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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.
Welcome to the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast. I'm your host, Dr.
Lee Warren, a neurosurgeon and an author, and we're here to take a hard look
at what we believe, why we believe it, and how neuroscience and faith can smash
together to help us live it out, defend it, and pursue our quest to become healthier,
feel better, and be happier the way our Creator designed us to.
So today, we're going to change our minds and change our lives with some spiritual
brain surgery. Let's get after it.
Music.
Good morning, my friend. I'm Dr. Lee Warren. I'm so grateful to be with you today.
We're going to start doing this Sunday check-in once in a while where we have
just a few minutes to sort of reassess our week, reassess where our minds are,
make sure we have some tools in place to prepare for not only the Lord's day, but for the week ahead.
And today I want to just talk for a moment about this idea that I've seen in
Scripture that keeps showing up.
And I think if you look at the whole of Scripture from start to finish,
I think we got it wrong when we think, if we look at it from one perspective,
one point of view, as we've been talking about on the Dr.
Lee Warren podcast all week, perspective and perception are different.
And if you look at faith or you look at scripture, you look at God and you see
a story about control, then I think you've missed the central exchange in scripture.
I think the general public thinks that God wants to control us,
to tell us what to do, to sort of be in charge of us.
And that's not what God wants, my friend.
God wants a relationship with you. God wants you not to be under his control,
but to be influenced by him for healing, for trust, for the preparation for
this hard journey ahead,
because he's doing the work to redeem and restore.
And those promises of Psalm 103, he forgives all our sins and heals all our
diseases and redeems us from the pit and crowns us with love and compassion
and satisfies our desires.
Those things will all come true. True, they're already underway.
And he doesn't want to control you. He doesn't want to tell you what to do. He wants to heal you.
And so I want to start looking for these places where there's central exchange,
where it's, hey, I don't want to tell you what to do.
I don't want to come in and take charge and boss you around.
I want you to transform your mind because this way of thinking and this perspective
is healthier than that one for you.
I designed you for this way to think and this way to live. And when you're not
living that way, you keep asking yourself, why isn't anything working?
Why is everything so hard? Why doesn't it seem to work out for me?
And God says, hey, I don't want to tie your hands and tell you exactly what you have to do.
I want to change your mind and give you a way to operate your mind,
to control your brain, to improve your life and the life of those around you
and those who follow you in your line.
That's what he wants. Because if you can live that way, all of a sudden you
start finding that promise of taste and see that the Lord is good and it comes true.
And then people around you start saying, hey, wait a minute,
why do you seem to be able to handle things?
Why do you have a different curve, a different plot for your life than I have
for mine? We go through the same things, but you seem to manage it more effectively.
Things seem to sort of roll off of you in a different way than they do me.
That's because we're changing our minds. Let me just give you this one idea.
Jesus wants all of you. He doesn't just want your life. He doesn't want your service.
He doesn't want your dollars. He doesn't want your time.
He does want those things, but he wants your mind because he's interested in
helping you heal and be whole.
He's always saying things like, cast your burdens. Put my yoke upon you because
it's lighter and and easier than the one that you're carrying.
Think on these things. Switch your mind from this to that. Cast your cares on
me. Bear one another's burdens.
That's what the whole idea of scripture is. The central exchange is not about
control. It's about healing.
Here's three scriptures, Psalm 19, 14. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation
of my heart be pleasing to you, O God.
Psalm 139, 23, and 24. Search me and know me.
Test my anxious thoughts.
Test my anxious thoughts. You're saying to God, hey, search my brain and help
me find the places where I'm allowing feelings to be facts, where I'm believing
that thoughts are always true.
Where I'm committing self-malpractice, where I'm making an operation out of
things, where I'm paying tomorrow taxes,
where I'm violating all these 10 commandments of self-brain surgery.
Search me and know me and reveal to me the things that I'm doing that are harming
my own ability to become healthier and feel better and be happier to help other
people see that that's possible too.
Search me and know me and test my anxious thoughts because I know that anxiety
and gratitude can't live in the same place because they're two different directions
of the same circuit in my brain.
In Psalm 34, 4, I prayed to the Lord and He answered me. He freed me from all my fears.
And notice this, this is really important. I heard this in Terri Lee Cobble's
devotional this morning.
Psalm 34, 4 doesn't say that God fixed everything that was making me afraid.
He got rid of everything I was afraid of.
He solved every problem and made everything stop being fearful for me.
No, that's not what it says. It says, I prayed to the Lord and he answered me
and he freed me from all my fears.
You see that? He doesn't take away everything that's scary.
He makes David not be afraid of it anymore.
He teaches him how to change his mind, teaches him how to say,
hey, I don't have to be afraid of something because my God is with me.
My rock is with me. He's not going to let me stumble.
And he's got a plan to help me through this. I don't have to be afraid of this anymore.
I'm so grateful that I have help in the midst of the storm. I talked to Pete Gregg on Friday.
I'm going to release that episode to you tomorrow on the Dr. Lee Warren podcast.
And Pete said, really, the answer to suffering is not to expect God to airlift
us out of it, but to expect him to parachute into it with us,
to come down into the fight.
He doesn't usually miraculously deliver us from everything we're afraid of by
making the things that are scary go away, does he?
That's the real answer to suffering is to know that somebody's coming alongside you in it.
When you're going through something scary, if you have somebody to reach out
and hold your hand, it helps, doesn't it? And that's what our God does for us.
That's the central exchange in Scripture. I don't want to control you,
and I'm not going to overwhelm you and take charge of everything and put my
hands on everything and do all the stuff and make everything happen the way
that I want it to happen in your life.
And I'm going to come in there and help you. I'm going to apply my healing to you.
I'm going to teach you how to think through the things that you're experiencing
in a healthier way and change your mind and change your life.
We're going to work on the words of our mouth, not just what we say and do,
but the way we think, the meditation of our heart.
We're going to ask God to search us out and help us to find those places where
we're not living in accordance with the Ten Commandments of Soul,
Brain, and Surtur because we're believing that thoughts are always true.
We're forgetting that thoughts become things. We're believing that feelings
are facts and all those things.
We're going to start asking God to search us and know us and find those places
where we need deliverance from the fear, even when we don't get deliverance
from the thing that's scary.
And so just for a moment here, I want you to work through this abide prayer,
the surgical one. We're not contemplating anymore.
We're going to operate and we're going to say, God, come in and open my hands.
I'm going to turn them down. i'm going to let you help me visualize the process
of letting go of things that i can't control.
And letting go of things that I've held onto so tightly because I believed that
they were the way, but it isn't working.
And so I need to let them go. And now I'm gonna turn my palms back up and I
want you to fill me with the tools and the help and the knowledge and the peace
that I need to get through this situation.
Whatever this trauma or tragedy or massive thing is, or whatever this sort of
disappointment is, this thing that isn't working, this thing I keep trying and
falling short, this life that doesn't feel like it's supposed to feel.
I've tasted it, and it doesn't taste very good, and now I need to taste something
different, and you're going to make me see that there's a better way.
And so we're going to assess our situation honestly, and we're going to say,
here's where I am, and here's where I've been, and here's where I believe I'm
supposed to be going, and we're going to make an objective assessment of the situation.
And then we are going to believe, this is the be and abide, assess,
we're going to believe Believe that he can do the right thing and he can help
us become the person who can navigate this.
He can empower us. He can come alongside us. He can come in.
He will parachute in to the situation.
And then we're going to stop contemplating and start operating.
We're going to pick up the scalpel and we're going to get after the self brain surgery that we need,
that he's going to give us the tools to change our minds and change our brains
and change our genetics and change our lives and change our families and break
generational curses and move
forward in this new empowered life and this embodied faith that we have.
We're going to make an incision and then we're going to D, we're going to deepen
it and press in and go all in on this new way of thinking and this new life.
And we're going to make new synapses and get out of those ruts of thinking and
behaving and pursuing the same ideas and the same solutions that haven't worked.
And we're going to change the synapses and we're going to make new new pathways
in our minds, in our brains, and we're going to deepen that exposure.
And he's going to continue to deliver us from the things that make us so afraid.
And we are going to expect a good outcome. It doesn't help us to be in the operating
room if we don't believe that we can make it better, that the situation has
a chance, that there's no hope.
If we don't believe that the patient has a chance, why would we even go to surgery?
We have to expect a good outcome if we apply good training and good science
and solid faith and deep trust to the situation and practice the way he teaches
us to practice because the great physician is a great teacher.
And He's right there alongside us, then we can expect to have the outcome that He wants us to have.
When we align ourselves with Him, when we delight ourselves in the Lord,
He'll give us the desires of our heart.
He forgives our sins and heals our diseases and redeems us from the pit and
crowns us with love and compassion and satisfies our desires with good things
so that our life, our youth is restored.
Like the eagle, that's Psalm 103.
And we're gonna expect Him to keep His promises. We're gonna put our own name
in them. I have a plan for you, Lola. I have a plan for you, Brian.
I have a plan for you, Helen. I have a plan for you, Susie.
I plan to prosper you and not to harm you. You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.
Joe, you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.
Jonna, you can because he's with you.
You can expect a good outcome. Start personalizing those promises.
In this world, you will have trouble, Charles, but take heart.
I have overcome the world. The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy,
Debbie, but I have come that you might have an abundant life.
You, you, Lisa, you, Dennis, you, my friend, can have an abundant life in spite of the trouble.
He might not airlift you out of it, but he will deliver you from all the fear
and he'll help you change your mind and he'll help you change your life.
And that's what the the abide process is. And remember, when you're doing that
type of meditative prayer, you are structurally improving the parts of your
brain that give you resilience and strength and hope.
And you're reducing the parts of your brain that make you feel anxious and jittery
and lose willpower and be unable to press in and persevere.
And you're doing self-brain surgery.
You can change your mind and you can change your life. And the good news is you can start today.
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 audiobooks hey
the theme music for the show is get up by my
friend tommy walker available for free at tommy walker
ministries.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 tommy walker ministries.org if
you need prayer go to the prayer wall at w1md.com slash prayer w lee warren
md.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 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.