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Do your thoughts feel out of control?
For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Lysa TerKeurst: Well, Pastor Craig is such a joy and an honor to get to speak to you today about something that I personally need and a book that I want to make required reading for my entire family. It's an incredible message. I feel like if there was only one book this year that I could just, I don't know, bribe my family or tell my family that I'll give them a big bonus of some sort if they read, this is the book. So, we're talking about Craig Groeschel’s new book, Winning The War In Your Mind with the subtitle Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life. Pastor Craig Groeschel, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
Craig Groeschel: Hey, Lysa, thank you for having me. I'm always honored to spend any time with you. And that's exactly what I do with my kids is I bribe them to read certain books, like for real. If there's mandatory reading, which they get $100, but they have to bring a report and discuss every chapter. So bribing is not a bad idea at times.
Lysa TerKeurst: Exactly. You know what I call that? I call it effective parenting. So that's awesome. Okay, Craig, let's jump right into this message because I'll be honest, not only was I looking forward to the interview today because you're a dear friend in ministry and I've been excited to talk with you about this, but because I personally need this message right now. And I know you wrote this message because you personally learned these lessons out of not just a pastor who saw a good topic to talk on or write on, but this was born out of your own place of desperation as well. You've had a pretty persistent, you've been honest about this, negative belief that you encountered early in your life, and you've been trying to overcome. So, can you share a little bit about that?
Craig Groeschel: Yeah, the book really is born out of a personal struggle that I've had for years, and it's embarrassing to be a pastor of a church and, and have, you know, somewhat of a decent impact, and yet still struggle with such basic battles in my mind. But early on in life Lysa, I just, I had this, these negative voices over and over and over shouting at me that you're not, you're not enough, you'll never be good enough, you'll never measure up. Basically, you're, you're incomplete. And in some ways, those voices can propel you to do a lot sometimes and sometimes your dysfunction actually makes you more successful in different ways, but the outcome and the personal price that I was paying for years and years and years, just became too much to bear, and so I started, I had another round of counseling and sometimes people you know, will make fun me or, or question, why would a pastor need counseling and I always kind of just gently push back and say, well, if a pro athlete needs a coach, I think that all of us need help and wise counsel along the way. And so, I had just some counseling in identifying some of the wrong thought patterns in my mind that were often based on shame or based on guilt, and trying to identify those and really pinpoint what they are and then attack them with truth so that I would stop living by the wrong cognitive biases and recreate a line of thinking in my, in my mind that is consistent with who God says I am, instead of what my insecurities are, someone else or some external failure says that I am. And so that's a that's a little a brief story of the journey that I've been on working to renew my mind.
Lysa TerKeurst: I was fascinated in the book by what I feel like was probably a profound turning point in your life, and it's when those thoughts of I'm not good enough, we're haunting you. And so, you set out to work so hard, I think you were saying seven days a week just nonstop to prove, either to other people or to yourself, that you were good enough to do this. And then you said you got a call one day from your daughter, Katie, who's grown now, but I'm assuming at the time, she was a little girl, and she said something to the effect of, daddy, why do you, why do you live at the office, and you just work at home? And I was so struck by that. And I imagine that was probably a big turning point for you of at least some awareness of, I've got to do something about this incessant drive to overcome these feelings of I'm not good enough.
Craig Groeschel: Sure, it was, and so in my, in my mid-20s, Lysa, the denomination I was a part of made me go to counseling for being a workaholic. And I laughed it off. I thought it was stupid at the time, I thought, I don't need this. They don't love Jesus like I do. They don't work like I do. They don't drive like I do. And so, I shook it off. It was several years after that, Katie was born around that season, and I were, we worked all the time and we thought it was pleasing to God, we thought we were doing the right thing. And you know, Amy was kind of there with me, she just supported me that you know, you're going to serve Jesus, you're going to depend, we've worked literally nonstop, like, no days off, no breaks, no vacation, it was really dysfunctional. We didn't know it. And I told Katie, she was a little girl, I'll be home in a little bit. And she said, daddy, this isn't your home, you live at the office. And when she said it, it was Lysa, it was like my whole world just crumbled in front of me and maybe the scales kind of fell off my eyes, and I realized what I'm doing is not healthy, it's really not God honoring. And then that was the first round of me actually saying, I do need to get help.
And it wasn't until years later that I recognized it was the unhealthy, dysfunctional, toxic voices in my brain that were driving me to prove something to I'm not even sure who, to myself, to you, to the crowd to my parents to anybody trying to find some external validation to satisfy these internal lies. And there was, there was no accomplishment, no achievement, no amount of work that could satisfy or uncross the crossed wires in my brain that continued just to drive me into kind of a dark hole of work. And I'm really happy to say that by identifying what those lies really are, and attacking them with truth, it’s interesting, you would think like you could, okay, that's not true and this is true, so I'm fine. Let's go. It's just not that easy. When you believe a lie for years and years, you create deep and strong neural pathways in your brain. And those become those become your default thoughts, they're easy to think again. And so, science would call it rewiring your brain, God would call it renewing your mind. And so, I went on just a real consistent, faithful spiritual journey to do just that, to literally uncross the wires and renew my mind with the truth of who God says I am.
Lysa TerKeurst: And I'm so glad you're touching on the fact that this isn't just a spiritual journey. It's also a physical journey and emotional journey, and it all works together. I think, for a long time, when I would hear statements in my mind, I just assumed that this is a completely spiritual journey. But there are some other things happening here. I love what you wrote on page 28. It says “my thought life can be crazy. My mind can run out of control, I despair, I obsess, I can be confused. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. It's like, I'm in a confrontation with myself, and I'm losing.” And I love what you wrote there because I can so relate to it. I don't think I struggle as much with the thoughts of I'm not good enough, although I have certainly felt that before. I think my thoughts that I have to battle constantly, are more like, why would God allow so many hard things? And when are the hard things ever going to stop? And is this as good as life is ever going to get? And I can sink into moments of despair so quickly, and I've been like you, a speaker and a writer and, and knee deep in God's Word. And then I feel like, what is my problem? Why am I sinking into these thoughts of despair? And I don't want to, and I love how in your book, you don't just throw the Bible verse, take every thought captive, you really give us some practical handles of what to do that help us recognize those thoughts, and then redirect them. And I think you've got some really good handles on exactly what we're supposed to do. One of those is to reframe. And so, do you want to take us through some of the practical elements that you unpack in the book of exactly what we're supposed to do?
Craig Groeschel: Sure. Well, if we were working together, as I've had, you know, great, and wise counselors work with me, once you start to identify wherever your thought patterns are wrong or toxic or thinking unhealthy, kind of like you have, what, what we'd often try to do is try to find the root reason, where’d that come from? And what part of you thinks like, maybe you brought this on, it's your fault, or you could have done something different and, and so we try to identify, you know, the why behind the what that you feel. And if we can do that a lot of times, you can, you can really give it a name and saying, you know, this is something that happened to me and here's how I wrongly perceived it. And then what we're going to do is try to reframe what happened in our past, what might have created a real negative cognitive bias or just a real negative filter, what we want to do is say, well, how could God have used that to shape me into who I am today. And so, I've kind of become a master at retelling the tragic, the hardships, the disappointments in a light, that I'm not interpreting God through a disappointment, I'm interpreting a disappointment through a lens of the goodness of God, if that makes sense.
And so, what we might do with what you're struggling with, is say, how has God used what you're going through to impact hundreds of thousands, millions of people? How have you become closer to Jesus through the years, the suffering that you've been through? And then and then work to reframe it. And what I did is a real visual illustration for the church, which is, I wish I could show here but there's a really beautiful and powerful photo of a sky, and part of the sky is cloudy, and dark and scary like there's a storm coming and part of it's got this gorgeous sun beaming through. And if you, if you put a frame around the dark part, yeah, it looks like your world's about to come to an end with a storm, if you could move a photo frame, a picture frame, to the sunshine part in the same photo but you see something that looks beautiful and hopeful. And so, what I'm working to do and try to work with our readers to do is you can't change what happens to you, but you can change how you frame it. You can, you can look at what's bad what you've lost, or you can look at what you haven't lost and look at, look for the goodness of God in it. And the beauty about God is even all the pain that you know, you've been so courageous to share in your own journey, the goodness of God, He's with you. He's real. And if we focus on just what you've lost, we might want to give up and go home. If on the other hand, we look at how God has comforted you, sustained you, surrounded you with great people, used your pain to impact others, brought you closer to Him. We might say He has been good, He has been faithful, even though we wouldn't have chosen the path. He has been with us on every step of the path.
Lysa TerKeurst: I'd love that you tell an interesting story in the book that I found. So, such a good example of this reframing because I remember when your book came out, Hopefully Dark, and you and I had several conversations because the book sold so quickly and then there were some problems with printing, and there weren't enough copies that had been printed. And so, it was a really crazy hard time that people were wanting the book. You had done such a great job telling people about the book now being available and then all of a sudden it had sold out and there were no books. And it was frustrating because you knew people wanted this book needed this book, there would be help in this book and it was a glitch in production that was preventing the message from going out. But you tell the story of, I want to make sure I get their name right. Is it Rance? And Heather? And when I read that, that helped me see what to do to reframe, and not get stuck in just the cloudy part of the dark skies of my situation. So, do you mind sharing that story?
Craig Groeschel: No, such a special story. Now, as an author, you know, Lysa, you pour your heart into every word on, in every paragraph on every page, praying and begging God to use it to impact lives. And so, when a book comes out, and it does land in people's hearts, it's, it's every, every prayer answered around that book. And so, when we ran out of books super quickly, and we're not talking about like two or three days, it was, I think it was, might have been eight weeks, nine weeks, that there were no books available to go out. And there was a printing problem. And so, I was just, I thought, you know how this happened. I was so crushed. Well, this couple Ranse and Heather were a part of our church, and I knew a little bit about their story. Heather had some real health issues and had what we thought was a miracle and she ended up ordering a copy of the book for her husband, but it never came. And he didn't know that. And then she ended up tragically dying in a real short period of time. And it was just, we're all so disappointed. And weeks and weeks and weeks, you know, after the book was out of stock, she had passed away.
And shortly after, when he just didn't know which way to turn, lost his young wife, now is a dad, but you know, without us, without his wife, and his kids don't have a mom. And right, I think it was right after the funeral, just right, shortly after the death, the book did end up delivering to his house as a gift from her. That came at the exact right time, he had no idea on, so I just sat back and thought it was worth it for him after he lost, to be out of books for that amount of time, then so be it. God, you had a purpose that was beyond anything I've ever imagined. And I embrace that. And the beautiful thing is, in our mind is, is our life is generally moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. And we're going to find what we're looking for Lysa, if we, every single day, even on a decent day, if we want to find things to be upset about, to complain about, to be negative about, to have a bad attitude, we can find it anywhere all the time. If on the other hand, we wake up and ask God to give us is to see Him working, to see His goodness, to believe the best about people, then, and we can and especially in the hardships of life, and I don't want to ever undermine anything anyone's going through. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. There is real pain. There's tragedy. Sometimes there's not an answer for anything in the moment but no matter what, if we look for the goodness of God, His comfort, His presence, we can find it. And if we train our minds, instead of going on the normal negative sinful pathways of criticism or complaint, but instead, train them to go on a pathway of gratitude, and hope and faith, it's amazing how much God can renew our minds and how different our perspectives can eventually become.
Lysa TerKeurst: Yeah, I loved that next part in the book where not only are we learning to reframe what has happened to us, but you talk about pre-framing your future. And you have that quote you mentioned just a minute ago, you will always find what you're looking for. Tell me a little bit about pre-framing your future.
Craig Groeschel: I love the idea of pre-framing. So reframing is kind of looking back and trying to, what a good counselor will do is, there's a technical term for it, but they'll, you go, and you've redefined the meaning of something. What I want to do is I want to help not just say you redefine it, but let's let Jesus help you redefine it. Where is he working in it? That's reframing. Pre-framing is before you go into a situation deciding how you're going to find meaning in it or what kind of attitude you're going to have. And I'm married to the master of pre-framing, Amy. She can go into any, in a situation, this could be hard, could be challenging, and decide ahead of time, we're going to have a good attitude, we're going to be blessed, we're going to see the best in people, we're going to be positive. And she just seems to do that. I can be, I could have a negative bias toward pre- framing, this is going to be hard, I'm not going to like it, these people make me crazy, you know, I don't want to be here. And it's amazing how that mindset tends to create a reality.
And so, what I want to do is I want to pre-frame seeing good in a situation. And it's not just, not just like life, like pre-frame a good date or a good whatever. I say in business and leadership tonight, I've got to talk to our whole staff and so I've already pre-framed in my mind the belief that God is with me, He's going to use it, even though I'm not as prepared as I'd like to be, I can visualize Him showing up, people being excited about the mission, and cheering that we get to do something that lasts eternally. And so, on my mind, I'm pre-framing the goodness of God. And I believe because I'm visualizing, and this not just creating in my mind, but by faith believing He's going to be there and be faithful, that we're going to have a great night's praise pre-frames toward the good and toward faith rather than pre-framed toward negativity or anything that would be toxic.
Lysa TerKeurst: I love that. And honestly, I feel like that section of the book Winning The War In Your Mind, it is worth the price of the entire book. And I just, I can't recommend it enough. I have a situation where I didn't know what to call it and, and it's reminded me of, I can call it now pre-framing and I think it's so good. But I, I have social anxiety when I walk into a gathering, not a gathering with people that I know I have instant depth with, but a gathering where I know there's going to be a lot of shallow conversations because everybody's on the surface. And so, I'm talking to me by the way, is it now, it is oh, man, I really, I struggle with it a lot. And so, I always go about where the bathroom is because the bathroom stall is a safe place when you have social anxiety. And the second thing I stalk is, where's the guy who restocks the sodas and the waters? Like if there's a table where they put out all the refreshments, whoever's restocking that, like they're a good person to talk to because they're always there, and they're always busy. And they have, they're not talking to anybody. So, I stalk out where's that person that works here that I can talk to, because they'll talk to me? And where's the bathroom stall? If this all goes crazy, I can go hide in.
Craig Groeschel: Imagine how amazing it is if that person is actually in the bathroom, and you could talk to him from the bathroom stall?
Lysa TerKeurst: Yeah. Well, no, no, that would be awkward and weird. But maybe for guys that's okay. For girls, that's weird. Okay, but here's the thing, I went to a gathering, and I walked in the room, and I was probably five minutes late from getting there with all the other people and everybody already had found someone to talk to. And so, I just knew this is going to be awful. And what I brought into that situation was a preconceived notion that no one really wants to talk to me, I don't really belong here, maybe a little bit of I'm not good enough. And I'm not really in the mood to have all these shallow conversations, because I don't like that. And so, I brought all of that into the room. I stayed for about five minutes, couldn't find a conversation where I could really break into, so instead of just going to the bathroom stall, it was at a hotel, I went up to my room in the hotel, and I walked into my hotel room, I threw myself across the bed, and I thought, I hate that I have this. I feel like it's crippling. And the Lord really spoke to my heart and said, Lysa, you walked in that room down there and the reason why you were so miserable is because you were waiting for someone else to make you feel like you belonged. Why don't you try walking back into that room, recognizing that every heart in there feels an element of insecurity, feels an element of they're not good enough, feels an element of what am I doing here? Do I really belong? And instead of walking in the room and looking for people to give something to you, why don't you walk in that room and make it a point to just really walk up to people and bless them, act interested in them, ask questions about them, and it'll change how you feel about this entire evening.
Craig Groeschel: So good.
Lysa TerKeurst: And so, I don't know if that's really pre-framing as well as you've stated it, but it sure did help me and it was the mindset I carried into the room that determined my experience once I was there. Way more.
Craig Groeschel: So powerful. Yep. So, I would, I would say, let's work with that idea. And what we, what we do in the book Winning The War In Your Mind is we try to identify, you know, what is the Bible calls it, a stronghold? What is, what is the lie? What's holding us hostage? And so, for you in that category, we're all going to have different categories, right? One of them might be people don't care about me, or I don't, I don't, I don't, can't add value in the situation or whatever. And so, what we would do is we would determine what is, what is a spiritual truth that counteracts that lie. And so, I would kind of even ask you that, is there a Bible verse, is there an idea that comes to mind that counteracts that lie? And you kind of said some, but is there something that you could just even say, right now that that comes to mind?
Lysa TerKeurst: Yeah, one of the verses I repeat to myself over and over is Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” And it in ties with a prayer that I try to pray every morning, and my prayer is “God, I want to see you, God, I want to hear you, God, I want to know you. And God, I want to follow hard after you. Before my feet even hit the floor today, I say yes to you.” And so that prayer sounds awesome and it's great, until I forget that I prayed that prayer that morning. So, when I walked in that room that day, instead of actively looking for how I was to say yes to God, I walked in a little bit desperate for someone to notice me and help me feel like I belonged in that room. And so “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”, if I want to see evidence of God in the room, and I want to see evidence that I belong, then I need to walk in that room more focused on bringing, bringing whatever I want that room to be filled with, whether it's peace, acceptance, belonging, happiness, joy, I don't need to wait for someone else to give it to me, I need to bring that into the atmosphere that I'm walking into.
Craig Groeschel: So that's so good. I'm writing, I'm writing down. And here's what we, here's what we want to do, and you're the master of this. In fact, you came and taught our staff about just the power of, of creating emotions around words, which you do better than better than anybody. And so, in the book, I’m really working to give people the tools to have what I call “Scriptural declarations” that we're going to say again, and again and again. And your prayer is that. I would add to it, I just kind of wrote this down, is what you want to do as you want to identify that you really, you belong to Jesus, that your worth is in Him. And so, you could add your prayers, something like, because I belong, because I'm blessed to belong to Jesus, I'm blessed to share His love with others. I'm curious, I'm intrigued, I’d add some words like that, I, when I see someone, I want to know about them. They're the center of my attention, and I'll show them God's love. And if you say that again, because I belong to Jesus, because I'm blessed to belong to Jesus, I'm blessed to show His love. When I meet someone, I want, I'm intrigued, I'm curious, I want to know about them. And I want to add value to their life. And so, I would work really hard to come up with a statement that’s better than that but I'm going to say it over and over and over and over and over again. Some of the things that I say I've got a list of declarations that, that I say, every day. I belong to Jesus, I exist to serve and glorify Him, I love my wife, I lay on my life to serve Him, I'll raise my children to love God and serve Him with their whole hearts, I'll nurture equipped, train and empower them to do more for the kingdom they have ever thought possible. And I'm disciplined. Christ in me is stronger than the wrong desires in me. And so, I go through this whole list of declarations that are designed, they're emotional to me, but they're based on spiritual truth. And they're designed to renew my mind around the qualities that I know God wants me to have and embody.
And so, with you, I take the two things we talked about. The first thing is when, if you feel like why are these bad things happening to me, and I would come up with a declaration that you can say again, and again. Though this day may or may be difficult, I choose to see the goodness of God. He is always with me, He is always for me and He's always working in all things to bring about good because I love Him and I'm called according to His purpose, something like that. We just, you know, we'd make it really personal. And the second thing is, because I'm blessed to belong to Jesus, I'm blessed to show His love wherever I go. When I walk into a room, I care about people, I believe the best in others. And when I leave people will be closer to Jesus than when I walked in, something like that. And we say it over and over and over again. And what we're doing is we are like to write it. I like to think it, I want to confess it until I believe it. And this isn't positive thinking this is, this is scriptural thinking what I'm doing is, is we want to align our minds with truth and when we identify wherever our thinking is faulty, where it's toxic, where it's insecure, where the devil is telling us what we aren't what we can never do, why our life's never going to matter, we're going to identify, he's the father of lies, Jesus is the truth and the truth will set you free, what is the truth that will renew my mind and set it free. And then we're just going to, we're going to drive it into our brains until our default thoughts are no longer the lies that have held us hostage to cause us to retreat or fear or feel ashamed or dirty or incapable, or whatever. And we're going to, we're going to, we're going to renew our minds with truth so that our default thought is God's Word, and His promises, not the other way around.
