Holy Spirit, My Personal Trainer: Losing Weight God's Way

By Jennifer Ritchie

Do you struggle to lose weight and keep it off? Have you gone from one diet to another, trying to find the right one that will give you permanent success? As a believer, do you have a desire to honor God with your body, recognizing that it is a temple of the Holy Spirit? If your answer to these questions is yes, then you too can learn, as Jennifer did, that inviting the Holy Spirit to be your personal trainer is Gods best success plan for you.

Applying the principles taught in this book can take you to new levels of freedom in all areas of your life. God is interested in far more than just your physical well-being. His personal, unique plan for you encompasses everything. Join Jennifer on this journey to complete physical, emotional, and spiritual health, as you dig into Gods Word and develop a close relationship with the Holy Spirit. Let Him become your personal trainer, leading you to the truth that will set you free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449754822

Jennifer Ritchie

Jennifer Ritchie is an ordained minister, life coach, leadership trainer and church planter who is passionate about teaching the Word of God, communicating the truth that will set people free. Ministering internationally, she helps believers understand their identity in Christ and their inheritance as God’s children. Having experienced in her own life the transforming power of God's Word, she now imparts that same freedom to others. She currently resides on Canada’s East Coast with her three children.

Book preview

Holy Spirit,

My Personal Trainer

Losing Weight God’s Way

Jennifer Ritchie

logoBlackwTN.ai

Copyright © 2012 by Jennifer Ritchie.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-5482-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-5483-9 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012909667

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1-[phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Cover Painting: Holy Spirit, My Personal Trainer by Stephen Ritchie, 2012, used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Wheaton Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE, Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified New Testament copyright © 1958, 1987 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/07/12

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1  My Journey

Chapter 2  Caring for the Temple

Chapter 3  Worshipping Another God

Chapter 4  Changing My Focus

Chapter 5  Listening to My Personal Trainer

Chapter 6  Calling Things That Are Not as Though They Are

Chapter 7  Letting Go of Manmade Rules

Chapter 8  Renewing My Mind

Chapter 9  Walking in Victory

Chapter 10  Conquering Temptation

Chapter 11  Getting Back on Track and Staying There

Chapter 12  Flying Free with the Holy Spirit

Appendix A  Knowing God Personally

Appendix B  Photos

About the Author

Introduction

Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

—1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (NLT)

DO YOU STRUGGLE WITH maintaining a healthy weight? I am so glad you picked up this book. Chances are it means you are a lot like me. For many years I struggled with the whole weight-gain, weight-loss cycle and tried a multitude of diets to conquer this stronghold in my life. As a Christian, I knew that my body was a temple of the Holy Spirit and I wanted to be healthy and free of excess pounds. It seemed almost impossible, however, to lose the weight and keep it off. The harder I tried to do it using only my own strength, the worse I failed.

During all those years of yo-yo dieting, I did learn some truths that have stuck with me. In the end, they helped me realize there was only going to be one way to lose weight and keep it off permanently. The times I did experience some success during those frustrating years were those times when I stopped blaming the food as being the source of my problem. The whole diet culture of our society focuses on the evils of the food we consume. But I have learned that there is an even greater evil that is responsible for our weight issues.

Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV) says, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

I am convinced food is not our enemy. The lust for too much food is the real problem. That is not to say we should not make healthy choices when planning our food intake. It simply means we need to change our focus from making the food behave to making our hearts behave.

When we focus on food and exercise as being our savior from obesity, we exclude from our plan the One who can truly set us free. We may not see it as that, but in reality, we are doing the work our way and asking God to bless it. Instead, He wants us to allow Him to do the work of changing our hearts and our behavior. Losing weight God’s way needs to be a work of the Holy Spirit from start to finish. When He convicts our hearts that we need to honor Him with our body, the first thing we need to do is repent. We must admit that we have sinned by mistreating His temple and then ask Him what His temple-care plan for us looks like. As we spend time with Him, He will reveal the perfect plan for our permanent weight loss and temple maintenance.

It is my prayer that as you read about my weight-loss journey with the Holy Spirit, you too will experience what it is like to have Him as your personal trainer. Then you also will be able to say goodbye to all the striving that went along with your own futile attempts to lose weight. Get ready for the adventure of your life as the Holy Spirit leads you on to victory. May you be encouraged, blessed, challenged, and most of all, victorious as you embrace the truth of this book.

Chapter 1

My Journey

And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

—John 8:32 (NLT)

MOMMY, IS THAT A book about God or a book about food? One might think that was just an innocent question by my young preschooler, but for me it was a wake-up call I will never forget. The Holy Spirit drove that question deep into my heart and showed me the god that food had become in my life. Even my child knew there were only two kinds of books Mommy read: books about God and books about food. She had watched her mom reading all those recipe books and diet books just as often as she had seen her read her Bible or other Christian literature. It was obvious to her, as young as she was, what captivated her mother’s attention.

I’d like to tell all of you that from that day forward, I never struggled again with my food obsession or saw my weight fluctuate up and down like a yo-yo, but that would not be reality, nor would there be much point to writing this book. That moment was only the beginning of a long journey of learning how to die to the flesh and let the Holy Spirit have complete control of my life. Before that moment, I did not recognize my struggle with my weight as being a sin issue. After that moment of revelation, the Holy Spirit held me accountable for what I had learned.

Weight issues had been a struggle for me from the time I was a child. Although I was never obese, I was at times what people would call chunky or heavyset. Before being able to wear women’s clothes, I had to wear a size in girls’ pants that could only be purchased from one store in our city, specializing in half sizes. This limited what clothing I could wear and didn’t do a lot for my self-esteem.

When I reached junior high school, I experienced the cruelty of other kids’ comments and labels that sent me spiraling into a world of dieting, losing weight, and an eating disorder. My body entered a cycle of going from plump to skinny over