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When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up, or does it crumble under the weight of doubt? I'm your host, Dr. Lee Warren- I'm a brain surgeon, author, and a person who's seen some stuff and wondered where God is in all this mess. This is The Spiritual Brain Surgery podcast, where we'll take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains can smash together with faith to help us become healthier, feel better, and be happier so we can find the hope to withstand anything life throws at us. You've got questions, and we're going to do the hard work to find the answers, but you can't change your life until you change your mind, and it's gonna take some spiritual-brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.
You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the
neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything
starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life?
Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.
I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,
take control of our thinking, and find real hope. This is where we learn to
become healthier, feel better, and be happier.
This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.
This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast.
This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.
Music.
Well, friend, we're back. It is Sunday afternoon. It's actually Easter Sunday,
isn't it, Tata? It is, yes. He is risen. Hallelujah is risen. Amen.
We are sitting by the river on a chilly spring day.
Spring is having a hard time getting started here. It is. It is. It's overcast today.
We saw the sun for a time, but now it's gone again.
Sandhill cranes are beginning there. They do this sort of week-long kind of
exercise program before they take off.
It looks like they're flying around all over, I guess, getting stronger,
getting ready for their long northern trek back to Canada, wherever they go.
And last week we recorded a Tuesdays with Tata episode that was to be the second
part of our talk about the Old Testament prophet Jonah.
And the internet goblins got us. We had a major, some kind of a technological
snafu, and the sound did not record to that episode.
So we're here on Sunday afternoon, and it's Tuesdays with Tata, part two of Jonah.
Yes. Welcome back, Tata. Thank you. Good to be back.
I told Lisa maybe we were teaching false doctrine or something.
And God deleted those files. I certainly hope not. I've been trying to think,
what did we say that the Lord didn't like?
I don't know, but I'm sure glad we did. Listen, I'm going to share something
with you, Dad, that I haven't shared with you yet. We got an email.
So I decided to replay part one of our Jonah conversation last week in place
of the one that wouldn't work.
And I got an email from a guy named William who lives in Georgia.
Shout out to William. He's a faithful listener to the show.
And he said, if there's one book I thought I had done a deep dive into, to it was Jonah.
But alas, today, new stuff jumped out and smacked me in between my eyes.
My wife and I experienced something at Home Depot. A clerk helped us find stuff,
and we ended up chatting with him.
And later, we realized that we had both sensed a nudge to teach him about Jesus
and share the gospel, but we didn't do it.
He said, I felt weird and different and a little prideful and callous.
And all day long today, I wondered, why did I clam up?
And your podcast answered the question. I didn't like the message.
And I confess that sometimes I don't like the message. I can sense the anticipation of being rejected.
And I want to spare myself the conflict, the rejection, the not being liked,
feeling like the weird guy, thinking that, does God love this guy that I think is weird?
Jonah nailed me today in a specific and personal way. His story is my story.
Thank you for sharing that with us. That's powerful. So there was a time and
a place for that. Yes, that's very good.
Thank you, William. Well, the one thing, and I can't tell you where this came
from, but one of the things that I've tried to diligently pursue is when someone
tells me no, I take that to mean tell me more. Tell me more.
That's interesting. So, but that has to be tempered with some common sense as well.
I mean, if somebody tells you no and they're holding an eight-pound hammer,
you probably won't agree with them, right?
Well, there's a way to invite them into further conversation. That's correct.
To make them aware that you're available to them. That's correct.
That's right. Well, we appreciate William writing in and all of you who have
written in lately. And it always seems like these conversations have a place
and a time for everyone specifically.
And sometimes they show up at just the right time. Yes. So I'm excited that
we get to talk about Jonah again today.
And I'm just confident that God's going to do something with this conversation
that he didn't do with the previous one that we lost.
And if we have to call this anything, it's Jonah Part 2. That's right.
And just as a way of refreshing, you remember that the chapter begins or the
book begins. in the first chapter with the Lord calling Jonah and sending him.
God told him to go to Nineveh and preach to that city or call them out,
call their sin out, because their sin had come before him. God said that. That's right.
But Jonah, and we don't know, Jonah didn't say anything. He didn't say yes. He didn't say no.
