Get Out of Your Head - The Antidote for Noise and Isolation

If I could use two words to describe our current society.

They would be noisy, isolated words may seem like opposites, but hear me out like never before and dated by the sounds and distractions of everyday life. At the same time were becoming more and more distanced from one another so how can we survive thanks for joining us for this edition of living only a Bible teacher for this international discipleship industry focused on helping Christians. This program will continue our series taught by our guest teacher. Those of you don't know is a best-selling author. The founder of in the series. Jenny's identifying seven toxic thoughts pollute our minds, and seven remedies that can stop in their tracks. For more insight into this important topic. Let me encourage you to get Jenny's booking which was the basis for the series, you can go to LivingontheEdge.org chipping Phillips joined Jenny no forward talk antidote for noise isolation noisy generation.

No generation has had to deal with more input than ours. So what is it look like to ship this spiral spiral throughout the book. The idea spiral is how we actually build out all the chapter so when you look at this chapter on stillness here and see the spiral it says discontent is this emotion I feel.

And then the thought that you had is also better if I stay distracted and were watching a spiral and emotion, hitting thought aside hitting a behavior and behavior. Having a relationship and those spirals are going through her mind all the time and what God wants to do as he wants to shift the spiral from a negative spiral that spiraling down. He wants us shifted to one is going out when it is going to enhance that interruption and that distraction that constantly has you pulling away from God. That distraction is our responsibility. We had a choice to change the way we think we have to choose it. I tell my kids this all the time and I think sometimes we need a parent telling us the same thing bossing us around us a little bit and so when we were thinking about a title.

I sent another thing that I want to happen is I want to be able to grab everybody by their shoulders and speak as clearly and boldly as I can do that because in the midst of a spiral that's been constant in your life you need some I just grab you by the shoulders and and say hey stop, you don't have to do this anymore and so that's can be a lot of how I speak to you, so bear with me in a really nice person and realize that I care about you and I want you to be free and so I want you to picture me right now grabbing you by the shoulders and saying to you.

Looking in the eyes and saying you have a choice. You'll have to spiral out. We can set up things that can limit our time on Instagram we can set up things that limit the noise in our lives that we have to choose it.

We have to choose it, and ultimately we have to choose the truth. The truth that is going to cut through the noise that is going to cut through the lies, because all that noise ambient random noise that noise is feeding us lies it's feeding us ideas about our words ideas about what we need to be happy ideas about our relationships is not like that noise is just subtle background noise elevator music that noise is telling us things, and most of what is telling us is lies. And so we have to see it that way. We've got to do a better job of surveying our lives noticing our inputs and noticing the things that we are believing because it doesn't my daughter, Kate. She's 18 and she is so zealous about this. She's better than me about this, she will take a social media Instagram everything off of her phone and leave it off unless she wants to share something I poster something Schultz will put it on initial scroll and see what her friends are up to, but she generally has it off of her phone and I think of it, you both.

My older kids are good at this. I think of it like old money in new money, you know, the idea of new money is that you just blow it all at once. And that's how our generation has been with our phones and with technology. We have just overdone it and I think this generation coming has watched their parents do that and they watch themselves in the temptation at business and they are aware, this is toxic and dangerous.

They are aware that they are filling their minds with lies and that is affecting their generation mother-daughter who wanted Instagram so badly was begging me for begging me for begging me for. Finally, I sent her an article I said I'm a tell you really clearly why I'm not getting this to you when she read the article about mental illness and Instagram in comparison. In this younger generation. She could have she didn't want it now. Years later she has it, but she was and is eager to have it when she realized that's the reason her friends are depressed. That's the reason her friends are anxious and we've got to be better surveyors of our life, but we also to be better fighters for the truth. All of that have a choice when we wake up in the morning. In fact, I told the story in the book about waking up in the morning and immediately spiraling out because I had the thought. I need to spend time with Jesus and instead I picked up my phone.

That is all of our realities every single morning. We always have a choice. And the reason it's urgent that we spent time with Jesus is not because there's some angel in heaven like checking off did she spend time with Jesus today. Did she sin, Jesus. Today it is because we are at war and we need the truth in our minds. First, we need to know who we are in Christ. We need to know who God is. We need to have truth so clearly before us that when we see other inputs coming our way on when were on slotted by all this noise we can sort out the lies in the truth when the truth is set before minds completely. Clearly this is you got is this is what is true then when a lot icons. We notice is a we know how to find it.

