Mental Health: Get Out of Your Head by Jennie Allen

Show Notes

Promo: Making Time

You have the same 24 hours in your day as the most accomplished people in the world. So why doesn't it feel that way? Follow along on this special 6 episode series as we take a look at how to make more time. By following biblical principles and taking a look at what you really want, Making Time shares the secret to having all the time you need... with a little help from some friends.

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Jennie Allen helps us do the impossible: change the way we think. We could waste away our entire lives if we never learn how to take our thoughts captive and replace our downward thought spiral with an upward spiral.

 

Watch the video of Session One

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Creators & Guests

Guest

Jennie Allen

Jennie Allen is the founder and visionary of IF:Gathering as well as the New York Times bestselling author of Get Out of Your Head, Made for This, Anything, and Nothing to Prove. A freqent speaker at events such as Catalyst and Q Conference, she is a passionate leader, following God’s call on her life to catalyze a generation to live what they believe. Jennie earned a master’s in biblical studies from Dallas Theological Seminary. She and her husband, Zac, have four children.

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Study Gateway's First Listens: Find your next Bible study! Join host Shelley Leith as she curates first sessions of Bible studies on various themes each season, taught by some of the world’s most influential Christian authors, teachers, and pastors. To learn more, visit https://StudyGateway.com.

First Listens Season 2: Episode 6:
Get Out of Your Head
By Jennie Allen

[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY LEITH: Hi there! I’m Shelley Leith, host of Study Gateway’s First Listens, where you get first listens of the first sessions on Study Gateway so you can find your next video Bible study.

We’re in Season 2 of First Listens, a season all about mental health. I’m bringing you sessions from seven Bible studies that deal with different aspects of mental health. In this season we’ve heard about depression from Chris Hodges in Out of the Cave, people pleasing from Karen Ehman’s When Making Others Happy Makes You Miserable, emotional un-healthiness from Pete Scazzero in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, anxiety in Rebekah Lyons’s study, Rhythms of Renewal, and toxic people in Gary Thomas’s When to Walk Away. After this week we only have one session to go, and it’s going to be a special one. We’ll be hearing from the Christian hip hop artist Lecrae, and this session is like no other Bible study you’ve heard before. All these pastors and authors – and musicians - have published their studies with HarperChristian Resources, and we stream their videos on Study Gateway. Once you have a taste of these first sessions, you’ll know which ones you’ve just got to go back and do, and today’s is another one I think you’ll find irresistible.

This week’s episode is Jennie Allen’s Get Out of Your Head, perhaps the most appropriately-titled study for a season on Mental Health! In todays session Jennie explains a common thing that happens inside our heads when we fixate on something, start to spin, obsess, and get entangled – we’re sucked into a downward spiral. Now, when you’re listening to this, you might notice some background noise. That’s because Jennie does her first session standing in the middle of an arcade, surrounded by video games and pinball machines. This is a visual picture of the noise going on in our minds, right? Let’s listen to “Spiraling Out,” from Get Out of Your Head.

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNIE ALLEN: - We've bought this lie that we are victim to our thoughts. We are at war.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. I wake up in the morning. And I'm thinking to myself, I really need to get a lot of work done today. And then I think, first, I'm going to spend some time with Jesus.

So what do I do? I pick up my phone. And then I notice this email about something I'm working on, and it's got some feedback in it for me. And all of a sudden, I'm completely discouraged.

And the next thing I know, I start distracting myself with Instagram, looking at all the gorgeous pictures of awesome people doing awesome things. And then in a few minutes, I noticed myself thinking, I don't measure up. I'm in the worst mood all of a sudden. I've decided that I'm a bad writer, that I'm spending my life on meaningless things, that I don't matter, that I have nothing to say. And I start spiraling.

And then my husband Zach will walk in. And he's all happy. He just met with Jesus. He says, good morning. And all of a sudden, I snap at him for no reason.

My mind is just spinning out. It's in chaos. And in less than an hour, I have completely diminished myself, criticized all my work, decided to quit the ministry. I've ignored God. I pushed away my best friend. And I know I sound crazy.

And I bet this is not inspiring a whole lot of confidence in you right now as we start this journey together. But I want to be honest. This is a struggle that every one of us find ourself at war in our brains every single day. We've bought this lie that we are a victim to our thoughts. I have bought this lie.
But in the next six weeks, we're going to look at the scriptures. We're going to look at what he tells us. And you're going to see again and again this truth that we are not victims to our thoughts, that we have authority over our thoughts.

