Heavy, Deep & Real ministries

Four days later and my sabbatical is coming to an end. As I prepare to head back home to a full schedule I’m reflecting this morning on what God has shown me these past days.

Yesterday I blogged on taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I went through each word and its meaning. I’ve discovered since then that the work TAKE is the hardest one!

Sometimes our thoughts are so automatic that they actually override the prefrontal cortex of our brains – the command and control center – and we are deep into the negative or intrusive thoughts before we can even recognize it! I was praying about it last night when it just happened to me. Imagine – here I was just talking with God then an intrusive thought comes in and instead of recognizing it and TAKING control of it my brain shut down my frontal lobe and my amygdala hijacked me. It took me several minutes to realize it happened.

Dang!!

Been talking with God about how I need a Holy Spirit intervention to be able to recognize when that happens as soon as it happens. So, the lesson here is taking that thought captive is tough if you can’t even recognize the thought!! Gotta keep working on that one!

We talked in a blog I wrote a couple days ago about how Negative Self Talk (NST) is actually inner child abuse – what I call self-flagellation! I’ve worked on that quite a bit since writing that blog and have been doing pretty well. Then again I haven’t been around people or situations that trigger my negative self-talk so perhaps I’ve been working on it in a vacuum! The proof will be when I get home and start engaging in all the various ministries and work I have to do! I think I’ll be better though. How about you? Been working on your inner monologue?

One of my big problems is I can’t say no to people. There’s a lot of reasons why but I have a hard time telling people no (having boundaries) when their request is something that I can actually do. God has shown me that I have to work on that and protect my time a bit more than I do.

It’s amazing when you get real quiet time with God with no distractions. The things He will show you! But in our busy schedules we rarely get that quiet time. God has shown me that I need to do that daily if possible! Now the trick is how can I arrange my schedule in such a way that I actually do it! I have to be intentional about it – I think you should think about that as well. Get your quiet time with God!

There is more I’ve learned that is more private stuff which I have to try to put into practice when I get home. Please pray for me that I am able to manage the various competing thought processes in my pea brain so that I can be more than man God has created me to be! I need Jesus to be more and me to be less!

Thanks, as always, for engaging with me in these blogs! And thanks for putting up with my verbal processing via blogging these past few days. You all are a blessing to me!