We know what's true.

That is why God wants time with us is not so that we know more and more and more about God that we can fight better than we can actually live the things that we know that God better. But we have to know them first. We can't just expect God to fight for us. When the main way he is fighting for us is to his word it says that his word is his two-edged sword that cuts through marrow that cuts your bone that it pierces our soul that there's nothing else that has the power to do that the word of God can can changes it says it will never return void that will always interests and change connection with God is the foundation for every other God-given tool were to talk about that we had to fight with.

We cannot know God. We cannot give God.

We cannot rest in God. We cannot find hope without time with him. That is how we get God we need stillness with God.

We don't just a mindfulness I now is that the lack I saw in the self-help world. I read a lot of those books and they were so interesting and fascinating, but I always wondered, like actually think this works when the answer and their book was how awesome we are like that goes apart pretty quickly, or when the answer is just be still and think about your thoughts on Mike. Well that's all sure if you don't have hope. Now that's why I love Jesus. That's why I preach the gospel. That's why don't shouldn't be found in the self-help section because my books are that much about self-help there about God help there about how he has helped us in the tools and the power that he's given us. Yes, to make our own choice, but with his power with his weapons with his truth.

Yes, there are methods in psychology that are truly helpful, but almost everyone that actually helpful is rooted somewhere in the Bible because God built our brains as he designed them. Our minds are actually physically built for silence the way God designed us. Your brain actually physiologically alters scientists have found that brains of the people who spend hours in prayer and meditation alone are different. Your imagination gets rewired when you relaxed society and depression actually decrease several studies that demonstrated that subjects who meditated for a short time showed increased alpha waves. The relaxed brain waves and decreased anxiety and depression. You guys this changes are brains. So yes what scientists discover about them happened to reflect the brilliance and power of that design. Think I built so you ready to mama bear you. I want you every single day.

I want to put your Bible by your bed and I wanted to be what you read before you grab your phone I want you to read it every single day because it matters that much because this is how we go to war.

This is how we fight better in the middle the night I told you about that season of doubt in the middle of the night. One thing I did was I bought this little light that could clip on my Bible and I put my Bible Bob bed and I put that little lie on it because of him. When we get my husband that I just had to start reading truth and so what I would do is I would go to a Psalm that I love that my kids and memorizing they were young at their school and I wanted to memorize as well as I would open it up to someone 39 and it talks about if you go down to the pit. If you go down she'll. He is there and if you send the heavens. He is there that there is nowhere you can go away from God and comforted me because my fear was in the middle of my doubt was that he wouldn't be, and death that he wouldn't be in the gray that it would just fade to black and and got that with truth and so fast forward, I'm in Uganda with some dear friends. And I'm sitting because I'm fixated on Scripture. I'm sitting in a devotional staff devotional listed for the hungry. Their entire team was in there all local Ugandans and South Sudanese refugees that that serve up there in northern Uganda and I'm sitting in his office. I mean way off the beaten path of life. I mean you were talking like took a little small little plane to get out there in a bus.

After that, we are just in the middle of nowhere. And guess what they open to you in the middle of my war with my mind.

He opens a Psalm 139 and he read specifically that part of the passage and guys I start weeping because I know that God is fighting for me.

How did he fight for me with his work.

He fought for me with his word.

That is how God is fighting for you right now that book that you are you feel burdened by that you think it's an obligation have to do that too much to do. That book is God fighting for you. Fighting for you to be more free fighting for you to know him more and his love for you more fighting for you to understand how much he is done and how much he wants to do for you that's that's what this isn't. So when we see that there is a relationship that's billed. It's not about us checking something off the listed site � my God is there.

I want to be with him. I want to know him. Psalm 8410 says for a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. Do we believe that, do we believe that time with God is better than any other place we could be is the only place I have ever felt true peace is with God, and especially peace in the midst of difficulty.

But even peace in the midst of a morning or anxious thoughts or worry y'all pulling out when I say get out of your head. I don't get out of your head into nothingness. I mean, get out of your head into a relationship with God and when we put God and fixate him in the center of our mind. Then there is this accountability because guess what God knows every thought we think before we think it psalmist says so.

We have a God that knows our thoughts already.

He's in with us and we have to realize that should bring some accountability. It should also bring some companionship right like we are not alone in our own thoughts.

God is with us and then he's not angry at us about them. He just desperately wants us to be free of the lies that we are choosing to believe some of you don't know this but God really likes you, like he likes you.

I think about my sign in the morning when he has been a brat the day before, but he comes down and he can ask for breakfast, and he's 11 years old and he's just hard and I love them so much but you know he's just gets in trouble and so he's coming down for breakfast and I turned the corner and you know I feel almost every time he turns 1/4 is how much I like him I like him like him I don't just let them I don't just he had to do something for me I don't I like and I think that's something we miss about God is that he likes us. Yes he's fighting for us. Yes, he loves us. Yes, he sent his son to die for us, but he also delights over us and I think is weak fixate on that. All the sudden we want to be with that God. We want to enjoy him. We want to experience his delight over us and we want to be with him.

My daughter is so great. And the reason she's so great is because she has walked through a season of doubt and realize that God is true to and I just want to tell you that this is like some great parenting skill set that got Kate where she is. This is her own faith journey that she had to go through with God and what Kate will do when she's going to a dark season is she won't watch Netflix. She won't listen to podcast. She will just turn on sermons and she lets these pastors. There's about a handful of them fight for her and she listens to them and she listens to truth because she knows if I watch Netflix right now I'm in a film I had with more lies and so the �17 you can imagine how convicted in a walk-in at 9 o'clock at night and she's in her bed and I think she's watching Netflix and I look and she's watching sermons.

This is how Kate is who she is, is because she will not settle to be stuck in bondage.

She allows people to fight for her. She allows God to fight for her because she puts truth in she doesn't just listen to lies all day long.

She knows the value of inputs. We have to realize the value of our inputs we to realize that whether or not were choosing them. They're coming for us in the form of lies all day every day and guys. This also applies to our kids.

We can fight for them. They're getting inputs every single day all day long.

My sweet 11-year-old boy goes to public school and you cannot believe he's such a talker. He comes home and tells me everything that he's heard that day and on like this is worse than X rated movie like this is fifth-grade public school.

My kid is being bullied on certain days.

I'm sure my kid is bullying on certain days that I'm just saying the inputs in his life are legit or dark and there legit and all of our kids are fighting more darkness than we can understand we want to fight for then how we fight for them.

Give them the same truth that we have to have we sit over then we read Scripture over them. Here's a morning Uber had had a bad day at school. I pulled him on my lap.

I said I want to tell you I've been praying for you and I know we talked what Jesus a lot tell you about grace again because grace has changed my life and I think it is the greatest gift to God's given us and started talking through it. I said today when you feel frustrated with people and you feel bullied and what you think about grace like I just want to think how much God like she and that that's enough in you. I think he was distracted, but combined form anyway. I mean that's what we gotta do we gotta fight for ourselves. You're listening to insightful words from Jimmy Fallon. She's our guest speaker for the series get out of your head. This is Chip Ingram you're listening to Living on the Edge and I pray that Jenny's words have encouraged you to protect your minds from the noise that were bombarded by day in and day out in our society for the rest of our time.

Jenny will explain why it's important that we find meaningful connections with others in the world is becoming increasingly isolated.

So here's Jenny, have you ever heard of something called mirror neurons.

So this is when you're sitting across from somebody else. A friend over coffee, let's say, and your mirror neurons are all firing and what that looks like is they share something with you and they have a very sad face and all the sudden you mirror their face. You are you are sad with the helmet as coming from something in your brain that is telling you physiologically to empathize with them and you guys were built for this God put that in us because he knew that we had to do life together that we couldn't just live on these isolated islands going through our junk and not connect with others. We are physically hardwired for connection. When I look back at those 18 months that I was struggling with doubt and I mean it really turn into a crisis of my faith. But where I gave into that attack and where I gave the enemy way too much power is that I was completely isolated, that I never brought anybody into it. I never said out loud the thoughts I was thinking. I never told my husband I never told my small group who I met with weekly. All I was in deep relationship with people I could've said it out loud I couldn't even text.

I have friends that they would be mad if I text him in the middle of the night when I was under attack. Evil is subtle and it comes for us and barely notice that evil loves to not be noticed wants to sneak up on us and wants to tell us things and and it doesn't want to be noticed and so for 18 months. I did notice it just sat there in it. But as we notice our thoughts and as we notice the lives that we then believing we need to say those things out loud as some of you are thinking. It's not like it's true will you don't know what to say.

As someone who lived in my brain for 18 months with the devil.

Tell me lies I didn't know what was true and what was life. All I knew was my thoughts were, you know all over the place and I was having a lot of discouraging doubtful thoughts but I didn't even think about it. I didn't think that this was attack and if second, I said it out loud Keynesian fall because the second I said out loud. I realize one how stupid it sounded that I really do believe in God. I don't believe the lots I don't and into. It was so clear was under spiritual attack. The second I said out loud, and the other thing that happened. If you read the book you know I had some pretty incredible friends begin to fight for me and they begin to fight for me, as if my life and faith depended on it. They did not take it lightly and you guys have to know how vulnerable it was for me for me to receive these dear friend Esther and and praying and fasting like not eating for 24 hours for me like that just felt so hard to receive but I was so desperate that I said okay and I need this. And so for 24 hours. All of us.

We fasted and we prayed and I look back and I don't know that I be free without those friends fighting for me without my small group fighting for me as I share with them when I was going through. I had a small little bitty army that fought for me.

My husband at the top of the list. Once he realized what was happening.

Oh my gosh he would wake up and pray for me he would pray before we go to sleep.

I mean we have to have those people that that love is that know is that we can call at any hour that we can tell anything to, we've got to have the people to fight for us. I remember when my friends from Austin. She confessed one time.

To me that she had been having feelings for another man and she told me that when the first time she confessed it that she never had feelings for him again. He was married and she was married and she said the second I said it out loud.

It was like it lost all its power guys. That is what were talking about were talking about an enemy who knows that if he has us alone in the dark, and he has us but if we bring people into it.

We bring and invite people to love Jesus and do it all us and we had invited the truth and the light into it and no longer are we alone with the devil we had people fighting for first John 17 says this, but if we walk in the light as he is in light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.

If we walk in the light of Christ is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

It's where life happens in the light. It happens in community happens in local churches that happens in small groups that happens in small Bible studies. This is what we have to do. But the truth is most of us even if we have some of those things in place, we are actually confessing our sin.

And that's a part of this is we have to say it when John's talking here about the light talking a confession he saying you bring things to light. Don't hide them in the dark and why we bring them to light.

First John 17 says because the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin, because he has power over the said and we experience that freedom. I believe my sin would've been forgiven if I never brought it into confession and into the light. But I don't believe that experience freedom on earth.

I don't believe I be reminded of that forgiveness. I don't believe I'd be reminded of the truth of God unless I brought people in and that's why we moved to the light, not because our salvation depends on it. But because our freedom on this earth depends on how it goes. We need people to fight for as many people that are fierce and that are warriors and they will just get their hands dirty like fine for us when we say the lies that are in her head self fight for us with the truth, but we also to be those friends and if any of you are wondering why you don't have those people in your life. There's a lot of reasons for that. There's a lot relationships are hard and we usually quit them as soon as they get hard and the best ones have been through a lot of parts we can't quit when it gets hard because that's actually building the depth and the maturity of the relationship there's a lot of reasons that we don't have deep close friendships, but we can always shift that in the best way to do it is to be that person first. So who can you fight for today. I want you to call a friend to text a friend and say let's go to coffee and I want you, rather than bringing your needs to the table. Even though some days that's obedience and vulnerable and what needs to happen. I want you to fight for them. I want you to tell them, make them listen to this. As I listened where to do this.

I'm doing this for you working to go to coffee for an hour and for an hour here and talk about your mind and your anxious thoughts and your worries.

Now let me tell you certain percentage of the time it will go well.

It won't heal tell a friend and LBJ won't know what to do with it.

Maybe they've never confessing themselves maybe have their own issues.

Who knows. And they'll backpedal and I'll change the subject, not your friend. Okay guess what, I know this is hard, but you go try again. You don't give up. Why because we cannot live without each other and as you fight for them there to see a new way to befriend a new way for freedom to unfold in their lives. And you know what's cool is when someone does that for you. You start to do it for them to go first Julio this program for noise and isolation which is from her series get out of your head you will join us in just a minute to share his application for this message.

Let me ask you a question what drives your thought life. Is it anxiety, loneliness, feeling like the world's out to get you. Perhaps you're really pessimistic or obsessed with being recognized when the series generally identifies seven common thoughts that are actually toxic to our lives and can be real or connection with God.