But what's interesting is the Bible doesn't call us victims. It calls us warriors. And we were built to fight the greatest battle in our generation, this battle of our minds.

So I want to take just a minute before we get started here. And I want to speak to those of you that struggle with mental illness and say first of all that I am so sorry and that this is familiar to me. I have walked through different seasons with anxiety and depression. And those close to me have done the same thing. So [SIGHS] I'm sorry.

And I also want to say that I'm going to say some things that are very authoritative, that we have power over our thoughts. But I don't want to mislead you. There are certain things we don't have power over. Chemical imbalances are like cancer. You cannot just will yourself to not have cancer. This is a war, I know it. But counseling and medicine can be a part of that road to healing.

And I think oftentimes, we have not-- the church has said, yeah, believe more in Jesus and all that. And I don't want to be that person. I want you to know that there is a place for medicine and a place for counseling. And I don't want you to feel ashamed.

However, I believe that the study-- I want you to stay because I believe it can help. I believe that some of you are past the point of medicine and counsel. You don't need that anymore. You just have these spirals that you don't believe or know that you can interrupt. I believe that there is hope if you stay. And God can use this to shift things in your mind.

You might be thinking that I don't have energy for this, or this isn't that urgent for me. Or my mind's a mess, but nothing I've tried before has worked. And what's going to be different this time? And maybe you've meditated. You've tried to be mindful. You've tried journaling. But nothing seems to stick.
This is a battle of light and darkness. The enemy is coming for us. This is not as simple as let me train my mind, guys. We are at war with the enemy.

This is how he comes for us. This is how he came for me that morning. He comes for us through our phones. He comes for us through our discouragement. He comes for us with lies that we have believed for way too long.

And what we're going to talk about here, it's more than some brain hack or a trick that you can play on yourself or practices or principles. It's a deep rewiring and renewing of our mind. It's a centering on the person of Jesus Christ. If we're going to do anything that's worthwhile in this life, then we're going to have to walk in a power that is not of our own, a power that we've been given because of Jesus Christ. And we have to get a hold of this thing between our ears.

Now, it's exciting because in the last 20 years, more about the brain has been discovered than in the last 2,000. There are researchers that can tell you how your brain works. We understand things about the brain that that no other generation has ever understood about the brain. And what's cool is God built our brains.

Although we still have a long way to go with that research, science keeps confirming that the truths in this book are true. And what the Bible said thousands of years ago, what God said thousands of years ago, it perfectly describes what we know now from science. And the truth is that we can interrupt spirals, that we have a choice, that our emotions are a byproduct of the way we think. And we can actually start to change our thinking. That's what Paul said. The apostle Paul calls it having the mind of Christ.

In these weeks we have together, we're going to stick with what Paul says. We're going to look at the letters of Paul, specifically in the book of Philippians. And we're going to see how Paul sets his mind on hope. He sets his mind on Jesus. And Paul writes more about the mind than anyone else in the Bible. And I believe it's because he knew that how we think will turn into how we live.

I want to read to you a couple of these passages that are going to lay the groundwork for what we're going to talk about here. The first one is in Romans. Paul wrote this. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind," so that we may know "what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

Guys, he's saying it's possible. He's saying it's possible to renew our minds and that that one step can transform everything else. And then he's going to say in II Corinthians, he's going to say, "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ." He says we have the power to destroy. We have the authority to control our minds, to not be subject to whatever whim or mood or thought plagues us. We have authority over it.
Guys, this may be news to you. No one may have ever told you that you are not a victim to your thoughts, that you have authority and power-- God-given power over your thoughts. And that shift could change everything.

So we don't want to just notice and capture thoughts. But we want to set them and fix them on something. This is our only hope. You can't just empty out all the negative thoughts. You have to set them on something. And I believe that as you set them on this thing, everything shifts. I don't think you can wrestle down every fear, but I believe that God could become so big that things fall away.

