Home of the Stop Dieting - Start Living course
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I was delighted to see that Christianity magazine had, in October, included a very positive book review on How to Stop Dieting and Start Living. (You can find it online by ‘googling’ Christianity magazine book review Sue Prosser. It is the magazine’s way of writing to talk generally about the book and then to mention the main positive and the main negative under the headings High and Low, so here is what the reviewer, Lisa Holmes, wrote: High: Well thought through; clear home assignments at the end of each chapter to help you put the principles into practice. Low: Reading the book alone won’t make you lose weight. So, reading the book alone won’t make you lose weight! Now there’s a revelation! If only….. If reading books alone had the power to change our lives then I would be perfect – after all I’ve read the Bible numerous times! Don’t get me wrong, the Bible, with the help of the Holy Spirit, has powerfully impacted my life; it has certainly changed my way of thinking and shown me just how God is willing and able to do on my behalf. But there have been millions of people who have studied it from cover to cover and yet whose lives have been unchanged. Even Hitler read the Bible! Back to my book: How to Stop Dieting and Start Living. I agree entirely with Lisa Holmes, reading my book alone won’t make you lose weight, yet many, many people have read my book and lost weight, as well as finding help for all manner of eating-related issues in their lives. I have received three testimonies just this week, all of them reporting the positive changes which have occurred in their lives through reading and applying the truths taught in its pages. And that is the key: For truth, any truth, to be effective in our lives it has to be applied. That’s the hard bit! In John 13 we read how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. In verse 14-15 he says: ‘If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.’ Then, in verse 17, he sums up his teaching by saying ‘ If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.’ That’s the Catch 22; that’s where the rubber really hits the road, and that’s where many of us fall down. I have written How to Stop Dieting and Start Living out of my own experience and revelation. In my own quest to find a permanent way to resolve my weight issues I was led to various Scriptures which were relevant to my situation. Usually these were of a general nature and could be applied to several areas of my life; many of them I had already come to love and cherish because I had seen them work powerfully within me in a different context – but now the Holy Spirit was showing me that right here, within the pages of a book I was already familiar with, were the very keys I had been searching for all along – keys, which if I would only fit them to the locked doors of my disordered eating, would lead me out of bondage and into freedom. I tried them, they worked, and here I am six years on having maintained my weight loss of four stone without resorting to secular dieting methods. But it was no good just looking at the keys and admiring them; I had to pick them up, put them in the lock and turn the key! Unless a key is applied to a lock it does nothing! So yes, if you were hoping that just by reading my book you would lose weight, think again. ‘ It ain’t gonna happen! But if you are like the wise man in Jesus’ parable about the two builders who built their homes, one on sand and the other on rock, you not only hear the word but do it, then your faith will be established and will succeed. God will do his part by empowering us through his Holy Spirit, but we must do ours. |
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