And it's, it takes time. But what Amy would tell you, I am a different person today than five years ago. We didn’t get here by accident. It wasn't by doing nothing. It wasn't by staying with the same patterns that I had for 48 years, it was for five years, working to capture the lies, identify it and replace it with a truth that's not just conceptual on, out there but it's concrete, it's written, it's personal, is grounded in God's Word and it's said over and over and over again. If I've, if I've thought, you know, 10,000 times, I'm not going to measure up, I'm not good enough, I'm unworthy, that I might say 10,000 times, I'm capable to do all things because the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells within me, I said, over and over and over again, until we literally are. You change your thinking; it'll change your life.
Lysa TerKeurst: I love that. That's probably one of the best practical examples of what to do to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ that I've ever heard. I think it's super powerful. I love that in the book you've typed out your scripts of your declarations, and exactly what you say, because I found myself thinking, okay, now I can see an example of exactly how he phrases this, I can give myself permission with great intentionality to do it myself. Let's end on this. This is, this has been so helpful for me personally so thank you, Pastor Craig. I love that you quoted Dr. Caroline Leaf, and this is the quote, “And I said, I need to read this over and over and over, it has been found that 12 minutes of daily focused prayer over an eight-week period can change the brain to such an extent that it can be measured on a brain scan.” That is incredible to me. And I love that, yes. And I love that it doesn't say for an hour a day, it says 12 minutes of daily focused prayer over an eight-week period. And I love that it's that defined, because it makes me feel like I want to do this with more intentionality and see what happens in my life. I can do this for eight weeks. It's doable. That's right. And so just answered this question when she says 12 minutes of daily focused prayer. What is a focused prayer?
Craig Groeschel: Well, that's a good question. Because I feel like a lot of my prayers are more like and, you know, me, wandering mind prayers. And so, I'm just I'm obsessed with the brain, I love the science of the mind, because God created science. So, to me, everything we talked about in mind is God honoring. If God, if God created the brain with that, we can create neural pathways, that means that the more we think of thought, the easier it is to think of that thought then I want to, I want to think the right thoughts and I want to train my mind at the same way. Um, I mean, I'm, I'm an old athlete, and so on and to training my body even if 53 I want to honor God by training my body. Why in the world am I not training my mind, the thing that directs everything about how I treat people, how, where my faith lies, what kind of impact I'm going to have. If there's anything I want to train is my mind.
So, if I'm going to meditate, oh, my gosh, isn't meditation new age? Look at scripture, meditate, simply focusing your thoughts. If I if I'm going to, I can meditate on God's Word, what I'm doing is I'm training my mind to focus. So, it sounds crazy. But part of my discipline bias was for two years, I don't do it anymore, but I come in and for five minutes, I train my mind in like, literally nothing but focus. And what I did is I'm going to like not let it wander, and I was horrible at it. But what that's done is now I'm better at focusing in prayer.
So, I do a few things. One is when I am focused in prayer, I have a list and I know you pray for our family, and you are, you’re on the list quite often because our family loves you, and so I'll pray to the list that keeps me focused. The other thing I do Lysa to train my mind into our prayer is so powerful and I'd love for your podcast family to do this is just anytime you're praying, just breathe in. And whenever you breathe in, ask God to give you a name. And I promise you, what’ll happen is there'll be a name that drops into your brain. And then when you breathe out, just say the name, take them before God. And then breathe in by faith waiting for God to give you another name. And He'll give you another name. And then breathe out and just say their name. It just takes, just take their name before God, and then breathe in and wait for God to give you another name. And what will happen is, you'll find you could for 12 minutes, like literally for 12 minutes, God give you name after name, after name after name, but it does a few things is one is it's training your brain to be focused to, it's helping you have confidence that you're actually hearing from God. He's bringing people to mind. Three is you're praying for people. Four is when you see them, guess what you can say, hey, God brought you to mind today, and I lifted you up in prayer. And then five is you go out on the day realizing, I just spent some time in the presence of God, focusing on others. I'm loving the Lord God with all my heart, mind, soul and sprinkle loving others myself. And it just, it brings a positive momentum that starts by retraining your mind toward the things of God. And this is what I like about Dr. Caroline Leaf, so many things I like about her. She's brilliant. But it's doable, it's achievable. But you'll also notice it doesn't happen after three days. It happens after eight weeks. And that's one of the things I've learned is that you can take three steps forward, you're likely to take two steps back because your lies we believe are so strong. Our spiritual enemy has such a hold of our minds, you're the world's coming to an end, you're not going to matter, you're not going to mess up, you're never going to have a good relationship, you're never going to be out of debt, you're always going to be bad, your kids are going to be a mess. It's your fault. You're always going to be addicted, you're your body's not pleasing to anybody, on and on and on, on and on and on. Those are lies from the pit of hell. And who are we, we belong to God, we're joint heirs with Jesus Christ, we are ambassadors, we are new, we're forgiven, we're redeemed, we're change who we are the same. We're overcomers we're more than conquerors. So, if we can if we can take the truth and form it in a way that's personal, scriptural, and, and, and demolishes the lies that have been holding us hostage, God can, God can renew our minds, it's they become different. And now our default thoughts don't go to what we're not and what we can't do and what we'll never have. But it goes to the goodness of God who He is His promises. And it's, it's, it's a game changer. And I pray, I pray your, your podcast family gets excited about I pray that I see real, genuine spiritual results as a result of seeking God to renew our minds with truth.
