Noise vs. Silence
This season the podcast we’re talking about the seven enemies of the mind that go along with my new book, Get Out of Your Head. Today we’re going to talk about noise, because it is so obvious and it’s coming for every single one of us. We live in the noisiest generation that has ever been. No generation has had to deal with more inputs than us. So how do we deal with it?
Throughout the book, we talk about this idea of a negative thought spiral and how to shift it. In this chapter on noise vs. silence, you’ll see the spiral that goes from the thought “I feel discontent” to the thought “I’ll feel better if I stay distracted.” These distractions are constantly pulling you away from God, and we have the choice to interrupt, but that is our responsibility. We have a choice to change the way we think, but we have to choose it. You have a choice. There are ways we can limit the noise and distraction in our life. Ultimately, we have to choose the truth. The truth that will cut through the noise and the lies. All that noise isn’t ambient or random noise. That noise is feeding us ideas about our worth, what we need to be happy, and our relationships. That noise is telling us things. Most of what it’s telling us is lies. We have to do a better job of surveying our lives, noticing our inputs, and understanding the things that we are believing because of those inputs. My daughter Kate is so good about this. She’ll take social media off of her phone and leave it off unless she wants to share a post. This generation below us is really aware that this is toxic and dangerous. They are aware that they are filling their mind with lies and it’s affecting their generation. They know it’s the reason so much of their generation is depressed and anxious. We have to be better surveyors of our lives. We also have to be better fighters for the truth.
In the book I tell this story where I woke up one morning and had planned to spend time with Jesus, but picked up my phone and scrolled Instagram instead. I was immediately put into a bad mood and snapped at my husband. We always have a choice, and our choices about what we choose to fill our mind affect the rest of our lives. This is why spending time with God in the morning is so vital and urgent to me. It’s not because I want to check it off the list, it’s because we are at war! We need the truth in our minds first. We need to know who we are in Christ, we need to know who God is, we need to know what the point of our lives is before we head into it everyday. We need to have truth so clearly put before us that when we see other inputs coming our way, we can sort out the lies and the truth. That is why God wants time with us. It is not so we know more and more about God. It’s so that we can fight better and actually live out those things we know to be true about God. But we have to know them first. We can’t just expect God to fight for us when the main way he is fighting for us is through his word. He says in Hebrews 4:12, “for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” There’s nothing else that can do that. The word of God changes us. Connection with God is the foundation for every other God-given tool we’re going to talk about that we have to fight with. We can not know God, give God, rest in God, or find hope without time with him. That is how we get God. We need stillness with God.
We don’t just need mindfulness. This is the lack that exists in self-help. We only have hope because of Jesus. Science is incredibly helpful, but almost every helpful tool is rooted in Scripture. These are God’s tools, his power, his weapons, and his truth. He built our brains, and he built them for silence. Science says that the brains of the people who spend hours in prayer and meditation alone are different. They have better imagination, less anxiety, and less depression. This changes our brains. What science is able to tell us about our brain reflects the brilliance and power of the one who designed them.
Some of you don’t know this, but God really likes you. Sometimes my son walks down the stairs in the morning after being a total brat the day before, and no matter how frustrated I am with him, when he turns the corner and asks me for breakfast, I always think, “I like him!” I don’t just love him, I actually enjoy him. I think a lot of us miss that about God. God loves you, he’s fighting for you, and he sent his son to die for you, but he also delights over you. If we can fixate on that, all the sudden we want to be with that God. We want to enjoy him. We want to experience his delight over us and be with him.
So here’s what I want you to do: put your Bible by your bed and have it be the first thing you read in the morning. Before you grab your phone or your newspaper, grab your Bible. It matters that much.This is how we go to war. This is how we fight better.
We need to fight for our kids too. They’re getting inputs every single day. Our kids are fighting more darkness than we can understand. We have to fight for them too. How? We give them the same scripture we’re feeding ourselves with. Sit with them, listen to them, read scripture over them, and pray with them. They need it just as much as we do.
I know sometimes opening up the Bible can be so overwhelming, so let’s get real simple. Here’s what I do in my time with God:
Make sure you have your tools. I love keeping my Bible, journal, pen, highlighter, and headphones altogether so I can grab it easily.
Work through a few verses of Scripture: sometimes I’ll just read, sometimes I’ll listen to it on the Dwell app, sometimes I’ll do both. I’ll pick a passage, write down what I learned, and write a few takeaways.
Once a week, I’ll pull out all my commentaries and really dig into a passage or book. I’ll learn about the context, the meaning of words, what the author was thinking when he wrote the passage, etc. One of my favorite tools to use for finding commentaries is preceptaustin.com
