Be Your Own Coach Pastor Steven Furtick - Steven Furtick

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

or not, but one of the things I put on

Elijah's 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 30% of my time in

that realm and 70% in the more unhealthy realm Whereas

before it was like 90-10, 90 unhealthy 10. I have

a very harsh inner critic, level 10 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

had the gift to connect with people. But a lot

of the times.

I feel very disappointed sometimes. 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 album since U2, 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 my.

Attitude and my entitlement.

But there are also times where I want to say,

you know, hey, get up, shake it off, go, 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 1-9 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 frilly, 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 Crash the Chatterbox.

I'd 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 in even just

laughing at your chatter sometimes than 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.

more mind more mind because your heart you know anyone'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

to 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

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, metanoia,

Greek means change of your mind. So it's like when

you change your mind.

I feel like memory is a powerful thing. Yes. Even though, Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Okay, she said, that's me. How many would also say,

that's me? So, I want you to get out of the,

that's me, this is my struggle, and realize, like, 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 Um, get, put a clothes 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, um, 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, um, that they've even.

Kind of buried that if you could see it for

what it is, you'd go, man, how are they even

doing as well as they are? Um, 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 thing happening. And we're trying

to do it with a, construct of our mind, like

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 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 certainly will challenge everything you

thought you knew. Different seasons of life where you're changing. So,

you know, practice on the lion and the bear because

you haven't even seen Goliath yet.

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