Lysa TerKeurst: I feel very confident that they will. Again, we've been talking to pastor Craig Groeschel, Winning The War In Your Mind, his new book that is changing the way I think, and I'm so grateful that I have this resource to give to my family, I want to make it required reading for my entire family. And I want to end on this declaration. It's one sentence that you have that you said, when I start to think about what that what I do doesn't matter that I'm not making a difference. This is one of the things you declare the world will be different and better because I served Jesus today. And I love that negative thoughts come so effortlessly in our mind, they just pop into our mind and assault us constantly. But this book, Winning the War in Your Mind, it will train us with great intentionality, to know how to counteract the lies that are hindering us so that we can really have the truth that will set us free and better perspectives to carry with us. And these declarations are such a crucial part of that. Pastor Craig, thank you so much for writing this message. Thank you for being with us today. Thank you for personally helping me on a day where I need to win the war inside of my mind. You're the best.
Craig Groeschel: Thank you for being a great family friend, and the world will be different and better Lysa because you serve Jesus today.
Lysa TerKeurst: Thank you. I'm believing it. I really do.
Kaley Olson: Well, what a good conversation. We told you at the beginning there were going to be so many good nuggets, and I got so many good nuggets from this. And one major point that I took away from Pastor Craig about speaking truth over your life was this sequence that he said I think it's so sticky. He said, “write it, think it, confess it and believe it” and I know transforming our thought life based on what we've learned from Pastor Craig and then even last weekend from Jennie, who is Pastor Jennie. Let's be honest. It's not an easy thing. And we talked about its kind of being one of those things where as soon as your feet hit the floor, it's a daily thing that you have to do. And so, I think if we can write it, think it, confess it and believe it, that's something we can remember to combat those lies that we've believed for a really long time.
Meredith Brock: Well, I couldn't agree more Kaley, it's something that you can take your thought captive, take every thought captive. So, if you want to learn more from Pastor Craig, we've linked his new book Winning The War In Your Mind in our show notes at Proverbs31.org/Listen, and also, I wanted to remind our friends about our upcoming Online Bible Study starting June 28. We recognize our thoughts have so much power over us more than we often pay attention to. And that's why we released these episodes back-to-back, so if you needed this message today, and last week's message from Jennie, will you join us for our Get Out of Your Head Online Bible Study, registration is totally free. And you can head on over to Proverbs31.org/study to get signed up today.
Kaley Olson: And lastly, this is a fun announcement because I'm not sure if you guys have missed in person events, but I sure have and that's why we're excited to let you know that you can join Lysa TerKeurst this fall, in 2021 on the Encounter tour. There are several one-night gatherings happening across the US and friends, you're not going to want to miss it. Together with Lysa, you'll pursue healing as you share the hard parts of your story, dig into God's Word, lean in and laugh and remind each other that God is not finished with you yet, man. I need to hear that for sure. Check out our show notes at Proverbs31.org/Listen to find the link to the Encounter tour and see if it's coming to a city near you. Thanks so much for joining us today friends at Proverbs 31 Ministries where we believe when you know the truth and live the truth, it changes everything.