Be-Your-Own-Coach

I don't remember if I've said this in a sermon

or not, but one of the things I put on

Elijahs list yesterday is about being your own coach. I

told him that if he will talk to himself like

a good coach would talk to an athlete that he

cared about and believed in, he would push himself. It's

not that you just accept anything from yourself, but you

push yourself in a way that leads to change, not paralysis.

And a good coach knows when you need to give

more effort versus when you're actually overthinking things. And a

good coach knows that too much correction is not a

good thing. And a good coach knows that to make

you doubt all of your movements is only going to

make you worse. So I'm into this thing of coaching

myself lately, and it's not the most spiritual sounding thing,

but I'm probably spending about thirty percent of my time

in that realm and seventy percent in the more unhealthy realm,

whereas before it was like ninety ten ninety unhealthy ten.

I have a very harsh inner critic level ten harsh.

It comes out in the way that I see others,

it comes out in the way that I see my life.

So my journey in life has been backwards toward coaching

myself in a constructive way and giving myself some props

every once in a while. It may surprise you to

know how little I usually like my own sermons. Sometimes

later I can appreciate them more. Sometimes in the moment,

I can appreciate them for what they are. Sometimes when

I'm preparing them, I enjoy what God has given me.

Sometimes I'm able to be thankful that I have the

gift to connect with people. But a lot of the

times I feel very disappointed in my delivery. I feel

nervous right now about all the songs that are going

out on the album as to whether they're any good

at all. And then I'll turn it on the next

time and think that this is the best worship since

you too, the Joshua Tree. And so I just I

vacillate probably between a lot of ego and a lot

of insecurity, And so the idea of coaching myself kind

of helps with both. It's like a good coach is

going to give confidence, but a good coach is also

going to put you in your place. But the coach

thing really works, you know, because and I said it,

a good coach who cared about and believed in the athlete.

That's really important. And so there are times where a

good coach will yell at you, and there are times

where I want to kind of yell at myself, you know,

about about my attitude and my my entitlement. But there

are also times where I want to say, you know it,

get up, shake off, let's go, let's go. And I

think the people who have the healthiest self talk, even

in psychobabble terminology, even if we don't have to put

the Joshua one to nine Bible Verse on it, the

healthiest people have learned the art of coaching themselves. And

you hear all kinds of things like be kinder to yourself,

be your own best friend. I guess to me that

feels a little frillly. But the coach thing works for

me because of my testosterone. It's like, well that I

can get behind, I can be my own coach, be

my own best friend, like take yourself out on it.

I don't know, coffee with yourself. I don't know, but

that's helped me a little bit lately. If I rewrote

crash the chatterbox. I probably wouldn't call it crashed the chatterbox.

I probably call it like, manage the chatterbox and negotiate

with the chatterbox so it doesn't blow your brains out,

because I realize how powerful that self talk is. And

I think I was writing it as a way therapeutically

to try to like, I'm going to crash this chatterbox.

And I say things in the book like it's not

a one time thing. But I think, even though it

was only a few years ago, I've come to realize

that there's more value and even just laughing at your

chatter sometimes and being like, listen to you right now,

so I'm learning more. Sometimes it's a little more like

parenting a crazy child. It's like you don't crash them,

you just kind of talk them down. Heart is more mind,

more mind because your heart, you know, and noone's in Christ,

is a new creation. You have a new nature. You

love God, and you've got you've got sin in your heart,

and you've got pride in your heart, and you've got

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Your

your life is playing out in your mind, and you're

experiencing your heart through your mind. You don't experience your

what's in your heart directly. It has the process through

your mind. So if the filter of your mind is

clogged up and wired in weird ways, then you're going

to assume you have a bad heart. But it's more

thinking patterns. And that's why repentance means what to change what.

You're right, you're half right. Take a guess no, no, no,

follow follow the logic. You asked, is it your heart

your mind? And I said it's your mind. And I said,

that's why repentance means to change change your mind. And

most people don't know that. They think repent means be sorry,

or they have the Old Testament view of repentance, which

is to change direction like military. It's a military term

turn around that has part to do with it, but

it means change your melanoia Greek means change change of

your mind mind. I feel like like physically yes, oh yes,

it's like okay, she said that's me? How manyone else?

I say that's me? So I want you to get

out of the that's me. This is my struggle in

really you're just describing like the human struggle for every

person and every believer, so you don't live with this

thing like well, I'm just messed up and screwed up.

Like if we could open up, get put a close

hanger in everybody's ear and pull out their thoughts right

now and parade it in front of the class y'all

would all hide from each other if we could get

the real thoughts, and you some of it would be

because like, well, there's a lot of lust that would

come out. There's a lot of lying people saying one

thing and presenting one thing, and it's not who they

are at all, So you wouldn't even know who each

other was. There's things they've been through that they've even

kind of buried that if you could see it for

what it is, you go, min, how are they even

doing as well as they are? And if you could

see how they talk to themselves and how they really

feel about themselves, it would shock you. So if nothing

else but to know that such as is common to all,

you know, that's a starting place for not going I'm crazy,

but going we're crazy, and we're trying to get this

mind of Christ's thing happening, and we're trying to do

it with a construct of our mind like we've got

we've got the new we've got the new software, but

our hardware is still slowing some stuff down, you know,

and so we feel like hypocrites. Then and then we

get a little spurt where we do much better and

we convince ourselves that we got our breakthrough, and then

it pulls you back down two feet deeper next time. Right,

And the daily discipline of your thought patterns is going

to get harder as you get older, because more stuff

is going to challenge the way you think. Everything you

think you know. So maybe if you get married, being

a wife will challenge some of those insecurities in unique ways.

If you have kids, being a parent serly will challenge

everything you thought you knew. Different seasons of life where

you're changing, so, you know, practice on the lion in

the bear because you haven't even seen Deliath yet. Hey,

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