Episode 72: Cultivating Focus In A Noisy World

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mack. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Well, dad, I don’t know about you, but it seems like to me, I’ve I’ve I’ve found myself getting it’s getting harder and harder to maintain deep sustained focus. Have you noticed that in yourself or noticing Well, people around

John McLarty: for our listeners, I’m just holding up this phone right here. And yes, I find myself continually just checking the weather, seeing if there’s a news headline. Has somebody texted me? Yeah. So it’s Even in middle

Kimberly Faith: of your Bible reading. Right. You’re like, oh, ping, my brain is like the squirrel brain. And it’s kind of funny because at first it was like, oh, wow, I can multitask. I can do all these things.

Right? But I’m kind of seeing myself on the other end of that tipping scale where when I go to focus and let’s say write a brief for court, I’m finding it hard to focus, sustained focus for on a deep subject. Or if I go to study the book of Jeremiah, my brain is constantly popping back and forth wondering what’s going on around me.

John McLarty: And then our devices don’t help us. So I’ll just get on my little bandwagon about these. I have a Fitbit on. So the old Fitbits, you just looked at it and it had your time and maybe you could track your steps and maybe your oxygen levels for a given time. And I’ve tried to undo this, but now it gives me notifications.

So it buzzes when I get a text or email. Oh my goodness. We could be sitting here talking right now and my wrist starts vibrating. And it’s a text. And your mind goes like, Well, at least, could that be mom?

Kimberly Faith: She’s Right.

John McLarty: Is it emergency? A question. Exactly. Those are distractions.

Kimberly Faith: I started getting really concerned about just my own inability to focus. It’s not to chase this rabbit, but I started noticing that people around me, especially like people that I am kind of trusting to do certain things in my life were also having the same problem.

John McLarty: Distractions.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And and it was affecting their myself, my own, effectiveness. It was and it was making me more, well, less effective even in writing devotionals, which, you know, we do that in five days a week, and and in the law practice. And more most importantly, in a in my ability to have a conversation with somebody and not be distracted. Right.

Know, which souls are the most important thing or person or purpose that we have to glorify God because they’re the only thing that lasts forever.

John McLarty: And that’s, I’m sure, an age old thing because our brains want to think our own thoughts. But I think it’s a cultural thing today that just everything is so our newsfeed, we just wanna look at the

Kimberly Faith: Well, I wanna talk about that.

John McLarty: Tweet version

Kimberly Faith: of the headline. My daughter, Grace, turned me on to a book by Nicholas Carr called The What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.

John McLarty: I could Yes, I could believe it, whatever it is.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Well, so I started listening to it and it’s because I don’t do that when I’m driving or hiking or something. But something that he talks about is that modern neuroscience is confirming that constant distraction overloads the brain’s executive function systems, which is directly connected to the surge in mental health conditions because it’s marked by our inability to focus for an extended period of time.

John McLarty: I can see that.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Can so relate to ADHD, anxiety disorders, intrusive types of disorder, people think that somebody’s after them.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: People who think always in the worst case scenario, right, of every situation, they always bring up the worst, you know, consider the worst case scenario, depression, slowed thinking, low motivation, trouble concentrating, even people who have endured trauma related to PTSD. All those things are the brain on high alert because the brain is being affected by this chronic overwork, nonstop digital stimulation, and it’s creating a stress induced attention problem. That’s an interesting study. And it’s like an addiction.

John McLarty: It’s like

Kimberly Faith: an addiction. It’s like your brain is so trained to expect that next know, dopamine, so to speak, gotta know what’s going on, that your brain is retraining. It’s like the Internet is training our brain instead of our you know, the human mind created the Internet, right? But it’s retraining us in this very scattered, shallow way of thinking. And I don’t want to get too deep into the science because I’m sure I won’t explain it right, but one of the things he talks about is in the neuroscience is that when we stimulate our brain over and over and over and over again with very shallow, thoughts that give us, what it does is that part of our brain actually grows.

And the part that is related to deep thinking and deep reasoning skills

John McLarty: Like the electrical Interesting.

Kimberly Faith: That part shrinks because it doesn’t get used. We lose our ability

John McLarty: Kind of use it or lose it.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. And that’s a very simplistic way, he was talking about how the science supports this. And I started thinking about that, and I was like, That directly affects my ability to glorify God.

John McLarty: That’s so interesting. It’s an age old problem, but mine’s stimulated by the new electronic world. Yes, yes.

Kimberly Faith: And we see it in children who are just handed devices and just spend hours and hours on devices and they’re just addicted. We’re not immune to that because our brain forms these addictions and we don’t even realize it.

John McLarty: Just the opposite of that, just to verify that, kind of as you grow older, we’re all advised to learn something new, take up a hobby.

Kimberly Faith: Right, crossword puzzles.

John McLarty: Crossword puzzles. Well, I’m just relating to what you just said. The idea of that is to focus the brain on something new, but in a long term way. You don’t just, Oh, I think I’ll learn guitar. You do it ten seconds a day.

Kimberly Faith: Right, right. It’s not the microwave approach. It’s the long, slow bake approach.

John McLarty: And it does affect the brain. It can slow, you might say mental deterioration by learning new things, cutting grooves or forming the electronic connections. So what you’re talking about is the opposite of that. By being so rapid fire, the brain doesn’t even in younger people or mid age, develop those deeper

Kimberly Faith: don’t have a deeper reasoning skill.

John McLarty: Reasoning. Interesting.

Kimberly Faith: And so, we think about how important the brain is an organ. And I want to just take a little quick sidebar here because we’re talking about cultivating focus in a world full of distraction. That’s the topic that we’re talking about today. And how do we do that?

John McLarty: I’m going to say countering that is going to have to be intentional. Yes, yes. It’s going to to be a decision, almost like a discipline.

Kimberly Faith: It is. It’s like any discipline where you have Let’s say you’re an alcoholic. You’ve got to be intentional about breaking that habit. Well, the distraction factor that is really ruining our brain has to be to undo that, we’ve really got to be intentional. That’s kind of where I’m at.

This is why I wanted to do this podcast because I’m in the middle of this. I’m like, okay, wait a minute. I have let myself be distracted way too much, and I can see that it is inhibiting my ability to go deep in thought and to focus for any and and especially to be intentional with people. And that’s that you know, then you’re crossing over into sin, really, because Christ wants us to be intentional with people. People are why we’re here.

We’re so little. We’re left here to glorify God, but that is to bring people into the kingdom of God through salvation.

John McLarty: Well, think about this, and I’m sure our listeners can relate to this because we all just have had the holidays and had relatives. How often does it happen that you’re talking to a relative, maybe that you haven’t seen for a while, You’re engaging in conversation eye to eye, just like we’re talking right now, and their phone buzzes and they immediately

Kimberly Faith: Shut the conversation down.

John McLarty: Shut the conversation down and just look at their phone and start texting a reply.

Kimberly Faith: Right, right.

John McLarty: I mean, I can say that because I’ve had to discipline myself. There’s a part of me that wants to do that. Like I said, my wrist is buzzing and I’ve had to make a decision, No, I’m not going to do that. And it’s just a little thing. And it’s kind of, right now, pet peeve.

When I’m talking to somebody and their phone buzzes, I’m like, You can do that later. You can do that later. You don’t have to break mid sentence or disrupt our whole conversation.

Kimberly Faith: That’s just one aspect of the cultural part

John McLarty: of it. That’s one aspect. That’s just something observable. I think everybody listening Yeah, can relate to

Kimberly Faith: and how on the receiving end of that, it’s so rude. I wanna make a quick side note before we start talking about this in some depth. The Bible and this is a distinction between we’re talking about the physical organ of the brain. That’s what the shallows, the book, is all about is the, you know, it’s about the brain and the the neurological makeup and the effect of all this the Internet on the brain. But the brain is the organ.

Right? It is the organ that’s in our head. Mhmm. But, and it’s part of the physical body and subject to weakness, injury, decay, right? But the Bible consistently teaches that our self awareness, our moral reasoning are not rooted in our flesh, but it’s in our mind.

John McLarty: Our mind.

Kimberly Faith: Our mind is the more spiritual component of the brain. And I don’t wanna get too semantic, but I think it’s important to understand that this it’s kind of like if we drink ourselves to death, it’s because we’ve damaged our liver, right? And that organ is damaged. Well, the brain, we don’t want to damage the brain, which without our brain, we can’t use our mind because it’s going to be neurologically collapsing the central part of us that allows us to be who we

John McLarty: are. Interconnected. So dysfunctioning brain, the physical part of us, can affect our mind. But then our mind, disciplining the mind’s a whole it’s like the mind is kind of our free will, what we do, what we want to do, what we resist doing.

Kimberly Faith: Well, the Bible says in first Corinthians two eleven, for what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him. So it’s really interesting that the scripture, you know and, of course, the the the bible also talks about you know, we’ve talked about this a lot is we the the in in Romans eight five, for whose Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, those who live according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. So unlike the brain, the mind can be transformed by God. I wanna make that distinction.

John McLarty: That’s good distinction.

Kimberly Faith: Paul talks about renew yourself by the transforming of your mind. Renew your mind. What is it again? Romans 12.

John McLarty: Transform ourselves by the renewing of our mind.

Kimberly Faith: Mind. Thank And so, we need to understand that distinction. Our brain is being trained, but our mind is deciding to train our brain by not exposing ourselves to a lot of distraction and keeping Yeah. That

John McLarty: Let me give you a simple example of that because I think most people experience this. I might be up late at night and it might occur to my mind, in my mind, just kind of this function of the brain. It’s so fascinating, really. So you feel this little hunger that’s coming from your body that enters your mind. Oh, I think I’ll go to the refrigerator and get some cheese and crackers or I’ll make a piece of toast.

Then because I wanna maintain weight or lose weight, I have this little in my mind within this brain, but there’s been this little struggle. Like, my well, body wants that, but I shouldn’t do it. So then you have this little conversation and there’s this free will. I can say, No, I’m not going to do that. Or sometimes you know, I fell.

I’m going like, Okay. I’m just gonna go get a piece of toast. I need some comfort or whatever. And you have this little battle of the mind. And that’s a small example, but there’s a spiritual that’s going on in the spiritual world.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. Exactly. And what we allow to come in our eyes, our ears, and into our brain will affect our mind.

John McLarty: Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: I think that is where we’re going with this. And if our mind is being trained through what is processed through our brain to be so distracted that we can’t even read a book without checking our phone, checking the weather, paying attention to our wrist that’s buzzing, you know, then what happens is we lose the human experience that we’re supposed to the human experience we are supposed to be enjoying in the presence of God because God is not distracted. He’s not distracted. That’s an amazing thought. God is not anxious.

He’s not distracted. He’s not worried. He’s peace.

John McLarty: And we’re told to kind of have or live according to the mind of Christ. As born again believers, we have the mind of Christ within us.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: But we also have, you might say, like you said earlier, the mind of the flesh.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Which is an enmity with God. And and, you know, this this kinda brings us to, hey. So what is this distraction, this this world distraction that we’re getting from the Internet and all these different resources? It’s one of the enemy’s primary spiritual strategies is distraction.

John McLarty: True.

Kimberly Faith: And and and, you know, Paul warns us that Satan seeks to corrupt our mind like he did in the garden from what he calls the simplicity that is in Christ. Why don’t you read up second Corinthians eleven three?

John McLarty: Yeah. It’s, but I fared less somehow as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Kimberly Faith: Uh-huh. Notice Satan is characterized as being crafty. Know, craftiness, there seems to be a, I don’t know, presumption that that involves complex, you know, things that take us away from the simplicity And that is in I think about the way the Internet bombards us, you know, whether it’s text messages, DMs, Messenger on Facebook. I have like four different platforms of messaging. And you know, why?

Why do I need Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, signal

John McLarty: Distraction on steroids.

Kimberly Faith: Text messages. Emails. Right? Why do I need all five of those? And but this is Satan’s strategy.

If he can keep us distracted, then he can keep us from fulfilling our divine purpose, which is to glorify God. Because you can’t glorify God if you’re a squirrel running around distracted by everything. Your head on us. That’s right. Well, and then we become susceptible to every wind of doctrine as well.

Like, I think it was the Apostle Paul

John McLarty: talked about, right? Remember back in the hippie days, we thought freedom was whatever pops into our mind, do it, which is crazy.

Kimberly Faith: It is crazy. But that

John McLarty: was really a way of thinking in the sixties. And it’s just so the opposite of what it says. That’s so susceptible to deceit.

Kimberly Faith: And it reminds me of what first John

John McLarty: two Obstructive behavior.

Kimberly Faith: First John two fifteen and sixteen says that when we’re instructed, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the father but is of the world. You think about 99.9% of what’s coming into our brain off the Internet is not of the Lord unless we’re just reading the Bible, you know, using our Bible app all the time, which I’m pretty sure nobody listening to this podcast, including you and I, are using just using the Internet for our Bible app. Right?

And and when it says, do not love the world, well, we do what we want. We listen to what we want. We read what we want, and that’s what we love. We think about what we want, but what we love, right? And if we love the distraction, that is what is our God.

John McLarty: And those are the three MOs that were relevant back in the days of Adam and Eve and still today. Absolutely.

Kimberly Faith: Lust of

John McLarty: the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Kimberly Faith: We tend to think of the word lust as only associated with sexual sin, but lust just means what you love. It’s just what you love.

John McLarty: In a sense, my example of the midnight and wanting a piece of toast, that’s a strong desire for that piece of toast with butter and our own canvas mountain produced honey on it.

Kimberly Faith: And it’s delicious. Yeah. It

John McLarty: creates this struggle.

Kimberly Faith: Well, one of the ways when people come to me, you know, they want me to help them with some spiritual direction, and I like to ask them, well, who is your God? Because that’s what I have to ask myself every day. And they’ll say, well, God is my God. Say, okay. Let’s just break that down.

Tell me, what is it you spend the most time thinking about and doing and talking about? And and, you know, that is a question that pulls you up short. Mhmm. Then tell me what you spend the most money on, and and that will pull you up short as well. Because those are just real easy indicators, measurements of who your god is.

You know? If I spend all my time and effort and energy thinking about my job and have divorced God from my law practice, then that’s my God.

John McLarty: That’s a good example where we put our efforts and our mind toward.

Kimberly Faith: Well, Jesus said, where your heart is, there your treasure is also. Right? And we you know, the enemy knows this. He knows if he can distract us, then he’s won. And I have just determined I am not standing for this because I know what he’s done to me.

I know what I have allowed myself to become with all this information, you know, overload. And and, you know, first Peter reminds us, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Well, you know, I’m just like, okay, God. I know you’ve equipped me to fight. You’ve equipped us to fight back.

Give me some strategies. So I have come up with some strategies, not me, but God has inspired some strategies. And they’re not they’re not you know, there’s I’m sure there’s a lot more. Mhmm. But I just think that we need to talk about these in this podcast.

John McLarty: Battle battle for the mind in the mind.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, and and it’s important that God you know, we have talked about the mind of Christ. We’ve done podcasts on that, and we’ve done podcasts on the attitudes of Christ. I I guarantee you, the more that that I have developed the mind of Christ and it’s not a it’s not a one off. It’s a daily process.

And the attitudes of Christ that we’ve talked about from the beatitudes, the less I am distracted. But I think there’s

John McLarty: also That’s an intentional decision.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: That’s right. That’s

Kimberly Faith: And I am convinced from God’s word that no matter what I mean, even if you have a diagnosis of a mental health condition, distraction does not help that. And I’m I’m convinced that no matter what your background, whatever your personal struggle is, with Jesus and using some just real simple strategies, you can win the battle of the mind because I’m winning it. I mean, I I have to wake up every day and fight the battle. I’m not saying every day I’m perfect or anything like that, not arrived, but I can see it changing me. You know, it’s funny.

I’ve been employing these strategies. I was I was visiting a couple of my children over the holiday where I’ve been employing these strategies, and and and one of my daughters said to me, mom, something’s different. You’re really present. And I and I shared this with her. I said, you know why?

Because this is I’ve realized how God has brought it to my attention that I needed to do I need to take a big one eighty in this area of constant distractions. So I wanna just share these with our listeners, and I hope this is something that if you are feeling like you are distracted to the nth degree, you can’t focus, feel like you’re not able to even communicate with another person without being constantly distracted, can’t take a deep dive and read a book like Jeremiah, you know, whatever that looks like for you.

John McLarty: I’ll just throw this in because we’ve talked about the Internet and Satan’s distractions.

Kimberly Faith: But

John McLarty: I can really relate to this, that one of my distractions that I’ve worked on in the last year see, and one of the things that I’m doing here is identify the distractions. One of them is my own mind.

Kimberly Faith: That’s the first step. Identify the distractions for everybody’s

John McLarty: listening. One of my distractions is my own thoughts. Interesting. So a lot of times I’m listening to somebody and my own thought my mind wanders as they’re talking to me.

Kimberly Faith: Know. My

John McLarty: mind wanders to, Oh, I need to pay this bill tomorrow. Or what

Kimberly Faith: you’re gonna say next.

John McLarty: What I’m gonna say next. When I get home, I need to unscrew the hose from the faucet because it’s gonna freeze tonight. And I’ll have to tell myself, and I do this. I’m like, no. Stop.

Keep eye contact. And what this person is saying is the most important thing happening right now.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, I love that.

John McLarty: And then I correct my mind. And I go like, no. This human interaction I’m having is the most important thing.

Kimberly Faith: I love that.

John McLarty: And I put that into practice. The last, you know, maybe four or five years, I became aware of that. Conversations at church. And so I’m like, no. Just keep eye contact.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s a strategy. It is Yeah. And people notice that. They do.

Yeah. There’s

John McLarty: That you’re listening to.

Kimberly Faith: And you can probably think of people who are that way that you really can pattern you know, you can take follow their example. So number one strategy, you’ve you’ve talked about identify the distractions. Mhmm. It may be your mind wandering during a conversation. For me, it was the just the mental dumpster of constant influx of information.

You know, you get the news flash coming up on your phone. You get the weather flash. You get the constant notifications through email, text messages, DMs, news alert. I mean, the whole thing. And I was like, okay, Lord.

Just show me how to minimize there’s I have to have a certain amount of traffic because of my you know, the law practice, and there’s a certain amount of I have family to take care of. There’s these responsibilities. Right? So the first thing that I mean, I we are not designed to live in a chronic mental traffic jam, and that’s where I felt like I was.

John McLarty: That’s a good analogy.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. So because what happens is you don’t have time to reflect, You’re just reacting. And then you’re you’re living in this reactionary mental process constantly, and you lose the ability to be still and know I am God, you know, which is what we’re we’re told to be still and to, like you said, connect with people. You know, think about what you said earlier. And the person we’re talking to is created in the same image of God as we are.

They deserve our full attention.

John McLarty: It’s the most important thing we’re doing.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: Listening to somebody.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And so the Lord is just really he was like, oh, you want my help? Okay. Literally I keep my phone on silent all the time unless I’m expecting a call.

John McLarty: See, and that’s a strategy. That’s a strategy. That people, you can put into practice.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Again, I’m not saying everybody has to have the same strategy because everybody has different jobs. But I have my iPad. None of the notifications come across on my iPad because it’s my main tool I work with with ministry and with law practice. I don’t check my my email, nothing comes across my phone except text messages that I can see that there’s actually something there.

And, my main email is not on my phone because the phone’s with me all the time. Right? I am very conscious about leaving my phone, like if I have company, if I’m with somebody, I don’t I my phone is I don’t even know where it is most of the time. I have consciously decided that my phone, my iPad, and my computer are things that I need to eliminate in them controlling me. They’re my tools.

I’m not their tool.

John McLarty: How about spending time with the Lord? I’m struggling with this. I just need to make a firmer decision, like my time in the morning with the Lord, put my phone aside.

Kimberly Faith: Yep. And you know what? This is another thing along with

John McLarty: Simple strategy.

Kimberly Faith: Along with that, the Lord has really just challenged me to stop using my iPad to read my Bible. I’ve got my physical study Bible back out.

John McLarty: And I agree with that. I like the written page here. Yeah. Yes.

Kimberly Faith: And I’ve got my little handwritten journal thing here, a pen. So first part of this as I started doing this, I was like, okay, Lord. I actually had a Saturday that was I didn’t have anything scheduled. And I said, Lord, I’m ready. Let’s just do this.

Got me up at 2AM. He said, get in there, get your Bible out, get your journal ready and get your pen ready and start reading the book of Jeremiah. I tell you what, I read God’s word and just absorbed God’s word, took handwritten notes from 2AM to noon.

John McLarty: That’s interesting.

Kimberly Faith: And it was like a refreshing spa time for my soul. I didn’t even know where my phone or my I didn’t even check anything. It was so refreshing. It was like my mind was saying, Thank you. Thank you.

I needed this relief. Thank you for letting me just be free of the distraction. It was like a You know, if you’ve ever When I remember I was taking jujitsu and you go to the mat, fifteen minutes on the mat is a long time, and your body is just like crying out for rest. And when you stop, and your body’s like, oh, let me just sit down and just sit here still for a minute. Because you’re using muscles you don’t even know you have.

And I mean, just it’s very intense. And it’s the same kind of reaction.

John McLarty: Yeah, I can totally relate to that. Yeah. Or after having an intense conversation with somebody, like I’ve had a phone conversation that lasts, say, an hour. Right. And then after it, mind is like, Oh, I need to relax from that.

Kimberly Faith: Right. It’s like in Hebrews, talks about laying aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us. You know, when we can lay aside the weight of what’s distracting us, which we don’t really think about the distractions of electronic devices as being weights. We think, Oh, we’re getting the information we need. Well, there’s a balance we have to discipline ourselves to strike.

Because you know what? At noon that day, I went in and spent five minutes checking all my messages, checking my emails, and categorizing the things I could deal with later and returning the phone calls I needed to return. Most of them weren’t important. They were just people checking in. I don’t mean that’s not important, but things I could answer in a few And then I set it aside again.

I was like, There’s no reason for me to be connected to my electronic devices today.

John McLarty: Well, let me read this first because it’s good. It’s Hebrews twelve:one-two. Let us lay aside every weight. And this key phrase, And the sin which so easily ensnares us. And that can be from gross, obvious sins to just these distractions we’re

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, talking sin of distraction. Just not

John McLarty: caring about the person that’s talking to us. Right. So the sin which so easily ensnares us, because we’re in the flesh. And let us run with endurance. So that’s a discipline.

Run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame,

Kimberly Faith: and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. You imagine Jesus had lived distracted? You know? I mean, not that he would because he that would be a sin, but he was so focused on the people around He had a mission and he was not being well, let’s just say this. What if you were in hand to hand combat?

You know, because we are spiritual in spiritual warfare. And you were distracted by, you know, somebody who stubbed their toe. Maybe you were distracted by wondering if you were gonna get fed that night. Your mind was just going all these different directions and not focused on the battle. You never win.

John McLarty: Yeah, right. That’s when you would die That’s if you’re in hand to hand right. So, the

Kimberly Faith: first strategy is to identify the distractions. What is stealing your peace? Right? And number two is to saturate the mind in the word.

John McLarty: That is really good.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty: This first Romans twelve:two, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And the word, the word of God, is the mind of God directly input into our mind. Yeah, downloaded. Just downloaded. And it’s the pure word of God.

Kimberly Faith: What was interesting is that when I spent that time in the book of Jeremiah, the other thing that happened was the Lord started I mean, I use this word downloading because he started downloading me with all kinds of ideas. One of them was to start analyzing this thing that the answers to the biblical answers to the big questions in life.

John McLarty: And

Kimberly Faith: wow, I was like, what a great strategy for reaching people by answering the big questions according to God’s word, like, who am I? What’s my purpose? And the thing is, the Bible, like you said, is the living word. It is Jesus. Right?

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And John one says, In the beginning was the word.

Jacob Paul: The word.

Kimberly Faith: And so, God’s word isn’t just another book. It’s alive. And when we download

John McLarty: it Yeah, it stimulates the mind of God within us if we’re born again.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: The mind of God is quickened and his thought processes spring forth

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Through the Because his wisdom supplants our wisdom. His thoughts become our thoughts. His ways become our ways. And the more that we read God’s word, even when I pray, I start praying God’s word because it’s been hidden in my heart so I won’t sin against him, which is what Proverbs says.

What God’s word does is it replaces the distraction with deep thought, wisdom. And what is the verse in Philippians that you were brought up earlier when we were talking about this?

John McLarty: It’s in Philippians four:eight and it says, Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. And right before that, let’s read verse seven. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. That’s so rich. Because what God’s word does, these may seem like small choices, but they produce huge results. Our peace increases. Right?

Our wisdom increases because it becomes God’s wisdom. We remain focused on important. We find simple joy. I’m finding more joy in being present with people than I ever have in my entire life. And I’m not just talking about people I like, okay?

I’m talking about people that maybe are not somebody I would necessarily hang out with. And the Lord, it’s like Jesus, when Jesus talked to the woman caught in adultery. You know, was no way the Pharisees and the religious leaders were gonna hobnob with her. But you can tell by what he said that he was appreciating her for who he had made her. That’s what we, as Christians, can do.

We can appreciate people for who God made them instead of maybe what their circumstances have thrust them into or what their sinful choices have made them. Because if you know, there’s an old saying that the enemy calls us by our sin, but God calls us by our name. Right?

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: And so, what happens when we become more laser focused with God’s thoughts, we start appreciating people for who they could be in Christ.

John McLarty: I’m thinking of the verse that says, Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus. So that was his mind, to love others, to help them, to be interested in them. So, it’s not like we take credit for it, but when we let that, let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, we let Jesus live through us and that gives us that compassion you’re talking about towards people

Kimberly Faith: because Jesus loved people. Because he had the right to be called and he was God.

John McLarty: He loves people today.

Kimberly Faith: That verse talks about he had the right to be he was God, but he humbled himself.

John McLarty: And we’re getting this information from the word of God. And That’s think about Psalms one:two. It says, His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And the first part of that verse is blessed is the man, And that whole Psalms one talks about how we are blessed when we delight ourselves in the law of the Lord. We become like a tree planted by the rivers of water. There’s all these blessings. And so planting identifying the distractions, number one.

Two is filling our mind with God’s word. And then number three is replacing unhealthy thoughts with God’s thoughts. You know, we don’t have to believe every anxious thought that comes into our mind. We don’t have to replay every hurtful memory. The Bible tells us to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ in two Corinthians.

John McLarty: And that’s really a mental exercise.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: That’s one of those things like I’ve identified if my mind’s wandering and I’ll listen to somebody. So in my mind, I tell myself, Oh, no, don’t do that. Focus on this person. So we do that here. If you have a negative thought, we can capture that thought.

Mean, the word of God tells us it’s possible.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: And replace that with a thought that would be from Christ.

Kimberly Faith: I’d give you an example that has been so powerful in my life of this. Was thinking I’ll just give you an example of that. I was thinking of a person that had really hurt me. And this person had kind of entered back into my path, and she’d done some pretty hurtful things to me. And I was struggling.

I was like, okay, you know what? That thought comes in. It’s not a sin yet. But then I start dwelling on it, and I start thinking about all the things that she did. Then I start realizing that I’m losing my peace.

Like, wait a minute, God, I want you to take this thought captive. I want you to take it captive and replace it with something else. He immediately, almost always does this, reminds me from his word that the person that has offended me has offended me far less than offended him. In other words, the sin that this person has committed against me doesn’t even measure up to all the sin that he’s forgiven me of. So, now I have humility, poor in spirit.

We’re back in that attitude of Christ.

John McLarty: Yeah, it’s like, Who am I to

Jacob Paul: have been

John McLarty: upset with this person when Christ forgave me? For so much.

Kimberly Faith: Mega millions more. And so then the next thought is, But Lord, you have to help me. And his response has been almost always, You pray for this person. You pray for this person to come to know me or to repent or whatever the need is. And when I say, Lord, I don’t know how to pray, he gives me a prayer.

John McLarty: That’s interesting. So this goes back to Philippians four and the verse before seven and eight, which we just read, but it says, Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplications with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passes understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. So that’s an excellent response, is prayer.

Kimberly Faith: Yes, because immediately what happens when I start praying for that person is I get my peace And that’s just And

John McLarty: you replace those negative thoughts.

Kimberly Faith: Right, right. And so it’s funny, we’ve segued into the fourth thing, which is prayer. And so we’ve got this whole It’s a very simple list. Identify the distraction, saturate your mind in the Word of God, replace unhealthy thoughts with God’s thoughts, and small prayers work large results. Constant communication with God put these tools to work.

It doesn’t have to be a flowery prayer, the example I used earlier. I was like, God, I don’t like this person. I don’t know how to pray for this person. You’re gonna have to help me out here.

John McLarty: And that’s a prayer.

Kimberly Faith: That’s a prayer.

John McLarty: Talking to God.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And God’s like, glad you asked. Here. And God reminded me about something painful that happened to this person. And I was like, well, that person’s just like I am.

Let me pray for that person just like it was me going through that. And the prayer flowed, no problem. Because we are all sinners. We have all been given so much grace. And I love the parable of the two servants.

That’s such a great parable about how the master forgave the evil servant of millions of dollars, and he turns around and beats his servant who owed him $10. I’m paraphrasing, you know. But that’s what we do. That’s the biggest that’s the way we can look at other people and say, you know what?

John McLarty: It’s our own pride, our own self centeredness. Think of the verse, I don’t know, if I’ll paraphrase it, but it says, To eschew, which is flee from evil, but cleave to that which is good. I like your example of you’ve had this bad thought or bad interaction with somebody and you’re replacing it with prayer for them. Yeah. Sometimes that involves forgiveness, like you’re talking about.

Kimberly Faith: And then

John McLarty: that strategy, Oh, I don’t want to be like the person who God forgave sins and then this person did this to me.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, It’s turned around to just miniscule. And it applies to whether the bad thought that we have to replace could be just anxiety about our bills. Well, you know what? If we are if we are saturating our mind with scripture and Jesus says, cast all your cares on me because I care for you, where your heart is, where your treasure is also, you know, these verses. Right?

Those are two different verses. But then we are like our our mind is brought up short to, wait a minute. What am I no. No. I don’t need to be anxious about my bills.

I need to be trusting the lord with all my heart, leaning out to my own understanding. In all my ways, acknowledge him, love him most, and he’s going to direct my path. Lord, help me to have these thoughts and to cast out these anxious thoughts about my bills. This applies to any area of our life where distraction has taken us and stolen our peace and stolen our focus. We can get it back.

John McLarty: We can get it back. And I’m just struck right now with these solutions, even identifying the problem. We’ve just been using scriptures.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: So this isn’t just our own mind coming up with solutions like some worldly counseling.

Kimberly Faith: Right. These are God’s tools.

John McLarty: This is God’s tools. God’s tools. And they come from the word. And that’s one of the strategies to overcome these distractions is to spend time in the word.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. That’s right.

John McLarty: And his answers are there.

Kimberly Faith: Identify the distractions, saturate your mind with God’s word, replace the unhealthy thoughts with God’s thoughts, and be in constant communication with God. I’m just sharing this, and I appreciate, you know, that maybe this isn’t where everybody is, but I’m I’m appreciating God’s strategy right now in my own life, and I can see how it is making me, more like Jesus. And I and I don’t say that proudly, I say that with all humility because it’s not me, it’s him.

John McLarty: And just a little personal testimony, I say I’ve spent more time in the word in the last five years, just more time in the word, just basically. It changes your life. It does. And we don’t get credit for it because we’re just downloading more information from God’s word.

Kimberly Faith: Well, I’m so glad you brought that up, dad, because the podcast we’re doing next week is exploring the difference between true righteousness and self righteousness. Good. And so that’s why I kinda wanted to make sure that when, you know, when I’m presenting these ideas that God has given me, I wanna clarify this is not a self righteous declaration. This is a testimony, a testament of me asking God, help me get overcome this enemy of distraction, get my focus back.

John McLarty: It’s your experiences and mine and others through trial and error of finding God’s solutions.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely.

John McLarty: Absolutely. So it’s through a lot of trial and error that we stumble upon God’s solution.

Kimberly Faith: And I just

John McLarty: Which is in

Kimberly Faith: the Word. To me, it’s useful when you’re listening to I mean, when you hear other people who are struggling, we all have the same struggles, I mean, it’s the bottom line, and how the Lord has worked in their life. That testimony is so powerful. And so, I just want to make sure people know that I’m not thinking that I’m being so great here. No, it’s not that at all.

It is God at work in me and he gets all the credit.

John McLarty: And in this world, there’s such electronic distractions. I mean, this is a good strategy. Just ID the distractions, saturate the mind with God’s Word, replace unhealthy thoughts with God’s thoughts, and then be in a lot of prayer.

Jacob Paul: Well said. You’ve been listening to the truth and love podcast with your hosts, Kimberly Faith and John Mack. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com.