilt, hopelessness, and shame that you hear are not of God but from the enemy who wants to destroy you (John10:10)

I would like to remind you today of our Father’s heart. The parable in Luke 15 about the prodigal son gives us a peek into the heart of our heavenly father. He is looking for you, waiting for you to return to Him. He doesn’t insist that you first clean up your act or that you get rid of your filth before you come to Him. On the contrary, when He sees you taking the first few steps, He will run to you with open arms, welcoming you and showering you with love.

Please don’t try to first get “better” before you come to God. It’s the enemy’s age old trick to keep us in bondage. It is only in God’s presence that we are cleaned and changed. You can not change yourself, but He has all the power to heal your broken heart and help you change the habits and addictions you’ve picked up to numb the pain. Better yet… He wants to heal the pain you are trying to numb…

Listen to what the Amplified Bible says about the father of the prodigal son:

“So he got up and came to his [own] father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity and tenderness [for him]; and he ran and embraced him and kissed him [fervently]” (Luke 15:20)(emphasis mine)

Do you see that the father was moved with pity and tenderness! Our heavenly Father has that same pity and tenderness towards us every time we come to Him, even in our filthy state. This might not be the first time you come to Him, but PLEASE don’t stop coming.

I found freedom from bulimia when I started crying out to God EVERY TIME I was binging or purging. I would cry and tell Him how bad I felt about myself, how ashamed I was, and how I needed Him to help me. He heard, He took pity on me, and drew me close to his heart with tenderness. You are his child too, He has no favorites, He wants to do the same for you!

I pray that you will experience a  miracle right from the hand of our Father. He wants to give you the miracle of life in that place of your heart where you now experience only death. The best part, you don’t have to do anything to earn this miracle… simply turn to God…

In His Love,
Heleen

 

 

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I CAN NOT do it!

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How are your New Years resolutions coming along? Have you already failed at it? Maybe you didn’t even bother making any because it’s the same story of disappointment year after year…

I’m reading Andrew Murray’s little book “Absolute Surrender” again this January.  An age-old message jumped out at me and hit me square between the eyes again: I CAN NOT DO IT! and the simple truth: GOD CAN DO IT!

Read it for yourself:
“And yet we are some of us wanting God to give us a little help while we do our best, instead of coming to understand what God wants, and to say: “I can do nothing. God must and will do all.” Have you said: “In worship, in work, in sanctification, in obedience to God, I can do nothing of myself, and so my place is to worship the omnipotent God, and to believe that He will work in me every moment”? Oh, may God teach us this! Oh, that God would by His grace show you what a God you have, and to what a God you have entrusted yourself — an omnipotent God, willing with His whole omnipotence to place Himself at the disposal of every child of His! Shall we not take the lesson of the Lord Jesus and say: “Amen; the things which are impossible with men are possible with God?”

Every time we make a decision that WE will accomplish something by ourselves, we dive right into a forever downward cycle. Let me illustrate this CYCLE OF EMPTINESS through a food struggle (it can really apply to any addiction or bondage)

  • We have an emptiness inside that CAN ONLY BE FILLED BY GOD, and yet we try to fill it daily with food. We use food for various reasons (that are better explained in my 12 Week Online Program) but the bottom line is the same: We are empty and we need to be filled. The problem is that this method of finding satisfaction only helps for a few minutes, and it usually backfires into severe physical problems and other consequences, so the emptiness deepens.
  • To get away from this we try to find a food plan with which we can occupy ourselves and which we hope will get us to another place that might satisfy: to be thin and beautiful. Problem is that most of these plans fail us too, because we were supposed to use them (the balanced ones) ONLY to get our physical bodies into shape, not to satisfy our soul hunger.
  • Even if a program works to rid us of the consequences of food addiction or compulsive overeating, and we lose all of our weight, it can not take care of the emptiness. We may now find ourselves trying to find satisfaction in clothes, having the perfect appearance, looking for skin lotions and procedures to make us prettier, and other ways to impress people. This too will fail us because there is always someone prettier or skinnier out there to compete with. We might turn to prestige, riches, fame, or studying to get more honor and respect at our workplace. All this added stress we put on our lives to strive for satisfaction might actually push us right back to where we’ve started; mindless overeating or binging to try and fill a deep emptiness inside.
  • In this very low place, we might even turn to drugs, alcohol, pornography, or any other idol because we’re so ashamed that we couldn’t “get it together” or “do better”.

THE TRUTH:
We will never be able to “do better” or “get our lives together”, even if our New Years resolutions or plans are all wonderful Godly ones.

WHY?
Our own self-will is corrupted by the desires of this world, and fickle at best. Even though we may have more self-discipline at times and find ourselves pumped and motivated, it can change at the drop of a hat. You know it! All it takes is our haywire hormones, for our circumstances to get complicated, or a sudden crisis to strike. During these times we either feel so ashamed of our own weakness and believe the enemy’s lies that we are total losers, or our eyes are opened to Jesus’s words in Luke 18:27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Now let’s get practical, how does this play out in daily life?

Two things need to happen DAILY  in order to give God full control:

1. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE
It seems so simple but it’s not so easy for our faith to raise up, simply because our society is so focused on “doing it ourselves” that many of us have lost faith in a mighty God that can SET PEOPLE FREE FROM ANY STRUGGLE, ADDICTION, OR FORM OF BONDAGE! We need to repent from our unbelief and ASK GOD FOR FAITH to surrender TOTALLY, instead of doing our best and just asking God to help us a little (as Murray says). This should be a MOMENT by MOMENT thing. It’s so easy to fall back into the trap of unbelief. Set alarms on your phone to remind you, make note cards, make pop-ups on your computers that say: What is impossible with man is possible with God
Hebrews 11:6 (NIV) And without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.
Romans 10:17 (NKJV) So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

2. The only plan you should have is to WORSHIP GOD
Take your hands off the wheel, give God control. Stop all the plans that you have in your head to “fix things” and rather use that valuable time to pick up the Bible, pray, sit in God’s presence, worship Him through music, go to church, etc. Most of us already know which food plan works for us, which exercise we should do, which steps we should take to accomplish God purpose and calling for our lives, BUT WE SIMPLY CAN NOT DO IT CONSISTENTLY! HOWEVER, ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE GOD CAN DO THAT WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH US. The problem: If we still think we can do it, or we “should” do better by picking ourselves up by the bootstraps, or reading the next best self-help book, we will keep going around in circles. We have to admit once and for all that WE CAN NOT DO IT! Then, finally, we are ready to let God do it for us.

OUR JOB: SEARCH GOD

Matthew 6:33 (NIV) But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.
Jeremiah 29:12-13 (NIV) Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Please get yourself out of the horrible cycle of  “TRYING TO DO BETTER” and “FAILING”! Please have a look at my resource below that might help you with this.

In His Love
Heleen

RESOURCES FOR YOU

NEW: INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING online or in Beaverton Oregon
Call Heleen at (503) 914-2749 or Schedule online: www.LifeSolutions.io

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.
A great resource for small groups or individual use.
Click on the image below to find out more: