Ejection Seat Theology: All-In August #15

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you, and it is Theology Thursday.

We are halfway through all in August. I'm so grateful to be here with you.

We've been doing this now for 15 days, and the people all over the world jumping

in, going all in, drawing a line in the sand and say, hey, what has been is unacceptable.

We're pressing forward. We know God's got a plan. He's got a purpose.

He doesn't want me to stay stuck.

He doesn't want me to stay broken. and he wants me to understand that he's given

me everything I need for life and godliness.

I want to share a scripture with you. This is a famous verse, okay?

But I think we always camp out on the first part of it. And I don't think we

notice the last part of it.

Peter says in 2 Timothy 1.7, I'm sorry, Paul says in 2 Timothy 1.7,

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

I want you to understand, he put the sound mind there. The last thing he said

in that verse, he wants you to remember that.

He has not given you a broken brain.

Trauma and tragedy and drama and massive things can tear up in some way that you can't be okay.

He hasn't given you ADHD that you can't overcome.

He hasn't given you a neurodivergence or a Enneagram type or a trauma or some

kind of abuse or some kind of genetic starting point that can't be overcome.

He has given you a spirit of a sound mind.

And that's what we can get if we go all in with this idea that God has given

us the tools to reshape how our mind and our brain interact,

to let the Holy Spirit help us as a great physician, as a kind and wise professor.

To help us perform the self-brain surgery that's already happening.

You just have to take control of it. You want to make your neuroplasticity and

your brain-mind interface and your brain-mind-body life interface work to your

advantage and not to your disadvantage.

That's what All In's about, God, okay? We are drawing a line in the sand.

We're going all in. We're going to finally believe that God means what he says.

And my friend, he says that you don't have to conform anymore to the way that

life wants to beat you down and smash you down and shape you into the shape

of somebody who's irredeemably broken. You don't have to live that way anymore.

You can rise up. You can hold on to hope. And even if your circumstance is difficult,

and sometimes it will be, you can still have hope and you can still have purpose

and you can still have a plan and you can still know that God has called you

to something great and you don't have to live in the defeated place of being

broken by your trauma or your tragedy or your drama or your massive thing.

You don't have to live in the shadow of your disease or your diagnosis.

Now, does that mean that you're always cured and you're always healed and you're

always rich and everything always works out? No, of course not.

Life is hard. I'm a living proof to the fact that life is hard.

I've survived a 100 mortar and rocket attacks.

I've been shot at by a sniper in Baghdad. I've been through a divorce. I've lost a son.

I know that circumstances don't always work out.

And you do too. You've seen them. You're in the middle of some of them.

So why do we press on? Because God says, hey, I'm not going to beam you up out

of your troubles, as Pete Gregg said.

I'm going to parachute down into them, and I'm going to fight the battle alongside

you, and I'm going to reframe and refocus you on what you think blessedness

is, what you think purpose is.

I'm going to show you that there is a path forward, no matter what you're going

through, because I I have given you the ability to change your mind.

2 Timothy 1.7, say it with me. For God has not given me, say your name.

God has not given Lisa. God has not given Denise.

God has not given Dana. God has not given Brian.

God has not given William a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Okay? I want you to have that close to your heart and in your mind.

I'm going to give you back some words that I spoke to you last all in August

about something I call Ejection Seat Theology.

Because we're going to address the very real fact that you're going to encounter

sometimes in your life when somebody pulls that ejection seat handle and you

get launched out of what you thought your life was about.

And it becomes about something else.

I think about email that I got recently from somebody who lost two children,

not just one, two children.

Their life is not going to look like it looked before that happened.

It's just not. Things are going to change.

But can you still find meaning and purpose anyway? Can you still find a way

to go forward? Can you still find hope? Can your life still be about something?

Can you honor the loss of those children by reframing the future and helping

other people find a way back when they go through the hard thing?

That's what ejection seat theology is all about, okay? We're going all in.

We're changing our mind. We're embracing the idea that when God says it,

he means it. There's a new song Cody Carnes wrote, I'll take you at your word.

If you say it, I'll believe it. If you start it, you'll complete it.

Like you're going to take him at his word. And he says, I've given you a spirit of a sound mind.

So let's go back in time to all in August last year. Let's learn a little bit

about ejection seat theology.

Let's go all in with this idea that we have a sound mind and we can use neuroplasticity

and self-brain surgery to reconnect and transform our thinking and find a way

forward, no matter how overwhelming it seems.

And we're going to make it happen, and we're going to start today.

Hey, my friend, I hope you're doing well today. I have a little theology and ejection seats.

So how in the world are we going to pull those two things together?

Let me just tell you, there's going to come some times in your life when you

encounter what Lisa and I call the massive thing, these big things that happen

that you are not expecting, and they They throw you off,

throw your life plan off onto a trajectory that you were not expecting.

And you never know what's going to happen after the massive thing.

And maybe it's not one big thing for you. Maybe it's a series of many massive

things, if you want to call them that.

Or maybe you've had more than one massive thing. So maybe it's not just one thing.

But when you get launched into this oblivion of unexpected turn in your life, what do you do then?

And I think it really depends on your theology. Of course, theology is the study, the study of religious.

Truth, the nature of God, the rational inquiry into religious questions.

That's what we would call theology.

I think if you've got bad theology or no theology, then you're going to have

a hard time dealing with the massive thing.

And so we're going to talk about

that today. We're going to have a good little talk about all of that.

But first, we're going to give Lisa a chance to tell us the good news.

Lisa, let's hear from you.

All right, friend. Ready? So theology is the study Study of the nature of God,

religious truth, the rational inquiries into religious questions,

a system or school of opinions concerning God and religious questions,

a course of specialized religious study, usually at a college or seminary.

That's the definition, the dictionary definition of theology.

Now, most of us, though, we don't really go around thinking of ourselves as theologians, right?

Most of my audience, I think, most of my friends who listen to my podcast probably are not.

Seminary-trained theologians, most of us just believe that we're walking through

this life either with a Christian faith or some sort of spiritual worldview

or maybe agnostic or atheistic, and maybe we don't really think about ourselves as theologians.

But I'm telling you, everybody has a theology, okay? Everybody has a theology.

And if your theology is bad, then you're not going to be armed with some of

the tools that you might have when you encounter these massive things.

Let me tell you a little story that's from my book, Hope is the First Dose.

This is a story that goes back way back to 2 million years ago when I was at

School of Aerospace Medicine in the Air Force while I was in medical school.

We had to go down to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, and we had to go

through this introductory course at the School of Aerospace Medicine,

which is where flight surgeons are trained.

There's two schools. You have to go through the primary course,

which I did, and then there's another one to actually get your wings and become

a flight surgeon that I didn't do because I went on to become a neurosurgeon, of course.

But in that first school, part of what you do is you get, at the end,

if you pass all your tests and do everything, you end up getting to take a ride

in a jet airplane with a pilot.

And the first plane you get to take a ride in is called the T-37.

And later we got to do a supersonic T-38s, but the T-37 was the first plane.

And that airplane is unique in the Air Force.

I think I've told you this story before. But that airplane is unique in the

Air Force in that it does not have a rocket-powered ejection seat.

That airplane has a spring-loaded ejection seat.

And basically, when you get in that seat, the crew chief tells you to look between

your legs, and there's a big pair of yellow handles down there.

When I wrote the book, I was, I forgot it. I said there is a handle,

but the more I remember it, I finally looked it up and Googled it.

And there's two handles. You have to put your hand, each hand on one of the

handles, and you have to pull it up to basically launch that seat out of the airplane.

And you have to have enough altitude because there's not a rocket,

right? It's just basically a spring.

So you have to have enough altitude to get the parachute to open in time for

you not to crash into the ground.

So the crew chief, one of the first things he tells you is, hey,

don't touch that ejection seat handle unless the pilot tells you to,

because if you don't have a thousand feet of altitude and you pull it,

you're going to die, right?

That's going to launch you up in the air and the parachute won't open and you're

going to crash onto your head and die.

And there's nothing anybody will be able to do about it. So keep your hands off the handle.

The massive thing that happened in our life, of course, losing our son is whatever

it is in your life. It's cancer. It's a loss. It's a divorce.

It's an infidelity. It's an abuse. it's a pandemic, it's a loss of a business,

it's a bankruptcy, it's whatever it might be, or it might be a series of those

things, or it might be a series of drip kind of water torture sort of things.

It might not be one thing for you, but there's going to come some point in your

life when you encounter something you were not planning on encountering,

and it's going to be hard.

And if you're not prepared for that, it can really knock you out.

Now, I spent years now studying suffering, grieving, and patients that were

dealing with terminal illnesses in their families and how to help them.

And then while I was doing that, we lost our son and I became one of the people I was trying to help.

And then I studied how people seem to handle this. There's four different groups

of people that I noticed over time and how they respond to major challenges.

I wrote about that in the new book. And those four groups of people,

I finally realized the differences between them, between Between the ones that

don't ever waver, they're just untouchable, and they maintain their peace of

mind, and they deal with whatever comes along, and they hold on to their faith,

and they don't get cast into doubt or despair.

Those guys versus what I call crashers who encounter something hard,

they seem pretty squared away, and then all of a sudden something bad happens,

and they end up just plunging into the abyss and misery and alcoholism and divorce.

And no matter what happens to their recovery of their illness,

if they have a successful surgery and survive or they get over their cancer or whatever happens,

no matter what, they end up down in this pit of despair and they're miserable

and they never recover again because they've been through something so hard

that it took them off their feet.

And then there's this group called dippers that I call them dippers where they

are great and then something happens and they crash a bit and then something

happens and they turn around and they remember everything.

What their faith was and they remember that they have hope and they remember they

have other things to live for and they recover and rally

and they end up back in a pretty solid place despite the

danger of what they are despite the difficulty that they've

been through and despite the outcome of their medical situation even if they're

dying of their cancer they find their feet again they tell a good story with

their lives and they were keep their families together and all that stuff and

then there's a group i call climbers who are people who are down and out to

begin with maybe didn't have any faith or had been through a series of really

hard things in their whole life, and they get this illness.

And somehow the illness or the challenge creates an opportunity for them to

finally say, wait a minute, my life is now limited by this disease,

but I've got other things to hope for.

And they find a way to find faith in those moments. And then the challenge actually

turns out to be the thing that is turning their life around.

And even if they die of their illness, like Joey, in my book,

I've seen the interview, even if they die of their illness, they end up happy

and they end up okay and they end up in this peaceful place and their lives

have a good sort of punchline to them because they've told a good story.

I started studying what is it that separates all those people and what it really

is at the end of the day is your theology.

It's your ability to believe that God is who he says he is.

Or if you don't believe in God, it's your ability then to find some way to have

faith in something that there's still hope and there's still light and there's

still some opportunity out there to find something good to think about out and

press forward to even if your days of your life are limited or even if you lost

the person or even if the situation didn't turn out.

So your theology then turns out to be the determining factor of whether you end up okay or not okay.

You end up in a more increased peace of mind, hope, faith, abundance,

and all those things, or despair and misery and brokenness and pain and all

the things that go along with it.

The thing that turns that around is your theology. Now,

let me tell you, let's just assume for a minute that we're going to leave the

atheists and agnostics out of this conversation for a minute because they got

their own challenges to figure out when they have to find something to live

for when their life is not what they thought it was going to be.

So, I'm talking right now specifically to you, my friend, if you do have a faith.

I want to make sure that you understand how your theology is put together,

because if it's not right, then you're going to struggle and suffer more than

you should when you encounter a hard thing. Let me give you an example of that.

