Get Rid of the Stinkin' Thinkin'

Let's Talk About It!

Angie Clayton

Marti & Dublin

This is the 2nd episode of our new monthly Let’s Talk About It which will air once a month.

If you’re new here, welcome! I’d like to welcome Jessica Prabhaker, Samuel Shamaun and Kimberly Koland.

I’ve started Let’s Talk About It! once a month where we have a few of us dissecting a topic. Today’s episode is one of those.

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Do you ever get stuck in stinkin’ thinkin’…. You know what I’m talking about. Someone says something to you that sticks in your head… and not the good kind of something.

The next thing you know, you start to believe it because you ruminate on it.

It keeps coming to the forefront of your mind.

It starts to attack your identity.

Marti Darcangelo and Angie Clayton join me today as we dig deep into the topic Transforming our Minds.

Not only do we hash out how that appears in our own minds, but lead you to what to do about it.

Problems with solutions.

So why do we need to transform our minds?

Marti: Well, I can start with that because I spent quite a bit of my life not transforming my mind and not having the discipline to take a breath,

move my emotions aside, which didn’t help me at all. My emotions didn’t help me at all.

And focus for a minute on what the Lord’s plan was for me and what the Lord asked me to do, which is always successful,

before things came out of my mouth

before I started rolling in my mind unhealthy thoughts or freaking out, and then doing an unhealthy action from freaking out in my mind.

I believe that transforming my mind with the Lord Jesus is the biggest gift of a beautiful life that you can have.

If you don’t focus on that,

you don’t have God’s best.

So transforming my mind is one of the key parts to my life now.

Angie: I realized how much bad thinking I had going on about six years into chronic illness and my husband had to say, you are.

You need to stop it.

Because I projected everything out to the worst possible scenario every single time. I went to the doctor. Well, I’d go three times a week about.

So it was consuming me.

And he was right. And so I had to learn, Marti, just like you said,

I had to learn how to stop, take those thoughts captive.

We’re instructed to do that, but then what? We can’t stop there because there’s a scripture somewhere about how you sweep out the bad stuff, and if you don’t put something else in there,

you know, they come back with a million more. So, if I don’t replace those wrong thoughts with something right or something good, I don’t win. God doesn’t win, I don’t let him win.

Angie: You know, something else that made me think of Jan, is that a lot of time, one of the reasons I needed to transform also is

because I lived in a lot of guilt and shame.

When we let those things define us, and we really can do that without realizing that’s what we’re doing,

all of our thinking is wrong because everything goes through that filter of shame, of guilt, and it’s wrong. Those never come from God.

And so we have to learn how to resist those,

I call that my brain eating itself.

When that starts to happen, I get in the cycle of, “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have done this. I’m a terrible person.”

That needs to go.

Jan: And you can think of all of those different ways that we define ourselves,

that are not his way of defining us and seeing us,

to enter in and to cause those thoughts.

Marti: I was thinking about that when I was preparing for our conversation this morning about how easy it is for all of us, all of human race,

to live in our past and just take that shame and the guilt and the just, “why didn’t I do it differently” and “why did I do it that way?” And that doesn’t help at all.

And we have this beautiful scripture that the apostle Paul says,

And that takes an active choice in our brain.

I’m not going to think about the past. I’m not going to live in the past.

I’m straining forward to the outward calling that Christ has for me.

So that’s transformation.

You have to choose that in your heart. You have to choose it in your mind, and then you have to start practicing it.

Because if you don’t practice,

it won’t become normal for you to stop living in the past and move forward in the Lord’s calling.

For us, it takes a lot of practice to transform and renew your mind.

Angie: It does. It really does. And one of the things I found for myself and for some of the other women that I’ve worked with is that the history,

the past, when we look back, and the guilt and shame associated with that, those are often so deeply ingrained that you’re not even aware.

Okay, so that’s the very first thing that has to happen, is recognition of what is happening in your brain.

You can’t fix it if you don’t know it’s there.

Jan: I think that what you’re saying is we need to be intentional and we need to create habits that do that which Dr. Deulen last week was saying that creates almost like a lubrication in your mind to reset and to put you in that way.

But I think also,

Once we start refocusing our mind into the new,

we’re putting away the old, and we do the new. Sometimes that new is, like,

unsettling, maybe because you’re not really sure where you are and what’s happening.

But each time we step into something to be intentional about recognizing that new thing and how it feels and where we’re going it can become comfortable in our new selves.

Angie: And I don’t know about you guys, but I have needed other humans to point some of that out to me. Some was my friends. I spent some time in counseling because I just couldn’t get a handle on some of the past stuff like Marti, you’re talking about,

because you can’t heal until you till that soil up and get to the bottom of it, and it’s usually like an onion, you know, one bit at a time.

And so here’s the thing. I can’t ever think that I’ve got this mastered,

because every time I think I do, then something else comes up and I have to practice it again. I have to learn how to practice it again. But I heard someone say not too long ago that everyone’s a beginner at the beginning,

I mean, that’s so simple.

But if we’re talking about learning new habits, are we going to blow it? Yeah, we are.

Those are opportunities to catch those thoughts.

We have to look at them as opportunities rather than failures.

Marti: New pattern making, too. Like what Jan was saying is we have a way that our minds naturally process things, which is not healthy.

And in order to stop that toxic thinking and move forward in positive thinking,

it takes practice enough so that that becomes a pattern, but that becomes a healthy pattern.

And I was also thinking, how blessed are we to have every answer that we need to do this in God’s word?

It’s not like we’re blindly figuring this out.

We have beautiful promises in God’s scripture that help us and encourage us to live without ache, without angst, without regrets.

And I have a list of scripture that I wanted to make sure that before the podcast is over to give to our listeners so that they can go back into their Bible and see how much God loves them and is rooting for them and has every answer for them.

Angie: Zephaniah 3:17.

One of my favorite scriptures to add it. It’s the Lord singing over you. Can you imagine?

Can you imagine? The God of the universe is singing over us. That’s amazing.

Who are we to run, feeling guilty?

Marti: I love Zephaniah3.17,

because in the New King James Version, it says that God quiets us with his love.

And for someone who is constantly on that hamster wheel of I did it wrong, I did it wrong. How do I do it right when I know that the Lord quiets that because he loves me?

It helps me to get out of that stinking thinking and move forward in a better way.

Angie: Brings us back to peace. Right? Isn’t that what you’re saying,

ultimately, isn’t that what we want? What do we want? We want peace with God primarily in our lives, in our relationships.

The peace that passes understanding. I’ve experienced it. You guys have, too. I know you have.

When it doesn’t make any sense at all.

But you know what? I never experienced that when I was feeling guilty, when I was living in the future, when I was looking at the past. I’ve never have.

And so that’s why the scripture about don’t worry about tomorrow is so very important. We have to stay in today. We can’t go into the past or project into the future.

We have to stay in today. And isn’t that how we’re meant to live?

Marti: Angie, One of the scriptures that I have on my list is Psalm 119:50. And listen to this. This is the NLT version, which I love.

It says,

So that is God giving us peace.

Angie: I was just looking to see what it said in ESV. Sometimes that’s fun.

In 19:50. And ESV said,

This is my comfort in my affliction that your promise gives me life.

Jan:

And Angie Deulen had said this from her podcast last time, “so the more we focus on God, who went through whatever sufferings we have gone through and knows us intimately, the more we can create and connect with the space in our brain that can erase that sinking thinking.”

“And physically, it begins to heal our nervous system so that eventually the memory doesn’t control us anymore.”

I just love that whole thinking right here, like right there is that God spot.

So if we’re in that, if you pictured it maybe like, a couch where Jesus is sitting, ready to take you in.

That can’t be a spot where Satan enters, can it?

Angie: No, I don’t see how. He can’t. Yeah, we know what he can and can’t do.

He can’t plant thoughts.

He can’t read our minds.

If we’re giving him access we give him information about us, we’re giving that to him. We’re handing it to him. We need to not do that.

You probably have Romans 12:2.

That’s the first one that came to mind.

I looked up the word transformed, and you know what? That’s not instant. That is a process that is gradual and it’s gonna take time.

To the listeners, don’t give up if you have a victory one time and then blow it the next 10.

Keep going, keep trying.

Get a buddy to help you that you can truly, truly trust with all your hard things. And some of it is just digging in and getting busy.

Marti: And all of Romans 12 is really good to go over that whole chapter. It just tells us how to practically live in that transformative thinking.

Not just Romans 12, 2, which is a hugely beneficial scripture, but the whole chapter. It’s so good.

Jan: 2 Corinthians 10

Okay, why? That’s why we’re taking them captive, right?

Because we want our thoughts to be obedient to Jesus. We want to be obedient,

and we can’t do that if we’re mired, if we’re mucking around in garbage.

Jan: Again, it takes intentionality.

And it also takes a space.

Like you can’t be in the middle of whatever you’re doing to work on that, I mean, you have to be at some point in your day,

a place to recognize whatever is going on and asking God to reveal those things to you as well, by his Holy Spirit,

so that you can start processing that, asking him to help us process it and to have that. Once you’ve taken that little spot of time alone to get to there,

then that can be working on your mind when whatever else you’re doing, but you gotta have that initial right place where that’s quiet.

Angie: If you are a trauma survivor of any kind, any kind of abuse, childhood, marriage, whatever.

If you’re a survivor of abuse, you may not be able to do this by yourself.

You may need help, professional help. I did.

I found an amazing counselor. And he took me down. It was a hard, long journey. But you know what? I am not the same.

I’m not the same as I was. I feel healed from a whole bunch of stuff.

Marti: Amen. That is so wonderful to hear.

Angie: What do I have to do? I have to keep taking those thoughts captive. What’s the Philippians verse about?

Whatever is true. Whatever’s honorable.

Marti: Yeah, that’s Philippians 4:8.

Angie: Yeah, fix your thoughts.

Marti: I really like what Jan just said about creating a space for you to take a step back and choose to go in God’s direction.

Because time and time again, I have done this, and I’ve seen this happen in so many instances where we don’t take that time to sit back and say, huh,

God, how would you have me move forward?

How would you have me process what just happened to me?

How would you have me process how I’m reacting to just what happened to me?

And if we don’t do that,

we just rush into this reactionary thing where we saw. I mean, we’ve seen it since the beginning of time.

What happens when Adam and Eve, you know, eat the fruit?

God comes and says, “what happened?”

And Adam goes, “she did it.” And Eve goes, “he did it.” And that is the very first reaction that we have when we do something that’s just dumb.

But if we’re not transforming our mind and taking a step back and thinking about it, we’ll stay there.

I just want relief. And so I’m gonna overreact and do something bad and wreck my future,

wreck my relationships with people, wreck my job, wreck my marriage, you know, out of a gut reaction,

rather than, “wait, wait,what is God doing here?”

What scripture can renew my mind?

What do I need to focus on and learn and practice and re-pattern in my mind?

So before reacting, shut your mouth.

Take a few seconds to go, and then see what God has.

Jan: Because also, you have to ask yourself, how’s this working out for me? When you’re in the middle of all of it.

And you see a pattern going on. It’s like, how is this working out for you?

Marti: Yeah, it’s awful. Unless we really re-pattern our minds and really take to heart that God’s promises are good for us.

His way is way better than us reacting and having that emotional reaction. Oh, I just want to get rid of it. I cannot say enough about that.

Angie: I love what you’re saying and you’re talking about the difference between reacting and responding.

Reacting is your instant, your emotion, your guts, all of that stuff. And if it comes flying out of my mouth, oh man, I’m usually sorry.

But if I can do what you’re saying, step back from it,

breathe, think about it. And sometimes, you know, what depends on the situation of the person. It might take a minute, it might take a day, it might take a bit.

But I would rather have it take time than to spit out something that’s going to be harmful to them or to me or to anyone else.

And you know we’re talking about today, now, right? We talked about not projecting into the future.

We talked about not looking into the past. But what happens when someone does something bad to you? Today is what we’re talking about now.

Don’t do this about the past, don’t do this about the future.

But what do you do when something that would hurt you, especially if it demeans your character? Those are tough, right?

There is anger that is righteous and there’s anger that is self-righteous and those are very different.

When you’re in a react versus respond thinking and you’re going to wait to respond, then chances are good, maybe you won’t say anything at all.

And here’s what I used to tell my kids.

Does it need to be said?

Does it need to be said by you?

And does it need to be said right now?

Does it need to be said at all?

Those are good rules to live by.

Jan: Do you have instances that you can think of where you have changed your mind,

where you have transformed it from some situation?

Marti: I can tell you a story of when I was living in California. I had some people deeply hurt me, just deeply hurt me to the point that that’s all I thought about.