[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY LEITH: I find it so hopeful to hear Jennie say that it is possible to renew our minds – we have the authority to control our minds. We don’t have to stay trapped by our negative thought spirals. I hope by the time we get to the end of this episode you decide to do more of this study. Get Out of Your Head is published by HarperChristian Resources and it streams on Study Gateway. Study Gateway is a streaming video service, and we’re the only one that has a subscription plan especially for small groups. For our First Listens listeners, we are offering an exclusive rate on our small group plan. When you use the promo code FIRST at studygateway.com, you’ll get a small group plan for up to 20 people for only $15.99/month, a 20% savings. And, for a complete experience with Get Out of Your Head, take advantage of our publisher-direct pricing on the essential study guide designed to be used with the videos. When I did this study, I found the study guide was essential to my experience of the study. In it you’ll make mind maps, you’ll track what you think about for a week, you’ll do projects, fill out charts, dive into Scripture studies. It’s such a great study guide. Get all the details at Studygateway.com.

And now, let’s return to Jennie Allen.

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNIE ALLEN: I love this quote from A. W. Tozer. In fact, I think I've probably quoted it in every Bible study I've ever taught. "Put God in His rightful place and a thousand problems are solved all at once." And I teach it in every Bible study because it's my only hope to give you. I want that. I want 1,000 problems solved all at once. And we can have that.

And Paul lived that way. In fact, he lived with this radical shift in his perspective. If you know anything about Paul, you know that he really started out as a bad guy, an actual killer, murderer of Christians. But then he had this encounter with the risen Jesus, and everything shifted. He was rapidly and completely rewired. Paul knew that how he thought would equal how he lived.

So in this study, we're going to drill down into this letter in the Philippian church. We're going to see how he thought. But first, we're going to go back in the Bible a little bit. And we're going to look at Acts. 16. This is the story of how that Philippian church that he was writing a letter to-- this is how that church actually began. And these people that he's writing to, they have names.

And Paul and his friends "went through the region of Phrygia and Galicia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus didn't allow them." Now, I don't want you to miss these little statements here. The Holy Spirit was clearly forbidding them to go to Asia, which is desperately where Paul wanted to go.

"And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them." Now, the writer of Acts wants to be super clear about two things. He wants every one of us to know that God did not want him to go to Asia and that God did want Paul to go to Macedonia.

Now, let me tell you what happens when he gets to Macedonia. He gets put in prison. So God says, my big awesome plan is I'm going to put you in a prison cell. I'm going to stop you from evangelizing an entirely new part of the world, a whole continent. And instead, I'm going to plop you down for a lot of the rest of your life in and out of prison.

Now, if I'm Paul, honestly, I'm very cranky. I'm spinning out. But guess what? In those prison cells, Paul would go on to write almost every letter that he wrote in the New Testament in prison. And it turns out Philippi is actually the leading city in the district of Macedonia; a Roman colony, one of the only Roman colonies in that space. This was a power center, strategically a great place to go.

But within days, hours, weeks, Paul's in prison. And in that time, Paul is in Philippi. He helps three people become Christians. Three people. Three. Not 3,000. Three. A woman that was a slave that was possessed by a demon; a woman that was wealthy named Lydia, who was actually having a prayer gathering that was religious outside of her house; and then a jailer. One jailer.

So these three people are how the Philippian church begins. And years later, Paul will be in prison again in Rome now. And he's writing this letter to the Philippians, back to that church.

He should have been wrestling a little bit more than he was. In fact, how is he not furious? There's something about the way that Paul thinks about his life, the way that Paul thinks about God and His plans for him that all he wants us to obey. All Paul wants us to be exactly where God wants him. And we're going to hear him praise God for his prison cell.

I am not naturally like this. I think I have great ideas of what God should do with me, with my kids, with our lives. And very few of those great ideas include things like prison, cancer, suffering, because who wants plans like that? I get that this is hard to share. And the reason I actually wrote this study is because for a year and a half of my life, I was spinning out and wrestling with something pretty big. And I didn't share it with anybody.

Every night at 3:00 AM, I would wake up-- the same time. And I would spin and spin and spin with this incredibly dark thought. What if God is not real? At night, I would think of it. If it just goes to black and heaven isn't true and this is all pretend, then what am I doing wasting my life preaching Jesus? What am I doing leading my kids soccer game and talking about God? What is that? I'm wasting my life.

I wanted to shut down the ministry. I wanted to crawl in a hole of comfort. I wanted to binge watch Netflix. I did not want to risk anything for God that might be pretend.

And I'll tell you exactly when it started to shift for me. I was walking around a track with my friends, my small group. And they had no idea about any of this. I just hadn't mentioned it. And I did that day. I said it out loud.

