"Look Over There!"
EPISODE 174
Pay Attention to Your Thoughts
How are our thoughts like looping commercials? And how is your heart like a fish tank? We’re thinking about thinking again this week as we kick off a new guided study called Talking to Yourself, all about what we say in our hearts. We kick it off with what Jesus Said about the source of evil. Then we share some Deep Thoughts about what people in Scripture say to themselves. Look for five short videos in this series to break next week on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and website. And then follow along with the whole series of studies at biblegeeks.fm/talkingtoyourself.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: What we tell ourselves can impact us in ways we don’t even realize.
This Week's Challenge: Catch a conversation with yourself in progress and notice if it’s edifying or unproductive.
Episode Transcription
No referencing anything that people who are listening can't see. Look over there! It's like these guitars you have over here, Bryan. If you are going to reference them, you have to describe them very well. [music] Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Weekly Podcast. This is episode 174. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. It is a monumental day here on the heels of our break week today. For the second time in our history, we are actually in person. I am literally staring right across the table at Ryan Joy's face. It is very exciting. It is exciting here in your office, which might as well be an Apple store as you have all of these iPads and everything around us. You just did exactly what you told me not to do. That's so funny, yes, because as the listeners can obviously see, We are clearly in my office and I was thinking actually do you remember where we sat the first time we recorded in person? We sat on a bench and it had a special name I can't remember the name of it the bench of knowledge. Yes the bench of knowledge at Pocahagan State Park It's not very exciting in my office, but it'll make do I feel like this is definitely a space of wisdom Good. All right. So we are as we talked about in the last episode We are getting into a brand new guided study our third guided study here that we've been doing together and we teased it I guess a whole bunch of weeks ago, but we are gonna be talking about talking to ourselves That is the title here of this series coming up We're actually gonna kick these things off this upcoming week and the title of this series talking to yourself I think is indicative of what this is all about This is thinking about the way that we think and if you've ever found yourself having a conversation with yourself Yeah, that's what we're really focused on here But I think this is actually good coming on the heels of the what's good series Because that whole thing in Philippians 4 verse 8 was thinking good thoughts I think that really will fold right into what we're talking about here. I agree I think there's these moments in Scripture where you catch people talking to themselves It's such an interesting thing. It's very revealing and just the way scripture tells the story is unsurprisingly insightful about human nature and how we talk to ourselves and how we think through things as we're just inside our own heads working through whatever's going on in our lives. And sometimes we take a turn towards good things and sometimes our thoughts take us down the wrong path. And so it's really helpful to be aware of what we're thinking about. Yeah and so is we kick this thing off with maybe an icebreaker i think it may be a good thing for us to identify when or where tends to be our thinking time where you like to go to think or when is the best time for you to think through things. Think whenever I'm on the move, I think best I need to be moving. If I go on a walk, I love driving to think. I love taking a just taken off and driving somewhere that I don't really need to go to because the thinking time, besides the destination, the thinking time is really helpful. And I also just mornings are usually a time I can be by myself for a little bit with a cup of coffee and process some things. And that usually gives me a good moment to get things rolling in the right way. What about you? When do you think? It's pretty much the same. I mean, it's the mornings for me definitely. And I do actually have a commute, so I do either hop on my bike and ride to work or I do get in my car and drive. So 20 to 30 minutes or so of just sitting around being quiet is a nice way to get geared up for the day. Also, the shower. The shower is a great time to think and obviously anytime where you're alone and you don't really have anything super important to do, I don't know, driving or showering. Yeah, thinking about things is usually an easy thing to do in those scenarios. Let's move on here to our Jesus said segment. So we have a verse obviously that we like to start out with every time we have these conversations about something that focuses on jesus and so what is jesus have to say about talking to yourself in these conversations that we have well i think mark seven is a good place to go where jesus is correcting this idea that washing your hands or the you know something external is going to be the source of uncleanness ceremonial uncleanness in the thinking there but he wants us to realize that it's the stuff that comes from within here in mark seven twenty one to twenty three that defiles as he says for from within out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts sexual immorality theft murder adultery coveting wickedness