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From Amazon.com
A path from trauma to transformation that doesn’t rely on willpower, but rather on the daily power of the Holy Spirit—from pastor and leadership coach Christopher Cook
“Razor-sharp focus . . . a clear-cut path to find healing.”—New York Times bestselling author and pastor Mark Batterson
The pain that happened to you is real . . . and it matters immensely.
The notion of healing what you can’t erase is not about ignoring the devastation of your past or putting a glossy, positive spin on current tragedy. That plastic version of faith isn’t actually faith; it’s unbelief.
Healing What You Can’t Erase offers a far better solution—a road map for moving forward through the losses and scars by allowing the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us . . . spirit, soul, and body.
Through story, instruction, action steps, and guided questions, you’ll discover
• why transformation beats willpower and self-help
• how to recognize and heal a broken spirit
• well-researched, biblically grounded strategies to revitalize your mental and emotional well-being
• how inside-out integrated transformation changes your spirit, soul, and body
Whether you’re wrestling with the loss of a marriage, a fractured friendship, a betrayal at work, or a chronic illness, there is hope. No matter your pain or traumatic experience, the Holy Spirit can heal and restore you to the life God created you for.
When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up, or does it crumble under the weight of doubt? I'm your host, Dr. Lee Warren- I'm a brain surgeon, author, and a person who's seen some stuff and wondered where God is in all this mess. This is The Spiritual Brain Surgery podcast, where we'll take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains can smash together with faith to help us become healthier, feel better, and be happier so we can find the hope to withstand anything life throws at us. You've got questions, and we're going to do the hard work to find the answers, but you can't change your life until you change your mind, and it's gonna take some spiritual-brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
Good morning, my friend. I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and we're back with some more self-brain surgery.
I am very excited today because I've got a conversation for you that's going
to help you in your life if you're stuck, if you're hurting,
if you're dealing with trauma, if you're in some place that you haven't been able to heal from.
Or if you've gone through something that you just can't move past,
if you've tried all the self-help and it hasn't helped.
Helped, if you've even tried spiritual things and you found yourself sort of
trying to improve yourself in some way using spiritual ideas,
but you're just stuck and not making progress, today we are going to move the needle.
I've got my friend Christopher Cook. Chris is a leadership coach, a pastor, an author.
He's focused on transformation and wholeness. He lives outside of Detroit.
He's got an aptitude for strategy and execution.
He is a deep thinker and a person with with a powerful story.
He's got some tragedy and some trauma, but also some healing and some hope in his story.
And today, everywhere books are sold, Chris's incredible new first book,
his debut book as an author.
Published by Waterbrook, my publisher, edited by Susan Jaden,
my editor, copy edited by Helen McDonald, my copy editor.
So we've got a lot of the same people that did Hope is the First Dose,
and I've seen the interview that have worked on Chris's book.
And it is incredible. Healing what you can't erase.
Transform your mental, emotional, and spiritual health from the inside out.
This is a beautiful book. I'm holding it in my hand as we speak.
I've got an advanced hardback copy that that Chris sent me.
I've already given my advanced paperback copy to a family member who needs it.
This is a powerful book, friend. It's everywhere books are sold.
Check it out. The audiobook Chris did himself is amazing.
It's going to be life-changing and game-changing for you. And we had a wide-ranging
conversation about how to heal what you can't erase.
Stick around for the end. I've got some information about a way that you can
get a copy of this book for free.
So listen to the the very end, and we'll be back to talk about that in a moment,
but I am so excited to bring you my friend Christopher Cook.
I asked Chris to say a prayer for us before we get started, and before we get any of that happening,
I just want to remind you, friend, that you can't change your life until you
change your mind, and sometimes you have to heal something even if you can't
erase it, and Christopher Cook's going to help us get it done,
but before that, I have a question for you.
Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.
You have have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where
the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything
starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life?
Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.
I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,
take control of our thinking, and find real hope.
This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.
This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.
This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast.
This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.
Music.
Okay, friend, we're back, and I'm so excited to be having another conversation
with my friend Christopher Cook.
Chris, you've got a new book coming out on Tuesday, and we're going to nerd
out all about it. Welcome to the show, my friend.
I love conversations with friends, and so I've been looking forward to this
one. Thanks for having me.
You've been really looking forward to it because I had to reschedule with you
twice, so thank you so much for your grace. Anything for you. Anything for you.
This is going to be great. I think the very first interview that I did for Hope
is the First Dose was with you.
It was one of the first one or two. So right after we got out and you were so
gracious and your show is awesome. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks, my friend.
Hey, before we start, Chris, let's have a prayer. Yeah, I would love to.
So Father, in the name of Jesus, I pray for everyone who's joined with Lee and me today.
Lord, we know that your invitation to all of us is one of transformation.
