Stretched Thin Part 4 | Can Self-Talk Impact Your Mental Health? with Chris Schlotterbeck

You can have all of me

Every single little piece

You can have it all

Welcome to Hub City Vineyard.

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If at any point during this message

you feel called to make a change in your life,

text change me to 970-00.

Thank you and enjoy the message.

Alright, well thank you everyone.

Your prayers would be appreciated.

The one thing that kind of I'm dreading

is a 17 hour plane flight.

If you know anything about me,

I'm rather active and busy.

So keeping myself occupied for 17 hours,

I will figure it out I'm sure.

But I woke up yesterday morning

frantic thinking, wow that's a long way to go.

So we're thankful you're here,

we're thankful you're joining us online.

I want to start this morning with a simple question.

What do you say to yourself

when you talk to yourself?

Now don't pretend like you don't do it,

because everyone does.

So some of you are thinking there,

I don't talk to myself, yeah right, sure you don't.

What do you say to yourself

when you talk to yourself?

Now please understand, I'm not talking about

the normal everyday stuff,

like don't forget to call Pam,

or don't forget to pack your passport,

or you will not get on a plane to go to Kenya.

I'm talking about the ongoing self-talk.

The stuff you say to yourself

over and over and over again in your mind.

What do you say to yourself

when you talk to yourself?

Now if you're like a lot of people,

unfortunately you get stuck in what

some experts call a negative loop.

You continue to think about things

that are not helpful and are often harmful.

For example, if you're driving in traffic

and you're going down the interstate,

for many of us we're not thinking,

God bless all these amazing drivers

that know how to drive a car.

If you're anything like me, you're thinking,

who taught you to drive?

There is a slow lane and a fast lane.

In the morning when you wake up,

if you're like many people, you might be thinking,

I've got a lot to accomplish today.

And then at the end of the day you think,

where did the day go?

I didn't get anything done.

When it comes to money,

so many people are full of negative self-talk.

I'm always going to be in debt.

I'll never have enough.

When it comes to relationships,

you may think, I can't trust anyone.

No one wants to be with me.

When you do something wrong,

if you're like so many people,

you'll say something that's derogatory toward yourself.

I'm so stupid.

Why do I always make that choice?

And you can see the negative loop,

it just goes on and on and on.

So reflect on,

what do you say when you talk to yourself?

And the reason I ask this question is because

what you say to yourself matters more than you think.

See, the Bible tells us in the book of Proverbs,

chapter four, verse 23,

guard your heart above all else,

for it determines the course of your life.

In the Good News translation,

the words read this way,

be careful how you think,

because your life is shaped by your thoughts.

Be careful how you think,

because what you think shapes your life.

Now psychologists would call this the law of cognition,

and essentially what the law of cognition teaches

is what you think impacts what you believe,

how you feel,

and it impacts what you do.

We've been saying for weeks now that your life

is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts,

because how you think, right,

that shapes what happens in your life.

Dr. Paul David Tripp, an author and pastor,

said this in his devotional New Morning Mercies,

no one is more influential in your life than you are

because no one talks to you more than you do.

It's a fact that you and I

are in an endless conversation with ourselves, right?

Powerful words that many of us realize,

daily we are talking to ourselves,

or I am talking myself,

into living a life that we hate.

And today I want to conclude our mental health series

Stretched Thin,

and so far over the course of April,

we've discussed lies about mental health

that the church believes.

We too, we looked at anxiety and worry.

Last week we dealt with depression,

and this morning we're going to be focusing

on silencing your negativity.

Now please understand, we've heard from people

time and time again how transformational this series has been.

Listen, you can go to our YouTube channel,

you can share it with family, you can share it with friends.

It's a great way to encourage others.

But to kick it off by a show of hands,

how many of you would agree that unfortunately

the world seems to be becoming more and more negative?

How many of you would agree with that?

I would say almost 90% of the people.

Chronic negativity, we could say,

is becoming an epidemic that's poisoning people's

mental health every single day.

And we must realize this isn't just a practical problem.

At the very root in many ways, it's a spiritual problem.

And today I simply want to give you a couple

foundational thoughts that I believe you'll come back to

again and again and again and again

as you walk through this thing called life

so that you can silence your negativity.

So let's open in prayer this morning.

Holy Spirit come.

