Shattering Negative Thoughts With Biblical Truths

Hi, there, listeners. It’s a beautiful day to listen to a podcast, and this podcast is Faithful on the clock, the show where every phone notification dings to get your faith and work aligned. I’m your host, Wanda Thibodeaux, and one of the things I’ve really been working hardcore on is stopping negative thoughts. We all have those, right, and if you don’t keep them in check, they really can get in the way of your work and ability to serve God well. So, today, I’m gonna give you some tips and Biblical insights for how to reframe and halt all those harsh things that might go through your head as you try to accomplish good things. If you’re ready to gain a better frame of mind, here we go.

So, as we get started with this episode, one thing I want to put front and center right away is to tell you, please do not be ashamed for the negative thoughts you have, OK? There are some kind of core ideas that a lot of people tend to struggle with, but a lot of what can go through a person’s head, you know, it can get pretty dark. And sometimes, we don’t admit to others that we’re having the kind of thoughts we are because we’re so afraid that they’ll judge us negatively for it, that they’ll just think we’re completely unstable or something. And we really can shrink away from getting any help because we get this idea somehow that there’s something wrong with us and that, quote unquote, “normal” people aren’t going to deal with this. But I want to reassure you, there’s nothing you could think or do that would scare God off, okay? There is nothing in your head that He does not intimately understand and want to help you heal. You know, He already knows everything. You don’t have to hide what’s going on from Him, and He absolutely wants you to come to Him exactly as you are. It does not matter how broken you might be or what others might have told you about your state of mind, okay? You’re not beyond hope. And I want you to know that because of Jesus, there’s a promise of joy, and you will not always be trapped in your head.

Now, all of that being said, what do all of these negative thoughts sound like? You know, what kind of things do people actually hear upstairs? Well, negative thoughts that can wreak havoc on your joy and success might sound like, “I’m not good enough” or “I’ll never make it.” They can sound like, “I’m just going to mess it up” or “I have to be perfect. I can’t make a mistake.” They can sound like “I don’t have anything of value to offer, I’m worthless, I’m stupid” or “I don’t really deserve to win.” And sometimes, they can be a little more subtle. Sometimes, they can sound like, “It’s selfish for me to go after this for whatever reason” or “I’m not allowed to [you know, whatever, fill in the blank].” It even can sound like, “I have to…” or “I should…” You know, all of these imposed dictates that are just what the culture says, rather than what God wants. And of course, there’s the classic, “I can’t.” But the most absolutely brutal negative thoughts are often about your relationship with God. You can think to yourself, you know, “He doesn’t want me.” And, “All those Bible promises, they’re good for other people, but me, nah, they don’t apply to me. I’m the exception.” “God’s just gonna reject me like everybody else.” And if I’m really honest with you, those thoughts are by far the most dangerous because of the way they cut you off from trusting Him.

But the first thing I want you to realize, you know, the first counterweight I want to offer, is that it is absolutely critical for you to understand that negative thoughts always have a source. And you might say, “Well, Wanda, I’ve got no idea where they come from. They just show up like crazy Aunt Martha on Thanksgiving. You know, I don’t invite them, they just are suddenly there.” And to that, I’ll tell you, if that’s how it feels, that’s just evidence of how routine or automatic and ingrained the thoughts have become. It’s not evidence that there’s nothing behind them. Because that’s just how the brain is designed — the more you think something, the more those specific neural pathways get carved out, and then that makes it easier for you to think that same thought again. And I point that out because sometimes, feeling like the thoughts are random or that you don’t have control over them, that just makes it all worse. But most negative thoughts, honestly, even though biology, chemical imbalances and whatnot, all that certainly can contribute, most negative thoughts, they come from experiences. And that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have had some huge trauma in your life. It just means that over time, there’s been accumulated explicit and implicit feedback that you have interpreted in a specific way, okay? So, when you have a negative thought, even if you’re not really sure of what the experiences were that created the thought, you can just tell yourself, “This is not me being crazy. This is me having learned something I shouldn’t have learned.” And what that does, remember, I was talking about shame at the top of the show, it allows you to accept that the problem wasn’t necessarily you. It helps you be objective about it and accept that you are not completely to blame. There were other factors probably at play, and there are other places where it’s appropriate to assign responsibility. And then, once you know how much responsibility is actually yours, then you can take appropriate actions to make changes and give yourself some self-forgiveness. So, that’s the first thing.