And so, Father, I pray that our hearts would be open to receive that which you're
going to speak through us today.
Lord, that we would all heed your invitation to take courage, to get up.
Lord, you're calling all of us to move forward, that we would represent you
well in purity, in power, and in maturity for the honor and the glory of Jesus.
So, Lord, bless this conversation.
Bless everyone who's joined with Lee and me today. Amen.
Amen. Thank you so much, my friend. so healing what
you can't erase is your very first book coming out on
tuesday everywhere books are sold are you so excited i
really am i'm really thankful you and i have been just texting offline and there
are so many similarities to our writing journeys yeah um having the same publisher
and so many layers of amazing people behind our work it's surreally because
and i and i wrote this in the the book,
I fought for every word I wrote and.
There's a level of sobriety, if I'm being honest, I feel right now,
because I truly want to see people well.
Yeah. I want to see people not experience change for the surface level responses
in life, but truly transformation.
And, you know, it is the story of my life because all of the helpful things
didn't produce lasting transformation in my life.
And so I think I was, I was today at the grocery store before we hopped on this
call and I'm a people watcher.
And as I was watching a few people, I thought, I wonder what,
I wonder what their stories about, you know, like, I wonder what their story
is comprised of and what their life experiences are.
And because of that, I think, number one, we all need an invitation to transformation
and the awareness of it to walk in it.
The second thing I think about is that everyone wants a king like Jesus. Everybody. Amen.
And if we represent him well, they'll receive us too. And that's my prayer for this. this.
I've told, I'll just say our team, because we have the same publisher,
but I've told our team throughout this whole journey of not only writing the
book, but prepping for its release here.
This for me is more than well-crafted words on a page. I hope well-crafted.
This is the testimony of my life. And so I feel really responsible to steward this well.
Yeah. Because Because I want people to come back to this message of healing what you can't erase.
So for the people who are walking through hard times right now,
I want this to be real and relevant.
But let's say someone is saying, you know, life is pretty good right now.
Yeah. What I do know, what you know, is that storms in life are inevitable.
So if I can help people shore up the foundations of their lives,
so that when the rains come, when the winds blow, their hearts,
their houses are built on the rock whose name is Jesus,
they won't be shifted.
So that's my heartbeat through it. It's a long way to say, yeah,
I'm excited, but I have this.
I don't know. I'm an introvert. I'm sort of a shy person.
But there's this level of sobriety, Lee, that I didn't expect with this.
And I'm a little nervous if I'm really being honest with you.
I'm nervous about it coming out.
Yeah, I think you and I chatted about that via text. I quoted a woman who was
on my podcast a couple of years ago.
And she said, you know, the Lord had really ministered to her in the writing
of her book. and she said that God said, hey, you take care of the depth and
I'll handle the breadth.
It'll get to the number of people it's supposed to get to.
You just make it as deep as it's supposed to be. And you've done that.
Healing What You Can't Erase, it is a deep and honest, raw, personal book.
But it's also so practical and it's just very ministerial.
And I would say you come across like a great friend and pastor.
Your writing style is so, it's just beautiful. Beautiful. Chris,
you've done a great job. It doesn't feel like somebody's first book.
Really? Yeah. It feels, it feels like you've been doing this for a while.
I really appreciate you saying that. I type a driven Enneagram one, like.
Perfectionist, you know, so it's like I would, um, I wrote the book during the
summer of 22 and I got up every day, sort of like a bricklayer and said,
Hey, today my quota is 750 bricks, 750 words
and i remember um our shared
executive editor i remember our editor um and
i having conversations like i would belabor over a word
or a phrase and like oh i don't know is this is this saying it right and she
is just the best and would encourage me or challenge me say hey chris like position
this a little differently because i want this to be easily digested by people yeah i I don't,
and I say this at the end of the book, the worst thing that could happen,
Lee, is that people would walk away from having read this book and go,
ah, it's great information.
That's good information, but not apply it, not do anything with it.
That's right. Because information won't change our lives.
That's right. It's when we apply information and then the power of the Holy
Spirit breathes life upon those words that we experience true transformation.
And so, yeah, that's my prayer. But thank you for those kind words.
I mean, you, in the last six, seven months of my life, even recently with some
challenges, have just been a friend and a confidant.
And I'm just thankful for you. Thankful for these just complimentary,
generous words even toward this book.
So, appreciate it. I love how God's put us together.
And today, we're going to rip the cover off this thing and talk a little bit about your story.
Give us the high-level view of Chris Cook and the life that you've lived and
where you've been and what you're doing.
And then we'll get down to the meat of it. Yeah, sounds good.
I will give you the flyover, say like the 20-year flyover that set up the message of the book.
And then you can drill down as you want. So when I was, I grew up in a very,
my sister and I actually grew up in a very safe, stable, faith-filled home,
incredible parents, parents were professional counselors, sacrificed a lot for us.
But, you know, just a simple family, we learned how to be appreciative of what
we had to honor people well, to see people in need. So we grew up in that type of environment.
And so when the storm came by way
of a cancer diagnosis to my mom when I was 11 I mean it really shook I mean
it shook us to the core as would be expected and this is so fun that you're
a medical doctor that we can sort of get into the weeds with this so yeah in 94 I.
My mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Yeah.
And she at the time was a 37 year old Caucasian woman.
And at the time, myeloma typically showed up in elderly black men.
So that's right. My mom was an anomaly.
People were like, I mean, she saw some of the leading oncologists here in Detroit
and they were like, we've never seen this.
So they offered her a stem cell transplant or do nothing. And at the time,
even the stem cell transplant was so volatile and had a lot of risk to it in
the early 90s, early to mid 90s.
So my parents ended up finding a classically trained immunologist who was based
in New York who practiced proteolytic enzyme therapy,
which for the layperson listening to us is a form of alternative medicine.
But when I say alternative medicine, don't be fooled to think it's just,
oh gosh, for lack of a better term, like hocus pocus.
I mean, he was a classically trained immunologist, a medical doctor,
and had seen pancreatic cancers 25 years after diagnosis, still in remission.
And so it was a very powerful therapy indeed.
I believe his mentor's name was Dr.
Donald Kelly, if I'm not mistaken. But his name was, he actually has since passed
away. His name was Nicholas Gonzalez.
And so my mom was a patient of Dr. Gonzalez for years and years.
Insurance didn't cover it. So my mom at the time, a professional counselor,
ran a hospice facility and she had to quit her job. So bills tripled.
Income was cut in half. So we had to downsize as a family. family.
So that, as I said, I was 11 in that time. And all through the years that followed.
The safety and stability of our home life was intact.
All while cancer ebbed and flowed in the conversations of everyday life.
We just, it was all we knew. So though it was perhaps abnormal, it was our normal.
My sister's in my normal, right? And so interestingly, she was in remission
and doing well until September of 2005.
Five, she started to have really severe pain in the lower lumbar region of her spine.
And they first thought it was displaced discs or something like that.
Well, after an MRI of the spine, the surgeon called and said,
you need an oncologist now because the disease had metastasized and had spread
and was all throughout her spine.
And I think they staged her at four and was given like 30 days to live.
So that moment, sorry, I should catch you up.
So the back pain started in September of five, but that MRI happened in May of 2006.
So May 1st, 2006, as I write about in the book was the second worst day of my life.
I showed up at home anticipating, Participating, finishing a paper I had to
do for undergrad and was living at home, helping the family.
My mom was stood frozen at the door. And I mean, she was given 30 days to live
had we not acted quickly.
And so in partnership with the doctor in New York, she went under the care of a local oncologist.
They just a barrage of chemotherapy hit her immediately as well as radiation.
And I love the medical side of this, so I'll just say this to you.
Like, her protein count, I think, Lee, was at, gosh, 75% or 80%. Wow.
Now, after a couple of months of a barrage of chemo, it dropped to five.
And so, but then myeloma grows back like hair.
So it just was back quickly. So, anyway, from 2006 to early 2012,
I mean, it was 365 days of trauma and emergencies on and off.
I mean, she was in the hospital all the time.
She had a plasma cytoma on her forehead the size of a softball,
and then one grew on her spine again. So, she was in the hospital all the time.
And we almost lost her in 2011. And so that reality was...
Frightening and traumatic, but it never let up. So my nervous system was just
shot in a state of constant dysregulation.
My sympathetic nervous system was like on go fight or flight a hundred percent of the time.
And, um, it was really, really scary. But again, here, here's the key.
It's all I knew.
All I knew was dysregulation. All I knew was trauma and stress.
So that became my normal, even though it was anything but normal.
And we were like leaning into the power of the Holy Spirit and what the scriptures
say about healing and life and not shirking from that anyway.
So by 2012, the medical community had given up on her and said,
there's nothing we can do.
And so she was placed on hospice care in October of 2012.
Interestingly, the same hospice facility that she once ran took care of her
and uh i think actually one of the hospice nurses came,
early on and said oh my gosh i've heard about you and she was halfway comatose
so we're like yeah she used to run this particular hospice facility and uh looked
at her all the bereavement care and.
That was a really hard season because from mid-october to um or mid to late
october 2012 to um i'd say mid-november she was not only in and out of a comatose
state but the side effects of the drugs that were given to her for palliative care i mean lee,
it's emotional to even think about it because she declined into this childlike
state and she became I became very belligerent.
And I'm like, I lost my mom before I lost my mom. That's hard.
So Wednesday, November 21st, 2012...
I'm sitting in my office at work, and thankfully I worked close to home.
My sister called and said, get home now. Mom stopped breathing,
and that was it, Lee. Like, I didn't get to say goodbye to her.
And it's really painful. In fact, from what I have been told,
she waited until for nearly, I mean, just a moment.
She was alone in the room, and she went. went.
And, um, I didn't get to say goodbye and it still haunts me.
Um, I miss her so much. Her birthday actually today's March 15th as we're recording. Oh, wow.
Her birthday was last Friday, the eighth.
She would have been 67 this year. This year she will have been with Jesus for 12 years.
Wow. And I can, and I can, Oh, 55. Yeah. Yeah.
And I can feel it. Like I, I miss her so much. I would love her to be able to hold this book.
And I'm sure we're going to talk about grief at some point, but I think I'm
going to interject real quick for people.
This is your story with Mitch, right? I know it. You and I have talked about
this just as friends and then on the pod, but like we don't get over grief.
That's right. We go through it.
Okay. Okay. So, November 21st, 2012, she goes to be with Jesus.
And if I'm honest, it was unexpected because we were like, we're believing for a miracle. Yeah.
And for the last, for the 18 years leading up to that date, mind you,
all I had known is this. Yeah.
So, in many ways, it's like there's an identity crisis.
Added to what later became complex post-traumatic stress for me. Yeah.
So nine months after mom dies, my immune system nosedives.
And after a series of tests and curiosity and a lot of fear and panic,
I'm diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis.
And, you know, for those joined with us that may know anything about autoimmune, I mean,
Not only is, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, Lee, I've heard 90,
95% of all illness has stress as a, as a motivator behind it.
But, um, yeah, I mean, my body unmasked and autoimmune disease and,
you know, so here I am diagnosed with MS nine months after she dies.
And Lee, I, I couldn't see my way out of it. I Christmas 2013,
I wasn't sure if I wanted to live.
Wow. I never thought about acting on it in terms of like ideation,
but that describes the level of hopelessness and depravity in my soul.
And so, you know, we're edging into 2014 and I mean, I was having no fewer than
20 severe panic attacks every single day. Wow.
That's like one an hour. Yeah. And that didn't let up for months and months
and months. I'm in therapy. Nothing's working.
I was getting used to my new treatment protocol for MS and changed a lot of my diet and lifestyle.
And I had lost a ton of weight just because I wasn't eating because of the stress
and the trauma and the grief.
And that leads to this point in the story where by October of 2014,
late October, I was at home watching TV and I said to the Lord in a cursory
fashion, like, I can't do this anymore.
You got to do something. You got to heal me.
Yeah. And it wasn't profound.
It wasn't really, you know, this concerted moment of seeking the Lord.
I turned the TV off and prayed quickly and turned the TV back on.
And ever since I was a little boy, though, I had grown very familiar with the
voice of the Lord, that still, small, deep knowing. Yeah.
He didn't say, great, you know, you have been through enough.
He came to me with a question. The question was, what do you want me to do for you?
Wow. Like you said to the blind man. Mark 10. Yeah. To Bartimaeus.
And that's a huge part of my story.
And I knew at that point I had been set up because he knew what I wanted. He knew what I needed.
He does that. What he was doing is number one, not invalidating.
Because right there, I actually need to say this to folks, because right there
people people would say through their own lens of unresolved disappointment.
I knew, see, I knew God was an uncaring, hard, harsh God. And I'm saying,
no, no, no, no, no. He wasn't being hard and harsh.
He was actually being a father. What he was saying is, I see you and your vulnerability.
I see the pain. I know what you need. It's just that my greatest work is not just healing your body.
It's transforming you spirit, soul, and body so that you can walk in wholeness.
And so really that question, what do you want me to do for you,
was rhetorical in nature because
he was asking me, was I willing to take responsibility for my life?
In other words, was I willing to disrobe from the garments of false identities
of I am a victim of life, from the fear, the shame, the blame? name.
And so that moment, I knew I had an opportunity to say yes, because that's the
thing. I didn't have to say yes either. That's right.
But I sensed the yes. And in the way I knew how I said yes, nothing changed overnight.
And this is the point to even the meta narrative of this book.
Transformation doesn't happen in a day or overnight.
Transformation happens daily. And so that yes, that day of that question simply
cracked open the door to a journey that all of us, that I, am still on.
Transformation doesn't happen in a day.
It happens daily.
So that's the 30,000-foot view on the story, and we can go wherever you'd like, my friend.
It's remarkable. We have a couple of similarities in our story.
Where days after Mitch died, I developed a really raging case of shingles in
my right shoulder and just out of nowhere.
And that's the stress coming out of your body. And in your case, it was autoimmune.
And probably because it was extended stress over a decade or longer of your life. Oh, yeah, Lee.
