The Life Recovery Workbook for Eating Disorders: A Bible-Centered Approach for Taking Your Life Back

by Stephen Arterburn M. ED., David Stoop

Overview

Begin the journey of recovery from eating disorders!
Let’s start now on a twelve-step path that will lead out of the bondage of eating disorders and into the freedom that comes from a closer relationship with God. In the Life Recovery Workbook for Eating Disorders, discover real-life stories of fellow travelers, great questions for individual or group discussion, and a Bible-centered approach to freedom. Twelve beautiful blessings await after our hard work on the journey of recovery from eating disorders.

• Step 1: Open our hearts to God’s power to free us from the grip of food addiction. “We now have this light shining in our hearts.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)
• Step 2: Allow God to join us in the powerful emotions behind our eating disorder. “Daughter,” he said to her, “your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” (Luke 8:48)
• Step 3: Rest in God’s care for every decision and eating habit. “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
• Step 4: Gain a true picture of how God sees us. “At that moment their eyes were opened.” (Genesis 3:7)
• Step 5: Experience the healing that begins with confession. “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (James 5:16)
• Step 6: Get ready for repentance from sins expressed in unhealthy eating. “You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” (Psalm 51:17)
• Step 7: Allow God’s Spirit to fix our food addictions. “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)
• Step 8: Create a list of people our eating disorders have affected. “Do to others as you would like them to do to you.” (Luke 6:31)
• Step 9: Restore relationships damaged by our sins (when possible) and experience a clean slate. “But then they turn from their sins and do what is just and right.” (Ezekiel 33:14)
• Step 10: Review daily the defects in us that hinder healthy life with God and others. “Be careful not to fall.” (1 Corinthians 10:12)
• Step 11: Grow closer to God through prayer and meditation. “The LORD is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.” (Lamentations 3:25)
• Step 12: Bless others with the blessing of healing from eating disorders. “Gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path.” (Galatians 6:1)

STEPHEN ARTERBURN is the founder of New Life Ministries—the nation’s largest faith-based broadcast, counseling, and treatment ministry—and host of the nationally syndicated New Life Live! daily radio program. He is a Gold Medallion–winning author and co-editor of The Life Recovery Bible.

DAVID STOOP, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of The Center for Family Therapy in Newport Beach, California. He also serves on the executive board of the American Association of Christian Counselors. David is a Gold Medallion–winning author and co-editor of The Life Recovery Bible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496448071
Publisher:	Tyndale House Publishers
Publication date:	01/21/2020
Series:	Life Recovery Topical Workbook
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	3 MB

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

STEP 1

PROFILE

When we are overweight or obese, the last thing we want to do is confront the reality of our size. We only look at our face in a mirror, either to put on our makeup, shave, or to fix our hair.

Tammy was like that. She preferred putting on her makeup and fixing her hair in the car, where all she could see in the mirror was her face and her head. Tammy taught third grade and didn't need to look in the mirror to realize her size. While teaching one day, she suddenly noticed that she could no longer fit in the aisles between her students' desks.

When she left school that day, she sat in her car in the parking lot and cried. This experience was a wake-up call. Her overeating was out of control. She knew she was gaining weight but had refused to confront the fact, as many overweight people do. It was time to do something about her weight. Tammy knew she was powerless to control her weight on her own, and her situation had become unmanageable.

The last time she visited the doctor, she had weighed just under 240 pounds. That was two years ago. She decided she had to face the embarrassment of seeing her doctor again and being weighed. When she did, she was told she now weighed 350 pounds. She had heard about Overeaters Anonymous groups, but she had always resisted attending. Now her resistance was done, and she began attending a group regularly.

When she saw the doctor a year later, her weight had dropped to 297 pounds. She marveled at the difference 53 pounds made in her life. It was much easier to walk, work, drive, and even sleep. Looking back to the year before, she was amazed that she had been able to even function as well as she did.

Tammy commented on how her weight was not related to ever being lazy. She was always a hard worker, one that ran around the office doing the work of three in hopes of being accepted by the "normal folks."

For Tammy, weighing 350 pounds was tough. It was hard work carrying all those extra pounds everywhere she went. The good news at this point was that she had given up 53 pounds of baggage — both physically and emotionally — and she is becoming lighter each week. Her goal is to have as little baggage as possible. It takes hard work, dedication, and complete faith in Jesus Christ, but he will carry our load if we will ask him. We are truly powerless to do it in our own strength.

Needless to say, Tammy's emotions have been all over the place. In the past, she always stuffed away the sad, painful emotions by eating large amounts of comfort food. She would eat until she was emotionally numb, which made her feel safe. She has since stopped medicating with food, and it's incredible for her to actually feel her emotions — good and bad. Of course, some days she wants to run to the refrigerator and indulge herself with food. But, amazing as it sounds, this is when she's learning to press into God even harder and ask him to walk with her through the emotions at hand.

STEP ONE

We admitted that we were powerless over our problems and that our lives had become unmanageable.

It's interesting that the first word in the first step is we.

I can't work on the problems in my life on my own. The resolution comes through the we. Tammy increasingly isolated herself over the years from other relationships in order to hide her eating behaviors. Then if her eating suddenly got out of control, no one would be around to see it. She was powerless, but she was not helpless. So she got help. The Twelve Steps teach us that recovery and healing always take place in the context of the we.