I just was so hurt and angry and I decided that I just couldn’t live that way anymore. So I wrote a letter to them.

I wrote a letter to myself.

I wrote a letter to God. I just poured it all out.

And my husband and I were on a trip.

So after I wrote the letters, I ripped them up, I put them in a plastic cup and it put water in the cup and swirled it around in the cup and dumped it into the trash.

Cause I couldn’t set it on fire, we were in a hotel and that would set off the alarm.

When I would start thinking, oh, I’m so hurt, I want to get, you know, like those very hurtful thoughts, I would stop and say,

“wait, those feelings are in the trash.”

You promised yourself that you weren’t going to dwell on that, that you were going to keep your eyes on the Lord.

And at first I was like reminding myself, keep your eyes on the Lord, Keep your eyes on the Lord, Keep your eyes on the Lord. Like I don’t know, probably 50 times a minute.

It was just like so often.

And eventually it got to where it was only once or twice a day and then once or twice a month. And now I come out of it years later going, oh Lord, you just taught me such a beautiful lesson.

Not only can I fix my thoughts on you,

you’ve put me in a position where I can actually pray for people and help other people to be able to be glorifying you in the process of healing.

So that is a circumstance that happened to me that really was life-changing.

Jan: And I think that goes back to pray for those who persecute you and use you.

And why does God say to do that? Because he knows that will transform your mind.

Marti: That’s right. But if you don’t, and it’s not natural.

If you’re focused just on yourself. How healing is it when you get out of yourself and you start praying for other people, you start caring about other people,

it instantly helps you.

The way that Lord has done this experience, forgiveness also.

Angie: Were you able to forgive then, Marti? At some point. It doesn’t always come right away.

Marti: Yeah.

Angie: Okay, I have a story.

But let me tell you something. This was so, so huge. It totally changed my life.

My husband And I, after 32 years of marriage were going in the toilet. I’m not kidding. We were. We’ve been believers for 25 years,

and we just. I don’t need to go into any of it. We both thought we were done.

And long story short, we went to the same counselor that helped me to heal so much. We went to see him, and he told us two things. Okay.

He said, Lay down your weapons.

In my case, that’s words.

Lay down your weapons and assume the best. Always assume the best.

This is applicable to so many things in life. Not only your spouse, but two things is what he told me.

Okay. So if I keep those two things in mind, whether it’s my husband or you or a situation or anything else, then I’m going into it in a healthy place.

If I’ve laid down my weapons and I’m assuming the best about you, then I’m going into it in a healthy mindset.

Marti: I can give you a final word because this says it better than I could ever say it is Colossians 1:10 to listen to this.

This is the Apostle Paul and his spiritual son, Timothy.

Angie: Sometimes I hear podcasts like these and I’m like, “oh, yeah, you’re right.”

And then it’s over. And I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to do now because you unearthed a whole bunch of stuff in me.

So two things.

Number one, find somebody. If you have somebody safe in your life, really truly safe, that you can talk to about this stuff, do it.

Friend, husband, whatever. Get a counselor if you need to. Okay? Because this stuff is so important.

Unless you figure this out, you’re also not going to be able to even figure this out unless you understand how much

God loves you. Unless you understand that He chose you. He loves you.

And so I’m going back to Zephaniah 3:17, which says, the Lord your God is in your midst, A mighty one who will save.

He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love.

He will exalt over you with loud singing.

So he’s rejoicing, he’s quieting us, and he’s exalting over us. We can’t forget that.

If you aren’t connected to my Substack,

do it, because it’s all in there, including the video and the audio as well.

And we want to hear from you,

from what kind of things are on your mind or even examples of things that you’ve been transformed with. So please share those with us, and I can share those with others as well.

I’ll leave you with these scriptures.

Psalm 19:7. the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

Psalm 119:50 This is my comfort in my affliction, for your word has given me life

Philippians 4:8 Finally brethren whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, just pure, love are of good report, if there is any viture and if there is anything praiseworthy- meditate on these things.

Col 1:9-14 “For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.””

Romans chapter 12 “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

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I’m pretty excited to share that my new book is at the publisher's right now!

This book was absolutely fun to write- full of comedy, cons, crime and Christ.

I know, I know, it’s past Christmas, but that shouldn’t stop you from having a fun read, right?

Till next time, keep talkin’ about Jesus!

Jan Johnson

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