You were just brutalized, right? And then it came out.
So talk about stress responses maybe and just for the people listening,
like wondering why their bodies are doing crazy things after they've been through
such hardship. Just touch on that for a second.
Well, you know, and I'm going to...
Not be probably as thorough as I need to be. And I'd love for you to just sort
of interject so we can kind of piece this together from a medical perspective.
But I think about this. So when our bodies are in stress, and we've already
established that 90, 95% of all illness stresses behind that.
When our bodies are in a chronic state of unrelenting fight or flight,
when the sympathetic nervous system is engaged and doesn't let up,
the parasympathetic just cannot not engage,
that does something.
That does something to our cells. That does something to the hypothalamus.
That does something to cortisol.
That does something to the vagus nerve. That does something to our gut-brain connection.
That does something to blood pressure. That does something to endocrine system and digestion.
So stress affects every system in the body.
And we know through scripture, for instance, Proverbs 1430 says that a calm
and undisturbed mind and heart, same Hebrew word, are the life and health of the body.
But envy, jealousy, and wrath, what are those negative emotions caused by stress,
caused by fear, are like rottenness of the bones.
So there's that connection between emotional and physical health.
We read all throughout Scripture, 3 John 2, beloved, I pray that you prosper
in all things and be in health in the same degree as your soul prospers.
So we see this connection between emotional and physical health.
And yeah, I mean, when the body is taxed constantly, it's bound to affect us.
I mean, in simple fashion, this is why people, you know, have headaches all
the time or face lethargy or I'm just exhausted.
Yeah. Beautiful. That's exactly right. Your thoughts become things.
I mean, the things that we go on. There we go. The amount of stress that we face.
All of these things, they show up in your body. And so, friend,
if you have been through a lot of hard things, you're going through something
hard and your body's reacting, that's because your body's doing what it's supposed to do.
You're telling your body that
you're sick in your mind, and your body's saying, yep, you're right, I am.
It's not crazy. You're not crazy. It's a natural response, and Chris is living it out.
Chris, one of the things I love the most about your book is you address this
idea of how you were seeking help, and you couldn't find it in self-help.
Just talk for a minute about self-help and what that is and what it's not.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, as we find ourselves in a culture of post-modernism, post-modern ethics.
Really throw gasoline on this flame called self-help.
In other words, look inside yourself to find your true self,
look inside yourself to find hope and healing.
But I like to say it this way. Imagine that we had a 16 ounce bottle of water,
like I have right here, a bottle of sparkling water, and it's a 16 ounce bottle.
And then maybe Lee, you have a five gallon bucket. Here's the point,
and this is as it relates to self-help.
You and I have different capacities, but not unlimited capacities.
And so let's even connect this to you. So if self-help says find yourself inside
yourself, fix yourself, but I have a stress response that is chronic and unrelenting,
where in the world am I going to find a solution that I really need to get me out of the mess?
In other words, if the problem is inside of me, how am I going to muster up
the energy and willpower to get myself out of that? Now, here's the thing.
When we muster up energy and exert willpower, it does put our body in a state
of stress. Now, not all stress is bad.
There's tolerable stress. There's good stress. There's toxic stress.
We're designed to handle a level of stress. It is to say, though,
when we are under chronic, unrelenting stress, who in the world can muster up
strength out of a state of chronic stress to fix themselves?
This is why the invitation, I believe, is to not look down and in, but up and out.
Where does our help come from? Our salvation.
Psalm 121 says, I look up, I look up.
Lift up my eyes. Yeah, and as Jesus' disciples told Bartimaeus in Mark chapter
10, take courage, get up, he's calling you.
We don't take courage in our own strength. Getting up is not something we do
because of our own might.
Whenever a solution or an opportunity is provided to us or the word of the Lord
comes to us, the empowerment to act on that word also comes.
That's right. But I also want to say this, like transformation is very practical also.
This isn't just Christian platitudes that all of a sudden fix things overnight.
This is training for transformation, as I say. This is putting daily things
into practice, which is what?
Time in the scriptures, spending time in a community of believers, therapy.
This is making practical choices for transformation.
Like when I wake up in the morning and, for instance, I'm coming out of like
a theta brainwave state and I'm just sort of murky.
I'm going to fill my mind with truth, not the traumas of the world,
which means my phone is not the first thing I'm going to look at.
I'm filling my mind. I'm setting my mind and keeping it set.
Self-help just doesn't offer this. Self-help says, get in the flow, try harder.
Find your truth. Yeah, find your truth inside yourself. But listen, your truth is a trap.
And so we have an opportunity to find help outside of ourselves.
And oftentimes, and this is sort of antithetical to the messaging of self-help,
For me and my story, the first step was surrender.