He didn't say maybe. He just went the other way.
That's right. He went and got on a boat and went to another city or was headed
for another city. And I understand that, and I understand what the writer was talking about because.
I talked about this a little bit, and I remember that once upon a time in my
career that I had a call to go to Brazil to work with a missionary.
That's when I was with Oak Hill Church in San Antonio.
And I kept saying to them, and I kept saying to myself, I'm too busy. I can't do that.
And that one particular Sunday, and I was ill for some reason.
I don't recall what happened at that time. But Lisa brought me a CD of the service, Lisa, my daughter.
And the title of that service, that message, was Boat Potatoes.
And it was by Rick Atschley, who was the minister at Bridgeland Hills in our Fort Worth.
He and Max Lakedo exchanged pulpits periodically.
But there was a line in that message that grabbed me. If you want to see Jesus,
you've got to get out of the boat.
If you want to see Jesus, you've got to get out of the boat. That's right.
And what does that say? You have to go where he is. That's right.
And maybe you don't know the way. I mean, the disciples said that.
Lord Thomas said that. We don't know where you're going. That's right.
But we have to ask him, show me the way. That's right. Speak to me. Help me understand.
That's right. And Jonah, he fled from the Lord's presence.
That's an interesting thought.
He fled from the Lord's presence. He heard God.
God gave him an assignment, but he was in the presence of God.
So maybe that speaks to how he was thinking at that time, that maybe he was reaching out to God.
Maybe he was in a posture of prayer, but he fled from God's presence.
And he got on this boat, and the boat went out to sea, and God caused a storm.
That's right. And the storm was so violent that the sailors on the boat were
even afraid. That's right. And they were calling out to their own gods.
And then they started throwing the cargo overboard to lighten it.
But Jonah, he was asleep down in the hull of the ship.
And so somewhere in there, there was a time when the sailors,
they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah that it was his fault.
That's right. That's why they were having a storm.
And so what did Jonah do?
He confessed. He told them who he was.
The first words that we have recorded out of his mouth, I'm a Hebrew.
And I fear God who made the sea and the land. That's right.
But he must have told them. Well, we know that he told them because it's part
of that conversation that he told them that he was fleeing the presence of the Lord.
And the sailors knew that. That's right. And so when they asked John, what do we do?
And Jonah said, well, throw me overboard and the storm will stop and your lives will be saved.
So, but several things happened that really catch your attention because,
They didn't immediately do that, but they finally did.
They threw Jonah overboard, and the storm stopped, and it was calm,
and the sailors became followers of God.
That's right. They called on God. That's right. And they made vows to God.
That's right. Now, what did they sound like?
Lord, don't ever let me get in this place again like this. That's right.
And I promise I won't do that again.
That's right. But they made vows to God, and they made a promise to God that they would follow him.
So here's Jonah, and the Lord prepared a big fish, and the fish swallowed Jonah.
And Jonah was in the belly of that fish for three days and three nights.
And Jesus in Matthew 20, I think in Matthew 12, 40, that Jesus makes a comment
about the sign of Jonah because the scribes and Pharisees were asking him for a sign.
And he said, the only sign you're going to get is a sign of Jonah.
So he was liking himself to being buried for three days and three nights. That's right.
But look what happened to Jonah when he's in the belly of the fish. He called out to God.
And in chapter 2, his prayer is, I called out to the Lord out of my distress,
and he answered me. me." So here he is.
He has disobeyed, and all this trauma and tragedy has come upon these people,
these sailors, because of him and his actions.
And God heard him. So what did he do? He repented of his sins.
Yeah. And he called on the Lord.
And it was so unique to me to think that the whale, when the whale vomited him
up on land, that the whale knew the direction to Nineveh.
God gave him the direction. he went to that part of the land and vomited Jonah
up so that Jonah could go into Nineveh. That's right.
And Jonah was very concerned about what was happening to the people in Nineveh.
And he was disappointed that God didn't destroy them.
Yeah. Because of Jonah's preaching, and my sense of it is he probably told the
people and everything that had happened, what he had done.
But he told them that God was going to destroy them in 40 days.
