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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.
Good morning, my friend. I hope you're doing well. This is Dr. Lee Warren.
I'm your host for another episode of Spiritual Brain Surgery.
I'm so excited about this new podcast.
We're diving deep into what we believe, why we believe it, how to share it with
other people, how to use your brain and your mind together with your faith to
get your neuroscience right, get your faith right, and give you some solid ground
to stand on when life gets hard.
This podcast is off to a great start. We've been in the top 150 of the Apple
Store. So you guys are doing a great job getting the word out.
I'd love it if you would like, leave a rating, leave a review.
Make sure you subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.
It'll really help get the word out, help other people find out so they can do
some spiritual brain surgery too.
This is going to be the first of kind of a one-two punch series of episodes.
I'm going to do a more spiritual episode on the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast
as part one. and then the part two will come on the Dr.
Lee Warren podcast where we go deeper into the science of whatever we talk about.
And today, we're going to talk about this word that shows up in the Bible numerous
times, particularly in John 15 in the first verse.
In 10 verses of John 15, we see the word abide show up 10 times in 10 verses.
So obviously Jesus is trying to tell us something here.
And I want to give you an example of what happens when you submit your will
in the first part of your day to the Lord.
Some surprising and beautiful things happen when you give him that time.
Sometimes he gives you great insights and prepares you for the day.
And this morning is a good example of that. This is not the episode I intended to record today.
And I'm going to just give you a little insight into my process and how I wake
up and start my day and give the Lord the first part of my day and try to get
my brain on right and get my brain into a good focused alpha state so we can
learn and grow and find some resilience and strength and all of that.
We're going to do that this morning.
Using the word abide, we're going to have a little bit of music,
a little bit of prayer time, and then part two is going to come on a frontal
lobe Friday, hopefully tomorrow. tomorrow.
Got a couple of things going on that could prevent a new episode from dropping
tomorrow, but prayerfully we'll get it done and it'll show up tomorrow.
And when we get to that frontal lobe Friday episode, we're going to look at
the neuroscience of what happens when you abide and spend time in prayer and meditation.
And there's some surprising things that you'll learn there on what actually
happens to our brain when we just do what God says.
And we've got this idea that if Christ never sinned with his mind,
that means his brain had better neural pathways, ways better synapses.
He created a better brain environment out of His good, perfect, holy mind environment.
And if we're going to try to be like Him, since we have the mind of Christ as
recipients of His gift of salvation, then we want to understand exactly what that means.
We want to get the full benefit of what it looks like when we spend a lifetime
making our brains more like His and working more in accordance with His desire
for our lives and our bodies, giving our bodies to to him as an essential act of worship,
as the scripture says in Romans chapter 12.
So today we're going to look at the word abide, and we're going to do that right now.
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 going to
take some spiritual brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
Music.
You ready? Let's get after it. Hey, let's go to John 10 for just a minute,
and we're going to look at, I'm sorry, John 15 for just a minute,
and we're going to look at the first 10 verses, okay?
The first 10 verses, we're going to see this word abide show up over and over.
I am the true vine. This is Jesus talking.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that
does not bear fruit, He takes away.
And every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes that it may bear more fruit.
Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine,
neither can you unless you abide in me.
I'm the vine, you're the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in him,
he it is that bears much fruit.
For apart from me you can do nothing.
If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away, like a branch that withers
and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.
This is fascinating. I've always, when I grew up, I had this sort of fear-based theology.
Theology, and I was sort of taught,
and I remember Bible class, and some youth minister in particular that used
this verse on the fear side,
like, hey, if you don't stay saved, you don't, you know, continually repent
of your sins and continually confess and continually stay in a safe state,
then your branch is going to get cut off and burned up, and you're not going to abide in Him.
You're going to lose your soul and burn in hell and all of that.
And that, my friend, that's true if you aren't connected to the vine.
But what Jesus is talking about here is power.
Jesus is talking about here, how do you maintain a whole life connected to your
Father so that you can rest and grow and learn and be loved and be kept and
be held and be grown and be pruned and become all that you are created to be.
It's abiding in Him. If somebody says something to you more than once, it's important.
If somebody says something to you 10 times in a row in 10 verses,
then it's really important.
So here's an interesting thing. If you get into a discipline of getting up in
the morning and giving your first part of the morning, just the very first moments,
first 15, 20 minutes, however long you have.