Yeah. But surrender wasn't giving up. It was giving into a process of confrontation
of my dysfunction that would lead to transformation and the renovation of my
heart, to use the language of Dallas Willard. Yeah.
I love how you wrote about the trap of self-creation.
That was a beautiful, incredibly helpful way to put it. I've told my podcast
listeners, they've heard me say it a million times, the only part of self-help
that you can do is to admit to yourself that you can't help yourself.
That's it. You've got to ask for help from the great physician because he's the one that can fix it.
You talked about, too, and I think this is really important.
I had a podcast guest recently who has written two New York Times bestsellers,
and one was about thinking and one was about feeling.
It really parsed them out into two separate things. And I told them,
I think you're making an operation out of it.
You got to smash them together. And you said it like this, thoughts and emotions
always work together. They always do. Talk about that for a second.
It's important to understand feelings. It's important to take care of your thoughts.
Those are really important ideas. That's right. But you cannot completely separate
them. So talk about that for a second, Chris. Yeah, I just don't think we can.
Thoughts and emotions so paul says this in second corinthians 10
he says take every thought captive now
this is an important distinction he doesn't say take every negative thought
captive he says take every thought captive and lead it to the obedience of christ
and because thoughts lead us to emotions emotions lead us to thoughts this is
this right this is the the both and of it,
i might wake up in the morning and just feel like crap and just feel anxious
or blah I didn't necessarily have an inciting thought,
but if I stay in that emotion and honor that emotion and say, hey, what's going on?
It might lead me to a deeper thought like, oh, I didn't process this yesterday
or I went to bed ruminating on this.
Proverbs 15, 15, I think the Amplified Classic does the best job really explaining this.
It says this, and I'm going to paraphrase it. It says, basically,
all the days, every day, all the days of the anxious are made evil by forebodings.
That means this, that the everyday lives of the already anxious people are worsened
by rumination. That's right.
Anxiety, there's the emotion, anxiety, and rumination, thought process.
Now, having said that, let's just kind of do the handshake. I just talked about
how emotions often have thoughts behind them.
But let's say I've got stinking thinking and I am just allowing myself to stay
in a state of rumination upon bitterness, unforgiveness, what didn't work, anger, whatever.
I'm going to feel that in my gut. I'm going to feel that in my nervous system.
I'm going to feel anger, sadness. sadness so yeah thoughts and emotions are
inextricably linked we cannot separate them.
That's right. It's beautifully put. I don't know if I did a decent job at explaining that.
You know, if you've got anything to button that up, bring it.
You did. And we talk about it all the time on this show. Yeah.
Sometimes it's helpful to have another person kind of say the same thing.
You and I, we got our nose down on a trail of something that's really important.
And it's that our great physician designed our minds to interface with him and
influence the wiring of our brain to optimize the function of our bodies.
And he did that so we could transform our minds and all of that.
And the back half of Romans 12, too, by the way, is so that we can test and
improve what God's will is, right? So we can live this life we're supposed to
live and we're called to.
And you brought it home in a way, as we start to try to put the gear down and
land this plane today, like you brought it home in a way where you said we are
transformed so that we can transform and help other people transform.
And I thought that was such a beautiful unpacking of Isaiah.
So talk about that for a second.
Because you're not, God doesn't heal you just so you can go on your merry way.
Like he's got a purpose for that.
Well, yeah. And this goes back to, if I can contextualize this,
I think this goes back to sort of the aim of post-modernity and post-modern ethics.
We are living right now, folks, whether or not you realize that we are in a
post-truth, post-Christian, post-modern era.
That's right. And so really the goal is what? Utopia, pleasure, hedonism.
So many of the self-help solutions, the angle is you're helping yourself.
Why? So you can live the good life.
Whatever that is, though. But we need an eternal perspective that is founded
upon a call to maturity when it relates to this.
Because if we don't have that mindset toward maturity and transformation in
terms of God's eternal purpose,
all we're doing through a book like mine is providing another set of self-help
strategies with Christian veneer. That's right.
That's exactly right. Yeah, and we see this in Isaiah 61.
In fact, Lee, every time I sign a card or a book, I always put Isaiah 61 underneath
the signature because it is emblematic of my life story. So check this out, and this is the point.
We are transformed, as you said, as I wrote, to transform. Why?
Because we are part of God's eternal purpose. And there is a stewardship responsibility
that all of us have because our stewardship of this life counts for the next one.
We have to maintain perspective of God's eternal purpose.
So as I see it this way, Isaiah 61 does this brilliantly. Basically,
he says, comfort all who mourn, give you beauty for ashes.
But then a few verses later, it talks about how they will rebuild ancient ruins.
They will restore former desolations. Who are they?
They are the same people who were restored just a couple of verses earlier.
We see this in the testimonies of the lives of people like Daniel and Joseph
and Esther throughout the scriptures. And again, folks, we need to maintain
perspective on God's eternal purpose.