And they repented in sackcloth. And then even the king, when he heard that, he took his robes off.
And he repented in sackcloth and ashes. And he declared a fast.
He called on the people to honor God. and repent of all their evil ways. And they did.
And God relented. Changed his mind.
He didn't destroy them. That's right.
That was powerful right there because the message. See, think about Jonah.
He delivered the message. That's right. He preached the sermon.
Even though he didn't want to. That's right. Even though he didn't want to.
Because he reminded God, said, I knew, don't you remember the conversation we
had when I was back in my country, that I knew you were long-suffering,
that you were patient, that you would relent.
And you did.
But Jonah still would not accept it. He went out there and sat on a hill to watch. That's right.
To see what the Lord was going to do. And he was rooting for their demise in
his heart. He did not want them to be saved.
That's an interesting point there, because one of the things that has plagued me,
the question, I guess, to boil it down to its simplest terms,
Should I be praying against evildoers, or should I be praying for them?
But if you go and read the Psalms, what did David do?
He prayed against them. But I have not done that, and I don't really know that I can do that.
And I don't know how long we have to pray for people that don't know the Lord.
And we don't really, what it is that troubles us most of all is that we just don't know.
We don't know what's in somebody's heart. We don't know what's in somebody's thoughts.
And just like the guy that wrote, he really, he should be kind to himself,
but because we really don't know for sure what happened in that other person's heart.
That's right. And they're thinking.
Or how they got there. Maybe. And maybe our work is like Paul said.
My work is to sow. Somebody else's work is to water. But God gives the increase. That's right.
So what I believe is that we have to give God all the room he needs to work. That's right.
And I think we have to remember that God created those people in his image,
just like he created us in his image.
And he loves them as much as he loves us.
And the problem with, Timothy Keller writes about this a lot,
The problem with Jonah here could have some political or even racial undertones.
When he meets the sailors, he leads with, I'm a Hebrew, he leads with his national identity.
Yes. And sometimes we have a sense, I think Americans do this a lot,
we have a sense that our national identity or our politics or our way of thinking
makes us sort of more favored to God than other people might be.
And God here is showing us that, yes, these people aren't Hebrews,
but he loves them and he has enough compassion for them that he wants to send
a prophet to get them to change so that he doesn't have to destroy them.
That's right. And so Jonah's problem is he's so caught up in his own righteousness
that he can't even, in his mind's eye, imagine God loving them enough to save them. That's right.
Yeah. He can't. He can't picture that. You would see that when Jonah considers the plant.
The plant came up overnight, provided shade for him, and then died at night. A worm ate it.
And then God sent a scorching wind from the east. That's right.
And the sun was beating down on his head, and he was very faint.
But, you know, back to the story I've told about going to Brazil,
and I can't tell you to this day why I picked it.
One of the first things we did was, after we got to Recife, was go with the missionary.
And the interesting point about the missionary, his name was Dennis Downing.
Yeah. And my name is Dennis McDonald. He called me the ultra-Dennis,
the other Dennis. The other Dennis.
But anyway, what I talked to the congregation about, and I spoke in English,
and he translated in Portuguese, is John 4, Jesus and the woman at the well.
And one of the things that I mentioned was that the woman said,
you don't have anything to drink from.
And that's what I said to the people in the congregation there,
that I've come to drink from your cup.
I didn't come here bringing my cup, but I came to drink from your cup.
So I want to be where you are. That's right. But that's what that says.
So that's the kind of mindset that you have to have.
That's right. You have to understand that we're more alike than we are different for one thing.
And you said it early on there that we're made in God's image.
And we're all God's children. That's right.
I think there's something to be said here for, or at least to be noticed,
that when our thinking becomes disordered.
So Jonah has a thought train and a mindset and a heart here that differs from God's.
God's plan is to redeem, restore, save, even people like the Ninevites.
Jonah feels like they're so bad that even God shouldn't forgive them.
That's right. And sometimes when our thinking becomes disordered like that,
then we can attach our own emotional state or even our own sense of hopefulness,
our own sense of our dreams and
desires to the outcome of a particular situation that we think is right.
And here Jonah in Jonah 4 basically is saying, I'd rather die than be wrong about the Ninevites.