And get into a place where you spend some time reading the Word,
listening to some music maybe,
spending some time in prayer and trying to get into that almost meditative state
where you're focusing and concentrating and listening and quieting your mind
and just getting your brain kind of relaxed. And that's when you start to hear things, okay?
Well, this morning I was doing that, and I did the Bible Recap with Tara Lee Cobble.
I have a big announcement about that pretty soon you're going to be excited
about, by the way. the Bible recap, listening to Exodus and working through that devotional.
And while I'm doing that, I was
making a cup of coffee, and I had Exodus playing in my ear about Pharaoh.
And noticed for the first time, as many times as I've read the Bible,
Terri Lee Cobble pointed out something.
Moses, I'm sorry, Pharaoh asks Moses to pray for him.
He's asking that Moses will pray that God God will relent and remove the plagues.
And what I've never noticed before, I thought it was interesting that Pharaoh
asked Moses to pray, but he does not change his heart.
He asked Moses to pray and lift the plagues, but he still won't let the people go.
And I realize prayer is not, we all think of prayer as this transaction.
We want God to do something for us, so we pray, and we hope he does what he
says, right? But prayer is not designed as a transactional interchange between
you and God. And I think that's where we lose our power.
Prayer is a conversation. Prayer is a state of communication and relationship.
And what Jesus is getting at here is if you stay connected, then when you start
talking to God, you start getting
what you want because you want what He wants, and His will prevails.
You get what He wants when you line your will up with His, when you're attached
to the vine. So Pharaoh wanted the hack, right?
He wanted, hey, Moses, pray for me. Let God take away all these frogs and all
these flies and all this blood and all this hail and all this stuff.
But he still didn't repent and change.
And he missed out on the power of the relationship of a body.
I've never noticed that before. He prayed, but he didn't repent.
And that's why he didn't have the outcome that he would have wanted of being
forgiven and being saved and being held onto and being loved and being grown
and pruned and abided by and abided in by somebody who loved him.
He wanted the hack of the relief of the present problem, but he didn't want
to change and attach himself to the power source of who we know to be our creator,
right? I never noticed that before. So here's what happened.
I'm making a cup of coffee. I'm reading that, listening to that, thinking about that.
And I've got this little app on my phone. It's a vocabulary app,
I guess because I'm a writer. I like to learn new words.
And it just pops up on your screen at a certain time every day with a word and a definition.
And the word that popped up today while I'm in the middle of my Bible study,
while I'm waiting for my cup of coffee to come out, is abide.
And the definition that the app had for the word abide is to tolerate something.
Something, and I read the definition.
It says, you know, to tolerate something you don't necessarily like,
like, well, I don't agree with that, but I'll abide by it because it's the law or whatever.
You're sort of grumpily agreeing, condescending to obey something because you have to.
That's one definition of the word abide, but here's what happens when you're submitting.
You're getting yourself into this place where you're listening,
and you're ready to learn, and you're trying to submit your will,
your mind, your body, your heart, your soul, your guts, everything to God so
you can learn and have this day planned out for you that's going to help you
accomplish whatever comes before you.
And you're in that state, and the word abide hits me, and my heart said,
it was the strangest thing, just a very strong reaction, almost a visceral reaction
to the word abide being defined in the negative as something you tolerate.
And my heart said, no, that's not what abide means, Lee. Go look at abide.
Go look at that word and spend some time thinking about that word this morning. And I did.
And I found John 15. And Jesus tells us 10 times, you abide in me and your life's
going to start changing.
You abide in me. You're going to start seeing some fruit come out of your life.
This is not a negative, tolerate something you don't like. This is a place of
rest and growth and pruning and learning.
And then I Googled and I looked up abide in the scripture and I found this this
beautiful devotional app I've never seen before, a place called Scripture Lullabies.
The website is scripture-lullabies.com, and it's this beautiful website.
They've got a Spotify channel with all this music where you can go and pray,
and you can use it as a prayer time.
Listen, I'll just play you a couple of seconds of one of their prayer time music pieces.
This one's called Precious Life. I'll just play this for a second.
This is scripture-lullabies.com, and their Spotify channel, which I'll link
to in the show notes. Here's what the music sounds like.
Music.