Romans 8, 19 says that the whole of creation eagerly waits for the revealing of God's sons.
Now, sonship is not a gender specific term.
It's a positional term. There are men, as men and women, we are called to sonship,
which infers maturity. maturity.
So as it pertains to healing what
you can't erase, Paul says this in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 23.
He prays that our whole spirit, our whole soul, our whole body would be sanctified
for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 24 says, faithful is he who calls you to himself.
He's utterly trustworthy. He will do it. Why?
Because there's a call on all of our lives,
to be transformed, that we would be those who demonstrate God's purpose and
plan for us to others, that we having been transformed would be agents of transformation.
Healing what you can't erase includes us, but it's not fully about us, actually.
And this is the eternal purpose. And I'd say the differentiating factor between
the message that I'm presenting in the book and a lot of even some of the Christian self-help advice.
Because at the end of the day, if it's going to lead me to just me.
What is that? That's right. I feel more responsible to it in terms of...
Helping people move forward through life. Yeah.
That's amazing. This is one of those kind of tip of the iceberg conversations.
We couldn't cover the depth of what you've done here in a 20-hour long podcast.
And, friend, I'm just encouraging you, Christopher Cook's book,
Healing What You Can't Erase, is probably the best pastoral lay perspective
of how you use brain and science and faith and experience to transform your life.
It's one of the best books in that space I've ever read, Chris.
You just really have done a beautiful job and it's gonna help people so much.
Thank you, sir. I got good news. We have three copies of the book to give away.
Oh, is that right? Yeah, we got three. So we're going to give away three copies.
Send in your name and your mailing address to Lee at DrLeeWarren.com.
We're going to randomly select three listeners. We're going to give those books away.
And Chris, you just did an amazing job. I'd like to have you back on the show
after the book's been out a little while. I'd love to.
I want to hear some stories of how people are reaching out to you and sharing
what it's doing for them.
Well, you know, that invitation is open to you. You've got a standing invitation on my show, too.
I'm coming back. Let's talk about that for a second. You've got a show, Win Today.
Tell folks about your work and what you do and where they can find you.
Sure. Win Today with Christopher Cook is the bread and the butter of my work. It's my weekly podcast.
Lately, sometimes it's twice a week.
The show focuses on three things very specifically, mental health,
emotional health, and spiritual growth.
So every conversation is aimed at that.
My guests include incredible people like you, physicians, therapists,
scientists. scientists, not every guest is a believer.
I'm okay with that because I want to integrate science and faith.
And I want to say like, they're not in competition.
And so I've had some of the.
Coolest conversations with neuroscientists about how
um neuroplastic adaptation
happens and is visible on fmri data
um yeah and they might not have a grid for the lord at all but i'm going oh
i i can read the scriptures and go you are proving on an mri that's right what
i've been reading so i love those conversations that's the weekly show i am
um yeah you can find the show So everywhere podcasts are available.
My YouTube channel is available if you want to watch the show as well in video
format. But I'm easy to find everywhere.
Just Wynn Today Chris on YouTube, on social media.
It's all the same. So Wynn Today Chris is the place to find me on social media.
Wynntoday.tv is the website. But yeah.
Awesome. It's amazing. It's great content. I'll put the links in the show notes.
Thanks, Lee. The book is coming out.
You're going to hear this actually the day that the book comes out.
So next Tuesday, we're recording on Friday, but you're going to hear it on Tuesday.
Book's coming out. There'll be links everywhere and you got to have it.
Chris, just a pastoral word real quick, because somebody inevitably,
based on my audience demographic, somebody just got the news.
They just got the diagnosis.
They just got home from the funeral home. They just buried their baby.
Somebody's in the thick of it. So give us a little pastoral word on what next
for that person who's right in the middle of it. Yeah.
So before I give you any advice, I just want to honor what you've just walked
through. And I want to say I'm so sorry.
You might be listening to this and you are literally, as Dr.
Lee said, coming out of a funeral home or walking out of a devastating diagnosis
at the doctor office. us. And I am so sorry.
Like, please don't run away from the pain you're feeling.
Feel it. Please don't stuff it. Please, please, please don't stuff it.
Surround yourself with people who love you.
And even as I've been saying that transformation doesn't happen in a day,
it happens daily. I want to say the same thing to you.
You don't have to have the next five steps worked out today.
I know because of our proclivity to want control of outcomes and want to know what's coming up.
I know the temptation, but just be here today, my friend.
Be here today. Jesus said tomorrow is going to have its own set of stuff.
So just be here today. And I actually want to say this just in faith.
Psalm 20 says, may the Lord God of Jacob answer you in the day of trouble.
So even in Jesus' name right now, Father, good news in some way. Hope.
