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Neurosurgeon and award-winning author Dr. W. Lee Warren, MD delivers daily prescriptions from neuroscience, faith, and common sense on how to lead a healthier, better, happier life. You can’t change your life until you change your mind, and Dr. Warren will teach you the art of self brain surgery to get it done. His new book, Hope Is the First Dose, is available everywhere books are sold.
Good morning, my friend. Hope you're doing well. We're in the third week of All In August.
If you're with us or if you're just getting started, you get permission to start today, going all in.
You've been tired of carrying the same things around your whole life or struggling
with the same things or having trouble breaking through in some area or failing
over and over in a particular thing or not getting started with a particular thing.
It's time to just go all in. Let God keep his promises that he will help you and be with you.
And if you're ready, or if you're already with us, I'd love to hear from you.
Speakpipe.com slash Dr. Lee Warren is the voicemail. Speakpipe.com slash Dr.
Lee Warren. You can leave a voicemail, use it on the podcast if it's appropriate.
You can send an email, Lee at DrLeeWarren.com. You can make a comment on the
post if you're using Substack or to listen.
Hey, listen, today I want to talk just for a second. I'm going to bring you
back a self-brain surgery tip.
Number four, actually. It's about breaking chains. It's about creating synapses
in your brain that are positive. It's about how to rewire your brain to look
away from the automatic negative bias.
And I think it's useful as we're wrapping up the last 10 days here of all in
August to just remember the neuroscience of what happens in the baseline negativity
state that you have and how you have to work hard to overcome that.
But before we get to that, I want to give you a scripture, Isaiah 55,
11. Here's what it says. God says this.
So it is, my word, it goes out from my mouth, will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
God says this, my word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. Isaiah 55, 11.
God's words, he says, don't go out empty.
They have power and they accomplish their purpose. God's word.
So if you got God's word in you, the promises he makes in scripture,
you can count on the fact that those promises are true and they're meant for
you and they are never fake.
They're never false. They're never lie. They're always true.
Why am I telling you that this morning?
Your brain is wired for negativity five times more than positivity,
which means you have some automatic negative thoughts that happen.
And one of the things that happens in your life, something challenging occurs
or somebody offends you or your husband doesn't come through again or your husband
hurts your feelings or your wife doesn't do this or doesn't do that you needed
her to and you have this automatic negative thought,
he's never going to come through for me. She never asked.
God doesn't see me. Nobody believes in me. Nobody respects me.
The money's going to run out. I'm not going to make it. My wife isn't going
to take care of me if I get sick and can't provide.
All these things that happen that people run with these negative thoughts. I'm scared.
I'm not going to succeed. I'm not going to be okay. It's never going to work
out. It's too hard. It's too late. It's too far, right?
All those negative things are easy and they're automated. We've talked about it a million times.
The way you overcome them is to state true things that are always true and that
are positive that will help you to be able to clear that cloud of negative neurotransmitters
and find hope in a path forward.
The fact is, no matter what situation you're in, you can make it better by starting
with you and changing your attitude and changing your mind about it and finding
a way to see the little bits of light that are still out there because there always are.
There's always some path forward, no matter what you're dealing with. it.
And the way you get there is to start, at least in my way of thinking,
you start with some word.
God, no, wait a minute. God didn't abandon me. He said he'll always be with me.
Eyes of the Lord reigns throughout the earth to seek hearts that are completely
his. He wants you all in, friend.
The Lord will rise to show you compassion. He longs to be gracious to you.
He keeps all your tears in a bottle. He wrote all the days of your life in his
book before one of them came to pass.
He's got good plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you.
He will give you strength. You can do all things through him who gives you strength.
See, I'm just rattling off.
This is not scripted. I'm rattling off God's promises and God's character and
God's nature that he has promised me from the word, from time spent in the word.
I've got all that ammo in my heart that I can use to throw at the attacks of negativity.
And this self-brain surgery tip number four is about breaking those chains,
automated negative synaptic chains, and making some better ones.
The thing is, no matter how dismal the situation, how bad the situation is,
how bad the diagnosis is, it doesn't have to wreck your peace of mind,
your hope, your abundance, and the story that you're telling for your life.
It doesn't have to, because God's word won't go out empty. If he says he cares about you, he does.
If he says he's got a plan for you, he does. If he says he can redeem you, he can.
If he says he can heal you, he will.
You see, all things through him who gives you strength.