This is true of anything focused on our spirits. Spiritual transformation always begins in community. At the start of Jesus' ministry, he began by gathering people around him as his disciples. The power of the early church in the book of Acts is directly related to their reputation for loving one another. So even recovery related to our eating disorders needs to take place in some sort of community, whether it's a support group for overeaters, an Eating Disorders Anonymous group, or simply a small group we gather around us. We have to stay connected as we look deep inside ourselves to get an understanding of what creates our insanity.

The key point in Step One has to do with the reality of our powerlessness. It's not a term we like. In fact, it's a term and a reality that we seek to avoid as much as possible. But when it comes to eating issues, we have tried and tried in our own power to overcome the swings in our weight. We lose weight only to gain it back, and we always seem to gain a little bit more on top of what we've lost before.

Admitting that we are powerless is to admit that something or someone has beaten us and is more powerful than our own wills. This injures our pride, so we keep on acting as if we can control food. It's in our sin nature to rebel at the idea of powerlessness because it signifies our inability to escape our life dependencies in our own strength.

To jump into recovery with both feet is good, but we must go even deeper. Not only must we admit and accept our powerlessness over our eating, we must also concede that our lives are unmanageable. This strikes the second blow to our pride and sense of self-sufficiency. When under the influence of addictive thinking, a person believes, "I can handle anything. I can fix this by myself, without anyone else having to be involved."

Here is one example from Scripture of how people can struggle with powerlessness. Naaman had a high-ranking position in the military that blinded him to his powerlessness (see 2 Kings 5:1-15). He began to demand things from life, thinking that he was special because of his position. Like Naaman, we will find that this type of pride that resists input and direction from others is what leads us to isolation. Only God can deal with this rebellion in our hearts. The consequences of our eating disorders are sometimes the only way God can break through to us. For Tammy, it was as simple as not being able to walk down the aisle between the desks in her classroom.

Sometimes we arrive at powerlessness and unmanageability by losing everything, as Job did. Being in recovery and trying to walk a spiritual path does not mean that we will be spared from snags and obstacles. In these times, recovery can appear to be hopeless and not worth the work. The rebel in us that wants control will counsel, "This is just too hard. Your trouble must mean that God doesn't like you." At this point, we need a group of people to continue pointing us to God no matter what happens, people who will nurture hope even in the midst of difficult places. As we hit bottom and face our powerlessness over all of life, we need encouragers.

By exploring our powerlessness, we will have to confront and oppose negative ideas that tell us that being powerless means being a victim. The truth is that by coming to the end of our own power, we develop enough humility to hear the voice of God and do his will.

The apostle Paul — before his conversion and transformation, when he was still known as Saul — could not surrender to his powerlessness because it placed him in opposition to God. He was intoxicated by the power he could wield. Yet God pursued Saul — despite his power-hungry, murderous state of mind — to call him to a new direction, to make him a totally transformed person, and to give him a new purpose. God pursued Saul so that he could stop persecuting the gospel and start preaching it. To accomplish this, God made him totally blind and dependent on others to lead, feed, and shelter him. Saul had to accept his powerlessness in order to be used by God in powerful and amazing ways.

We must first accept our powerlessness and inability to manage before we can be freed from addiction and become a channel for God in ways we could never imagine. We are so schooled in the thought that we can do anything we put our minds to that it is almost impossible to envision the power of God in us doing what we have not been able to do to this point. Shining through human vessels, God is in us and gives us the ability to recover, to accept powerlessness, and to accept inability to manage on our own. We are then open to a life powered by God rather than by our dependencies, our addictions, or our fallible selves.

QUESTIONS FOR STEP ONE

TrappedGenesis 16:1-15

1. How is my experience of powerlessness similar to Hagar's experience? How is it different?

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2. How have I tried to escape from the pain related to my eating issues?

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3. What has been my experience of anger in my struggle? What scares me about my anger?

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4. How have I experienced sadness related to my eating disorder? What scares me about my sadness?

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5. What are some of my fears about facing my issues?

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6. Where can I see God in this process right now?

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All Is DarknessJob 6:2-13

1. Job is very clear about the pain he is feeling. Describe the pain you're experiencing regarding your eating issues.

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2. In what ways have I felt totally powerless in my food addiction?

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3. In what ways have I tried to be faithful to God in the midst of my compulsive behavior?

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4. How can Job's experience help me understand my experience of powerlessness?

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Worn Out from SobbingPsalm 6:1-10

1. How does my sadness affect my relationships?

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2. In what ways have others misunderstood my food addiction?

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3. David seems to project his anger onto God. That's why we need to get comfortable expressing our anger in relationships, especially our relationship with God. Anger can be a protest. In what ways have I brought my protest into a relationship?

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4. Who in my circle of friends would be able to help me restore my confidence in God?

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Breaking the CycleEcclesiastes 1:1-18

1. How have I tried to break the cycle of my eating patterns?

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2. What strategies have I relied on when I've tried to break the old eating habits?

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3. What prevents me from letting go of my own control and declaring that I am powerless?

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Like Little ChildrenMark 10:13-16

1. When I feel powerless, do I feel like a little child? How does that feel?

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2. When do I feel most cared for?

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3. How does being childlike help me depend on God?

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The Paradox of Powerlessness2 Corinthians 4:7-10

1. Remember some examples of when you have accepted your own powerlessness and embraced God's powerfulness. Describe them in this space below.

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3. How do I respond to being perplexed?

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4. What do I do when it feels like God has abandoned me?

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There is great power in our realizing that we are powerless.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Life Recovery Workbook for Eating Disorders"
by .
Copyright © 2020 Stephen Arterburn and David Stoop.
Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers.
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