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Real faith. Real life. Hosted by Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown of Sandals Church, The Debrief Podcast goes beyond Sunday conversations—diving into the questions, stories, and struggles that shape who we are. Thoughtful. Honest. Unfiltered.
Welcome to the debrief podcast with Matthew Stephen Brown, where we take questions about faith, the bible, and culture, and give you honest practical advice you can trust. This is a space to ask anything and get real answers for real life. We're glad you're here. Now let's get into today's episode.
Tammy Brown:Hey, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the debrief with Matthew Steven Brown, pastor of Samuel's Church, and my better half. Hope twenty twenty six is finding you doing well. How are you?
Matthew Stephen Brown:I'm doing great. Excited, man. Excited to jump back into the debrief, do some questions. These are great questions, by
Tammy Brown:the Yeah. We're really excited about this season of the debrief, and we have some fun, fun episodes planned for you guys. And with that being said, let's jump into today's questions. This first one comes from Laurel, and she sent this off Instagram. So make sure you're following the debrief on Instagram because it's also a good way for you to get us questions.
Tammy Brown:She says, I would like to hear a Christian pastor's take on the use of psychedelics and therapy to treat mental illnesses such as suppression and CPTSD. It's legal in Oregon and Colorado as of now. What's your thoughts?
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Laurel, this is a great question. Mhmm. And I think that I'm gonna answer this question, and then, you know, what I do, I'm just gonna dive into it. Rant.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And so yeah. Rant. Yeah. A religious rant. And so, I mean, she's asking for what my take is on this.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And so what I would say, first of all, Laurel, is probably if you ask 10 pastors what their take is on this, you'd get 12 answers. So this is just one of those things where people are asking pastors to weight in something we do not fully understand. So you could have all the way on one side, somebody's going to quote Greek to you, pharmakia is the Greek word that we translate witchcraft in the Bible, and so this is a form of pharmakia, and therefore is witchcraft, and then you could have all the way over to the other side where absolutely whatever science says you need to do. So that's the range. What I would say is, Laurel, I am not a psychiatrist.
Matthew Stephen Brown:I am not a doctor. I'm not a research scientist for medicine or for therapies. And so my short answer is I don't know. What I can tell you is there are people and families in our church who have prayed, fasted, tried all kinds of treatment and all kinds of drugs, and nothing has worked to alleviate depression, anxiety, all kinds of issues. And so I think as a Christian, Laurel, instead of saying, what do we think about this therapy, we have to ask ourselves, What do we think about people who are suffering?
Matthew Stephen Brown:And we have to remind ourselves that unless we've been through a bout of depression where we feel like we can't function, it's really hard for us to say what we would do if we were in that situation. You know, not to be gross, but you're a mom with Oh, three no. We have a grandkid. We can't imagine ever doing anything to hurt our children. And yet in the Bible, several times, women eat their kids because they're starving.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And why did they do that? Because of the situation they found themselves in. And so it's easy for us, when we say we're starving, it's because we only have a Snickers bar. We've not lived through actual starving, and so we don't know what we would actually do. So we have to be careful, and not say that something is morally right, but to have compassion on people who find themselves in such dire that that feels like a choice.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Not that eating your children is right. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying it's easy for me, someone who's never been hungry for more than a few hours in my life outside of intentional fasting, to judge someone who hadn't eaten for several months, and they're choosing between one child and others. So we have to be really careful. So we need to remember, as a Christian, the suffering of people.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And what I would say is my counsel to a person in our church who was saying, Hey, my psychiatrist has recommended this for treatment, and nothing else has worked, what I would encourage you to do is to try it and see if it works under the supervision of a medical doctor and a treatment facility, not you and your buddies out at a ranch smoking a joint with herbs in it. That's not treatment, okay? That's numbing, that's coping. As soon as you become your own doctor, you're in trouble. So we have too many doctors because they've read some articles on the internet, and On TikTok.
Matthew Stephen Brown:On TikTok, and they're finding all this stuff, or you've asked chat GPT. If you're not a medical doctor, you're not a medical doctor. And I was actually listening this week to Doctor. Huberman, and I love him, he's from Stanford University. He has a lot to say about medicine, and he actually asked this question to the person that was interviewing him.
Matthew Stephen Brown:He said, What percentage, and I'm going to ask you because I'm curious about your answer, and Tammy doesn't know what I'm going ask you.
Tammy Brown:Oh, okay.
Matthew Stephen Brown:What percentage of understanding do you think that modern today's medicine has about the human body? 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 90%, 95%?
Tammy Brown:What- That medicine has of
Matthew Stephen Brown:Of medicine today. So when you go to the doctors today, what percentage of complete understanding do they have about your body, your human body, and the medicine and how it interacts? Where would you say we are? What percent?