That's right. I'd rather die than watch you save them. And that's just a sign
that his thinking had become significantly disordered.
And the farther your mindset gets from the mindset of Christ,
the more deranged your behavior and your life can be. And that's exactly why
I think Jesus said, judge not unless you be judged. That's right.
And the same measure that you use is going to be used on you as well. That's right.
So I think that's a good example of why we really do this thing that we talk
about. what we called self brain surgery, this continual attempt to align our
thinking with the mind of Christ. Like to say, okay, I'm having this thought.
The next thought in that train would be that I hope God burns these people up.
But God's next thought in that train would be, I sure hope they repent.
That's right. Well, God said, why shouldn't I be concerned about the Ninevites?
There's 120,000 people here and there's a lot of cattle. That's right.
Yeah, in New Living Translation, it says, the Lord said, Nineveh has more than
120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals.
Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city? What a place to end.
It's just one of those pretty rare times in Scripture where we don't get the story.
We don't get the end of the story. We know God already said He relented.
We don't know what happens to Jonah, though. No, we don't. We don't know if
Jonah lines up with God and changes his heart and is glad of their salvation
or if he goes moping around wishing he was dead because his enemy didn't get smited.
Or God didn't take him by the hair of his head and shake him and said,
look, it's my way or the highway. That's right.
And I think the difference, too, to parse out what you said earlier about David,
if you look at what David prayed through the Psalms, he was always praying against
the behavior of people who were after him.
Yes. and asking God to take care of it, make them relent, punish them,
destroy them, because he was being unjustly attacked.
Jonah is asking God to destroy people that have nothing to do with him. That's right.
He just is mad because they're getting God's favor when he doesn't think they
deserve it. Yes, that's right. You said it. He didn't think they deserved it. That's right.
So who are we to decide who God shows his favor to?
Far be it from us to even guess. That's right. And I think that's a big lesson
from Jonah is it's a lesson of do we put our politics, our national identity,
our racial identity, our maybe our denomination or our view of doctrine ahead
of God's love for other people?
Do we sometimes let disordered thinking take us farther away from what God would
do or think or closer to him?
And do we want to find ourselves at the end of a story where God and we are
apart from one another intellectually or theologically?
Because that's where Jonah and God are here at the end. God is saying,
I really want to save these people, and I have compassion for them.
And Jonah was saying, well, then just kill me then. I'd rather be dead.
We don't want to be there. No, we do not. And that's what poses this question,
and we should ask ourselves every day.
Okay, Lord, what do you want me to know now? That's right. What do you want me to know now?
Because that says several things, because that means that we have some kind
of connection with him that is important, but it means also that we understand
that he's in charge, that it's his plan.
That's right. Timothy Keller wraps up his book that's called The Prodigal Prophet,
which is about Jonah. And I don't agree with everything he said.
He seemed to be leaning heavy on the political side of Jonah,
which is a lot of conjecture because we don't get that from the text.
But at the end, he talks about how God had a character of compassion towards Jonah. He says.
Withered and died. Why did God do it?
Because he was being merciful and therefore was doing spiritual surgery on the idols of Jonah's heart.
So sometimes when our minds are separate from God's, perhaps he sends some difficulties
in our way so that we can say, wait, maybe I need to do some heart surgery on
myself to align myself back up with God's will.
See, sometimes what we don't want to do is stop.
We don't want to stop and wait on the Lord. We don't want to do that.
We don't see any value in that.
So what's your biggest takeaway from the book of Jonah, Dad?
Well, one of the things that one
of the things that's obvious to me is we better do what God says to do.
That's right. When God speaks and sends us to do something, we need to go do it.
And we shouldn't look back we have to understand that we can't do it without his help,
we cannot we need his help and that's one of the things that we see about Jonah
that he never wants we don't see him asking God help me we don't see that.
He prays in the belly of the fish, which is about as close as we get to it.
He says, I cried out to you in my great trouble, and you answered me.
I called to you from the land of the dead, and you heard me.
You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea.
And I said, Lord, you have driven me from your presence, yet I will look once
more toward your holy temple. Yes.
I think right there, there might be a little clue, because this is actually
not correct. What Jonah said, you have driven me from your presence.
