Read an Excerpt

 
Session 1
Introduction
The Chatterbox


This session’s key idea: We can never tune out all the chatter—
the lies in our minds—but we can learn to tune in to God’s
voice.
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I read online that the average person has more than sixty thousand
thoughts per day and over 80 percent of these thoughts are
negative. Is that accurate? I don’t know. But let’s think together
about the possibility that 80 percent of our thoughts are not
only devoid of any power to help us but are also actively working
against us. When we allow our thoughts to go unchecked,
a steady drip of lies cements the wrong patterns within our
minds, building a Berlin Wall of bad beliefs.
 
I wonder how much of its forty-eight-thousand-word quota
your chatterbox has already filled today.
 
Did you hear it in the closet while you were getting dressed,
telling you that it doesn’t matter what you put on, that nothing
will look good on you because you’re too flabby, too bony, too
pale, too old, or, in a single word, defective?
 
Did you hear it in the office where you work or in the home
where you raise your children, telling you there’s no point in
trying so hard because no one notices anyway?
 
Do you hear it loudest at the end of the day, when mistakes
and regrets and missteps can bounce around the room unobstructed
by progress or perspective?
 
You sounded really stupid when…
How will you ever recover from…
Why would anybody want to be around a person like you,
who…
God must be awfully disappointed in the way you…
 
We all have a chatterbox. How we respond to it will make
the difference between a life spent floundering around in lies
and regrets or a life that’s making steady progress toward fulfilling
God’s desires for us.