Tammy Brown:I would say high, like in the 90s?
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yes. And that's what Doctor. Huberman said. He said, as a medical research doctor at Stanford, we're like at ten percent.
Tammy Brown:Wait, what?
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yes. So he just said, when someone says believe in science, what he's saying is the science is so limited, and we don't understand how things interact with the body, and most people believe it's 90% of understanding. And he said we're at the very beginning of our understanding of the human body and how things work. And he just went on to talk about consciousness, the mind, how things interact. And so he just said, We need to remember that, that medicine is a practice.
Matthew Stephen Brown:It's called a medical practice. They're practicing on us, collecting data and learning. And so we need to be very, very careful about what we judge about anything, Laurel. So should a person use psychedelics in therapy to treat mental illness? And what I would say, it depends on the suffering, the level of suffering, and the things that they've tried.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Have we tried a deep healing? And that's our form of exorcism that we do at Sandals Church. Have they tried counseling? Have they changed their habits, their behaviors? Is there evidence of effort?
Matthew Stephen Brown:Because I think when people are constantly pursuing the next magic pill, that tends to fall into our pharmaceutically addicted society that believes that science can solve everything. So have they done all of these things? If we had a child, or it was you, and we had done everything, and you're like, I don't want to live, I don't want to be married, I'm losing my faith, you're losing your battle, or one of our kids was losing their battle with mental illness, I would probably try almost anything. And that's out of desperation. So we got to be careful as Christians.
Matthew Stephen Brown:You and I talked about Christians sharing their feelings on GLP-1s and judging people, just And everybody has to have an here's the thing is, if you're not a person who has struggled with weight and struggled with health, and you don't know what they've done, because for some of us, I'm blessed with a body that God gave me I didn't choose. If I exercise and eat right, my body tends to respond, and my body doesn't struggle with insulin resistance and sugars. Some peoples do. And so that's not fair that they've struggled or whatever, so we have to have grace for that. Rather than, like, Christian has to have an opinion on everything today, we have to have grace.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Also, like I said, what are you doing? Because medicine doesn't solve everything, and I said this in my book, Everyday a Miracle, what we really need is health practitioners, pastors, and people to come together and say, What can we do together to help people who are suffering and hurting? And so, Laurel, what I would say, again, short answer to my long answer is have compassion on the people. I have not reviewed the literature. We have a doctor on staff, Doctor.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Eric Sallie. I typically ask him. He doesn't give me his answer, he goes and does the research. He pulls up the research, and he'll say, usually, this is usually what he says, it's inconclusive. I mean, I cannot tell you how many times I've heard about something online that's very helpful, they're quoting a study.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And oftentimes, these studies are backed by the people that are trying to sell you things. Like, for example, the cigarette industry told Americans for fifty years that nicotine is not addictive and cigarettes are not unhealthy. More recently, the wine industry is telling us that wine is good for you and alcohol is good for you. Well, we found out, and everybody, see, people are to write in, Well, you're saying I shouldn't drink. That's not what I'm saying.
Matthew Stephen Brown:I'm just saying a lot of times, these studies are backed by the people who financially benefit from the results being So in their we have to be careful. So I ask Doctor. Sallie, he does the research, he gets back to me, and very rarely does he say, Yeah, there's real evidence for that. So I don't know on this situation, Laurel, and here's what I would caution every, even if you're a doctor and you're listening to this show, unless you're a research doctor, unless you've researched this, you've been a part of clinical trials, you probably don't know. You're probably not on the cutting edge of what's happening.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And so what I would say is let's research somebody who's a born again Christian, okay, loves God, believes in the Bible, attends church, and is practicing psychiatry and has found people who benefit from this. And so here's the thing. Here's why I'm hesitant. Even if it works and provides relief, we don't know what these things do to the mind. We don't know.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And messing with your mind is something that should be done with extreme caution, and our hope and prayer would be this for any treatment. Here would be my hope and prayer. It doesn't make things worse. Because sometimes, I mean, how many people in our church have back problems? They go in for relief for surgery, and they come out worse.
Matthew Stephen Brown:They don't tell you that on the front end. And that's not to say that I'm against back surgery. It's to say, What are the percentages of this making you better? And if it improves people, if something helps people, I'm for it. Like for example, Laurel, I'm not a fan of marijuana.
Matthew Stephen Brown:I know some of our listeners smoke marijuana, and people have all kinds of reasons for why they do. I don't like anything that messes with your mind. However, we had a friend of ours who has an incurable illness and cannot sleep and cannot rest. And they said, Would it be okay if I did this? And I said, Yes, in that instance, because the suffering was unbearable.