And as soon as I said it out loud, I had this thought. I thought, what did I just say? My first time to say it out loud. I'll never forget it. And immediately, the next thought in my head was, this is ludicrous. I believe God.

This is the enemy. This is coming for me. In the night, in the dark when nobody is there to defend me, this is the enemy. In the dark, I was giving the enemy time for conversation. Anything he wanted to say to me, I gave it to him. And for a year and a half, he had me.

When I brought it into the light, my people started praying for me. They started fighting for me. They fasted. They prayed.They saw it immediately, this is attack. We've got to fight this. And so we did together.

And it shifted. In the middle of the night, I would wake up. And instead, I would read in Psalms where it says if I go down to Sheol, if I go down to the dark grave, you are there. And I would repeat those passages over and over again.

And I'm telling you, it wasn't immediate. But guys, I got free. That spiral shifted. And now I don't wake up very often at night. But when I do, it's actually some of the sweetest time with Jesus.
This can shift. You do not have to live stuck and spiraling for the rest of your life. But you might if you don't go to war with this.

You need somebody to go to war with. You need somebody that's going to fight for you, somebody that you can say loud the words, I am wrestling with blank, no matter what that blank is. Those things that you can't control, the part of the plan that isn't going right, that's sending you spinning, the diagnosis or the addiction. We carry those things, but we carry them together, and we take them to God.

And that renewal of our mind, it happens as we pray. It happens as we conform our minds to this book. It happens as we close our eyes, we talk to God because he is real and he is fighting for you.

And what we believe about God and what we think about God, it matters. And the enemy knows it. And if he isn't going to take you down in some big dramatic way, he's going to get in your head. He's going to distract you. He's going to make you doubt. He's going to make you afraid.

It's not that all these problems are going to go away. It's that all of these problems are going to be held together in and through knowing and loving a powerful God. Our perspective shifts. And our lives and our minds and our relationship shifts.

Now, the interesting thing about Paul is you're sitting here today because Paul was locked up for most of his ministry in a prison. The gospel went for generations because God knew if I put that man in a prison cell, he will write letters. He will write letters. No big deal. He doesn't know that those letters will bring a church together for thousands and thousands of years and instruct them and teach them how to know and love Jesus more.

As we stand, as we fight, as we take hold of the mind of Christ, He frees us. He gives us peace no matter what our prison cell is. So in these weeks, we're going to bring a lot to the light. We're going to say things out loud. We're going to fight for each other. We're going to get encouragement from Paul from his prison cell showing us how to be strong in our mind and our heart when we're in ours.
You are not helpless against your thoughts. God gives us tools. And together, we're going to go learn how to break spirals and just see what God can do with a mind that is completely and wholly focused on him.
[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING] SHELLEY LEITH: AAAAGH. I love this study! Back when I did it I had been really frustrated with how negative I was getting in my head, always being critical, and this study really gave me tools to reverse those spirals, and change my thinking. Get Out of Your head is published by HarperChristian Resources and it streams on Study Gateway. Here at Study Gateway you can find your favorite authors, pastors and Bible teachers, all in one place. We’re the only streaming video subscription service that offers a small group-sized plan, AND has user-based pricing for churches, no matter what the size. And don’t forget, you can use the promo code FIRST to get a 20% savings on a small group plan. What does 20% mean to your pocketbook? It means you’re going to save $4/month, so instead of $19.99/month, you’ll pay only 15.99/month for your entire small group of up to 20 people, which works out to only 80 cents per person per month!

With Study Gateway, you also get a direct link to our store, where you get publisher-direct pricing on the essential Bible study guide and conversation cards for Get Out of Your Head. This study is a little different. You actually do your work in your study guide before you meet, then you get together and use the conversation cards to drive which questions you talk about together as a group. Then, you finish by watching the video. It’s a great system for encouraging you to dig into the material and make discoveries for yourself and really start working on your thoughts – by the time you get together with your group, do you ever have meaningful discussions! Is Get Out of Your Head going to be your next study? Get started right now by going to studygateway.com, click start free trial, choose the monthly small group plan, and use the promo code FIRST.

Come back next week for our final episode in the Mental Health season, where we’ll hear a very special message from hip-hop artist Lecrae, and we’ll even get to hear him recording his powerful song that might just reflect your own heart cry, Restore Me. Make sure you rate and review this podcast so other people can find this show too. See you next time on Study Gateway’s First Listens.
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