S2. E29. How to handle backslides
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you need to go through these things. The Lord needs to work these things out in you so that you can heal and look more like Christ. So consider it pure joy. When you go through these things. Don't be surprised by it. Expect that these things are gonna happen and reframe it.
It's not a failure, it's feedback. Oh, this is an opportunity for me to look more like Christ. Let me embrace it. .
hello. Hello y'all. I am pumped [00:01:00] for this episode this is something I talk about with my clients a lot on our calls and. I just, my prayer is that you feel the heart of Jesus and that you have deeper revelations of His, of his true nature, and that this really is encouraging when you experience.
Backslides and when you have slipups and when you feel like you're failing and this gives you a new way to approach those, and reframe those. I was talking to a patient earlier this week and that it, this appointment was confirmation. I was like, yep, I need to do an episode on this. Like, God, I hear you.
It's, it's time because it's something I talk about in my session so much and I'm like, everyone on the podcast needs to hear this, so. She is working on healing her relationship with food, a history of, anorexia and restriction. And she [00:02:00] has been in and out of recovery, like residential, inpatient, things like that, like a million times, she has tried to recover so many times, but she has never done it with God. So finally she is seeing breakthrough in success because she's doing it in a faith-based way. And I'm like, praise God. 'cause only, only God can heal like all glory to God. And so we get on our client call and any clients that are listening, you know, you know,
I always start our client call off with, all right, what are some wins? What are some things that you wanna celebrate? What is something that's going well? And that is the most difficult question for people to answer. And I think part of it is when you're meeting with a counselor, a coach, a dietician, a therapist, a doctor like you are going in with the list of questions that you have, that things are, that aren't going right, that you need support on, so that you can leave having more clarity, getting support, you are coming in wanting to talk about what's not going well so that you can course correct. A hundred percent. Totally get that. So this question always throws people for a loop. [00:03:00] Even if they've been working with me for months, I find that it does get easier and easier with time, and most clients start thinking about their win before they get on the call, which is great.
So we, we love that. So it does get easier and then eventually clients are so excited to tell me their wins, but initially this is really hard and sometimes we'll just sit there and I'll wait. I'll wait. I am sad. I will wait for you to find something that's going well. We have such a negativity bias. We always wanna default to the negative.
We think of ourselves as, as failures. We're so hypercritical of ourselves and harsh and mean towards ourselves. I'm like, there's something that's going well. Even if like the sky is falling and you have a lot of things to work through. There is something that's going well, right? There is something to praise.
And you know what? Sometimes the win for clients is. But I know that God is still good, or I showed up to this call today. That is the win. I still showed up. That is a win. That is a win. And so this client showed up and it was [00:04:00] really hard for her to name a win.
And she said, I really feel like a failure., I almost binged between our last call and this one. And I said, well, that's a win. You said you almost binged, you didn't. And she's like, yeah, I guess you're right. And I'm like, so sometimes we don't even realize the wins, but I'm like, girl, like let, let's debrief this.
And I said, praise God that you had that experience. And then it wasn't perfect. And she was starting to say like, yeah, but you know, I started to eat. But, but then I stopped and I felt bad and I felt bad going to God because I had already started to binge. But I was like, but, but you stopped.
And you three months ago, six months ago, a year ago, would have kept going, but now you're not. You're rebounding a lot faster and you're more aware of what you're doing. And I was like, the greater revelations that you have about who God is whenever we backslide and slip up, that will make you more confident in approaching his [00:05:00] throne with confidence.
Like Hebrews, we talked about this in the last episode. But Hebrews four, where it talks about you can approach God's throne with confidence because it is a throne of grace. So the greater revelations that you have about who God is, how much he loves you, and how he still loves you, despite our sin, you will approach him faster and more and, and quicker and you will rebound faster and not be so shy to go to him and not hide away, but actually go to him. So , her story really,, empowered me to, to share this reframe for when we backslide because I think that it will be very helpful for you.