deceit sensuality envy slander pride foolishness all these things come from within and they defile a person so when you think about that, Bryan, think about what Jesus says here in regards to the source of evil and by extension, you'd think the source of good. Where does that take you as you connect it back to this whole series? I find it interesting if you even back up here in the context as he's talking about all of these things that will defile us. And right before this in verse 20, it says, "Thus he declared all foods clean." I mean, he was effectively getting the people to understand the shift that had taken place. And I think we covered this in our What's Good series in that last conversation about purity. How when he says in Matthew 5 verse 8, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," you know, he's giving them a correction or sort of an addendum on the commonly held belief that you have to be pure in what you eat or pure in what you handle. And here he's saying, "No, it's about purity of heart." And I think it's the same kind of thing that he's dealing with here. We're not just focused on purity on the outside, but more importantly, purity on the inside. And so for a Jew, I think this would have been a moment, almost like when like a mama bird pushes her baby birds out of the nest. Like for all of this time, in the old law, it was training people to avoid uncleanness in the external kinds of things that they dealt with. and now they're finally moving forward to getting into this heart work, into the inner work. Not that God never cared about the inward cleanness before, but he was always using these external things to lead up to a time where it was really all about the internal stuff. We don't have these food laws anymore, we don't have these unclean, clean animals anymore, but what we do have is a quality of the heart that needs to remain pure, and God always wanted that. And so I think the idea here is just to fill our hearts with all the best things, and then you're gonna do the best things. You're gonna take part in the best kinds of work on the outside when it stems from a quality of heart that is pure. - It's about maturity. It's about stepping out into that difficult space of looking at yourself and working on our hearts to be more like Christ, more like God's in the way we think and our perspective on the world, so that then what we do starts to reflect the goodness he wants to bring into the world, of course. And I've never noticed before that this list of awful things like murder, adultery, starts with evil thoughts. It's pretty evident when you've murdered somebody, but if we're not watching for them, evil thoughts could creep in and saturate our inner lives without us even noticing. And for me, that's where this verse intersected with the purpose of this series, to pay attention to our thoughts. As Jesus says here, all the evil that pollutes us comes from our thoughts, from our attitudes, from our perspectives, from this conversation we're having with ourselves, within ourselves, all these thoughts we're having. So, we've built this series around this idea of self-talk. But really, I think building from the What's Good series like you were talking about, we're really trying to point to an even bigger idea, which is that what we think and how we think has eternal consequences. It's not just important because it affects how you feel or even what you do, but the thoughts themselves are the source, the spring, the wellspring of all the other stuff of our lives. I think that's super powerful. And, you know, as you really stop and think about how often the Bible gives us insight into who is thinking what and talking to themselves, there are a lot of opportunities in the Bible that we see people having these inner dialogues that you would never know about, if not for the Holy Spirit's ability to obviously read people's hearts. And so it is cool that we can see some of these things. And so that actually leads us into our second segment here, which is deep thoughts. And now deep thoughts. And so we're thinking here together about these deep things. And I think we're going to tell some stories of self-talkers. There are a lot of conversations that people have with themselves in the Bible, and so we're going to maybe pick off three or four of those here on the episode and talk about them. And I think you've got the first one here, and it's a really popular story, actually. Yeah, so I picked the first two places in the Bible where it uses the phrase, "He said to himself." And so the first one is in Genesis 17 verse 16, where God tells Abraham that Sarah is going to have a kid. And so it says in Genesis 17 verse 17, "Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed. And he said to himself, 'Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah who is ninety years old bear a child?'" And then the next verse, Abraham shifts his focus and Abraham said to God, "Oh, that Ishmael might live before you." So there's this switch from verse 17 where he's talking to himself to verse 18 where he's talking to God and of course God sees right through him and says, "No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son." In verse 19. There's a lot of humor I think in scriptures talking to yourself moments because they just reveal so much about what we really think. We say one thing to ourselves and something else when we come to God as if he can't hear our thoughts. Abraham speaks these words of doubt to himself. "Can I really have this kid?" But then in the next verse, it's almost like he's being strategic with this request. "Oh, but that