You know what, I'm going to play that over some scripture that we read,
and I'm going to give you some tie-ins.
This is a good example of using music that doesn't have words to get the language
part of your brain out of your way so you can just start hearing and listening,
breathing and praying. Think about that for a second.
Music.
Now think about Psalm 34. four. I will extol the Lord at all times.
His praise will always be on my lips.
I will glorify in the Lord. Let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
Glorify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he answered me.
He delivered me from all my fears.
Deliver me from my fears, Lord. I'm seeking you. I'm listening to you.
I'm trying to abide in you. you deliver me from my fears.
Music.
Do you see how that music could be helpful if you prayed like that?
So that's the scripture lullaby.
So anyway, to finish the story, I'm in the middle of my app and listening to my Bible time.
I see that word pop up. I have a visceral reaction to it.
I'm prompted to go and look at the word in scripture and what it actually means
in a scriptural context. text, and I find this devotional on the Scripture Lullaby
website about the word abide, and it's a study from John 15.
And they made three points, and they're beautiful.
The first one is, when we abide in Christ, we enjoy His rest and peace.
So the word abide shows up 10 times in 10 verses in John 15,
and when you go and do a word study on the Greek roots of the word abide,
it doesn't mean a negative thing.
It means dwell in, remain in, be present with, be held and kept in this place.
So abiding talks about posture and place.
Abiding talks about dwelling in God's presence, remaining in His Word,
experiencing His power and peace.
It's not about work, not about your work.
It's about His work. It's about what He's doing. He's the gardener. He's the vine.
He's the the one who prunes. He's the one who nurtures. He's the one who nourishes.
He's the one who makes the growth happen.
We're just held and kept in his peace and promises, as the devotional says.
So that we can enjoy his deep rest.
So when we abide in Christ, we enjoy rest and peace.
The second point they made, when we abide in Christ, our hearts are cultivated for growth.
And they talk about a garden and the fact you get into a garden and you see
all this stuff and you You imagine how a vine is climbing a trellis or wildflowers
are growing in there, and you can kind of just smell everything,
and it's so beautiful and peaceful and calm that you can recognize it as a place of rest.
But there's another layer there.
And I remember we went one time to Napa Valley, and we have friends who have
a winery out there, the Biali family.
And we were walking around their vineyard and looking at all these amazing grapevines.
And they told us these plants were over 100 years old, and our grandfather brought
them here on a boat from Italy.
They were cut from the vines that are still growing in Italy on our original family's vineyard.
And so when you look at those vines, that's over a hundred years of work,
the careful stewarding that these people on their hands and knees and their
fathers and their grandfathers and grandmothers and cousins have all worked
this land for over a century.
And when you look at one of their vines, it doesn't just represent something
beautiful and aromatic that can turn into wine and all that.
It also represents a lot of work and calluses and sweat and toil.
And the gardener's been working this. There's been a lot of tending going on in that vineyard.
And the Scripture Lullabies website says you can feel in the garden,
you can feel calluses and digging and aching in the back from bending over and weeding.
You can feel the gardener's hard work that has produced this beautiful, incredible outcome.
It's a gardening analogy all throughout John 15.
And Jesus is using this language of cultivation. And we see ourselves as the
branches with this potential to bear fruit.
We start feeling as we go through our lives and we go through these traumas
and tragedies and massive things, we start feeling like we've lost our potential,
like our best days are behind us.
Like we've made some sort of mistake or we ended up in some place where our
future is really kind of limited now and we're hosed.
We've kind of shot ourselves in the foot and we have all this sort of language
that's limiting of ourselves.
But what Jesus says in John 15 is we have incredible future potential for growth.
If you're still alive, my friend, if you're still drawing breath and you're
connected to the vine, you're not done growing yet.
Okay? So Jesus says, I'm here so that you can abide in me. And if you do, you'll bear fruit.
And I will prune it and it will bear more fruit. Like your work is,
God's work in you is active.
Now, again, here's where this analogy broke down when I was a kid and I was
learning John 15. They were talking about pruning.
It was always in the negative. This is going to hurt. God's going to cut some stuff away from me.
He's going to cut out your bad attitudes and cut out your sin,
and he's going to chop you down.
And it was always this sort of negative idea.
