Self-Talk

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MP3 Audio (1.11 MB)

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Self-Talk

MP3 Audio (1.11 MB)
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How God can help you stop talking yourself into depression and anger.

Transcript

 

[Gary Petty] Do you ever talk to yourself? Of course you do. We all do it all the time. Have you ever been in a situation where you did something that didn't work out and you've said, "Boy was I stupid." And unfortunately much of the self-talk we do can be very negative - we put ourselves down, we see things in the negative light. And what we do is we actually feed anxiety, fear, frustration. Now, I want you to think about it for a minute. What if the next time you face a difficult situation, instead of negative self-talk, you replace that with, not what psychologist say, positive self-talk, but you replace it with a thought from God, something from the Scripture.

Let me give you an example. You find out you're going to get your pay cut. I mean many people are facing employment problems in today's economy. And so you find out that "Oh, I'm going to have to take a cut in pay." And that means what? And the first thing in your mind is, "Oh, how am I going to do that? How am I going to pay my electric bill? How am I going to tell my wife?" And all of this anxiety and you feed the anxiety through all this self-talk until finally you get home and you just collapse in depression because you don't know what you're going to do.

But what if you started that conversation with yourself with a thought from God? How about these words from Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount where He said, "Therefore, do not worry saying what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear for after all these things the Gentiles seek, for your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you" (Matthew 6:31-33).  Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, we can just sit around and let God handle everything. We have to do our part. We have to work. But think about how that conversation in your own mind changes if you start from that premise instead of the premise of, "I'm going to fail. This is horrible. My life's going to really go down in the tank."

So, what we need to do is spend more time in this Book, in the Bible, in the Scripture, taking these thoughts and making them our thoughts. And the next time you have a conversation with yourself and you're dealing with negative emotions or hatred or stress, start it with a thought from God and see where it takes you.

That's today's BT Daily. Join us again tomorrow.