Ishmael, Sarah's solution for this whole problem could work out for you." Because he's struggling to find a way to conceive of God making this plan of his work. And he just can't seem to get there on God delivering on His promise of a son from Sarah. I think it's such an insight into how we sometimes deal with our doubts, redirecting them into lesser requests. We feel, "Eh, this is more reasonable for God." And whether that's about a chronic health issue or a marriage or the spread of the gospel or whatever the big things in our lives are, sometimes we just want to shrink them down a itty bitty little, "I know God can do this. There's no risk of me feeling like a fool for asking this thing." And God is, I know, willing and He's still doing things like this around these days. Whatever it is, I don't know. And I'm really telling on myself here, of course. I like to just say it in the sense of, "We do this." But it's really, I do this sometimes. And I sometimes have trouble seeing God as both willing and able to hear and answer bold requests. And boy, I've been working on this a lot of years. We talked about it in our book club. - Yep. - And I'm progressing and I just think this moment with Abraham told on me a little bit and helped me realize I need to make sure that what I'm telling myself and what I'm telling God that I can be aware enough of the challenges I'm having or the struggles I'm having to not let that downgrade my requests. We don't always know what his answer will be, but downgrading the request reveals a lot about what we're really telling ourselves when we're not talking to God. It's so funny because I actually was thinking about this verse in connection with this and it's totally not even the same situation, but if you go all the way up to Jesus day when in Matthew chapter 9 verse 21, there's that woman with the issue of blood and she has a conversation with herself where she says, "If I only touch his garment, I will be made well." If there was an opposite reaction to Abraham in that scenario, it would be this woman, right? Because she's never seen a miracle like this before, yet she knew that it could work. And she didn't, like you say, boil it down to like some small thing that God could do. She really understood that if she had faith, then she could imagine this big thing happening. A really cool introduction here to these conversations. Let's get into, I think, my first deep thought, and that is about Haman. I think if we do another Bible bracket and if we do the Bible bracket on villains, I think Haman might be a really solid one to throw in there, obviously in the story of Esther here. But we see in Esther 6 verse 6, Haman comes in and the king is having this conversation with him. And the king says, "What should be done to the man whom the king delights to honor?" Knowing what we know about Haman, obviously it's no surprise that he says to himself, "Whom would the king delight to honor more than me?" And I love that thought. Person like Haman, who obviously acts like he is the most important person in the world, also thinks the same thing to himself. He is very consistent, for sure. And so, when he's having this conversation, he expresses the no one else is as amazing as I am kind of mentality. He is the hero of his story. He is the hero of his story. he thinks he is the most important person. - A legend in his own mind. - And not only that, he also believes that the king feels the same way, that the king feels like Haman is the person who needs to be honored the most. And thinking about a story like this, it is easy for us to be so self-focused. And it is maybe a meta-conversation in this whole thing. We are thinking about our thinking, but it's also important that we don't overestimate our thoughts, that we don't overestimate our opinion of ourselves. I think that's a really dangerous thing. When we focus on ourselves, it's not because we're being prideful or self-centered here in this series, we're really focusing on making sure we have a balanced view of ourselves. We're not that important. We're not the center of the world. No one else feels like we're the center of the world. And if we have a kind of mentality like Heyman had, I think we put ourselves into a really dangerous position that we're going to get seriously disappointed as Heyman wound up getting. So I think we can overestimate ourselves, but then maybe on the other side of this, I think we can underestimate ourselves. And maybe you're on one end of the spectrum. I know I've been at either end of those spectrums on too many occasions. Sometimes people might fall into the trap of thinking that they're worthless or that they're a worm or that they're some sort of bottom of the totem pole kind of person. And wherever you stand, I think it is important for us to see that we need to see our value in what God did for us in giving His Son to die for us. I mean, that obviously shows extreme value, but clearly, as Romans 6 talks about a lot, we were all guilty in our sins. So we're not worthy of it. We're not amazing to the point where we should be honored in any way. But we find that balance, I think, in the grace of Jesus. And I think the more that we estimate ourselves too highly, the more we're really looking to get burned, I think, in the end. It's a kind of a complicated thing. I think the main thing, it's not a complicated idea. I think it made me think of this verse, Romans 12 verse 3, "For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned him." I think the idea of humility isn't to think that you're nothing to God, because that's not true. The idea of humility