We're just thankful for the life change,

we're thankful for the outlook change,

we're just thankful for all that you're doing in our midst.

God, open our ears, our minds, and our hearts,

more importantly, to receive you this truth this morning.

That each and every person here watching online

is here by divine appointment,

scheduled to meet with you.

Change us, God, in Jesus' name, amen.

So I want you to realize the incredible truth

that your thoughts have incredible power.

What happens in your mind has incredible power,

but there's good news to that.

Our first thought this morning, we have power over our minds.

Yes, your thoughts are incredibly powerful.

Your life is always moving in the direction

of your strongest thoughts, but the good news,

you don't have to be a victim to your thoughts.

You don't have to use your thoughts as an excuse

and as a reason, but by the power of God,

you can actually choose what you think about.

And what you think about determines how you live.

Yes, your thoughts are incredibly powerful,

but you have power over your thoughts.

In fact, it was Paul who wrote these words in Romans

chapter eight, verse five.

Those who are dominated by the sinful nature

think about sinful things.

And I just wanna pause right there for a second.

What did he mean by that?

Paul is essentially saying those who live according

to their sinful nature, who have their minds set

on their old man, their old desires, right?

And you say, well, Chris, what's that look like?

Once over needs, right?

People pleasing rather than living with a purpose.

Always focused on me and what I'm gonna get out of it, right?

That is the old man.

That's the sinful nature.

And then Paul goes on to say, but those who are controlled

by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.

So if you find yourself struggling,

if you're here this morning and you're constantly feeling

depressed and broken, if you find yourself discouraged,

overwhelmed, if you're bombarded with this state

of negativity, could it be that your mind is set

on the things of this world instead of the things of God?

Because when you set your mind on the things of God

and on the things of the Spirit, we find life and peace

and joy and happiness.

And friends, it's very important that we realize

negativity is not only hurting you, but your family,

your relationships, your marriage, your values,

your relationship with Jesus, the direction of your life,

your outlook, and dare I say the list goes on and on and on,

which leads us to our next thought.

See, humanity leans towards that which is negative.

Why is negativity so toxic?

Well, at its roots, we need to understand that we have

what is called a negativity bias.

And what that means is we're biased or we lean toward

that which is negative.

Neuroscience actually shows all of us that negative events

imprint on our brains more quickly and linger longer

than positive ones.

Negative events like something bad happened at work

or at school, you had a tragic accident, an unfortunate outcome

like a health issue hits you, right?

Those type of events stick in our brains longer

than positive ones.

And this can be proven with simple examples

from our everyday life.

Okay, a little bit of audience participation here.

What do you think spreads faster on social media?

Something positive or something negative?

Very true.

The answer is always something negative.

When any news app, which stories get more clicks,

negative or positive?

Negative.

The answer is negative.

News agencies will tell you if it bleeds, it leads.

Personally, if you have a presentation coming up

and you're really nervous about sharing it, right,

you do a great job afterwards, five people say,

wow, that was amazing, you crushed it.

I love what you said, it was powerful.

Five people loved it.

One person makes a negative comment.

And think about this, I present weekly.

At the end of the day, are you thinking about the five positive

or the one negative?

The one negative.

It just is in your brain and you're trying to figure out

what did I say, what did I do, why was that person frustrated?

And now you can see over time, unfortunately,

is chronic negativity.

It's all throughout our culture and we're bombarded with it

every single day and it sends our brains into a constant state

of flight or fight.

And for our brains, that's how we're wired.

And this isn't initially a bad thing

because in a stressful situation, God designed our brains

to release cortisol into our blood system.

That's a good thing because in a stressful situation,

it makes us more alert, it makes us more focused,

it makes us ready to deal with the problem that was at hand.

That's good until it's not.

When we become bombarded with chronic negativity,

then we get stuck in an ongoing negative loop.

We always feel like there's danger.

Danger.

Right?

And when we feel this threat, notice what Paul says

in verses six through seven of Romans eight.

Those who are dominated by the sinful nature

think about sinful things.

Those who are controlled by the Spirit

think about things that please the Spirit.

So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death.

Chronic negativity leads to death.

But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.

For the sinful nature, the negativity is always hostile to God.

And see, what happens is when all this negativity

is bombarding us on social media,

when we're hanging around with friends that are negative, right?

When we're saying to ourselves, we're no good,

we're never gonna live up.