Father God, thank you so much for this day. Lord, we praise you that your mercies are new every single morning. Each day. We have new fresh bread. We have daily bread, Lord. And it doesn't matter what we've done in the past, what we did yesterday, how we messed up, how we fell, short of the [00:06:00] glory of God
because. Jesus, you made a way for us to be reconciled with the Father and forgiven, and we can receive your forgiveness and your grace, Lord, and we just praise you that each day is anew and we are washed with your blood and that there's power in the blood and we receive that, that we are made new in you and that each day is a new opportunity to steward our bodies better, to follow you better and to look more.
Like you and praise you, Jesus, that there is no condemnation, no shame in you. Lord, I pray that as we go into this episode that is deeply healing for every single listener that it helps to renew their mind. Pull a Romans 12, 1 2 of their mind, and I pray that everything that's said in this episode is led by your Holy Spirit and that your spirit does what only he can do.
Lord, have your way. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I'm gonna be reading from [00:07:00] Second Corinthians chapter three, verses 16 to 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 everlasting glory, which comes from the Lord. Who is the Spirit, the Word of the Lord, y'all. Whenever clients backslide. So that client that I was mentioning before at the beginning of our call, this is what I said to her.
Number one, I said, thank you so much for coming to our call today, not canceling and for being honest and transparent about what you've been through. I said, praise God that you went through that. And she kind of looked at me like, what? Like I'm just telling you how I messed up. And I'm like, but this is an opportunity [00:08:00] for us to review what went well and what.
It didn't go so well, so that you can course correct for next time and continue to be sanctified and look more like Christ and heal from binge and emotional eating. And we actually were able to glean a lot of data and gain a lot of insight about your habits and your tendencies and what you default to when you're feeling overwhelming and big emotions.
Like, this is good data. This is useful. We can do something with this so that you don't fall into these same patterns and you can actually heal from this. And she's like, oh, wow. When I look at it that way, like, that's great. So I shared with her this image, and if you Google it, you'll, you'll see what I'm talking about.
It's a popular image in the intuitive eating community. Called the spiral of healing, and it looks like a corkscrew that's just going up, up, up, like it's almost like a DNA strand that is spiraling up and the arrows go, go up and coming at this [00:09:00] image from a faith-based lens, you're trending. In an ascending direction.
You are getting closer to heaven, closer to God, and you are being sanctified, looking more like Christ as you go along your journey. But as you can see, this journey is not linear. Even though you're going in an ascending direction, it is not linear because you have those kinks in the chain.
You have those coils, you have those peaks and valleys. So things aren't going to be perfect along the journey. You are going to have kinks in the chain, but the rate of your growth, the depth of your growth, the ability to grow comes from how you see those kinks in the chain. We are constantly so critical of ourselves.
We're condemning towards ourselves. We see ourselves as failures. When we. Backslide or slip up over. We don't do things perfectly, but instead we want to show ourselves compassion [00:10:00] and approach those kinks in the chain with curiosity. Those things that we go through are not failures. It's an opportunity for feedback.
And so when you stop saying to yourself, I'm a failure, but you start to see like, oh, I can use this as feedback. And you don't put your identity in those failures like you are not a failure. Like you need to stop saying that you're a failure and just saying, Hey, I fell a little short. I could have been better.
I could have handled that better Holy Spirit, what could I have done differently? How can I better myself for next time and receive his grace and his mercy? You don't need to beat yourself up. For the things that we do, because Jesus has taken the full brunt of the punishment already. He has already been beat up enough.
So you don't need to beat yourself up. You just need to take full confidence in the crucifixion and the resurrection in what Jesus did for you on the cross, and trust that it was sufficient and it is finished and you have victory over this because Jesus has overcome the world. And this verse is saying [00:11:00] where God is, there is freedom. So you are called to freedom. And instead of seeing these kinks in the chain as failure after failure, after failure, you keep backsliding, backsliding, blackside, slipping up, slipping up, slipping. You're failure. Failure, failure. See it as going from glory to glory to glory.
And that mindset shift has changed everything. The Lord gave that revelation to another one of I, a different client than what I would, than who I was talking about before. And I'm like, oh, that's good. And then the Lord led me to this scripture and I'm like, yes, we are being transformed. Into his image.