is to have an accurate perception of yourself. A sober perspective on yourself. A sober perspective where you recognize, "I'm not any better than anybody else. I don't deserve, like you said, all of the mercy of God and goodness of God, but He does love me. I do have something to contribute." just understanding. The Bible has a lot of truth to tell us about how to think about ourselves and how to, more importantly, stop thinking about ourselves and just recognize what you have to contribute and then go do it and do it by thinking about others and loving others and imitating Jesus who didn't prioritize himself, but he was exalted in the end. So going from his discussion with himself To another example, all the way back in Genesis again, my second deep thought has to do with Esau. And Esau hated Jacob, verse 41 of Genesis 27 tells us. And that leads him to a different kind of talking to himself. So it says, "He hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him and Esau said to himself, 'The days of mourning for my father are approaching.' And then he says, "Then I will kill my brother Jacob." So he's talking to himself about his dad dying and how he's gonna kill his brother Jacob. And then his mom is very perceptive too here. It says, "The words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called to Jacob, her younger son, and said to him, 'Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you.'" Nothing more comforting than sitting at home plotting the death of your brother. I mean, what a interesting and sobering story about self soothing. Just because you can take comfort in what you're telling yourself doesn't make it good. Yeah. It's so easy to try to take care of yourself by thinking the things that put us in a, a particular happy zone, a comfort zone. And man, that can be really dangerous. As this story illustrates, we could comfort ourselves with self talk about greed. You know, if I work hard and buy my time, someday this will all be Emon. Uh, where we could soothe ourselves with spiteful thoughts. You know, you could look at people you don't like and say, at least I can rejoice that they're suffering. You know, uh, you could think about fleshly fantasies or prideful visions of empty glory or, you know, all kinds of things like Esau. We could have an evil plot where we're scheming something really awful and find comfort in that. But again, this is the message of this whole episode. If we pay attention to what we're telling ourselves and we seek to honor God in both our thoughts and our actions, we can catch and correct those conversations we're having with ourselves. Thoughts happen, they have a way of just kind of taking over because we're not stepping back and taking the reins, taking the steering wheel, you know? You know, it's like we're letting the thing just drive. And God has given us the ability to be conscious of what we're meditating on. And so that's a big part of what we're trying to talk about here is stepping back one layer more to where you can see what's going on with what you're telling yourself and catch yourself. Imagine if Esau noticed what he was saying to himself and saw these thoughts for what they were. Imagine him just, "What am I doing? I started to have such jealousy that I am plotting my brother's murder. I'm fantasizing about killing him and I'm taking comfort in it. And he could turn to God, "Forgive me, cleanse my heart. These are awful thoughts. Help me to learn to love my brother like I need to." And the Bible often tells us to catch wrong thoughts and repent before they turn into action. There's so many examples, really. most obvious ones that I think about is Matthew 5 where Jesus talks about lust and how that itself is wrong, having these lustful thoughts, looking with lust or anger, stopping the anger. It's like murder already. I think of something like Proverbs instruction about looking at the wine when it sparkles in Proverbs 23. You know, sometimes the thought itself is sin. Sometimes it's just unwise and it leads down the wrong path. But either way, if we catch ourselves, we can work with ourselves before it gets worse. Adrian and I talk about this thing, "catch and correct." Sometimes you catch and correct after you're already down the road further than you want. But if you keep noticing and working with it, you start to catch right away and redirect, and we can bring ourselves before God for mercy and for help if we're noticing and steering the boat. I think you sort of summarized really where we're going in this whole conversation in in this guided study because that whole catch and correct is really what we're gonna be talking about doing and how we can do that, the strategies that we can put into place to actually make that happen. And it is within our control and I think that is what is so powerful. Like even with a strong emotion like anger, you know when you're in a situation where you are super angry, that is one of the hardest things to overcome and correct because it's just such a strong and powerful emotion, but it is possible. It is something that we should control And that's why Jesus, like you said, commanded us really to correct those thoughts before they get started. And so, let me wrap this thing up with my second deep thought, which is about Jeroboam. In 1 Kings chapter 12, verses 25 to 27, we find out that Jeroboam had built all of these places, Shechem, in the hill country of Ephraim. He was living there. And he said in his heart, he has this conversation with himself. He says, "Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of the people will turn again to their