(Oct 12, 2021)
Hi Guys, Ash here. This blog post is for those of you who are struggling with body image, discontentment, comparison, eating-disorder struggles, and food anxieties.
We live in a self-obsessed, self-absorbed culture. We live in a culture that sets a standard of beauty that is unattainable. We also live in a culture that defines beauty in a very specific way, and I want you to think about what is the definition of beauty? What is the true definition of beauty? What do you believe beauty is?
We grew up seeing magazine covers before social media existed—magazines were the thing. Growing up, we played with Barbie dolls and we watched Disney princess movies, and then we just grew up into the social media generation. Everyone started posting their best photos, and many still are posting their best photos of their best everything on social media. We kind of just grew up in this very self-obsessed culture. If we naturally go with the flow of culture, then of course we're going to fall into the trap of being self-obsessed and self-absorbed, always comparing, never being content with what we have, and struggling with things like body image, comparison, and discontentment. Also, since we're sinful human beings, it's easy to fall into that trap.
But let's not be slaves and victims to our culture; we get to choose what we believe. We get to choose to say “yes” to God's way or to choose to dwell on and let lies take root in our hearts. We get the choice to fill our minds with media or the choice to fill our minds with God's Word. We can choose to say “no” to culture and “yes” to Jesus's way.
A personal testimony of mine is that I used to struggle with binge eating disorder, body-image issues, discontentment, and anxiety with food. God brought healing to me from my eating disorder, and for that I thank him from the bottom of my heart. But, that is not to say that I don't still struggle with anxious thoughts and body-image issues, comparison, and discontentment. I still struggle daily. That is why I still need to remind myself of God's truth every single day. I especially need to be reminded when I'm going through hard seasons, hard moments, hard weeks, and hard days of bad and negative thinking.
How we can store God’s Word in our heart:
o Listen to God's Word
o Read God's Word
o Read God's Word aloud (repeating)
o Write God's Word down
o Memorize God's Word
o Pray God's Word
o Think about God's Word
o Talk about God's Word with our friends
Last week was a hard week of bad body-image thoughts and anxiety. I started to realize the importance of God's Word and the importance of storing scripture in our hearts. It’s important because when those hard moments happen and bad thoughts come to mind, then we will have scripture stored in our hearts to counter the lies.
So this week, I am deleting social media. Rather than going on social media, I am going to be picking a scripture verse and thinking about it, meditating on it, and storing it in my heart. I’ll be chewing on it and repeating it out loud and using tools to help me store God's Word in my heart.
Above are some of the helpful ways to store God's Word in your heart. I don't know about you, but social media is not the most positive thing in my life sometimes. So this week, I am challenging myself to delete social media and to pick a scripture verse to store in my heart. I'm going to give you a list of scripture that you can look through, and I want you to pick a scripture verse to memorize. I actually encourage you to read all the scriptures throughout the week and to delete social media (just for the week). Maybe you can't do all of that, so I encourage you to at least delete one app that sucks up all your time. Even if you’re not on social media, remove something that sucks up your time and pick a scripture verse off this page and *boop* put it into your life.
Delete social media just for the week and see what happens.
Fill your heart with that scripture you chose; memorize it, study it, think about it, speak it out loud, and focus on it this week. You can set it as your phone background, print it out and put it up in your bathroom on the mirror, put it next to your bed before you go to sleep, and write it down in your journal on a sticky note or on a flash card. Take it with you in the car, on a train, and the bus—anywhere at any time fill your mind with this scripture.
I really want to challenge you guys to do this because I know you can do it, and I know how transformative God's Word is for our lives. Again, guys let's not be victims of our culture. Let's not be slaves to sin but slaves to God, walking in righteousness. That is my encouragement to you, and that is my challenge for you this week. Let's do this together.
I love you guys, and I hope this was encouraging to you.
See you soon.
P.S. Before I leave, I just wanted to mention that there's gonna be a part two to this video that’s just going to be me reading to you guys the scriptures that are on the page I’m giving to you. I'm going to do a video of me reading them out loud so you can have it just to listen to, to soak into your brain. I want you to have a resource of all the scriptures being read to you related to body image, eating disorders, discontentment, comparison, and self-worth.
Stay tuned for that video; it will be coming out soon.