Matthew Stephen Brown:They didn't want to be stoned. They're not looking to check out. They are battling an illness that on my very worst day is 10% of what he struggles with every day. And so you can disagree with me on that, but I'm the pastor, and I'm having to say, What can I do to alleviate suffering? And so if we think about heroin, so we have the group in here, do you guys know why we call heroin heroin?
Matthew Stephen Brown:It comes from the Greek word hero. And so when they treated soldiers on the battlefield with heroin, it relieved pain. It helped heroes. So you take this beautiful drug, right? So your leg's blown off, your arm's blown off, it's your last breath, and I can make your last few moments of life comfortable.
Matthew Stephen Brown:It helps heroes. It helps you die a hero. And then we have people who take that because they're stressed out, or they're addicted, or they went to a party, got drunk, and tried it, and now they're hooked. It makes them not heroes, it makes them zeros. Same drug.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So And that's what people say, well, why would God have created heroin, or He didn't create heroin, but poppies, if He didn't want us to use it? Well, it has a beautiful purpose when utilized. And so we gotta be really, really careful, Laurel, that we don't judge, that we exercise wisdom. And every Christian listening, please practice this. I don't know, and I don't have an opinion.
Matthew Stephen Brown:If you can say those things, I think you'll help a lot of people, because a lot of times we don't know. And even if we have an opinion, is it helpful or not? So I I don't
Tammy Brown:think we could practice that across the board as Christians on almost any topic, not feeling like we have to come across as the authority because we don't know
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Well, we're being bombarded with thousands of controversial things, and people want your immediate take. And here's the thing, Laurel, I've learned is I've been wrong. I've given an immediate take. I've given my gut instinct.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Sometimes I've prayed about it, and it turns out I didn't have all the information. And so that's why we can speak generally about an issue. What do you believe about psychedelics and therapy? And then we can talk about a person who I've seen people, and you and I know this, we have a good friend, and they're fighting for their life with mental illness. And in the same way that if someone in our church was dying of cancer and they said, Hey, there's this experimental treatment, I'd probably say, Try it, as long as it doesn't make things worse.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And so Laurel, have grace, give grace to me, give grace to people, and
Tammy Brown:I would even say for you and I, one of the things that as a believer in my 50s that's different from when I was a believer in my twenties is I had really big opinions on things I had never yet
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:Come face to face with. And we talk sometimes about looking back about how, like, we took some pretty strong stances on things. Yeah. And then you kinda walk a different road. And it's not that you're compromising your faith, but you're just like, oh, I I only had such a limited perspective.
Tammy Brown:Or I I I never came face to face with it. It's very easy to say what you think should happen. And and we should have pretty solid convictions about what we would do before we face crisis so that we don't go crazy in crisis. But it is interesting the more you experience people, the more stories you hear
Matthew Stephen Brown:Mhmm.
Tammy Brown:The more you go through your own life where you're just like, everything is a little more nuanced, I should say, as you go through life. And so I love the idea and just the practice of not having to have a full opinion, starting in a place of conviction with compassion of caring about someone's suffering before we're what. That's really good.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. And I would say, you know, if we learned anything from Jesus, religious people have a tendency to take God's command, right, which is good and true, and then they build a wall around it so that they don't commit that, and then they build another wall, then they build a fort, and before you know it, we have Jesus healing a paralyzed man on the Sabbath, and they're saying, You have violated that thou shalt not work commandment in Scripture. And Jesus says, Is it okay to do good on the Sabbath? Of course it is. And so we have to be careful that in our desperate need for clarity, what about this, what about this, we build all of these arbitrary walls that by the time Jesus comes have nothing to do with the original tent.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And Jesus says, Man was not made for Sabbath, but Sabbath was made for the man. The purpose was we need rest, and God wants to give that to us. We've to be really, really careful. And just know, it's all of our tendencies to do this, is to expand the teaching, try to find every single nuance, you know, every single way it could be used, and then before you know it, we're so far away from the original intent, and we're so religious, people want nothing to do with this. So we've to be real, real careful.
Tammy Brown:Yeah. So good. Yeah. Okay. This next question says it comes from Shasta, but it could come right from me because I relate so much to this question.
Tammy Brown:When life feels overwhelming with stress piling up from work, health, and everything in between, it can be hard to tell what thoughts are from God and what's just fear and exhaustion. How do you really know when it's God's voice and not your own worry speaking? How can we find our way back to discernment and trust when our minds feel so loud? Such a great question. I know so many people are gonna relate with this, but I love that last part.
Tammy Brown:How can we find our way back to discernment and trust when our minds feel so loud? That's a great question. Pretend I'm asking
Matthew Stephen Brown:it.
Tammy Brown:Yeah.
Matthew Stephen Brown:For a friend. You know, I think that we all suffer today from, you know what, I tell you sometimes, and you ask me, How did you sleep? When we wake up, we tend to talk about the quality of our sleep because we're that age now. But, and I'll tell you, I had busy brain last night, so my brain is going, and it can't shut off. And so the way that God has created our brains is to think about possible negative scenarios so that we can avoid them.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So that's the beauty of it, right? I can try to predict something that's bad that's happened, and then I work in my brain to avoid that so that I don't get hurt. But our brains can become addicted to negative scenarios, and so then we're always stuck in this endless cycle. And I think that the best verse for this Shasta is the verse, Be still and know that I am God. And so stilling the mind, stilling our thoughts, trying to learn to be quiet, learning to meditate.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So worry is just meditating on the wrong things. Meditation is thinking about the right things. So a lot of people say they can't meditate. I'm like, You do, you just do it on the wrong things. So what I would do is, I don't know Shasta.
Matthew Stephen Brown:She says, How do you really know when it's God's voice and not your own worry speaking? Here's how you know. God is never speaking through worry. He never does. Jesus says, Don't worry.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So when it's worry, it's not God. It's just not. That's your own mind. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have concerns. We shouldn't express caution, we shouldn't utilize wisdom, but worry is something that's entirely separate from that process.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And so what I do, a couple years ago, read a book, you remember, called The Worry Cure, and he, the author of that book, outlines three things to do when you just can't shut off your mind. He says, what's the worst outcome, what's the best outcome, and then what's the most likely outcome? And you just give yourself a couple minutes to think about each three of those things, because what worry does is it fixates on the worst possible outcome and believes it as fact. Because you think about it, you can't be worried about something that's happened. Like when you're on an airplane, you're not worried about the plane crashing after it crashed.
Matthew Stephen Brown:You're worried about something that hasn't happened yet, but is in the future. And so that's where that lies, and it's about outcomes. And here is the god awful truth, Shasta, we don't know. Only God knows the future. We don't know the future.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And so it's human to be anxious when we step into God's presence, and we try to predict the future. And so we can't, and that's very unsettling. And so what we can do is be in the present say, okay, be still and know that I'm God, and then look in the past. Where has God been with me before? Have I got through this before?
Matthew Stephen Brown:But I would say this, you said, how can we know when it's God's voice or not our own worries? Whenever it's your worries, it's not God. That's how you know. And what you have to do is speak God's Word like I just did, be still and know that I am God. You have to speak God's Word to your own words, and choose to let God's Word win out.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And that's not easy because when we become overwhelmed with anxiety, we get addicted to our own words. The devil's words, well, is going to blow up, this is never going to end, this is all going to end in absolute ruin, and if we're not careful, it can ruin us. And so what we need is people that speak truth in our lives. Like for Tammy and it's not always good that I do that, but in our small group, in our discipleship group, we have another gentleman, Pastor Eric, who speaks truth to you. Goes, Well, now Tammy, that's not the truth.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And you'll speak God's word to her, and that's very reassuring. For when I say it, it sounds
Tammy Brown:Blah blah blah.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. It leads not to I a good can
Tammy Brown:take it from you sometimes, but every time I'm just like, of course, that's what you're going to say to me. Yeah. Don't judge me, everyone. I'm like, stop pastoring me.
Matthew Stephen Brown:I'm terrible. What I would do, next thing is, so I would start there. One is worry, it's not you, and then I would start a practice of journaling and writing down, here's what I'm thinking. And then if it's God, where God guides, he provides. When it's God, it's going to happen.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And so, you know, there was a thing, and Tammy knows about this, where I was pretty certain that God said some things to me, and we made some assumptions, we sold our house based upon what I thought God was doing, and it didn't happen. So that obviously wasn't God's will for our life, and we made some major decisions based upon that. And so what I just decided to do was say, Okay, I got that one wrong. Doesn't mean I'm not a good leader. Doesn't mean I don't love God.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Doesn't mean I don't hear from God, but in that instance, I got it wrong. And here's the thing, Shasta, I can be wrong, God is never wrong. And you just have to rest in that. And what it's allowed me to do is seek counsel, open up, and really lay out kind of the scenarios for that. But this is where spiritual community is so important with people that you love and trust, and those people must love and trust God, and really know God, because everybody wants to give spiritual advice, but a lot of people don't know God's word.
Matthew Stephen Brown:We just got out of sermon planning, and we were talking about different sermon ideas for the 2026 calendar and beyond. And I was saying, if we can tie it to a book of the Bible, that's better, because when I first started Sandals Church, topical sermons were great because people had an understanding of God's Word. Now, people are just shooting from the hip, and what they think is spiritual oftentimes is anti biblical. And so if we can teach out of a book, that helps us because if we're in God's word, we got a better shot of hearing God's word than if we're just, know, hey, let's just kind of talk about this issue. And so what I would say is hearing from God and discerning is a process.
Matthew Stephen Brown:We just had this conversation with one of our kids, and she was saying, How do I know when God is leading one way, and how do I know it's not my own ambition? That was literally our kids' conversation. And I said, That's a good start. Because when you're aware of your own ambition and your own voice, that makes it, I think, easier for you to hear God. People that say, God said to me, make me very nervous.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Like, okay. And in my experience, those people are usually wrong, and God's not wrong. And so what that means is, A, they think their voice is God's voice, or B, they're hearing another voice. And I would listen to somebody Shasta that's generally right, has a proven track record of integrity, knows their Bible, and that you feel like you can trust. And I'm assuming, thank you, by the grace of God, Tammy and I are two of those people, and I'm trying to answer this question, but it's a finely nuanced balancing act, and you got to be very, very careful.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Sometimes, you know, God is very clear, like I love in the book of Daniel, you know, hand comes on the wall and writes. Wouldn't that be nice? You know, but they still didn't get it. Like
Tammy Brown:I think that I am someone that can super speak to this because this just described my life. It's who you live with on a regular basis. And so on this one, I am in the weeds of trying to figure this out every single day for myself. So I love this question, Shasta. Thank you so much.
Tammy Brown:Some of the things that I do because I do struggle with rumination, just like overplaying the same scenario, the same wound, the same fear. And so I have to develop some strategies that help me get out of that. A few of those just like practical strategies as you know is, I my bend in life is to naturally think of what can go wrong. I have to discipline myself mentally to consider what can go right. That's kind of the the worry care book that you mentioned of like, what's the worst case scenario?
Tammy Brown:I've already thought that a million times. What's the best case scenario and what's more realistic? Doing that mental exercise has been so helpful for me because I'll always think about what can go wrong. So I have to consider what can go right. And the track record of life is most of the time most of the time, things either went best case scenario or went right.
Tammy Brown:Like, it's it's typically never as bad as I thought it would be. And so just remembering that, in the moment of that being like, I what do I know that God says? He'll never leave me or forsake me. He has good things for those who follow him. And because I'm a worst case scenario type thinker, I'm an enneagram six, I'd struggle with fear.
Tammy Brown:I naturally work out the worst case scenario. In most of the situations in life, worst case scenario could be getting gravely hurt or and or dying. So most of my like, like, we joke all the time. Like, my seven steps till death is like Yeah. That's where my mind goes.
Tammy Brown:That my kids are Matt's gone. The kids are gone. I'm starved. I'm homeless, and I'm dead. Like, that's a very I'm like but I I do think that way a lot as you know.
Tammy Brown:Mhmm. And so I have to say to myself, even if all of that happened, I'm in the presence of God because he has promised that I will see him in heaven. And so sometimes working out the worst case scenario can help you because our worst case scenarios for those of us who love God, follow Jesus, and will spend eternity with him, our worst case scenarios end up with him. But more often than not, it's never as bad as we think. Mhmm.
Tammy Brown:And I just think the practice of thinking of what can go right is so helpful and can alleviate. The other thing that you challenged me to do a lot is to give myself a time. Like, go spend ten minutes and like get as dark as you feel like you need to get. You know, like work all of the like everything can go wrong and then force yourself now once everything can go right. And it kinda pulls you out of the mire of that thinking when you give space for that as well.
Tammy Brown:And but not like I'm just gonna spend the whole day in my bed doom scrolling and thinking about what can go wrong. That's just such a spiral. So, you know, the other things that as you know, when you get in these kind of mindsets is being stagnant. Like, I will feel instantly better even when everything is going wrong if we take a long walk, if we go do the stair climber
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:If I go in the sauna, if I get myself moving and out of it, or just like a practice of gratitude. Like, let's say a dozen things in our life are going really, really bad. You know? We've had we've had some pretty rough heartbreak and relational brokenness in our life. We've had some big disappointments.
Tammy Brown:We've had all of that, and I can really ruminate on all of that. And what tends to pull me out is when I'm like, but you know who didn't leave? And I start naming everyone who stayed in our life, who stayed in our kid's life, everyone who's been good to us, all of the good news. And and when you try to shift into, yes, all of this isn't going right, Or I might say even pivot that thinking to it's not going as planned
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:Or as I desire.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:There's a lot of things in life in hindsight that I thought I wanted to go a certain way and they didn't, and it was a disappointment. And on the other side of it, I'm like, this is so much better. And so but is to remember outside of that circumstance, everything else in your life, everyone else in your life who is showing up, who has stayed, who does love you, who supports you. Those are just some practical things I do to kind of get my my voice out of my head and try to get bring myself into reality. So I don't know if that's helpful, but I am your people, Shasta.
Tammy Brown:I really struggle.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So Yeah.