Don't live so we can break free from these dangerous mindsets by wielding the power God's already given us. If you wanted to learn more about this topic. Let me encourage you to get your Facebook get out of your head. For complete details, go to LivingontheEdge.org or call us a triple late.

333-6003 that's AAA 333-6003, or LivingontheEdge.org hapless nurse top special offers ships jointly in studio.

No trip to the end of your message today by talking about fighting for those people in our lives were important to us as you engage with people around the country who and what are people fighting for these challenging times as I travel around the United States and speaker churches college campuses pastors conferences, military personnel, there is one theme that just keeps coming out. It doesn't matter where I speak or who I'm with. It's the family, its communication and its relationships.

No here's the thing.

There's a lot that goes into building a strong family. Great communication and in doing that for different groups is certainly a challenge but that's why we're committed to continuing to teach the Bible regularly, practically and relevantly were committed to develop group resources and online courses that help people personally apply the truth to their life and were committed to having fun with families and creating tools that allow families to get together and enjoy one another and share their hearts. Each one of those has their place and here's what I would ask you, would you be willing to help us create these and then get them in the hands of families all across America.

It takes resources and am so grateful for those of you that pray and partner with us financially and I want to thank you first and second if you don't partner with us financially. Now, would you consider partnering financially in helping us do what families desperately need.

Thanks so much for praying about it and then doing whatever God chose you to do. Clerkship will as you prayerfully consider your role with this ministry.

I want to remind you that every gift is significant when you partner with Living on the Edge you multiply your efforts and resources in ways that only God can do to send a gift call us at AAA 333-6003 or go to LivingontheEdge.org that's AAA 333-6003, or LivingontheEdge.org hapless nurse top donate all the triplets gift of application. We promised as we close today's program.

Let's pause for a moment I heard Jenny as she wrapped up her teaching literally plea with us plea with us to say fight for that person care for that person. Interject your life. Ask him to go for coffee text in the day, give him a call today.

Who is that person that you know but needs a friend or who is that person that you know you had a relationship but you both got busy. You both got sidetracked and you really need to be together as she was speaking. I just thought of how easy it is to let work or distractions or discouragement or binging on a Netflix series or to fill our lives with so many other things. When what I heard.

And what's so true is we need each other. For me personally, I've had to structure that in my life. You know love to myself. I love to work you know of good for grown kids and got 12 grandkids. I can end up doing a lot of really good things. I can feel responsible. I do this I do that right, but I need some people in my life that are just for me. A couple friends like that, and sometimes they initiate and in more recent times I've initiated. I had one friend who was a friend of friends. I mean he would text me at 6 AM and say let's get coffee because I could tell man you were sort of funky and you really need to sit down and talk to someone having this is what he told me he was a quarterback at Boise years ago and said come on bro, let's get together and that you're working too much, let's go play golf and other times it would be and I'm so sorry.

I know you had to bury that guy that died early in counsel's family. You must be really struggling. All I want you to know was who is that person in your life and are you that person in someone else's life. What I heard Jenny saying is this is more than I'm in a Bible study or I meet with some people now and then or have some light conversation. This is about getting connected from the hard being real, being honest, speaking the truth in love, bearing one another's burdens. Proverbs 1320 I shared over and over with my kids growing up. He who dwells with Wiseman will be wise, but the companion of a fool will suffer harm if you really want to know what your life is going to look like in 3 to 5 to 7 years all I have to ask you is show me your friends all show you your future and sometimes our friends end up being ones we just play with. Or sometimes the ones we just work with and evolve things that you need to make sure you do is for those of us that are married we need to make sure that we're making deep friendship. A big part of the connection that means you go on dates. That means you take walks in your my wife to said no we haven't read out loud together in a long time.

Why don't we do that but we just started working out together a couple times a week and and I'm you know I'm on my own doing my thing and she's on her own doing her thing you know out of all the last few years of all this isolation, we decided what we do this together is been fun.

It's been great.

Let me ask you who needs a text from you today. Who needs a call that says this week, not later, not someday for you to get coffee or dinner or lunch. Okay you ready go connect with someone Bill Lovett and you and me need great word trip verdicts as we close, I want you to know that as a staff we ask the Lord to help you take whatever your next step is there's a way we can help. We love to do that would be give us a call at AAA 333-6003 or connect with the soap LivingontheEdge.org while you're there, take a moment to look through our resources on a variety of topics, many of them absolutely free to list on this site.

Thanks for listening. This vision of living