May hope come as the first dose for someone who really needs it today.
And the second thing I want to say to this is whatever you're facing,
especially if it's a grief, a loss, you never have to move on from that loss.
That's right. Meaning?
Don't you dare think that just because Jesus comes into your life and the Holy
Spirit fills your heart that he gives you amnesia about the devastation of your past or your present.
You don't have to move on, but there will be a day.
There will be a day where the invitation comes to you to move forward.
That's right. And moving forward and moving on are different experiences.
So my friend, listen. That's right.
Today you have a gaping open wound. And I just, I'm so sorry.
The day will come as you walk through the process of transformation that that open wound will close.
It will no longer be gushing pain and sorrow.
And what will remain will be a scar.
That's right. There are those of you today who are perhaps embarrassed by the
scar. The presence of the scar.
And I want to say to you today, there is no shame in the scar.
The scar tells a story of healing. That's right.
None of us will walk through this life unscathed.
But the promise of the Lord is that you, my friend, are more than a conqueror in all things.
And so walking through life with the presence of a scar is not indicative of
weakness or does not promote a false identity.
It says you are a human being who has experienced life in a fallen,
broken world awaiting redemption.
Scars tell a story. And so move not on, but move forward.
That day will come. The invitation will come to take courage,
to get up. Maybe right now you're in the middle of it.
And right now you need the people like Job's friends initially before they opened
their mouths and said a bunch of silly things.
They sat with him and they said nothing. Maybe you need those people.
And maybe right now it is staying down and caring for your soul and grieving.
Let the tears come. Let the tears come.
Grief is messy. It's unpredictable. Let it come. And allow people to come and
sit with you. There will come a day where you take courage, where you get up
and still bear those scars.
But guess what? It is for this.
That the testimony of your life will be marked by transformation and wholeness.
Transformation doesn't happen in a day. It happens daily.
So I bless you in Jesus' name. I bless you with hope, perseverance,
the steadfastness of spirit, and I am cheering you on.
Amen. My brother, praying for you and the success and the breadth of this book
and the message that it carries. It's going to save some lives.
It's going to redeem some lives and restore some lives and hearts.
And I'm proud of you, what you're doing. And we're praying for you, my friend. Thank you.
Thank you. What an honor, really. And folks, I just got to say this before we close this out.
Dr. Lee Warren is the real deal. We met, I think, last summer,
if I'm not mistaken. taken.
I just want to honor you before your tribe and say, thank you.
Yeah, you've added so much value to my life. And I just want to say to folks
joined with us today, you are in the hands of a brilliant man,
a man who carries the heart of God.
And I just want to honor you for that. So thank you for having me here today.
Thank you, my friend. We'll see you soon. And Lord willing, we'll do this again
very soon. Yes, sir. I cannot wait.
Thank you, brother. God bless you. What a great conversation.
Christopher Cook is always a fascinating conversation.
His book, Healing What You Can't Erase, I'm telling you, you need a copy of it.
If you've been through something hard, if you love somebody who's been through
something hard or going through something hard, Chris is pastoral,
he's compassionate, he's a brilliant thinker. and this is the perfect melding
of theology and therapy.
It's just wonderful. I'm telling you, the book is great. I've learned a lot from him personally.
I'm going to have him back on the show in a few weeks after the book's been
out and unpack some of the lessons, specific things from the book rather than just a big overview.
And if you'd like a copy, we have three copies from Waterbrook to give away.
Send me an email, lee at drleewarren.com.
Don't leave a comment on the website. Don't put it on YouTube.
Send me an email. Make it easy for me, okay? OK, Lee at Dr.
Lee Warren dot com and put your name, your mailing address and your zip code,
mailing address, name and zip code.
If you'd like to be entered into the random choosing of three copies of this
book, Chris's book, Healing What You Can't Erase.
I'm telling you, this is a powerful and helpful book, and I would love for you
to read it. Send me some feedback if you read it and you find it helpful.
Chris Cook, pray for him, pray for his ongoing battle with multiple sclerosis
and his continued healing after losing his mom and a lot of the things that he's been through.
Christopher is a great example of the submitted life to Christ and the great
work that you can do when you're transformed and willing to help other people
transform. I hope this was beneficial to you.
Loved my conversation with Chris, and I love his book even more,
and you're going to love it too. Everywhere books are sold, Healing What You
Can't Erase, available from Waterbrook, Penguin Random House today.
Go get it. Listen, you can't change your life until you change your mind.
And the good news is, my friend, even when you've been through something you
can't erase, you can't forget,
you still can heal and be transformed by the power of the great physician working
through your mind and your brain and the incredible science of neuroplasticity. You can change.
You can heal, even if you can't erase it. 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,
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And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,
every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60-plus countries
around the world. I'm Dr.
Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your
life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.
Music.