Tammy Brown:You good to go to the next question?
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Great question, Shasta. We'll be praying for you.
Tammy Brown:This next one has a little caveat with it. It's from Hannah of Riverside. So I'm gonna read the question, and then I'm gonna we're gonna give a little context to it. So this is such a good question, and I know that so many of you guys are going to relate to this because this is really out there. I've been seeing a lot of stuff on TikTok about different types of demons and spirits that can attach themselves to you depending on different types of sins that you commit.
Tammy Brown:Is this biblical? This stuff makes sense, but I don't ever really see this in the Bible. I'm gonna read a little context for you with that. Yeah. The question is referring to a trend of spiritual content that creators claiming that if you do certain things, you're allowing certain spirits to take hold of you.
Tammy Brown:Yeah. For example, if you stalk your ex, the spirit of surveillance can attach itself to you and hinder your spiritual growth because you are focused on the past. So I do see a lot of this happening on Instagram, TikTok, and other things where there's just a lot of pastoring and spiritual stuff going on. So and I know that you have some good thoughts on this. So what do you think about spirits attaching to us based on our sin
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah.
Tammy Brown:And things that we're behaviors that we're giving ourselves to?
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. So, I mean, you you gotta understand, Hannah, that there's a difference between demon possession and demonization. And so doctor Kraft, who wrote a book out of Fuller Theological Seminary, Defeating Archangels, was a great book to try to understand that. So a Christian cannot be demon possessed. So once the Holy Spirit is inside of you, you cannot be demon possessed.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So a non believer can be demon possessed, but a believer can be demonized, attacked, afflicted, tortured by the demonic world. And so the question is, how and why does that happen? And so kind of Doctor. Kraft, who's kind of the leading thinker on this, right, is that they attach to things in our life. So they can't be in us, but they can be on us.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And so they're attaching to things like a spirit of unforgiveness, an addiction to pornography, or lust, or sin. And so whenever we're inviting sin to rule and reign in our life, we're inviting the kingdom of darkness into our life. I think the mistake Christians make, and particularly my charismatic brothers and sisters who like to get very specific about types of demons, so the demon of surveillance, the only thing that I'm aware anywhere close to that would be out of book of Enoch chapter six, which is an apocryphal letter, first century BCE before Christ. We've talked a little bit about this in some sermons, but it calls them the watchers. So it takes Genesis chapter six, the sons of God that descended and had sex with the daughters of Eve.
Matthew Stephen Brown:It identifies those as watchers, and so this would be a particular group of supernatural beings. I don't want to call them angels. So we got to remember, an angel is something they do, it's not something they are. So the word angelos in Greek, angel is messenger. So all kinds of supernatural beings could play the role of messenger.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So angelos or angel is not what they are, it's what they do. So we don't know exactly what these supernatural beings are, but Enoch calls them watchers, and they watch us. So maybe that's the demon of surveillance, and so their kind of understanding is that out of Genesis chapter six, when these watchers had sex with daughters of Eve, that it produced demons after those offspring died. Whether that's true or not, man, we don't know, and so what I would say is, Hannah, is the spiritual world is real. We have to be very, very careful.
Matthew Stephen Brown:People like clarity. So I don't know if you've ever seen like a set of clouds and somebody will say, Oh, I see Michael Jackson in the clouds. And you look at it and you're kind of like, Okay, maybe. And that's kind of what people do in the spiritual realm is they kind of read a figure, or they read a name, or they read something into something that's ambiguous. And so that's not to say that there aren't clouds.
Matthew Stephen Brown:That's not to say that there isn't movement, but reading a face or a name into it, I think oftentimes is going too far. And so what we need to say is, yeah, you know, there can be demons in our life, and certainly they can attach themselves, rather than a demon of surveillance, I would say a demon is trying to get you to believe you can control things, it's making you paranoid. Surveillance is what you're doing, but that's not the problem. You know, that's the behavior. What is the underlying sin?
Matthew Stephen Brown:You can't let this person go. You have wrapped up your identity in a friendship or a dating relationship or a marriage rather than Christ, right? Demons can attach themselves that way. I don't think they could cause you to be depressed, but they can increase that. So I think it's okay to call things out, and Doctor.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Kraft certainly does that in his book, and we experience that in practice. So some of it, Hannah, I think is okay. Can it go a little too far? Yes.
Tammy Brown:Do you mean there's some truth in it that our behaviors can attract? One of the things Doctor. Kraft would say to us is we have to the dem how do you say it? The demons are the rats, and they're attracted to the To
Matthew Stephen Brown:the trash.
Tammy Brown:Yeah. So what is the trash in our life that's attracting the rats? Do you wanna talk
Matthew Stephen Brown:a little bit about Yes. So we can come to church every single weekend, and in the name of Jesus, ask these demons to go, and they will temporarily, but unless you deal with the garbage that's in your life, they're going to come back. And so what we have to do is learn to identify the garbage, the sins in our life, and when we get rid of that, they'll go. I was just doing a deep healing a couple of weeks ago, and we use the language deep healing rather than exorcism, because again, I don't believe that a Christian can be possessed at church, but they can be demonized. And so this person has allowed the enemy into their life, and so we called out the demon of anger.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So that's where I would say, and we commanded it to go, And I said, I asked him, I said, Did it go? And he said, No, it won't leave. And here's why, I can't make it leave because there's still an attachment. And so we had to deal with, okay, what is that is thing holding And really what it was is the person I was dealing with is still angry. So that's why Paul literally says, Do not let the sun go down in your anger, lest you give the devil a foothold.
Matthew Stephen Brown:I mean, that's scripture, right?
Tammy Brown:That's literally the verse that I wanted to Yeah. Ask you
Matthew Stephen Brown:The beast the word of
Tammy Brown:four twenty seven.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So it says that, you know, this is why we often think of sins like sex or drunkenness, but we don't include bitterness, we don't include unforgiveness, we don't include anger in these things. These are things that can feel like a strength, but are actually strengths of the devil in our lives. And so we have to get rid of all rage, malice, and clamor. I mean, that's the old translation. Clamor is shouting, you know, repeatedly shouting negative things at people.
Matthew Stephen Brown:These things invite the enemy to in our life. You know, the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and self control. Against these things, there is no law. Right? So these are the good things in our lives.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So I think we need to be careful not to be overly specific, but we need to be aware that, yeah. And if you're a Christian, let me just ask you, why wouldn't the devil come after you?
Tammy Brown:Right.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Of course he Of course he wants to destroy your marriage. Of course he wants you out of church. Of course he wants you depressed. Of course he wants you to be in love with anything and everything but God. Absolutely.
Matthew Stephen Brown:There's a spiritual war for your soul. He can't take your soul, so he's going to ruin your life. And remember, the only way the devil can hurt God is by hurting you because you're the one thing that God loves. So you're the thing that matters more. And so I think that we need to be aware of this, but when Paul in Ephesians, he says, We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of the unseen realm.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So that's as far as scripture goes. He says, There's a realm that's very real that we cannot see. We don't know where it is, but it's upon us, it's with us. Call it a dimension, whatever you want, and it interacts with us, and we don't know what this is, but we're waging war against it. And so we have to be very, very careful.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And one of the ways I've seen the devil kind of suck people in is they get overly fascinated with this, and they think they have clarity. And I remember years ago, we had a pastor with us that was doing deep healings, and he was doing things, and I said, You're trusting the enemy on the other side of the veil. He is the father of lies. Jesus says every word that he says is a lie. You don't trust the thing that he said because this person said, Well, this demon said this.
Matthew Stephen Brown:I was like, Man, I don't care what a demon says. I'm not trusting them. I'm trusting the Word of God. And actually, what happened was this demon was claiming to want to be forgiven. And I said, Here's what Jesus did with him.
Matthew Stephen Brown:He kicked him out. That's what I'm I am not, my job is not to save a demon. My job is to kick it out and to bring about healing. And all I can say to our listeners is this stuff is real. It might sound like hocus pocus.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's real. And I've seen it when it's real. And so we got to be careful that we don't get overly fascinated with it, but we need to be aware that it's real, and it impacts us and affects us. So would I use the language a spirit of surveillance?
Tammy Brown:Well, that was just an example.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah, no, but I would say, is surveilling and stalking your ex or friend groups online, is that the Lord? No. The Lord's not leading you to do that. You know, think about the devil like alcohol. Are you under the influence?
Matthew Stephen Brown:That's how I would
Tammy Brown:look at Well, I would say, like, whatever afflictions you're dealing with, bitterness, anger, rage, unforgiveness, eve even even I mean, the the plethora of things. Like, are you? Or at least this is, I think, how we have talked about it throughout our own Christian, like, discipleship process of becoming more like it's like, what are the areas of my life that I am giving the devil a foothold? Yeah. Are we staying bitter?
Tammy Brown:Am I holding on to rage? Am I thinking the worst? Am I trying to control? Mhmm. And so those are the areas because the bible does speak to giving the devil a foothold.
Tammy Brown:Yeah. What does that practically look like in our lives? And I I think that's sort of the biblical answer to to this. There is truth in the areas that we give the devil a foothold, we are attracting.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. Demonic. I think, yeah, I think that, you know, counseling is helpful in that it helps us identify the wounds that people have done to us. Very few counselors are equipped to help us repent of what it's made us become. So, you know, this person that I was doing counseling with, right, they had an encounter with an adult that didn't protect them, that tried to molest them.