When we read the news or hear the news, it's always negative.

What are we gonna lean towards?

We're gonna focus on the negative,

and we're actually creating neural pathways in our brain of negativity.

We've been talking about this a lot, right?

What you think about is literally imprinted in your brain.

And when you think of that thought once, it's easier to think it again.

And when you focus on the negative, what are you gonna think about?

The negative.

When you hang around negative people, what are you gonna join in with saying?

Criticism, judgment, right?

When you're hanging around one news station and it's always negative,

you're gonna judge the other side.

Negativity becomes a habit, dare I say.

We have a habit of negativity that the American culture lives in.

If things are gonna be bad, they're only gonna get worse.

Don't trust anyone, everyone's out to get you.

All Christians are hypocrites, and this life sucks, and it's only getting worse.

We laugh, but we say it.

When mental health is bad, right?

And we're focusing on the negative, guess what?

You're never gonna be happy.

No one's ever gonna please you, right?

Nothing in life really matters.

I'm always gonna be stuck here.

And very literally, negativity becomes your default habit.

I mean, think about it.

The mind governed by the sinful nature is what?

Death.

The news we consume.

Quite often death.

The shows we watch.

Death.

The lyrics to the music we play over and over and over and over again.

Well, Chris, it's only classic rock.

Death.

The social media that we hold on to, it just makes us feel jealous, angry, and less than.

The people we hang around with, right?

All of these things begin to direct our life.

Your thoughts have incredible power over the direction of your life.

But the good news is you have incredible power over where your thoughts are taking you.

And what I want to do is now try to help you identify where you're most prone to be negative.

So we're all gonna take a second, look in the mirror, and determine out of four different areas

which area I am most negatively towards.

Even for myself, in preparing for this series over the last several weeks,

I've located this specific area in my own life, and through reading the Bible, meditating, and praying,

God has been renewing my mind and leading me towards progress.

It's my prayer that you will identify an area, one, everyone say one,

out of the four, okay, because even though some of you have all four,

if you have all four, you can just leave.

I'm just kidding.

I want you to identify one because if you try to do all four, guess what?

You won't be successful.

But if you identify one area, what can happen?

Change can happen, which leads us to our next thought, the four categories of negativity.

Now some of you are thinking, Chris, why is that humanity is so negative?

Well, Jeremiah 17, nine kind of sums it up.

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, desperately wicked.

Who really knows how bad it is?

Remember, we are all born into a sinful world with a sinful nature, right?

And our natural lean is toward what? Sin, right?

That negativity.

And the best way to battle this lean is to identify the struggle, name the issue,

and according to the experts, there's four big ones.

And as I define them for you, I want you to put your finger on one.

And as we work through the rest of the talk, I'm believing God's going to give you tools

to battle against that negativity.

Now the first one's called relational cynicism.

Relational cynicism.

And cynicism is defined as general distrust of people and motives.

What is it?

I won't.

I can't trust people.

They're going to take advantage of me.

Everyone is out for themselves.

All these people want their own way.

No matter what I do, they're looking out for their own interests.

Nobody's really generous.

Nobody's benevolent.

You can't trust anyone.

Now, on a side note, according to the experts,

this cynicism is generally a reflection of how you feel about yourself.

See, I hate to say it, but when you distrust the motives of others,

according to psychologists, this isn't according to Chris,

it often reveals that you don't really like your own motives.

Okay, but I'm going to let Charlie preach on that one.

I'm going to stay positive.

Okay?

Relational cynicism.

And for some of you, that's you.

That's your number one.

You might say, Chris, I don't trust anyone.

I believe that people are out for themselves.

I don't have a good view of our society right now.

That's where I'm at.

I'm relational and cynical.

Okay, keep that in your mind.

Now, the second category is called negative filtering.

Negative filtering is simply defined as seeing what's wrong.

And all it means is you find the worst possible thing to point out to someone.

It's overlooking what's good, right?

It's overlooking what's right, and it's pointing out what's wrong.

Chris, that one hair is just a little out of place.

Could you mix in a brush?

It could be assuming the worst possible outcome, right?

The kids are running late, and immediately you think,

oh, I hope they're not in an accident.

Even though 12 times before when they were late,

they were never in an accident, right?

You get a text from a friend, right, that doesn't respond.

As you send it, you get nothing back, and you think they're upset with me, right?

It's finding what's wrong instead of looking for what's right.

I mean, heck, you can go on vacation,

and you walk into your vacation rental and find what's wrong rather than what's right.

You can walk into a restaurant, and just by the server greeting you,

you can immediately think, I don't want to eat here.

You meet a person, and immediately your mind goes to, what's wrong with them?

You do that a lot in here.

What's wrong with that dude up front?

Which brings me to the next one, you go to church.

Praise God! I know how to fix that church.

It's negative filtering, finding what's wrong and seeing what's right.

For some of you, that's it. You're like, yep, that's me.

Number three, absolute thinking.

It can be defined as all or nothing.

It's the polarizing thoughts, kind of like black or white outlook on life.

If a man hurts you, all men are bad.

If a woman lies to you, all women are liars.

If a Republican says something wrong, all Republicans are terrible.

If a Democrat makes a decision, I knew it.

It's polarizing politics. We live in the middle of it.

If you make a mistake, I'm just stupid.

If you disagree with someone about an issue, you write them off.

You just write them off.

Think about our world that we live in.

This type of thinking is rampant in our culture.

No one can get past it.

Well, I'm right, they're wrong.

That's absolute thinking.

And some of you, you're so there, you can't even see it.

Just being honest with you, you're an arrogant jerk because you always think you're right.

And just because you're right doesn't make you righteous.

But that's another sermon for another later day.

Church, it doesn't give you the right to judge others.

It doesn't give you the right to point out the wrongs.

Jesus challenges us to put others first and to listen and to serve.

And the final one is blaming.

Blaming is simply defined as believing you're always the victim.

It's mom and dad's fault. It's my brother's fault. It's my sister's fault.

The reason you are where you are is because someone else did something to you.

They took your toy.

They stole your date for prom.

I didn't get that chance. I didn't get that promotion.

And it leaves you feel like you don't have any control.

It's someone else's fault.

You're just a victim in this life, in the circumstances,

and there's no way you're ever going to get ahead.

You're going to be successful. The whole world stacked against you.

And that raises a simple question.

When you find yourself constantly jealous or critical or discontent or assuming the worst

or your heart on other people and negative about other people

or your heart on yourself, can you change?

Can you shift from chronically thinking negatively

to a life that's full of faith and reflects the heart and character of God?

Can you change?

The answer is yes, you can.

But it's not easy. It's not easy.

Which leads us to our final thoughts. With God's power, change is possible.

And notice that in our fourth thought, Chris added, with God's power, change is possible.

It's got to be God's power first.

In Corinthians 10 says it this way, we are human, but we don't wage war as humans do.

We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons,

to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.

That's all the pretension that's going on in your brain.

We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.

We capture the rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.

So you've got to capture the negativity and put it in line with truth.

Now, in preparing for this talk, I saw a study on a TED talk this week.

The TED talk was called A Simple Trick to Improve Positive Thinking.

And I want to share with you what the psychologist did.

So the psychologist, they introduced an imaginary, again, it's a made up new surgical procedure.

They took two different groups of people and they presented the same procedure

with different odds of success versus failure to see if they thought the surgery was good or bad.

The first group, they went to and they said, there's a 70% chance of success in this surgery.

The other group, they went to and said, there's a 30% chance of failure.

Same odds, just a different way of presenting it.

So that's the first group.

If there's a 70% chance that this surgery is going to be successful,

is this a good procedure or a bad procedure?

The first group responded by majority, this is a good procedure.

To those on the other side, they presented the same thing.

There's a 30% chance of failure and they asked them the same question, is it good or bad?

When they presented the 30% chance of failure with that group, they said it's a bad procedure.

No one should get that surgery.

Now you might expect that, right?

Then they wanted to determine, can you change?

Can you switch or flip the narrative?

They went to the first group and they said, we're glad you think this is a good surgery,

but let me give you the other side.

There's also a 30% chance of failure.

Knowing that, do you still think it's good?

The majority who first said it was good when hearing about the negativity, guess what they did?

They switched.

They said, this is not a good surgery, people shouldn't do it.

They flipped the script.

And then when they went to the other group that was already negative,

they said, we know that's a 30% chance of failure.

What do you think about it this way?

There's a 70% chance that this surgery is going to save your life.

Do you think their chance, their stance changed?

Nope, they remained negative.

Those who said it was bad, even after the switch, also said it was bad.

What does this prove to us?

You can change your perspective, right?

It's really easy to change your perspective from good to bad.

It's really hard to change from bad to good.

You might need a little supernatural help from God and a little intentional work on your end.

And Paul says it this way in Romans 15.

I pray that God, the source of hope will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trusted him.

Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And see, this is really, really important because your thoughts are more powerful than you can imagine.

And you have more power over your thoughts than you think.

How do you do it?

Well, if you really want to work on your negativity, there's steps to change.

And what we're going to do is we're going to look at one of the most powerful illustrations of how the mind can change,

seen through the life of David recorded in the Old Testament.

And he shows us what to do when we're hit or blindsided by an avalanche of negativity,

which we are blindsided with every single day.

We're going to be in 1 Samuel chapter 30.

1 Samuel 30 · chapter mention

Let me give you a little background, a little context.

It was a bad day.

In fact, it was worse than you could have possibly imagined.

If you think you had a bad week, David's day was much, much worse.

Okay, which leads to our action steps.

Silencing negativity. The first is you got to go to God.

1 Samuel 30, verses 1 through 5.

1 Samuel 30:1–5

Listen to what happened to David and his men.

Three days later, when David and his men arrived home at their town of Ziklag,

David and his men had been out fighting wars, defeating the enemy.

They found that the Amalekites had raided into the Negev and they had crushed Ziklag,

which was their hometown, and burned it to the ground.

They carried off the women and children and everyone else, but without killing anyone.

When David and his men saw the ruins and realized what had happened to their families,

they wept until they could weep no more.

David was now in great danger because all his men were very bitter about losing their sons and daughters,

and they began to talk of stoning him.

That, my friends, is a bad day.

But here's the reality.

Some of you feel that way right now.

You're hurting inside so deeply and struggling with so much pain and anxiety and fear

that you literally want to weep out loud.

Your heart is weak.

You're overwhelmed.

And David, understandably, was greatly stressed out

because now the men, his men, who would go with him anywhere, were talking about stoning him

because they were bitter in spirit because they lost their families, they lost their homes.

And in the middle of this worst and lowest moment, the Bible tells us this in verse 6,

but David found strength in the Lord his God.

In the middle of an avalanche of negativity and doubt and frustration and strength,

he found strength in the Lord his God.

And for some of you, it's time to find some strength.

But hear me out, church, not in your own power, not in your own positive thinking,

but in the life-changing power and presence of God.

Because we're so quick to get a self-help book, we're so quick to quote a couple references,

but we walk away from the presence of God, and that's where change happens.

He found strength in the Lord.

Now, I don't typically do this, but I like the way the New King James Version translates this verse.

In the middle of his darkest moment, in the New King James Version, it says,

David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.

He strengthened himself.

And some of you that are living in a world of chronic negativity,

it's time for you to learn to encourage yourself in the Lord.

Okay, now notice, what did David say?

What did David say to himself?

Well, the answer is we don't really know because the Bible doesn't tell us.

But we do know what he said other times,

and it's very likely what he said at other times is similar to what he said to himself,

which leads us to our next step.

So we go to God to find strength, and then we meditate on and speak out Scripture.

Psalm 103, verse 1, David was talking to himself.

Psalms 103:1

He was encouraging himself in the Lord, and he says,

Let all that I am praise the Lord. With my whole heart I will praise his holy name.

Now, please understand, David is not saying here, greater you, Lord.

That's not what he's saying.

He's not saying, God, you're great and greatly to be praised.

David is saying, Hey, David, hey, heart, hey, mind, hey, spirit, wake up.

Wake up and praise the Lord.

He is literally worshiping God, but he's telling himself to get up and do it.

He's speaking to himself. And then he says this,

Let all that I am praise the Lord.

May I never forget the good things he does for me.

He forgives all my sins and heals my diseases.

He redeems me from death, crowns me with love and tender mercies.

He fills my life with good things.

My youth is renewed like the eagles.

See, he is literally saying to himself,

David, remember, God anointed you with his king.

He chose you. He set you apart.

He delivered you from a lion and a bear.

He gave you the faith to stand up to Goliath.

David, he never leaves you.

He never forsakes you.