In ever increasing glory, right? So if you're going through that spiral of healing, you're ever increasing, you're ever so going in an ascending direction, and you're going from glory to glory to glory. Because each time that you go through something that is hard, that is not perfect, that is [00:12:00] a tough scenario.
A trial persecution. That is an opportunity for the Lord to lovingly correct you to prune what is worldly, what wasn't of God, how God wouldn't do that, and to lovingly teach you to convict you of certain things and that gives you momentum and propels you into the next phase of your journey.
, So it's not a failure, it's feedback. You're collecting data, and you're working things out.
I feel like Sarah Jakes Roberts when I say this right now, but I just pray that this is coming off and I'm explaining it in a way that's hitting your spirit like that, that is my goal. I think it is also helpful when you can see that image of the spiral of healing, so definitely Google it, but, ah, I just like, Lord, help me say this better.
This reminds me of James. One versus one through four. I'm gonna open up to that. It says, considerate pure joy. My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials [00:13:00] of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
So consider it pure joy when you go through things. So what I wanna say, if you're a client of mine or you wanna be a future client of mine, I wanna see you come on our calls. Even if you just binge yesterday, right? Even if you just backslid into old behaviors, I want you to come on our coaching call with pure joy.
Because it's like, yep, I can learn from this. I'm gonna learn how to persevere, and by letting perseverance do its thing, strengthen me, sanctify me. I'm going to be mature in the Lord. I'm going to be complete. The Lord is trying to get us back to wholeness because of sin. Living on earth with death and destruction and disease, we are broken, but Jesus makes [00:14:00] us whole.
Our sanctification process makes us whole. We are one with Christ. Jesus says, you are gonna be one with me as I'm one with the Father. And so the things that we go through, the trials that we go through produce in us perseverance and that perseverance through, sanctification allows us to become complete and mature.
We're not lacking anything. So you need to go through these things. The Lord needs to work these things out in you so that you can heal and look more like Christ. So consider it pure joy. When you go through these things. Don't be surprised by it. Expect that these things are gonna happen and reframe it.
It's not a failure, it's feedback. Oh, this is an opportunity for me to look more like Christ. Let me embrace it. This also reminds me of
second Corinthians 12. Verses eight through 10 where Paul says three times, I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. We've talked about this verse before on other [00:15:00] podcast episodes, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, Paul says, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me.
That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight. In weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties for when I am weak, that I am strong. And so often I see clients kind of sheepishly come on our, coaching calls because they're like, oh, I, I, I binged over the weekend. Or like, oh, I, I backslid or all, you know, I fell back into those habits.
It's like, don't show up sheepishly. Rejoice delight in those things. Not that we want to be like, yay sin, but it's like, yay, because the Lord is going to reveal his glory through this. The Lord is going to heal me through this. I'm gonna look more like Christ when I work through this. [00:16:00] His glory is on the other side of so, and there's other scriptures that say, too, that we share in Christ's sufferings.
And we also share in his glory as well. So let's focus less on the suffering and more on his glory. And you're not going from failure to failure to failure, but you're going from glory to glory to glory.
So I pray that this. Scripture is encouraging to y'all, and if you need help healing your relationship with food, go to the show notes and you can book a free 20 minute call with me to kickstart your journey to finding food freedom in Christ.
I also now offer biblical nutrition audits, so you can fill out a whole form. Let me know what your preferences are, what you like to eat, what you don't like. How you currently have been eating, a little bit about your lifestyle and your patterns, anything you're allergic to, and I give you suggestions on how to eat better and a little bit of a sample meal plans, some recipe ideas and some scriptures to speak into your situation.
So the free call is great. The biblical audit gives you more information and is more in depth and highly personalized. [00:17:00] To you. So I pray that, if the Lord and the Spirit is stirring something in you, that you have the courage to click those links and follow through on those things. 'cause I know it will be very fruitful for you.
Hope y'all have a great week and I'll see you next Wednesday.
