Image seminar helps women see their body as a gift from God

Do you view your body as a machine, as never measuring up or as vulnerable? This was the lead question asked of eight women in a three-hour seminar on the importance of a right body image.

The seminar, provided April 19 at New Life Homes Inc. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by Chapter 61 Ministries, challenged traditional views women often have of their bodies, and provided biblical teaching on the importance of honoring the body as a gift from God.

New Life Homes Inc. is a home for women transitioning out of prison who have made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and are building the spiritual and educational skills necessary to become a valuable, productive citizen. Many of the women have experienced abuse, rape and molestation in their lives.

Chapter 61 members Kendis Paris, Kylla Leeburg and Julie Mihevc led the women, both in teaching and in discussing the fallacies of these body views. Paris covered the body as a machine, while Mihevc and Leeburg led the teaching on viewing the body as never measuring up and on the body as vulnerable, respectively. They asked the women attending the seminar how these faulty body views may have led them to feel, think and act in certain ways. Discussion included how a faulty body view could lead you to allow your body to serve a false idol, such as money, sex, power, drugs, fear.

“For me, it’s only been in the last three years that I’ve received some personal healing on how I view my body,” Paris shared. “From the time I was 12 years old, I drove my body to get certain things that were important to me without any sense of freedom as to who God had really made me to be or how my body could be used to bless others.”

Using personal, cultural, historical and biblical examples to show how women develop faulty body views, Paris, Leeburg and Mihevc then focused the discussion on how to honor the body as a gift of God. They asked the women if they were more than their bodies and helped them begin to see how God wants to heal false body image and enable women to become all He made them to be.

At the conclusion of the seminar, Chapter 61 presented the attendees with follow-up journals to continue the process of correcting faulty body image and gaining God’s perspective on the body.

Holly Snyder, head of New Life Homes, commented, “The seminar was more than we had hoped for. Our women were so impressed. They felt like it went by too fast, and they were sorry it was over. For one of our women, who had been raped, beaten and left for dead in a coma, it was a platform to draw things out and begin her healing process. Her tears flowed all afternoon. Everyone was really touched by the day. You really felt the Holy Spirit there.”