Remember, he protected you from the attacks of Saul and the spears of Saul.

He encourages himself in the Lord.

And then in verse eight, he says something you may have heard before.

Now in a moment, I'm going to ask you a simple question,

whether you heard this verse before or not.

And if you have heard it before, I want you to raise your hand.

No big deal if you have never heard the verse, right?

Not everyone's been around the Bible. It's all good.

I get it. The Bible is weird, okay?

And can be very extremely difficult to read.

So I get it if you've never heard this voice, it's no big deal.

But if you have, I want you to simply tell me by raising your hand.

You ready?

Verse eight says this.

The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

Have you ever heard that before?

Oh, good. Many people have heard that.

Right?

Now I want to say, are you sure?

Are you sure you heard that verse before?

Because David said those words in Psalm 108 verse eight,

but David also said this in Psalm 86 15.

But you, oh Lord, are a good or a God of compassion and mercy,

slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

Have you heard that before?

I think so.

But are you sure?

Are you sure you've heard that one or the other one?

Or perhaps it's Psalm 145 verse eight when David says,

the Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

Maybe it's that one.

Is it that one?

Or is it another one?

You can't just say, yep, because you said you heard it before.

Which one was it?

Right?

Isn't it reality that David wasn't really creative?

Right?

When he's talking to himself, he says the same thing over and over and over again.

The Lord is gracious, he's compassionate, he's slow to get angry, he's righteous.

And he says it again and again and again and again.

And what's crazy is David wasn't the first one that said those words.

He was plagiarizing.

He copied someone.

Does anyone know who it was?

It was God.

God said it of himself in Exodus 34 6.

The Lord passed in front of Moses calling out Yahweh, the Lord, the God of compassion and mercy.

I am slow to get anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

See, what's interesting is when things got bad, right,

David didn't go searching in the Bible or the Torah for a verse.

What did he do?

He already had it in his heart.

He quoted it.

And he stood on it.

And he encouraged himself in the Lord.

And what I want to do is I want to give you a tool to help encourage yourself.

Because one of the greatest tools that you can do is to start acting like a cow.

You know, eat more chicken, right?

Isn't that what the cow says?

Go buy the Lord's fries, the Lord's waffle fries.

Eat more chicken.

I'm not talking about that though.

What does a cow do?

How does a cow eat?

When a cow eats, a cow does something called ruminate,

which is really, really cool.

Can I tell you about it?

When a cow eats, it chews grass, a big mouthful,

and it chews and chews and chews and chews.

You know what it does then?

It swallows it.

And then it vomits it into his mouth.

And it chews and chews and chews and chews.

And it swallows it.

And then what does it do?

It vomits it into his mouth.

Everyone remember that taste?

You know when you vomit in your mouth, you're like, oh.

And you run for mouthwash.

Such a good image in your mind right now, right?

That's ruminating.

And that's what a cow does every time it eats.

But listen, ruminate.

The same Hebrew word in the Old Testament translated as meditate

can also be translated as ruminate.

They're one in the same.

And God is telling us to focus on, to chew on,

to put his word in your heart so that when trouble comes

and you're in a difficult situation,

you don't have to look for a verse that's already there.

It's in your heart, right?

David said the Lord is slow to angry.

He's compassionate.

He's gracious.

He's faithful because he was meditating on that.

And that's what we need to learn to do.

Now earlier I gave you four big categories, right?

And for many of you, you identified with one of them.

And what I want to challenge you to do now is create power thoughts

that eliminate the negativity in your life.

So for each negative bucket, I am going to give you a verse

that I want to encourage you.

Take your phone out.

Take a picture of it so that when your negativity comes into your mind,

you open that up and you memorize that verse

so that you can quote it and defeat the enemy.

For example, if you find yourself battling with cynicism, right?

You don't trust anyone.

You're negative.

Your outlook on life isn't right.

Ephesians 4, 31 to 32.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander,

as well as all types of evil behavior.

Instead, be kind to each other.

Tenderhearted, forgiving one another,

just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

That will change your life.

You memorize that verse, you put it in your heart.

When that negative cynicism comes to mind, you quote it,

and it will defeat it.

If you find yourself battling with negative filtering,

always finding what's wrong.

Second Corinthians 10, 4 through 5.

The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world.

On the contrary, we have divine power to demolish strongholds.