Matthew Stephen Brown:This is forty years ago, and I just asked him, I said, how many more years are you going to give this wound control of your life? Because this happened when you were 10 years old. You're my age now. This person's my age. So we've given the devil forty years, and it's not the event that's your sin.
Matthew Stephen Brown:You're not responsible for the event. You are responsible for the power you give the wounding. And that's where the devil sits in there. Because ultimately what happens, right, when we kind of fixate, use the word ruminate on these wounds, what we're saying is, God, you're not good at your job. That's what we're saying, is you're not a good God.
Matthew Stephen Brown:You're not protecting me. You weren't there for me. And we have to remind ourselves so that the most difficult chapter in Everyday Miracle is chapter, I think it's six, when God says no. We have to remember that the resurrection matters. So not everything will be solved in this life.
Matthew Stephen Brown:There will be a resurrection where we will receive a new body, and all things are made right. We have to remind ourselves of that, that God's final verdict has not been given yet. And so for us to judge how he's bringing about the salvation of the world, the healing of the world, the redemption of the world, how he's bringing about the new earth, for us to criticize that is to sit in the seat of God, which ultimately you got to think is what made the devil the devil. I don't like your plan. It's a bad plan.
Matthew Stephen Brown:We're going to do this my way.
Tammy Brown:That's good.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So the devil rejects God's plan, it's his way. So we got to be really, really careful. It's not the wounds that destroy us, it's the meaning we attach to them. And so the devil, like for example, with sexual molestation, it's the shame piece, I'm no good. God allowed this to happen And to so what I was talking with my friend is, you were a kid, give yourself grace.
Matthew Stephen Brown:You can woulda, coulda, shoulda all day long when you're nine years old. I mean, who knows why you do what you do when you're nine? I mean, who knows? And so we have to give ourselves grace. And so I said in this last week's message, I think they'll hear this a week from now, we ended with conflict resolution and giving of grace.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And for a lot of us, grace has to start with ourselves. My life would have never been ruined if I had not married that guy, dated that guy, gone to that party, right? You're not giving yourself any grace. We all make mistakes. We all mess up.
Tammy Brown:And we always know better
Matthew Stephen Brown:after Yeah, the after. Of course you do, and go be a better person, but you have to speak back into the event and speak grace into your life. Otherwise, you're giving the devil a foothold in your past, and if he has a foothold in your past, he's ruining your present. And if he's ruining your present, he's ruining your future. Yeah.
Matthew Stephen Brown:Yeah. That's And I don't mean your eternity, right? That's fixed.
Tammy Brown:Yeah.
Matthew Stephen Brown:So the devil knows he can't get your soul for eternity, so he's going to ruin your life today. We need to be aware of that. So love you guys. Praying for you guys. Hannah, great, great question.
Matthew Stephen Brown:And again, I think there's some truth in that. Just I I just wouldn't go go specific in naming all that.
Tammy Brown:So good. So good. Well, thank you, Matt, for these answers today, and thank you to everyone who wrote these answers in and for listening along. If you have questions for us, please send those into us. And I do wanna do a little shout out for the debrief Instagram because we are gonna be putting some things up there where you can ask us to speak on specific topics this year, where we will have episodes, yes, that you can listen to the weekend messages and ask Matt to debrief them here and go a little deeper.
Tammy Brown:But then also, we wanna compile some specific topical episodes for you this year, we're gonna be asking for those questions. So make sure that you're following us there. I believe we're on YouTube, so follow us there. Am I right, everybody? Are we on TikTok?
Tammy Brown:Yep. And TikTok. You cannot follow us there.
Matthew Stephen Brown:I knew that because I'm on TikTok.
Tammy Brown:I don't TikTok very much. But we're super grateful. So thank you for being a part of the show, sending these questions. If you like it, please subscribe. And if any of the questions that are answered today or in the past, please share these episodes with your friends and family.
Tammy Brown:The the debrief exists to be a resource to be able to speak wisdom into you guys about what God's word says about our lives as we are on our each of our own individual discipleship process of what it looks like to follow Jesus and navigate this very complicated world that we live in. So you can also help us out by supporting the debrief. You can go to sandalschurch.com/support to help us keep this show going. This is a sub ministry of Sandals Church. And so when you do that, if you find this to be helpful and meaningful, that means so much to us, you guys.
Tammy Brown:But until then, we'll see you next time.
Celeste Contreras:Thank you for listening. We hope this conversation helped you grow in your faith. If you've enjoyed today's episode, make sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss what's next. You can also stay connected by following us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for behind the scenes clips, highlights, and more ways to engage with the community. We'll see you next time right here on the debrief podcast with Matthew Stephen Brown.