Then, secondly, I’ll point out that a lot of the negative thoughts you might have, they’re pretty black and white. Like, there’s no wiggle room or room for discussion at all. It either is or isn’t. But there’s a specific type of therapy known as dialectical behavioral therapy, or DBT. And one of the core concepts in DBT is that more than one thing can be true at the same time, or that there is a dialect between contradictory elements that can happen. Or, to put it another way, there’s space for the word “also.” So, for example, it might be true that you completely bombed your last job. But it might also be true that you didn’t have the right training or that you have skills you can apply successfully somewhere else. Or, you might say, “Yeah, you know, I completely went against what I know God wanted me to do.” But then you can say, “It is also true that according to Romans 8:38-39, there’s nothing that can separate me from the love of God, and it is also true that according to Romans 3:23 I’m not the only one who’s fallen short. And so working within a DBT program or framework really can help you start to challenge the patterns of strict behavior and thinking that you have. And I think that’s particularly critical when it comes to faith, because if you start to think that there’s this hard boundary between you can God, like there’s just this strict line where you’re just incompetent or awful and that’s it, then it’s all too easy to just let this habit fester of not coming to Him. And if that happens, it just gets easier and easier to start listening to more and more of what the Devil wants to use against you. So, any time you start going down that negative rabbit hole, you know, you’re replaying all the things that happened in the meeting or whatever, I’d just encourage you, look for the also. Look for the alternatives, the other points where there’s some truth. And one verse I do want to offer here is Philippians 4:8. And that one is pretty familiar, but it basically just says, whatever’s good, put your mind on those things. And I’ve cautioned the use of this verse before, because if you don’t watch it, it can tempt you to just lapse into toxic positivity and just deny what’s wrong. But in line with this whole DBT concept that more than one thing can be true, it’s not an invitation to ignore what’s bad, okay? It is instead a reminder that there are not only bad things. It’s a reminder that even though some things might not be so great, it is also true that there are things you can celebrate and find joy in. And if you think about those things, it’s harder to feel like everything is completely hopeless.

Then, the third thing is, if you notice, a lot of the negative thoughts you have probably revolve around your identity. You know, you can feel like you don’t belong or aren’t a smart person or all kinds of things, and you’re assigning all of these labels or perceptions to your sense of self. And the big point here is that your identity is absolutely where the Devil will attack you. Because I’m telling you, the most valuable thing you can grasp is that you are a child of God who cannot be separated from God or your inheritance. If you know who you are and that you belong to God, then you can trust in the power He’s able to give you. And if you can do that, then suddenly the Devil, see, then he’s suddenly got a real problem. He’s got a battle he won’t be able to win. So, one of the first things he does is try to wear on your understanding of who you are. And he will take every opportunity to magnify everything untrue that you have learned. He’ll do everything he can to make sure you recall every negative thing you’ve ever heard in your life about yourself. So, when you start thinking false things about your core self, stuff like, “I don’t have any value,” you have to actively challenge what the Devil’s whispering you are and reclaim who God knows you to be. And you just repeat to yourself as many times as it takes that you are a precious daughter or son of the Father, and you tell yourself where you are headed, and you tell yourself that your mind is not real estate that belongs to God’s enemy. And I’m gonna be real blunt with you here. Just saying this stuff, you might not feel it right away, OK? But I think it was Louie Giglio, there was a sermon he did called Living Free From Anxiety, but he said, “Worship and worry cannot be in our mouths at the same time. One of them always displaces the other.” And you know, if you think of Job, I can guarantee he wasn’t feeling all that great when he lost everything. But in his darkest moments, he still worshiped. And the idea is, the more you worship, the more you keep telling yourself the truth of who you are, the less room there is for your old scripts to play upstairs. Because like he said, you can’t be doing both. So let worship be your sword. When those thoughts start playing, interrupt them with praise. Just disrupt them. Don’t even give them room to get to the end, because that’s not the path God wants you to go down. And that to me is the test of real faith. It’s easy to worship when things are great. But when you can worship even when everything feels awful and you genuinely don’t know what else to do, that’s integrity, and God absolutely pays attention to it. It is a gift He provides that will protect you, and it’s never the wrong choice. And I was thinking, you know, out this over this holiday, but one final thought is, again, considering Job, you don’t have to have this big list of thanksgiving when you worship. That’s what Americans especially tend to do, is say, “God, I’m so grateful to you that I have this great thing or my job or whatever it is.” We go around the table and bow our heads and share the list as we eat our turkey. But sometimes the best thing you can do in your worship is just to stop and, instead of giving thanks TO God, give thanks FOR God. Let everything else just melt into the background, and just say, “God, I am thankful FOR YOU, that You are Who You are and that You’re sovereign, because if I have YOU, then I have more than enough.”