God, to Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah." And I just think when I see his conversation with himself here, I think he is so afraid. He is so afraid of people taking away his power. He's so afraid of what's going to happen. And he has a very good reason to be afraid because he's already started to almost snowball sins here. He started this whole thing off by really pulling away and dividing the people and adding to that sort of political error. Now he's about to commit religious error by erecting these alternate places of worship that people would not have to go to the temple. And I think for me, when I see this story, it kind of reminds me of David a little bit and his sin with Bathsheba and how that one action rolls right into another action and another action and all kinds of actions that pile up together to really put yourself in a bad position. And then you find yourself justifying yourself. Then you find yourself making up all of these reasons why you do what you do, planning out things and scheming things, and I have definitely been there. When you do one thing that's wrong and you feel like you're right and you can't honestly admit to yourself that it was wrong, then you're gonna wind up doing another thing that is gonna add and compound on that and you're gonna convince yourself that that was the right thing to do. And if we let these kinds of sins pile up on each other, eventually we're gonna wind up in a really serious situation in relation to how we're viewed in the eyes of God. And so Jeroboam's story, he was full of fear. He had a conversation with himself that I think a lot of us have. And that is, how can I make this bad situation better? And rather than doing the right thing, he did obviously add to his sins with more sins. I think there's a lot of wisdom in that idea of how sin keeps building on itself and it can start to pollute more and more. Our thinking, we don't realize what's going on. My family just maybe six months ago got a fish tank. And so it's been just one of those little fun things you do with the kids, you know, taking care of these fish. They've got a little Hogwarts looking castle that the fish is swimming through and everything. Nice. But if you don't tend to the water, then it gets dirty. You got to clean the water, change outdoor, clean the tank. It's a little green stuff builds up and you think about how the fish don't know. If they, if this is all they're swimming in is dirty water. That's all they know. You have to take them out of the water, put them in clean water for them to see the difference. And I think that Jeroboam is a kind of example, as so many people in the Bible, Haman is a great example too, of you just, he was so immersed in his deluded perspective of the way the world worked and this sinful evil perspective that was not only self-exalting, but was like Jeroboam grasping for his own what was good, willing to take anybody down, to harm anybody, change, throw out God's ways. And so it is so essential that we, yes, catch ourselves before we get that far, but also that we're doing the work of looking around, you know, look around your fish tank. What's going on inside this fish tank that you're swimming around in? That's such a cool picture. Yeah. Let's move on here in the last segment of the show and we're going to get into our reach out question. Reach out, reach out and touch someone. All right, so here we are, we're going to talk to each other and ask this question. What tone do your conversations with yourself tend to have? Are you shouting at yourself loudly about how awesome you are? Or maybe the opposite? How do your conversations with yourself tend to sound? This is scary stuff to get inside. It's scary for everybody else to look inside these conversations. In the office here, we do have a couch, so if Ryan wants to lay down while we have this conversation, you're certainly welcome to. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Phil. All right. So, you know that Pixar movie Inside Out where all the people have different people inside them, joy, anger, fear, that stuff? Oh, yeah. So last night, me and the kids watched the short that comes from that movie about this teenage girl, Riley, who's going on her first date. And the kid who comes to pick her up has absolute chaos going on inside his brain. Whenever you see inside of some of his inner voices are skateboarding out of control into walls emotions crash into each other. But all the while his face looks totally blank. He's like this, you know, kind of a typical teenage boys. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Like my face looks a lot of the time. I think I can relate to all of that. And most of the time it's pretty calm. I think they're in mission control, but like flipping a switch though, I feel like it can get turbulent really quickly. And when I'm disappointed in myself or I have conflict with people I care about, or I just, I don't know, sometimes you get mixed up about what really matters, I guess. I don't know. There's just different moments that I notice I am not doing well and it is like people are careening off of each other inside my head and, or you go to the fish bowl, you know, there's water splashing everywhere. It's just the tone of that conversation can get very turbulent. And I have found my mainstay, my lifeline in those moments is prayer. And going back to the example of Abraham, talking to God is different than talking to yourself. And so I know that's not exactly the question. The question is about the tone whenever you're talking to yourself. But whenever it changes to that tone, it can be a better conversation, I find than just trying to coach myself up or do something like, "Hey, sport, you're okay." Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. That's right. Yeah. I just find that there is a better spot that I can find myself in whenever I turn my conversation with myself into a conversation with God. And I try to settle down all those crazy careening, skateboarding emotions and center my thinking on the Lord. And it is kind of a switch that I have to flip too, just because you're always, like said, there's things playing in your head, and if I'm not careful, I can just say, "Okay, now I'm going to pray," and I keep talking in the same way. I mean, I have to focus my attention in a way that I realize, "Okay, I'm on holy ground here. This is not me thinking to myself now. I'm going to go and talk to God about this." And it's just a really important, intentional shift that I find I need to make. But when I do that, now I'm addressing God, really tends to help in so many ways. So I would say my conversations tend to be a mix of calm, chaotic, and then turning into those conversations with God. What about you? What tone do your conversations have? Well, I was thinking about this question and I was reminded how we don't have cable. And a lot of the things that we watch are all streaming on various streaming services. And like almost every commercial break, some of these streaming services, I think they have like four commercials that are allowed to air at any time. And sometimes they will play the same commercial back to back to back. And it is so annoying to like hear the exact same jingle, the exact same narrator, watch the exact same scenes play out right in front of you over and over and over again. And that happens so often with streaming TV. But as I was thinking about this question, I was thinking that is often the tone of my conversations is they are sort of a looping, just cyclical conversation. And often it has a tone of defensiveness to it. There have been so many times, and I know we've talked about this on episodes past, but there've been so many times where I'll be driving or I'll be riding my bike to work or I'll be in those quiet moments, maybe in the shower, and I will be replaying a conversation that I had with somebody, or I'll be replaying something that someone told me or sent me and I'll replay it over and over and over again and maybe I'll replay what I said and maybe I'll think about saying it in a different way or maybe I'll think about how I could have adjusted this situation or my reaction or whatever, sort of like Dr. Strange in the multiverse. I'm playing out every different permeate, well if I would have said this or they would have said that or I am almost in my story, I am almost always the person who is right or like, I don't really have a lot to learn or there's nothing really that I need to change in these conversations, but it's usually like, okay, why would they have said that? Or what is their problem? And those are really the times where when I notice myself doing that, it is so powerful to really just stop myself and remind myself of some things and get real with myself and understand that I'm not the center. It's embarrassing to admit though, but this has been a thing that I've dealt with a lot, someone else being the problem. And that's never an easy thing to stop this whole cycling kind of conversation. So I think the things that we're gonna talk about here in this series, I think have been super helpful in just the last few weeks, thinking about my own thinking and changing the tone of my own stories. - Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it's really, it's just, it's really real. (laughing) It's just really challenging stuff. I think that taking an honest look at our inner lives and then bringing it before scripture, before what the Bible teaches, it is a game changer because the scriptures, I don't know how I missed it for many years, but the scriptures have so much to say about what a healthy, God-honoring inner life looks like. I mean, so much in the scriptures are about the heart. All the things that we can get stuck in, Scripture has so much wisdom that is practical and can guide us through all the challenges that we get stuck in, in both our outer lives and our relationships and all that kind of stuff and getting to the source in our hearts. I think when you used a verse not too long ago and a few episodes back where from Jeremiah 17 verse 9, Jeremiah reminds us all that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick who can understand it. I mean that is really the focus of this whole series is like trying to understand our hearts, trying to understand why we are so sick and why we get into these patterns and if we can understand that the Bible has a lot of instruction on pulling ourselves out of that condition and bringing us to a better place, I think that's really where the power of God's word lands is not only changing our outward people but also and maybe more importantly changing our inward people. So, let's get into our challenge here for this week. I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. So this week's challenge is to catch yourself. Catch yourself in the act. Catch a conversation with yourself in progress and just notice, notice your thoughts. Notice if it's edifying or unproductive. Catch yourself talking with yourself and notice, are you building yourself Are you tearing something down that's actually good? Well, this whole episode has been really explaining this challenge in a way. Just yeah, just pay attention Just notice