But pruning is an essential act of loving on behalf of the gardener so that
the stuff that isn't helpful gets cut away so that you can grow into who you're
really supposed to be. So we think about pruning as this negative thing, but it's really not.
If you look closer, the devotional says that the original language, it's cleansing.
God is purging things from you that aren't helpful to you or helpful to Him.
They're not like Him or from Him. It's things that we've allowed to attach like
barnacles on a ship that have become attached to us that we don't need and aren't
helpful and are actually hindering us.
Remember our scripture, we started back in New Thing November,
started talking about Hebrews 12.
And that verse in Hebrews 12, 1, therefore, since we're surrounded by such a
great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin
that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance, the race marked out for us.
See that idea that we need to get rid of things that are hindering us,
including sin, sin that so easily entangles, but not only sin,
anything that's getting in your way that's keeping you from achieving your potential,
that's keeping that you're over busy, you're overtaxed, you're saying yes to too many things.
You're holding onto some stuff from the past that you've already been forgiven
for or it's already out of your control and you can't fix it anymore or some
massive thing that you went through and it's not changeable and it's time to
start moving forward because it's hindering you, right?
So that's what pruning is.
So do you see what's happening? So this is the result.
What we're talking about right now is the result of that discipline of starting
the morning in a quiet place and then the word abide shows up And I studied
that, and all of a sudden we're having a great talk about abiding and pruning
and growing and resting and being held.
And the third part of that devotional is when we abide in Christ,
we produce good and lasting fruit.
Because there's one more abide that shows up down in verse 16.
So we've had these 10 mentions of the word abide in the first 10 verses,
and then all of a sudden you get to 16, and he gives us one more thing that's not tied to us abiding.
It's tied to our legacy, our future. and we start thinking that our life's been
hindered and messed up and we've made all these mistakes and we're never gonna
be okay and our best days are behind us and God says, hey, hang on a second.
Guess what? There's something more to this story, my friend.
He says this, you didn't choose me.
I chose you and appointed you so that you should go and bear fruit and that
your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask in my name,
he'll give it to you. The things I command you, you will love one another.
Listen, he's saying, if you live your life in this place of abiding in me,
I will grow you. I will cultivate you.
I'll prune away things from you that aren't necessary, that aren't helpful to you.
I will help you, and I will make sure that what you leave behind will continue
to influence and help those before.
Just like our friends, the Bialis, their vineyard, their great-great-grandfather
probably never envisioned that somebody would cut some of those vines and take
them on a boat to America and plant them in California,
and a hundred years later have a thriving business and a family that's still
working that land. man, that's abiding, okay?
That's something that's lasting. And your life can mean something,
not only in an eternal context, but here, what you do, the way that you spend
your time, the way that you attach yourself to the Father will affect other
people long past the time that you're here.
I love the idea that these podcasts will be out there somewhere.
My great-grandkids may hear Pop talking about what he studied in the morning
or some way that your brain can be used to help you.
Maybe my words will help your great-grandchild someday. That's abiding, okay?
We've connected ourselves, and the fruit that we produce will abide and remain
and continue to be helpful.
It won't spoil, the devotional says, but it will dwell in the lives of those around us.
That's a little look at the word abide, and it's an example of the process that
you can go through when you give the Lord your first few minutes.
I'm going to play you a little bit of music. There's a website I love called
the North American Guitar Company. I'm a guitar nerd.
These are handcrafted, beautiful acoustic guitars that they sell from all over the place.
They have amazing guitar players that come into their studio and play these
things. They put them on their website so you can hear how a guitar sounds in case you want to buy it.
There's a guy named Carl Miner I've been following for a long time.
Carl's a young man. He's a gifted fingerstyle guitar player.
He won the North American Fingerpicking Tournament, the fingerpicking contest,
several times when he was a young teenager.
Incredibly gifted guitar player. And he just picks up one of these amazing instruments
and plays it on their website on YouTube, and he's just unbelievable.
But this music, for me, speaks right to my soul, and it gives me an opportunity to sort of abide.
So I'm going to use Psalm 46, and we're going to talk about how we can get our
brains under control when we're in the midst of stress.
And I just want to give you this one little exercise of using Psalm 46 to realize
what God says in the midst of the storm, in the midst of the trouble that you're
having, a technique that you can use.
And then on Frontal Lobe Friday down the road, hopefully tomorrow,
we're going to talk about Andrew Newberg's book, How God Changes Your Brain.
And we're going to look at what actually happens when you submit your brain
to a prayerful meditative state and what structurally happens in your brain
to reinforce and get stronger so that you're better able to handle these difficulties as time goes on.
And so we're going to use 46 here in just a minute as kind of a template for
working through a stressful time in your mind. And you'll see the context is
there's terror, there's fear, there's bad weather, there's war.
And God steps in and takes charge and tells us what our posture needs to be
when we're dealing with something hard.
And this is good therapy for Theology Thursday.
So here's Carl Miner, and we're going to play this music, and then we're going
to kind of work through that, and then we'll be done for today on spiritual
brain surgery. But let's get after it for a minute.
Music.
And here's Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength, very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains
be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
There's a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved.
God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage.
The kingdoms totter. He utters his voice. The earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress. Come, behold the works of the Lord now,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.
He burns the chariots with fire. Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Music.
Now, just walk back through Psalm 46 and realize he starts with truth.
He's remembering. This is how you build hope. You remember and then you move.
So here's what he's doing. He's remembering.
God is our refuge and our strength. He's present in our trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear.
And then he tells us what you could be afraid of. The earth is trembling.
The earth gives way. The mountains are moved into the sea. The world's falling apart here.
The waters are roaring and foaming. And the mountains are trembling.
But he's already reminded himself that God is our present help and trouble.
He's our refuge and our strength, and so we don't have to be afraid,
even though the world is crumbling.
Then he reminds himself that in the middle of all of this, there's a river that
leads to the city of God, and God is there, and he's taking care of it,
and it's not going to move us, not going to hurt us, because God's got us in
his hand, and he'll help us.
Even when nations rage and kingdoms totter, He utters His voice,
and He's there. You're not alone.
No matter what's happening in your life, you're not alone.
There's a river that leads to the city of God. God is on the throne.
He's your ever-present help. He's right there in the midst of whatever it is
that you're going through, friend.
And so this is a hope-building chapter to get out of the fear and anxiety state
of, oh my goodness, the world's falling apart.
There's war and there's famine and there's destruction and there's weather and
there's horrible things and all this stuff is happening.
Wait, stand by, God says, down in verse 10.
And understand, this is not some, oh, hey, calm down, baby. I got you. It's okay, buddy.
Come here, let me put my arm around you. This is the way I've always read this
until I read Susie Larson's book, Fully Alive, that changed my mind,
broke my brain about this verse.
God's not whispering here because the world world is falling apart.
Everything's blowing up. It's a crazy time. There's fire and hail and destruction
and war and earthquake and all this stuff. So God's not whispering here.
God is shouting, be still and know that I am God.
He's saying, hey, get my, look in my eyes. Hey, hey, buddy. Hey,
sweetheart, look at me. Listen to me. Calm down.
I'm God. Don't worry about this this earthquake over here. I'm God.
I'm going to take care of you, okay?
I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth,
not the earthquake, not the war.
I'll break that bow. You guys, somebody's got a bow. They're going to shoot
an arrow at you. I'll snap it in half.
Somebody's going to launch a missile at you. I'll crush that.
It's not going to hit you. I'm going to take care of it. Calm down.
The Lord of hosts, he reminds himself, he remembers, he moves towards the promise.
He finishes the chapter with the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.
So reminding yourself of truth is how you get your brain under control when
it feels like it's on fire.
Abiding in him, going back to the place where you have peace and safety and
comfort and strength and nurturing. Yes, there might be some pruning.
You might need to have some things cut away, maybe, but get you some music and
spend some time and relax and calm and listen and wait and see if he doesn't
show you a word like abide that you need to go study.
See if He doesn't show something in your path that says, hey,
remember that passage in Deuteronomy, you're going to hear a voice that says
to the left or to the right, that this is the way, walk in this way.
Don't go that way, go this way. You'll start to feel that little nudge.
If you give God this little bit of time in the morning, I promise you, you'll start to hear.
You'll start to know that you're not alone. You're abiding, and you're growing,
and you have potential, and you have legacy, and your best days are not behind
you, but your best days are ahead of you.
Because you decided, my friend, to start today.
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 audiobooks hey the theme music for the show is get up by my friend tommy
walker available for free at tommy walker 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,
wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer, 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.