Steven Furtick — 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 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 gonna 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 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 album since U2, The Joshua Tree.
So I just 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 gonna give confidence, but a good coach is also gonna 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 coach 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, I 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 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, because that I can get behind, I can be my own coach. Be my own best friend like take yourself out on, ah coffee with yourself, I don't know, but that that's helped me a little bit lately.
But, if I rewrote Crash the Chatterbox, I probably wouldn't call it Crash the Chatterbox. I probably would call it like Manage the Chatterbox and Negotiate with the Chatterbox. So it doesn't blow your brains out, because I realized how powerful that self-talk is and I think I was writing it as a way therapeutically like: I'm gonna 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 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...
Question: Is it a heart issue or a mind issue?
More mind more mind, because you know: anyone in Christ is a new creation, you have a new nature, you love God and you've got sin in your heart, and you've got pride in your heart... But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. your life is playing out in your mind, and you're experiencing your heart through your mind. You don't experience what's in your heart directly, you have to process it in your mind. So if the filter of your mind is clogged up and wired in weird ways, then you're gonna 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, guess, no no follow it, 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 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 metanoia (Greek). It means change of your mind.
Question: When you change your mind, I feel like memory is a powerful thing. So even though, like, physically you can be beyond the situation, it will always take you back there. And that's me, how do I break that barrier?
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, 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... 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 would be like: 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 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 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 gonna get harder, as you get older, because more stuff is gonna challenge 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.