and then you can address it and try to obey God in your thinking I love that old I love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel are Standing at the conveyor belt as the chocolates are running by and I love thinking about how if given this challenge you might ask yourself Well, do I have to catch every thought like do I have to really get every piece of chocolate as it comes down the conveyor belt? And we all know that that's not gonna be a winning endeavor and so I think maybe with this challenge if you start by just Tackling the big thoughts maybe if you start small and you don't really have to like judgmentally look at every single thing and like feel bad about it or even treat it lightly and Notice like this is helping me or this thought this isn't helpful "This isn't a good thought that I'm having." But if we really try to tackle every thought, I think that's impossible, to be honest. - Absolutely, yeah, this is catch a conversation with yourself, not every conversation. - I love the, I love Lucy illustration too, because that's so much of it is it's going, it's going by, and if you can just, every once in a while, stop the act of trying to package everything on the conveyor belt or whatever, and just notice it, and just take a look. Do a little quality control, do a little just awareness of, hey, all of these, this is what is going by. This is what that looks like, these thoughts that are going by. And you start, you could kind of start picking up a habit of just noticing more and more so that awareness, the Bible word for it, I think we used the word sober earlier, the word alert is a watchful. Watching is a big word, and there's a lot of things we are watchful in, but one of the things we watch is we keep watch over our heart. And if we can be diligent and vigilant in watching our heart and just get better at that, every step in that direction is going to help us. - Well, cool. All right, so here we are at the end of the episode, and maybe it feels pretty good to close this thing out with a prayer. I know that was one of obviously the recommendations that you had in the reach out question. When you come to a time when you're thinking about your thinking, bring God into the conversation. we're gonna have that discussion here later on in our series. But the prayer that we're gonna offer here comes from Colossians 3 verse 2, and the prayer is, "Father, help us to know our thoughts "and direct them toward the things above." And really, that is the thought, because as you were talking about quality control, nobody else is gonna be able to quality control your own thoughts, except for you, and obviously God. And so, bringing him into that conversation, I think, is so powerful. So let's go to God in prayer as we close out this episode. Our Holy God, you have created us through your power, through your word in the very beginning to be like you, created us in your image. What an incredible blessing it is that we have to be your creation, to be the pottery and have you as our potter. We honor you as our maker, the one who formed us and the one who continues to form us. We ask through your word that we will see how much you hate it when humanity is stubborn and self-willed help us to see when we are following our own path in a stubborn and self-willed way. Please, Father, soften us. Let us be more moldable. Let us be more pliable in your hands. Help us through this upcoming study to allow your Word to shape our thoughts, to allow your Word to break in and change the tone and quality of those thoughts, to be more faithful, to be more trusting in you. We believe that Jesus is your Son who came here to die for us, and we pray that our faith, Our faith in Him, our faith in You would increase every day. Please Father, defeat us when our thoughts lead us down a destructive path and lead us back to thoughts of You. We thank You so much for this time that we've had together and we offer this prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. So as we talked about here on the episode, our first guided study session in this Talking to Yourself series is going to be next week, Lord willing. And so we're going to think there in that conversation about facing the facts. Of all the things we've talked about, it would be nice if we would just tell ourselves the truth and the truth sometimes is very elusive when we have conversations with ourselves. And so to prepare for that conversation, we encourage you to read along with us Luke 15 verses 17 to 20, Romans 6 verses 16 to 17, and Romans 7 verses 19 to 20. of these passages really having to do with truthfulness and being true to yourself. I think that'll be a good setup for next week's conversation. Yeah, you'll see in those passages the struggle to the struggle between the different voices and the different things that are pulling at us and making sure that we are grabbing on to, like you say, the truth, grabbing onto the things of God and the truth will set you free. All right. And so that has been episode 174 of the Bible Geeks Weekly Podcast. so much everyone for tuning in. You can find show notes on our website or in your podcast player of choice. Stay tuned. Next week we're going to have another episode here on the weekly podcast, but we're also going to drop a whole bunch of conversation starter videos on social media. They will also be in our daily downloads podcast feed if you want to go check that out. And you can find all of these things at biblegeeks.fm/talkingtoyourself. That is the landing page for this guided study. Until next week, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom.