God's truth

Our lives can be disrupted by our thoughts. Our thoughts can pull us down. Our thoughts can be intrusive. Our thoughts can lie to us. Our thoughts can tell us things that are not true about God or make us fear ourselves or fear other people. Fear is not of God. And when our thoughts are wonky, that's just really, really hard because that's one of the things that if the brain is the part that governs our thoughts, right, then if that is giving us thoughts that are unhelpful, it's really hard, and it's really challenging. When we have these thoughts, we have these feelings. And feelings are just indicators of our environment. They're not right or wrong, they're just feelings.

But then those feelings if we go with them too much or tell ourselves lies because we feel the feelings. Feelings aren't actually facts, so we can get confused there and then our bodies start to take those thoughts and those feelings as if they're real. And so the actions that we do or the way we feel in our comfort level in our bodies, I mean, it's just this whole thing, right? And as Christians we know that there's this whole spiritual being that we are and it's like what are we even dealing with? Like is this a spiritual thing? Is this a physical thing? I'm confused as to what I need to do here. Do I need to pray harder? Do I need to take a vitamin supplement? Do I need to exercise more? Do I need a nap? I mean, someone help me cut through the chaos. That's why I like to say, "It's time for no more crazy lady" because I have been there. I have totally been there and sometimes it's still unclear. But I have ways of discerning now. I have ways of understanding.

One of my key takeaways is that if it is something that is condemning or it is something that is fear causing or judgmental or tying you in knots, it's not of God. It's not of God. God is peace. God is peace. His Holy Spirit one of the fruits of the Spirit is peace, gentleness. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So that's the first tip, is that God's ways are indicated by who He is, by His Holy Spirit. If you aren't feeling love, joy, peace, self-control, patience, having kindness with yourself, gentleness, I mean, those are things that God has for us, and I don't want them to be stolen from you.

And that's what the enemy tries to do. So if you're wondering, am I in a spiritual battle? Well, yes, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Right? It's a spiritual battle just to be a living human being on the planet Earth. And also, I think I don't want to say this in a wrong way, but it's also a practical battle, too. It's a physical battle. It's an action battle. It's a thought battle. It's an emotional battle.

It is pretty much that we can help when we have these spiritual battles by also having tools for very practical things. Just like if you have a broken arm, you put a cast on it to heal. It was something that was meant to harm a broken arm. But a cast can help it to heal and mend. And I mean, yes, the spiritual is that God gave us wisdom and bones that can heal. So he gave medical wisdom to put it in a cast, and he gave bones that can heal. But also it's a practical skill that allows us to have movement again without pain, that allows us to immobilize the arm until it's totally ready for use again, and then to build up the muscle strength again. Right? So it's practical and spiritual, and sometimes we get the lie that we're not spiritual enough or we're not good enough, or God's mad at us because we're having some more practical, physical, or mental or emotional issues, and we're thinking, what is wrong? I'm praying to get out of this, and I'm trying. And I don't understand why I'm still here and still stuck.

So today I'm going to give you the first part of what I have put together with God's great grace and help, and that is the Empowered Freedom Framework. So, God and I have worked on this together through the years. I didn't know what it was called. I didn't see it all laid out until this summer, where I've really been seeking God's direction for showing me kind of the next steps with the podcast and helping people and the next steps for my family and all of that. And as he's helped me put this together, it is a framework for you to get freedom. It includes things in the way of how I got free. It includes things in the way of education and science and biblical truth and practical skills and spiritual identity. It's a comprehensive educational program that will give you the tools, insights and skills to be able to heal, to be able to take back your power that is rightfully yours from Jesus.

To start we're going to talk about peach pie. I don't know if you like peach pie or not. If you don't like peach pie, I want you to insert whatever pie you do like. If you don't like pie, insert cake. If you don't like sweets, insert soup. Insert a recipe. I'm using the peach pie metaphor because I like alliteration and they both start with the letter P.

To have a peach pie, we need a baker. That baker is someone who knows exactly how to design this peach pie. This baker knows what to put into the peach pie. To make it a peach pie, they might put in some peaches, and they might put in some cinnamon, and they might put in some flour, and they might put, I don't know, whatever else they put, butter or nutmeg. Whatever they put in there, they have a recipe, and they know how it's going to turn out because they followed the recipe. The unique ingredients are in there for this perfect peach pie. See what I did there? More alliteration for the perfect peach pie, okay? And that perfect peach pie is priceless. I mean, that perfect peach pie is so priceless because it is just perfectly made, perfectly designed by the baker. And that peach pie has everything it needs to be successful in delighting people's tummies in delighting their taste buds in filling a need for a sweet after a satisfying meal. It's inherently perfect as a peach pie, and its purpose is from the baker.

Now, as you probably have figured out, you are the peach pie, right? And God is the baker. He has perfectly put the ingredients into you for the purposes and outcomes that He has for you to do in this world. You are a beautiful, perfect peach pie in every way, and you are made to shine and do your job as you were designed with the unique ingredients for the perfect purpose and just it's spectacular. You are a unique creation, and the world needs you.

And God destined you for such a time as this. So that's the first part of my empowered freedom framework is realizing the story of you, of who you are, and that you are made by God, fearfully and wonderfully as a masterpiece. Here's the second part, though. Sometimes the story gets messed up. Someone tries to rewrite it, rewrite the recipe, they start to mess with the ingredients. These things that were good, like trusting, caring, showing vulnerability, connecting, being real, praying, trusting God, having a sound mind, a restful body, gentle emotions that are easy and light came along and messed with the recipe. It was like an evil person who was jealous and wanted to stop the recipe from being perfect. And what happened is the pie was perfect and all the ingredients were perfect when this devious thief came and stole from the baker, stole from the pie, put some ingredients in there that caused pain or that contradicted the good stuff, or that left some space for doubt as to whether they should be following the right recipe or not, it caused chaos.

Just like in a peach pie, if you put something else into it or not enough of something into it or too much of something into it, you're going to get different results. That didn't mean the original recipe was wrong. That didn't mean the original baker was wrong. That means that someone tampered with the ingredients, someone tampered with that perfect story, that perfect recipe, and that's the enemy. And the enemy can tamper in the lives of God's creation, through hurtful relationships, through bad experiences, through tragedy, through trauma, through gaslighting, from parents, through abusive marriage relationships, through bullying or insecurity, through hardships. The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.

But God, through Jesus, has already overcome the world, and we have the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead living in us. So the death that the enemy meant for evil, God will turn for good and redeem. And that peach pie will now be like a super peach pie. By the time God gets done with this, the original baker with the original recipe, He's taken those original ingredients and gotten rid of the muck. With all of those things that were not wanted, or additives or things that were stolen, the icky, God comes along and takes what the enemy meant for evil and turns it for good. Now, maybe the peaches are too sweet or not too sweet, but now maybe the peaches are so sweet, and God adds praline topping to it or some caramel sauce or some whipped cream, and it's like, even better than before. God makes it look like He had it planned all along well, because He knows what's going to happen.

He knows he's not going to let anything happen to you that He can't redeem, because He is a redemptive God. And He didn't want that junk to happen to you, but He wants the victory of you being who you are made to be. And sometimes those things that happen to us are the very areas where we overcome and shine and do even more than what the enemy was trying to stop us from doing in the first place.

That's why you're hearing from me today. I never thought that I would be able to get through my low self-esteem, my anxiety, my panic, my post-traumatic stress disorder, my obsessive-compulsive disorder. I mean, if you had seen me 30 years ago in my 20s, this would have been a whole different person you would have seen. And yet I was still the same person with all the right ingredients. But I had had some very toxic experiences in relationships, and I needed healing.

I needed the original baker, the one with the original recipe, to come in and supercharge my recipe by putting in even more of the wonderful things he had put in me through his power. The pralines and the pecans and the caramel sauce and the whipped cream. And it almost makes it worth all of the struggles that I went through. I don't know if I could say that I'd prefer to have still gone through them, but I am so glad to be on the other side. And I am so glad God redeemed it. And I am so glad that I am now here to help you get that extra recipe, that extra special sauce. As you break free from that awfulness that was trying to distort your recipe, you are fearfully and wonderfully, made a unique masterpiece no one compares to you. God has good for you.

God will redeem what the enemy stole, and He will make it all work together for good. So it'll look like it was part of the plan all along, because God is a good God, and He has got you. And He has got you with pralines and caramel sauce and whipped cream and even a cherry on top with a dash of cinnamon, I mean, God is that good. And if you're suffering right now and your story is more like the recipe of things that were tainted or stolen or harmed, where too many dashes of something bad were added in, or maybe someone dropped your pie on the floor and it crumbled, so to speak, God is a God who restores.

I saw this really cool picture of Queen Elizabeth II recently. It was when she was on stage at a Live Aid concert in 1985, and she was wearing these cutoff jeans and this short sleeved white t-shirt. Actually, it was sleeveless, and she didn't have a crown on, and she didn't even have a tiara or jewelry. She just looked so relaxed and so cool standing there on stage and ready to perform. I had never known that she had done this, so it was really, really impressive. I was very impressed, and she really got my respect going there.

The thing is it never actually happened. It was an AI generated image, and I thought for a moment that it was real. That's something that our brains can do to us. If you've ever judged yourself and scared yourself, wondering why you've had intrusive thoughts or thought of things that you really are repulsed by or felt that because you had some fleeting thought or negative feelings, unpleasant feelings, that you were somehow causing something awful to happen, I want to help you have peace today. You see, just like that image of Queen Elizabeth was not real, the way you feel about yourself when you judge yourself simply by the messages and the way that your brain and your feelings put the messaging together when they receive it, can be faulty pictures, not actual truth, not based on fact, just mere images, creations that we ascribe meaning to that you think you're seeing clearly when that's not actually the case.

So, here's the main point of all of this in today's podcast. When you think things, I want you to realize that while what you think may be fact may be true, there is no way for your brain to know the only thing that your brain can do is to make predictions and calculations based on information and experiences that it has had exposure to before. So, when you have thoughts, they are not actual things that need to be scary or need to be feared, they are simply chemical reactions. They're neurons firing. When you have feelings, same thing. It's nerve fibers, it's chemicals, it's energy. It is information that your body is encoding and decoding. That's all it is.