We demolish arguments and every pretension

that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

You don't have to be negative.

If you find yourself battling with absolute thinking, right?

All or nothing, black or white.

You judge others regularly.

You're always right.

Philippians 2, 3, don't be selfish.

Don't try to impress others.

Be humble.

Thinking of others is better than yourselves.

That will eliminate that negative thinking.

If you find yourself battling with blaming,

it's everybody else's fault.

2 Peter 1, 3 says this.

By his divine power, God has given us everything we need

for living a godly life.

We have received all this by coming to know him,

the one who called us to himself

by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.

The mind governed by the sinful nature is death,

destruction, darkness, and negativity.

And friends, where does that come from?

It comes from our spiritual enemy

who is the father of lies

and who comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

But Jesus said,

I have come that you may have life

and have it to the full.

The mind governed by the sinful nature is death,

but the mind governed by the spirit is life, joy, and peace,

which leads us to our next step.

We go to God, right?

We meditate on and speak scripture.

We remove negativity.

Guard your heart above all else

for it determines the course of your life.

Some of you right now, you know what you need?

You need a negativity fast.

You need a fast from all the negativity.

Whatever it is that's causing you stress, worry, anxiety,

or overwhelmed with life.

For example, the news.

Right?

If you want to be upset and mad and afraid of everything,

just watch the news.

Right?

Turn on that same channel,

the one that you go to, your favorite channel,

it gets you fired up and tells you that the other side is wrong.

It's all their fault.

It's all their fault.

Now, I know none of you watch channels like that,

and you're all perfect, forgiving, loving Jesus followers,

but here's the reality.

If you're watching channels like that, get rid of it,

because it's no good.

It's negativity.

If you're watching a show that's pulling you down,

turn the show off.

Right?

If you're pointing fingers at everyone else,

because social media brings you down

and makes you feel horrible about yourself,

get rid of social media.

It's not real hard.

The last time I checked, there's this thing called delete.

Delete.

But the reason we keep it is because we get energized.

Remember, what happens in our brains when the negativity happens?

Cortisol.

Right? Your brain is firing,

and you're negative because you're struggling

with fight or flight.

You can't figure out what's going on.

You've got to get rid of stuff.

If you're around friends that are negative, judgmental,

you know, saying things like,

oh, you still go to that hippie church?

Get rid of them!

I mean, I'm not being mean.

I'm not saying be mean to them.

Don't judge them.

Don't go like this to them.

Give them a big hug.

Say, I love you.

We'll hang out when you're nice.

Right?

It's not that hard.

Just say, I can't handle it.

Some of you, some of you young people,

can I be honest with you?

You're stuck in a TikTok rabbit hole.

Young people, you're stuck in a TikTok rabbit hole,

and if you're an old person stuck in a TikTok rabbit hole,

I feel bad for you.

OK?

Did you know that that TikTok...

Listen, this is the truth.

That TikTok rabbit hole is simply an algorithm

that's feeding you garbage.

It's a computer program.

That's all it is.

And the more you watch a certain subject,

guess what shows up in your feed?

That subject.

Same thing.

Over and over and over again.

What do you need to do?

Delete.

Get rid of it!

Right?

You have got to make a choice to get rid of negativity.

Why?

Because your thoughts are powerful

and you have power over your thoughts.

The last time I checked,

Proverbs 17 tells us,

a cheerful heart is good medicine,

but a broken spirit saps a person's strength.

That sounds like negativity to me.

Go to God.

Right?

Meditate on and speak Scripture.

Get rid of negativity and number four, live.

Right?

Live.

So what do you want to be?

You want to be caught in an endless loop of negativity,

lowering yourself to the common denominator

of popular opinion?

You want to be caught in that cycle?

Are you going to stand up for something

that brings glory to God?

Because the last time I checked,

bringing glory to God is what matters.

You have got to stand up and say,

I'm not going to be a victim of what goes on in the world.

I'm going to choose to see where God's moving,

where God's working,

and I'm going to choose to see the good in people.

I'm going to choose to be loving and kind and full of grace

because your thoughts have incredible power

and you have incredible power of your thoughts.

Romans 12, two.

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world,

but let God transform you into a new person

by changing the way you think.

Then you will learn to know God's will for you,

which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Church, how are we transformed?

By renewing our minds.

By renewing our minds.

.