If your theology has you believe that God winds this whole thing up and then

sets it loose and doesn't really get involved in our lives too much,

like deism, or if you just believe that God may care about us,

but he doesn't care about me as an individual.

And so therefore, when something bad happens, God is either responsible for

it because he's capricious and he punishes people for their sins.

And he's, I'm getting this cancer because I did that bad thing 10 years ago

and God's paying me back.

And there's karma or mixing Eastern religion with Christianity or something.

If that's your God, or if your God is not involved at all, and yeah, I've got this cancer.

He doesn't care and I'll see you in heaven. And whatever happens now is up to us.

If that's your theology, you're going to have a hard time. or if you believe

that God actively does cause things to happen to punish you or interfere with

your life or do something for somebody else's benefit that hurts you.

Like then I've seen people that have all of these beliefs.

We had a pastor one time who we had a friend who her daughter died during a

heart transplant and then her

husband died a year later of a broken heart after his little girl died.

He just sat up one day in their house and fell over and died like almost a year

to the day that they lost their daughter. and this pastor said somebody in their

family must have a sin problem that's unconfessed and there must be a generational

curse on that family. That is not biblical, friend.

God doesn't do that. He doesn't thump you on the head because your dad told

a lie 20 years ago. He doesn't do that. That is not scriptural.

He doesn't punish you for your father's sins.

Now, there's some scripture that

talks about how he visits iniquity on the fourth and fifth generations.

And what that means, though, is that there are some generational things that hurt our kids.

If you're an alcoholic, your kid's more likely to be an alcoholic and their

kids are more likely to be an alcoholic.

Or if you're abusive, your kid's more likely to be abusive and their kids are

more likely to be abusive. Those are generational curses. Okay.

And so at some point, if you straighten your life up and get closer to him and

to solve all those problems,

and you have a good chance of God breaking that curse and it stops with you

so that your child doesn't pass that bad behavior or that problem,

that depression or that issue that you're dealing with onto the next generation,

because you got it squared away in your life, right?

So the generational curse is not the same thing that I'm talking about when

I say God doesn't punish you for your dad's or your mom's or your cousin's problems.

So that's bad theology, right?

So you need a theology that tells you the truth when you go through something hard. You just do.

One thing that commonly I hear in patients, I commonly hear it in families who

are suffering in different ways, who have lost somebody.

And I heard some of our relatives say, why does God allow this to happen?

Why did God do this to me? Why did God take him from me?

So when we have a theology that says if something bad happens,

it's because God did something to harm us.

We can't find joy in that. We can't find peace in that because we can't square

up a God who says he loves us and he would do everything for us with a God who

would do something to us that's harmful, right?

You can't square that up. And it's not, it wouldn't make sense for you to be able to.

So when you encounter a hard time, when life pulls the handle and the ejection

seat launches you into space and everything seems impossible and there's no

way for you to have enough altitude to survive, you have to have a God.

You have to have a faith in a God who can open that parachute and get you down safely anyway.

Or if the disease is going to win, you have to have a God who says,

hey, I can comfort you anyway.

I can help you through this. I can help you and your family make it through this.

And even if you pass away from your illness, I can give you hope and to know

that your family is going to make it.

We have to have a theology that allows us to believe in that,

even when the massive thing...

Comes and pulls the ejections he handled. And I'm just going to give you a quick

idea today that the theology that works, the theology that is true and correct

is the one that the Bible presents.

And that is to get away from this idea that all of us have some different version

of the truth or that there are multiple ways to find God. There are multiple paths to him.

What the Bible says, what Jesus said out of his own mouth in John 14,

6, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me.

Get that. Jesus said, I am not a way, not one of the ways, not some way.

Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me. So can you get to God some other

way? Can you find a path through some other prophet?

Can you wind your way around and find your way to God except through Jesus,

not if Jesus is telling the truth.

It can't because he said, no one comes to the Father except through me.

So let me make it really simple for you. If you want to have something to hold

on to when life pulls the yellow handle and launches you into space because the TMT has arrived,

the massive thing has arrived, you need to know that the only hope is in Jesus,

that he's got you, that he will help you, and he will offer you hope and a future.

That when he says the thief comes to steal and kill and

destroy and your life has felt like it's been stolen and

then killed and destroyed you need to know the next part of that sentence jesus

says i came that you might have life and have it abundantly you need to know

that's true and then he can pull it off and no one comes to the father except

through him that he's the way and the truth and the life and his truth he says

later will set you free right you need to know that's true.

When you're trying to put your theology together, I would call it prehab for

the self-brain surgery you're going to need to do when you encounter hard things.

Put you some word in your heart so you understand and can call on it and use

it like a medicine, like a first aid kit when you encounter something hard.

Okay? So get you some theology that understands that there's only one way,

there's only one truth, there's only one life, and it's in Jesus.

Okay? When you encounter that hard thing, you need to know God is not going to lie to you.

He's not going to break his promise to you.

Hebrews says it plainly in Hebrews 6.18.

It is impossible for God to lie. It's impossible for God to lie.

That means, my friend, if there are in fact multiple truths,

if there are in fact multiple paths, like the progressive Christianity gospel

would tell you nowadays,

nowadays if there are more than one path christianity can't

be one of them because it has an internal claim that

god can't tell a lie and that jesus is the only way

so if those two things are not true then he can't be

one of the paths to salvation right it

can't be so you need to decide you're going

to go all in with him or are

you going to try to find some other truth that you find more palatable and

most of the time that that more palatable truth is because you have some stuff

going on in your life that you want to hold on to and you can't reconcile them

with what the word says with what jesus says so you want to make it where the

word isn't what he says it is or what jesus isn't who he says he is and he doesn't

have the authority to give you that.

Direction. So what I want to tell you today is that when the ejection seat handle

gets pulled and you get launched,

God can and will open that parachute and help you float down safely to a place

where you're going to be okay, regardless of the outcome of the event that's happening in your life.

Regardless of the circumstance, he can help you maintain your peace of mind

and your hope and your peace and find a way forward and find a way to save your

family and all those things.

He can't because he can't tell a lie because he's the way, the truth,

and the life. And let me give you one of the verses that I use. It's Psalm 16.

This is a Psalm of David, Psalm 16, 8.

I keep my eyes always on the Lord with him at my right hand. I will not be shaken.

Okay. If you have that in your prehab, the first aid kit, okay.

When you hit that hard thing, when the handle gets pulled and you didn't want

it to, when the phone rings on the night of your child's death,

when the phone rings and the doctor's calling with the report,

when the phone rings and the accountant's got bad news, when the phone rings and whatever,

fill in the blank, he's not coming back, she's not coming back,

whatever it is, when the phone rings, when the message occurs,

when the situation develops, I will keep my eyes always on the Lord.

With him in my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Okay. I'm going to get through this because he's the way he's the truth. He's the life.

He's the parachute. Okay. When the handle gets pulled and you get launched and

nothing's right, and your world's coming apart, you need to know that shoot is going to open.

You need to be able to rest in that promise because he doesn't lie to you.

And that's how my friend, when you're in the pit of despair,

when you're in this furnace of suffering, as Isaiah called it,

you can, instead of continuing to fall down deeper and deeper into the pit,

you can start finding some rungs on the ladder to climb back up out of that hole.

And the rungs are the promises that if he can't tell you a lie and he's the

truth and he says, I will work this out for your good somehow.

I will get up out of my chair to show you compassion.

I long to be gracious to you. I will rise to show you compassion.

He says, Psalm 34, 18 says, He says, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted.

And you know how he's close to you? It's true. It turns out to be true.

He's going to send people to ring your doorbell and bring you food.

He's going to send somebody to shoot you a text message and say,

hey, I'm thinking about you right now.

He's going to send somebody to go to the prayer wall and click on your prayer request.

And you'll get an email that says, I prayed for you. When you go to w1md.com

slash prayer, he's going to send somebody to help you get through that financial

situation that you thought was impossible.

He's going to give you an answer because you're going to use your brain.

He's going to help your brain chemistry get better.

You start thinking more positively and you'll think, oh, I think I see a way out of this situation.

I think I see a way I can make this work.

And you'll start to be able to rest in the midst of that storm when he says, peace, be still.

You'll start to be able to see possibility instead of just the pain.

You'll start to be able to understand that there's hope, that there's a reason

to be able to be hopeful still, no matter what it is that you've gone through or are going through.

No matter how many times TMT just won't leave you alone, you'll start to be

able to believe that there will come a day when things will feel better again.

My friend, I'm telling you, it's true.

He's the way, and he's the truth, and he's the life,

and that's the theology you need to have because every other one leaves you

frustrated and wondering why he doesn't care or wondering why he's capricious

or wondering why he won't get involved or wondering why he did what he did or

wondering why you don't even think he might even be there at all.

That's bad theology. You need some good theology.

You need some help. You need some rest. I need you to know that with the right

theology, you can survive when the handle gets pulled.

You can survive when the a TMT shows up, even if it's a bunch of mini TMTs or

if it's one massive one or more than one massive one.

You can make it. You can get through, but you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And to do that, you got to have the right theology, friend. I want you to get

some rest and you can't do that with bad theology.

I want you to understand that the good news is you can change it.

Good news is you can start today. Hey, if these episodes are helpful to you,

please share them with your friend. Encourage somebody else to go all in, okay?

Say, let's change our minds. Let's change our lives. God hasn't given us a spirit

of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. We are self-brain surgeons.

We're practicing information medicine. We are understanding that we can change

our minds and change our lives by using the things that God put inside us,

and He will come alongside and help us to change the structure of our brains.

Our brains aren't broken. They're just waiting for better instructions.

Our brains aren't filtering out everything that's good and only seeing the negative.

They're just waiting for better instructions to reset our reticular activating

systems so we can see that there's another way to think.

There was a recent study that said, actually, which is better,

positive thinking or less negative thinking?

Which is better, positive thinking or less negative thinking?

And the research is overwhelmingly clear. It's far better for you to have realistic,

less negative thinking than it is to just convince yourself to put a smile on

and have this artificial positivity.

We've talked about positivity bias and how important that is.

But the reality is, you've got to get your negative thinking under control.

You've got to replace it with something accurate. That's why I give you the

thought biopsy procedure we talk about all the time. We're going to talk about

it again on Self-Brain Surgery Saturday coming up.

We have a brand new Frontal Lobe Friday and a brand new Self-Brain Surgery Saturday

coming up tomorrow and the next day.

We're going to get real tactical, okay, about getting negative thinking under

control. It's the number one hindrance we have.

So don't just put a smile on, but actively take charge of your thinking.

2 Corinthians 10.5, take every thought captive, actively take charge,

even in the midst of the ejection seat, even in the midst of the massive thing,

even in the hard times, get your thinking under control.

No, God hasn't abandoned me. No, he's not trying to punish me.

No, this doesn't spell the end for me.

Yes, this is hard. Yes, I'm grieving. Yes, I'm suffering, but there's still

hope, and yet there is still hope.

That's what I want you to get to, my friends. Let's go all in with understanding

that even in the midst of the massive thing, he's still giving us a spirit of a sound mind.

You're going to find your way forward when you clear your thinking.

You use your giant, amazing, beautiful frontal lobes instead of your terrified

little almond-sized amygdala to make better decisions, to find your path forward, to hold on to hope.

No matter what, you can change your mind and you can change your life.

Isn't that something to go all in for?

Let's get after it. And the good news, my friend, you can start today.