He's the one that drove himself from God's presence. That's right.
God just tossed him into the ocean, but saved him with the fish.
So God was acting compassionately on him the whole time.
So maybe one of the morals of the story here is when we find ourselves in the
depths of the sea, we should start unwinding our own actions and seeing if there
was some place where we took a step off of God's path.
Yeah. How did we get there? How did we get there? Yeah. Because God's heart
is not for you to be in the belly of the fish, friend, in despair.
And it's not for you to be cursing that he's not blowing somebody else up.
It's to be aligned with his heart and his will for your life.
That's right. That's right. We should.
And I've struggled with the other part that I've struggled with is about fearing God.
Yeah. And we don't sense that Jonah had any kind of, and I don't think it means
that we were terrified of him.
No. That we have respect for him, that we're awed by him. That's right.
But we don't see that from Jonah.
You're right. We see this sort of self-righteousness that he still,
at the end of the book, thinks that his plan for Nineveh is better than God's.
That's right. It's unfortunate. Fortunate.
We've learned a lot about this little prophet, and it kind of reminds me of
the fact that there's stuff in the Bible that we don't read very often that
maybe we remember from Sunday school, or maybe we remember from one big story
like the fish and Jonah, and it's not necessarily the whale.
Did we tell that joke? Did we tell that joke? I don't know. I thought about
it. I think we probably should. Do you remember it?
Yeah. Well, it's an old story, and I can't even and began to tell you where it hurted.
But apparently in the classroom, in school, the teacher and a little girl were
having an open discussion about whether Jonah was swallowed by a big fish or by a whale.
And some way or another, the conversation ended with the teacher telling the
little girl said to the teacher, well, when I get to heaven,
I'll ask Jonah, was it a fish or a whale? Yeah.
And the teacher said, well, what if he didn't go to heaven?
You ask him. The little girl said, you ask him then. Then you ask.
She so disagreed with the teacher's insistence that it was a whale that she
said, maybe you can ask him if he's not in heaven. That was pretty funny.
Well, I think that there's just immense value in looking at these old stories.
And every time, that's the thing about the Bible. It always reads you too.
Every time we read a story that we think we know all about, we find something
in there that we haven't seen before.
At that moment in time, the Holy Spirit reminds you of something or teaches
you something that you didn't know.
And I think for me today, the story of Jonah has shown me, I need to be looking
at places in my life where things seem inexplicably hard or challenging.
And maybe there's some places where I need to go back and find the place where
I stepped off the path that God wanted me to be on.
Maybe some of those difficulties are not because I'm being singled out,
but maybe because I'm not in the land where he wants me to be. That's right.
Well, the question, we neglected to point this out, but the question as you
look at Jonah is, where am I in the story? Am I Jonah?
Am I the sailors?
Am I the Ninevites? That's right. Who am I? That's right. Right.
And because I think we need to know that. That's right.
I think we need to know how God views us. That's right.
And that is a great place to probably land this plane today,
is that a beautiful and powerful way to study the Word is to shift the narrator,
shift the perspective that you're viewing the story from,
and sometimes be the main character, and sometimes be one of the witnesses,
and sometimes be the opponent, and sometimes be a different character when you read it.
And see how your heart would have responded to the story from that point of view.
And that's a powerful way to study Scripture. Yes, it is.
And someone said a long time ago that when we pray, that's us talking to God.
That's right. When we read the Bible, that's Him talking to us. That's right.
That's exactly right. So, friend, maybe take another look at this little book
of Jonah and see some places where maybe you've not read all the way through
that story and seen it for what it was.
It's a powerful story about having our minds lined up with what God's will is
and seeing other people with compassion like God would see them and knowing
that no matter what someone else is doing, God still loves them and they were
still made in His image. That's right.
I guess if we're going to undergo such a mind shift, Tata, when should we start?
We should start today. We need to start today. Yeah.
Music.
Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my
brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering
from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.
It's available everywhere books are sold. And I narrated the audio books.
Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,
available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.
They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship
the Most High God. And if you're interested in learning more,
check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.
If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,
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And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,
every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60-plus countries around the world.
I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend,
you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.
Music.