Creation Story (Theology Thursday)

Good morning, my friend. I'm Dr. Lee Warren here with you on Theology Thursday.

We're going to do a little bit of self-brain surgery today.

I had a long day in surgery yesterday. Man, we had a long day.

We got to do a little brain surgery this morning, and then we have clinics,

so it's going to be a busy day as we continue to pay the tax from the weather

delays that we had in central Nebraska earlier this week.

So your prayers for that. that. Today, I'm going to give you back something

that hasn't been online for a while.

I did an episode back in season five about what I call a creation story.

And it's funny, as I play this episode a little bit from now,

you're going to hear me talk about the book that I'm writing.

At the time, I was writing Hope is the First Dose.

But when I first started writing that book, I had tentatively called it Infinitely Happier.

My original idea when I started writing the book was not Hope is the First Dose.

It was about how we get our brains around on finding our hope and our faith

and our happiness again after we've gone through these massive things.

And as I prepared that book, it evolved into what ultimately became Hope is the First Dose.

And I still think I need to write the sort of more focused on infinitely happier idea at some point.

But the Lord reveals these things to me as we go.

And so it ended up being Hope is the First Dose. and I'm so grateful for that

book and the way it's helping people and I hope it's helped you if you haven't

read it yet it's a treatment plan for what you do when trauma and tragedy and

massive things happen in your life how do you find your feet again

and it starts with being ready being prepared for them but if you're not it

gives you a place to start and so as I was writing that book,

I remembered how it felt to be standing out on the street,

outside the house in which our son Mitchell and his best friend were stabbed to death.

And I remember having this just strong sense that something new was starting

in our family. It wasn't a good thing, but it was a creation event.

It was the beginning of a new life for us. It was a creation story.

And I talked about that in this episode that I'm gonna play you.

And the reason I'm doing that is we've got several people that have written

in lately that have talked about massive things that they're going through.

Our friends, Brad and Jill Sullivan, for example, Brad and Jill lost their teenage

daughter to a glioblastoma several years ago.

And they've done this amazing work around the world with

the While We're Waiting podcast and this group for bereaved families

and they've helped groups around the world that have gone to other countries

and just helped bereaved parents find their feet and their faith again and they've

done such an important work and had the great honor of being on their podcast

and I was just reaching out to them to have them on my podcast when I learned

the news that Brad had been involved in a serious ATV accident.

He's been in the ICU in Arkansas, had a significant head injury and now he's

in a rehab environment and so they're going through something new and whatever

that's going to unfold and look like in the coming months, it's a new creation story for them.

It's something they weren't expecting, a massive thing that came along and now

as they've done before when they lost their daughter, they're going to have

to go through a new birth pain of a new creation,

and I'm giving you this episode because I want you to sort of be able to start

to see the troubles that you go through as not necessarily the end of what has been.

But the beginning of something new.

Because if we believe God's promises, if we believe that somehow God in his

quantum physics creator mode can create something out of the rubble,

out of the ashes of our old life.

Turn it out to eventually work for our good.

Not that it will be a good thing, but that somehow he can grow us,

mold us, shape us, train us, teach us, stretch us, reveal things to us about

ourselves that can ultimately result in our good or something good for us.

If we believe that, then we have to see these events, these massive things.

Life is never going to be the same again after the massive thing,

but can it still have meaning and purpose?

And if it can, and I'm telling you,

as 10 years, almost 11 years now as a bereaved father. It can, it does.

All the research looking at cancer survivors says that an overwhelming number

of them find that they grew and changed and that the ultimate experience of

them having had cancer turned out to be positive in their life.

People respond to suffering sometimes by navigating their minds through it in

a way that produces meaning and purpose in it.

And they begin something new that turns out to have been a blessing in their life at the end.

Again, not saying these massive things are good things, but if you trust in

your Savior and your Creator God, He can say, hey, you just had a big bang in

your life and I'm gonna create something beautiful out of it.

You just have to walk with me through it. It's not a zap me up and take me out of this painful life.

It's a John 10, 10 when Jesus said, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy,

but I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.

Friend, we're going to go into this creation story this morning.

We're going to end it with the song that I woke up with on my heart this morning,

my friend Tommy Walker's song, I Love the Lord.

I had struggled a little bit last night. We've got a lot going on in our personal lives.

I was chewing on a lot of things, and I woke up with this song in my heart.

I love the Lord. He heard my voice. He heard my cry. He turned his ear.

When sorrows overwhelm me, he heard my cry.

For he is good, he is good, he is good. For he is good. It's Psalm 116. It's I love the Lord.

So Tommy's song, we're gonna end with that because when you're going through

a creation story, you need to know where you're gonna land and you need to know

what you're gonna hold on to.

And I'm telling you that when the massive thing happens, friend, you can hold on to him.

He won't change. He won't fail.

His promises turn out to be true. And even when you're going through a new creation

event, you can trust that it's going to result in you finding a new way forward.

And you can land on hope. You can become healthier and feel better,

maybe even be happier again down the road.

And this is the path forward. It's the creation story. And I'm gonna give it

to you right after I ask you one question.

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the

neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything.

Starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life? Well,

this is the place. Self-Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,

take control of our thinking, and find real hope.

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready?

This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time,

my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

It's basically about this idea that it's vitally important

if you are infinitely miserable if you are in the hole if

you've lost your son if you've something devastating has happened to you and

you're as far from happiness as you can imagine you're infinitely miserable

then 10% happier or a little bit happier through chemicals or through meditation

or through yoga or something that just gets your mind off of it for a little

while is not going to move the needle very much on your your happiness.

And Jesus said the whole reason he came here, he could have saved us.

He could have just laid down his life and let Satan kill him and pay for our lives with his.

He could have done that, but he didn't. He came here. He lived in our shoes.

He learned our ways. He understood what we went through. He showed us a way to live without sin.

And he paid our sins with his blood and he lived a perfect life.

And that's why he came, right? To achieve salvation. But he could Could have

done that in a different way.

God could have rectified that by just taking the blood from him, right?

So he didn't. He came here, he says in John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal

and kill and destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.

And all through the Bible, all through the Old Testament, we see the word Asher in the Hebrew.

Asher means happy. All through the New Testament, we see the word makarios, which means happy.

Happy are you when you do this and that, Jesus says.

Happy are you when you suffer for my name's sake. Happy, happy,

happy. Not to quote Duck Donasty.

I talked about that in the episode a couple of weeks ago about macaroni and the macarena.

Those are two words that originated from the root word in Greek.

Makarios which means happy so same word that

we turned into blessed which sounds all pious and

holy and we missed the point completely if we think about

it as some spiritual thing he's talking about us learning how to be happy so

anyway that's the that's the gist of the book is how do we live in this hard

world and still be infinitely happier and why does it matter and it matters

because we can't really survive life if you don't learn how to be happy in spite

of the things that you go through.

And you certainly can't help other people find Jesus if you're miserable all

the time, right? So that's the gist of it.

But in getting into that story, I had to go down into the hole where we lost Mitch.

Because then I've seen the end

of you. I told you that we lost Mitch and I told you that it really hurt.

And I told you that faith and hope and light helped us find our way out of that.

But I didn't tell you how we did it. I didn't tell you how the mechanics of

how a person can do self-brain surgery and turn their lives around by allowing

Jesus to help them be happy even when things hurt.

And so in order to do that, I had to get down in that hole and rip the Band-Aid

off and go back and remember a lot of the things in the first few days after

Mitch died that I had tried to forget.

When we experience trauma, we stuff a lot of things down inside of us,

and that's a good thing, and it protects us, right?

But sometimes there's value in going back and not ruminating in the pain but

to mine it for the lessons that we can learn from it and help others with it.

And that's what I'm doing here.

And it's been a hard couple of days, frankly. So pray for me as I go through that.

I wrote about 7,000 words this weekend. So it's a really good,

productive weekend. And I'm on the right track with this book.

But something remarkable happened. In the first few chapters of this book,

I talk about the fact that we had a death and a burial and a resurrection. Our son died.

And on a Tuesday, he died, August 20th, 2013. And then on that Friday, we had a funeral for him.

We didn't bury him. We cremated him. But we had a burial of sorts.

And on the same day, our granddaughter, Scarlett, our first granddaughter, was born in San Antonio.

So it was some light in the darkness, but it was also devastating because our

daughter Katie and her husband Nate couldn't be at the funeral because they

were in San Antonio. We were in Alabama.

We were all supposed to be there. So Katie was mourning and having birth at the same time.

And it was just a devastating back and forth, light, dark situation.

And so in the book, I'm starting, the first few chapters are what I call the unholy week.

And I'm using the creation story because when we were standing outside the house

where our son died, waiting on the police to figure out what happened,

and we were all being held outside and couldn't go in and see what was happening,

it felt like in my mind I knew we were experiencing a creation of a new family,

a new world, a new life for us.

It was going to be different because Mitch wasn't going to be part of it anymore.

And it was new, and it was going to be painful and cataclysmic and devastating and new.

And so as I'm writing that, I kept being drawn back to the creation story in Genesis 1.

And at the end of each day of creation, he says, and it was evening and it was morning the first day.

And it was evening, it was morning the second day. It was evening and morning the third day.

And I just went through that week for us after Mitch died, and I used that analogy

of how the creation was happening.

And then I got to the fourth day, which is the Friday of that week when Mitch was cremated.

I'm sorry, when we had a memorial service for Mitch and Scarlett was born on the same day.

I got to Genesis 1, I looked at the fourth day and guess what I found?

Let me read it to you in the voice. This is not gonna appear anywhere in my work,

I promise you, as a man of my word, nobody's gonna hear this until this book

comes out and you're gonna get to hear it first now because I want you to be

praying about the process of me writing it and I really would love if you send

me an email and let me know if you get what I'm talking about.

Yesterday I got to day four in the creation story and I read it in the voice and here's what it says,

It says,

darkness.

And God saw that his new creation was beautiful and good.

Evening gave way to morning. That was day four.

Okay, friends, so get this. I'm setting this story up in the book where the.

Thing that really gave us a little tiny glimpse that there could be hope again

someday, even though it was just a seed that God planted and we didn't even see it at the time.

Our granddaughter being born the day we lost our son. So you had this beauty from ashes moment.

And so we had this dark day and God put a little bit of light in it to separate

the darkness from the light, just to remind us that the light was still out there.

When I saw that yesterday, it saw crystal clear exactly what God was trying

to show me that Scarlet having new birth, new life was a little bit of grace in that moment.

And it was like day four, it was day four of our new creation story.

And God was separating again like he did on the first day for the light from the darkness.

I wanted to bless you with that story. I hope, because the thing is,

whatever dark moment you're having, friend, or you've been through,

God will put some light in there if you just look for it.

And if you're in the middle of the night, you don't have to do anything for the day to come again.

It will, you just have to hang on. So don't give up, okay?

Thank you for partnering with us in this podcast. Thank you for joining us to

help others find that light and start looking for the places where God is separating

the light from the darkness, the day four of your creation story.

And do that, my friend, starting today.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my

brand new book, Hope is the First Dose.

It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audiobooks.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the Most High God.

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer.

And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,

every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries

around the world. I'm Dr.

Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your

life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.

Music.