So, connecting to the idea of God’s sovereignty and this idea of your identity, you probably have heard Proverbs 3:5, which tells you not to lean on your own understanding. And a lot of people take that kind of as a warning against pride, right? Like, don’t get so puffed up that you think you know everything. But it’s also a caution because our information and perceptions are so flawed and incomplete. So, if we lean on our understanding instead of God’s, we’re asking for trouble, because we never are fully accurate or have all the data we need. And what happens with negative thoughts is, your understanding of what’s true gets all distorted. You’re essentially replaying a bunch of lies, which the Devil then takes advantage of. And so, one way to combat your negative thoughts is to do everything in your power to improve how much you understand Who God is. Now, a lot of that will come from going deeper into His Word, and I’ll remind you here that when Jesus was tempted by the Devil, that’s what Jesus pulled out to make the Devil shut up. He immediately refuted what the Devil was saying with God’s truth. And so, you need to be doing the same thing. No matter how you feel, no matter what’s running through your head, you dive into the Word and you say, “I don’t know, but God does.” And you constantly look for Who He says you are. And you pray for Him to reveal things meant only for you. You go to people who are trustworthy like your pastor and you ask them to teach you and correct you. Because remember, God can work through others, right? And sometimes He’s gonna speak to you through other people. But you just seek Him out in every way you possibly can, accepting that you don’t really know on your own.

Which leads me to another point or tip. A lot of the time, our negative thoughts are anticipatory. They’re just this whole spaghetti plate of what we imagine is going to happen. So, for example, you might say, “Well, I can’t get up in front of everybody because I’ll just stutter over everything and embarrass myself.” And the reality is, we spend a whole lot of time worrying about the future, even though studies have confirmed that the majority of things we imagine don’t actually manifest. And so, the point here is that, you know, the future is God’s. We don’t actually know what’s going to happen. And just because we anticipate something bad doesn’t mean He’s not going to love and protect and provide for us. And so, there’s a big component here about being willing to be fully present in the moment. And when you catch yourself thinking about what’s going to happen, you can say, “No, now, now wait a minute. I’m not even there yet. I don’t have to let what’s down the road take my joy from the here and now. I can just focus on where I am and let God handle the rest.” And you want to know what will help you to stay present? Instead of having a conversation with yourself, you know, letting that internal critic just fire away, have conversation with God. Like, seriously, just chat Him up. That’s what He’s there for. It doesn’t have to be all formal or anything at all. It just has to be respectful and honor Who He is. Because again, there’s nothing that can scare Him off, and the whole reason He gave Jesus to the cross was so that you could be completely yourself with Him without any barriers or hiding. And to that worry and worship idea one more time, if you’re conversing with Him, there’s no room to simultaneously let those unhelpful scripts play. But I also recommend that you tap other grounding strategies — and I offered some of those in Episode 74 about staying calm under pressure. Sometimes, techniques like breathing or identifying things in the room, it helps to reset the nervous system and stop those mental recordings from just getting out of control.

The last point I’d like to leave you with is, the classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And so often, our thoughts get in a rut because our habits are in a rut. You know, we’re not doing anything different, so once you’ve hit play on that script, it’s hard to stop it. You just follow what’s familiar, right? So, one of the best things you can do to break free of negative thoughts is to change up your environment. And that might be something as simple as leaving lots of positive notes for yourself around the house. It might mean going to different places or trying new hobbies, or maybe you even set some boundaries with other people and say, “You know, look, every time I hang around you, I end up going down this spiral, so I’m not gonna hang out with you anymore. I have to invest my time in people who love God who can build me up.” Maybe at work, you ask to sit next to somebody else or you start listening to Christian music through your earbuds while you’re at your desk. But if you don’t want to think the same things, sometimes you’ve gotta make some changes. And other people can help hold you accountable along the way. That’s a big part of being loving the way God called us to be.

So, having given you these tactics and thoughts, I’ll close out with a prayer.

Lord, people in the business world, we know all about outside threats. We look to see what our competition is doing all the time. But for a lot of us, Lord, the biggest enemy isn’t somebody on the outside. It’s us, our own mind. So, today I just ask that you’ll speak to those who need to hear your reassurance, that you’ll reset their thinking with your truth and protect them from all the ways the Devil tries to attack. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

That wraps up another episode, listeners. I will say, this is a show I’ve wanted to do for a while now, just because I know the state of mental health is just not good for so many people out there. And my hope is that by helping you confront the negative thoughts you have, you’ll not only be able to meet your career goals, but also experience a relationship with God that’s completely open and filled with an understanding of how much He cares about you. Next episode, I’ll be covering how an intentional approach to using your time influences your neuroplasticity and connects to career success. Join me in two weeks for that, and until then, be blessed.