It is not truth. Now, it can represent truth and fact and figure that out. The way it can do that is from prior experience, ways that we've learned things before that we know to be true, such as there is gravity. We know that because we've fallen down, or someone taught it to us, or we read it in a book, right? We know things because we've tested them out, or because God's word says it, or because the Holy Spirit has told us. But we don't know things as absolute fact simply because we've perceived them. That could tell us something that isn't true, and we might confuse it with something that is true. Many times, when I work with clients who have thoughts that are intrusive or that they don't want, they fear that they are somehow some sort of deviant, or that they should be punished or put away because they can't believe that they had those thoughts and they're so awful and that couldn't be further from the truth. These are typically clients who are very decent people who want to serve the Lord and who just are very aware of how they don't want the awful feelings or the awful thoughts to hurt anybody.

It's actually the opposite of what they're thinking, but because they make a leap and associate negative thoughts or feelings, unpleasant thoughts or feelings, things that they would never want to think or to feel with a value judgment, they get confused, and then they get scared and get down on themselves. If that's you, I want to encourage you to remember this Queen Elizabeth AI generated picture. You see, I had different parts of information. I had what my eyes took in as I looked at the different parts of the picture. I had my context of what I knew about Queen Elizabeth II. I had my memory of the fact that there was a Live Aid concert or something similar back in the 80s. I was able to think, I can't actually tell if this is true or not, but what I was able to tell was that I was getting information and I was trying to figure out how to process it's meaning and to ascribe to it and figure out whether that picture was actually true or false. Then I put it against other information that I had, and that other information told me that the queen is not somebody who was into casual attire. She was someone who took the monarchy very seriously. Knowing that, I realized this is probably not true, because I used other information and backed it up with facts. I did know from experience, from learning, from prior exposure, and was able to make a more accurate picture.

They are no more real and true as value judgments and accurate pictures of who you are or how situations are than money is something of value. Listen to this. Money is something that has value because people ascribe value to it and put meaning towards it and know what it's worth, how to use it, what you can get for it, what you can do with it, but in reality, what is money? Money is paper. That's it. If we didn't ascribe value to this paper, these threads, this fabric, it would mean nothing. It would just be paper. Same with the chemicals. They're just chemicals. The neurons are just neurons doing their job with energy. It is what we learn to tell ourselves about the meaning and about the picture that we're seeing as we try to put the facts together, or what we perceive as the facts together that can sometimes cause us distress. That's why it's important to take every thought captive, put it against God's word, pray about it, be wise and discerning. Because if we just take it at face value, like I did, that picture of the queen, we might believe something that isn't true. No matter how true it feels, no matter how true it seems, no matter how scared we are of it, how curious we are about it, or how surprised we are, we're simply having a human experience of input and nerves and wiring that God created. There is absolute truth, but it's not something that we can tell right off the bat. Just like with an AI generated image of the queen at a concert, I had to run it through its paces and figure out how I could find what the truth actually was.

That's what I want you to think about. Whenever you have thoughts or feelings that are unpleasant or intrusive or you start feeling bad about yourself for having, I want you to realize that it's not a sin to simply have input or to simply have these chemical reactions. What you choose to do with the thoughts or what you choose to do with the feelings is where there's some substance of something that shows your character and shows what you believe in, what action choices you've chosen, and what you will do. Having the thoughts is just something that happens. Having the feelings is just something that happens. Putting meaning to them is something that happens, but putting meaning to them can be true or false, accurate or inaccurate, and it can cause you peace or it can cause you disturbance.

I've seen this so many times in the women that I've worked with, especially when I work with Christian women who really want to do the right thing and be pleasing to God in the way that they live their lives. These unpleasant thoughts or feelings can really, really cause them a lot of headaches. I want to just give you the understanding that you don't have to have a lot of disturbance because of the meaning that you ascribe to thoughts and feelings. They're just chemicals, reactions, nerves, fibers, energy, and they're your brain trying to sort through and figure out what's what. You get to determine through putting it against things that are true, like the Bible and prior experience, to figure out what you're going to do with it. That's something you can control, that's something you can choose, and that's something that you can take action in wisdom on. So just like that picture of Queen Elizabeth was not actually true, I could have ascribed meaning to it, but I might have been wrong. So, I needed to run it through the paces and tell myself what was actually true, not what seemed to be true.

If you're telling yourself things about yourself because you've had intrusive thoughts, disturbing thoughts, painful emotions, fears, and that you start to make the leap and think that things are going to go badly because you had some fear, or that things are going horribly wrong because you had a thought, I want you to realize those are distortions. There's not a cause and effect that is absolutely true. The only thing that is absolutely true is you're having information nation, and you need to put it against other stuff to determine what is true and what is false so that you can take every thought captive and learn to tell yourself the truth. It'll save you a lot of internal grief and disturbance, and it's something that can help bring you peace, hope.

Go take on the day.