And so I just want to give you that. Isaiah 55, 11, my word will not go out empty.
It will accomplish my purpose. It will do what I want it to.
It will come back to me fulfilled.
So when you're in that situation where you typically would run with the negative
and go down the rabbit hole of all the different reasons why you're hosed,
just remember God's got some word for you.
I call it prehab, like before you hit that situation, since it's inevitable
that you will hit the situation.
Situation, use the word as a prehab. Put some word in there so you can call
on it when you need it. That's the first step in the treatment plan.
We're going to get to the rest of it later.
I'm going to give you that today, Isaiah 5511. Today, I want you to remember Isaiah 5511, okay?
Say it with me. Isaiah 5511.
It is my word. It goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Friend, friend, his word won't go out empty.
You got to know it and you got to have it inside you before you can send it.
And no matter how difficult the situation, send it anyway.
There's a little message from Jamil Gillian, who's a pastor at Church of the
Highlands. He preached a great little 15-minute message on send it anyway.
Even if it seems impossible for the word to be true in that moment, send it anyway.
Send it anyway. But that's the message for today. Break those chains. Make new synapses.
Rewire your brain to see the possibility instead of the problem.
Send it anyway send God's Word on it anyway no matter
what listen this is self brain surgery tip number four
okay and it's a quick thing I've got just one idea from neuroscience here it
is so brain surgery tip number four the more you think about something the more
easily it returns to your mind in the future synapses that fire together a wire
together this is one negative thinking is so harmful and.
It automates negativity in your brain. Change it to something positive. Get this again.
The more you think about something, the more easily it returns to your mind in the future.
Synapses that fire together are wired together. That's why negative thinking
is so harmful because it automates negativity in your brain.
Change it to something positive. Listen to me.
Synapses are the connections between
neurons in your brain because there's trillions of them in your brain.
More than stars in the universe, maybe. There's so many of these connections
in your brain And what happens is the more you do something,
the more synapses you create that make that thing easier to do.
That's actually what muscle memory is. It's not muscle memory.
It's brain memory. You're forming synaptic patterns in your brain that make
a particular task easier and more automatic the more you do it, right?
That's why you can use a keypad the first hundred times you do it.
You have to look at the numbers.
And after that, you find yourself pushing in numbers like crazy without looking
at them because you've made synapses in your brain, okay? But it also works on the back end.
Negative synapses are much more easily formed because they're associated with painful responses.
And so your brain doesn't want you going through all that pain,
so it makes synapses to create automated ways to avoid that.
But it also proves true in how you think. If you have a negative thought pattern
that becomes repetitive, then it becomes more easy for your brain to fire that automatically.
And so I want to share that with you today to say, okay, clean up the synaptic
connections in your brain by forcing yourself to think positively and more hopefully
about your life, because that will create automatic thinking that's easier.
And you'll spend that energy that you have left over to do better things with
those better thoughts. Okay. Now, let me give you a spiritual thought.
There's two scriptures. There's lots of different places where this comes up,
but I want to share with you.
Exodus 34, 7, okay? Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity
and transgression of soul, but who will by no means clear the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children
to the third and the fourth generation.
Let me repeat that in a different way.
The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity
and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth
generation. That's said that way in Numbers 14, 18.
There's two places where God reveals his own character.
He's slow to anger. He abounds in love. He forgives iniquity and transgression,
but he does not forget guilt.
There has to be justice. Now, thank God we have Jesus, right?
But what he's saying here is the iniquity of the fathers is visited on the third
and fourth generation of the children.
And that sounds terrible. At first, on the first read of that,
it sounds like he's saying he's going to punish kids for their parents' sin.
That's not what he's saying. And I'll tell you why you can know that our God is not saying that.
Because Ezekiel 18, 20, God says, clears that up a little bit.
The soul who sins will die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the
father, meaning he's not punished for the sin of the father,
nor will the father suffer for the iniquity of the son.
The righteousness of the righteous will be on himself and the wickedness of
the wicked will be on himself.
So clear that up. God is not saying that if you commit a sin,
he will punish your child for you committing that sin.
He's not saying that your children and your children's children and their children's
children are going to pay for the sin that you commit.
But understand clearly what he is saying here.
The iniquity, the things that are true of you negatively in your character will
persist in your family's line for multiple generations.
Why? Here's why. life. If you grow up in an abusive environment,
if you grow up in an environment where your father is particularly negative
or nitpicking or physically abusive or verbally abusive, or if you grow up in
a situation where your mother is consistently passive aggressive,
you're going to learn behavior and thought patterns that will persist into your own life.
And they will affect the way that you see the world and that you raise your own children.
And then your children will be raised with those persistent thought patterns
and behavior patterns and attitude patterns and their whole mindset of how your
child is raised in the environment and the nurturing and the nature of how they come up.
And for several generations, that will persist. Now, what's going to happen,
though? Let's say your dad was really hard on you, okay?
Physically, verbally, never could satisfy him. Then you're bent towards that
negative approach towards your child, or maybe you overreact and you go the
other way, and you underparent, and that creates all kinds of issues.
But you marry somebody that had a different background, right?
They're going to influence you one way or the other to help you, hopefully,
if you marry well, like Lisa for me has, is Lisa takes the things that are broken
in me and she helps influence me back towards a more whole attitude,
a more whole behavior pattern.
She's helped me break some synapses and create better ones. And so my children
have some of the issues that I have, but they're tempered by my relationship
with the Lord and my relationship with Lisa to some degree, right?
And then so they're going to grow up with their own set of issues,
but also be tempered by the people that God puts in their lives,
right? At some point in almost every family, you should see it.
Somebody decides to quit being poor. Somebody says, I'm not going to live in
this poverty and spend my money and invest it properly.
Somebody says, I'm not going to have that alcohol in my house.
That's not going to happen. We're going to draw the line right here.
Grandfather and my dad were alcoholics. It's not going to happen in my family.
Somebody down the line, God somehow lifts that generational curse off the family
at some point through the influence of good people, through the teaching of
the church, through the relationship with Jesus.
Through wisdom or marrying well or something, that iniquity peters out eventually in generations.
God says it's not going to persist forever because synapses that fire together wire together.
And somebody in somebody's family down the road always manages through the grace
of God to break that chain at some point in the future.
Let me give you another piece of scripture that is beautiful.
So you remember, God's iniquity. God visits iniquity, he says,
on three or four generations.
But look at the flip side. Deuteronomy 7 and 9, know therefore that the Lord
your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love to those
who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.
Now he's being metaphorical here. He's basically saying, if you raise your kids,
if you hold on to the Lord, if you press into me and you let me love you and
you keep covenant with me, I will never stop being faithful to you.
And that will persist through your family line for a thousand generations forever.
Why is he saying that? Because the power of positivity,
the power of doing things well, the power of setting a good legacy and telling
a good story with your life and loving the Lord with all your heart,
that will raise your children in a way that they will try to do the same thing in their family.
And it doesn't always work out that way. All of us have exceptions, right?
But for the most part, if you raise up a child in the way that they should go,
they won't go away from it when they're older.
And so what he's saying here is make good synapses in your life.
Break the negative ones, set good ones.
If you're one of those people that was raised in a way that you've got all kinds
of baggage and issues, and you're seeing now you've got your own kids and they're
coming up and you're starting to see how those things are playing out,
you need to break that chain.
You need to be the one that says,
this generational thing is going to stop with me. The buck stops here.
I am going to set a different way for my family's future. My family's ship is
not going to sail in the direction that the last three or four generations have.
It's going to sail in a different direction because God is going to help me
break those synapses, make better ones, and break those chains.
That's the self-praying surgery tip for you for today.
Iniquity comes for three or four generations and somebody has to break the chain.
And Jesus will give you the power to do there's power in the name of Jesus to break every chain.
I just wanted to share that idea with you. Positive synapses will persist forever
and they will make everything better in your brain and in the lives of everyone around you.
And you'll tell a better story with your life for a thousand generations.
If you learn how to break those chains of negative synapses,
my friend, this is an important neuroscience tip.
It's an important spirituality tip. It's self-brain surgery.
It's grab onto this idea that the power of breaking chains and making better
synapses will make a difference in your family line forever and in the lines
of everybody you know or everybody your life contacts.
Make better synapses, friend, and start today. Don't forget wle1md.com slash
prayer for the prayer wall.
Wle1md.com slash voicemail. Leave us a voicemail.
Wle1md.com slash newsletter to connect to the newsletter far and wide.
Every Sunday, I give you my best prescriptions for this kind of stuff,
break those synapses, friend, break those chains, let the Lord step in and change
the way the ship of your family is going and start today.