Every Thought Captive Podcast | Episode 5

Hey there, Pando family. Welcome to the Every Thought Captive podcast, where we've been walking through the recent sermon series Kyle's been going through, walking through Kyle's book, kind of talking about how it is we take our thoughts captive, how we kind of rein in the things that are going through our mind and use them more effectively for Jesus, sending them more on him. My name is Brandon Braun. I'm part of the SE Online team, and with me is Derek Snyder. And we've been going on this journey with you guys, just walking through this book. And so this week, Derek, we're going to turn our attention to something Kyle talked about in a recent message, which was winning the morning. Yes. Now, I know just from like our own conversations, I know that neither you nor I are what we would call morning people. We have no, we're not winners of the morning. We're not champions of the AM, probably at all. No, like I think my general, like I got to survive the morning and then we can win the afternoon, maybe sometimes even like the evening. We'll just kind of see. We'll see how it goes. But but winning the morning, I like I think it's so important. And I love the way Kyle talked about it in his in his recent message, where he talks about the idea that morning is just whenever, you know, you wake up, you know, your first moments when you open your eyes, when you're looking at, you know, at the ceiling or whatever, and you're thinking about the day ahead. And so as you kind of think about, you know, what morning routine looks like, when you think about how you face the morning, like what are those initial first thoughts for you? Yeah, I think normally when I wake up, I'm trying to figure out what day is this? You know, what day is this that I'm entering into here? You know, but I think a lot of times what initially comes to my mind are, okay, what

are all the things that I need to do today? Or what are the things I have to do today? And a lot of times, you know, there may be some things I'm looking forward to. But a lot of times, I think it's like the things that it's like, man, I have to do these things today. Whether it's a hard conversation, or, you know, a meeting I have to be a part of, or, you know, maybe one of our kids are going through something, or maybe it's a two-hour swim practice, you know, that one of our kids has that tends to come to mind first. Okay. Okay. You know, I'm with you on that a little bit. You know, something that Kyle talked about that I didn't think I did all that much. He was like, well, don't look at your phone first thing in the morning. And I thought, well, that's not really a problem for me. And then in the past few days, I've realized, well, yeah, it is because I set my alarm on my phone. Yes. So like the very first, like, it's the first thing I pick up. And sometimes, I would guess most of the time since I was oblivious to it, it's like the first thing, like, after I turn it off, I'm like, okay, well, let's see if I got an email or whatever. And, you know, that's probably not the best way to start the day. But I'm also with you in the fact that one of my first thoughts when I wake up is not just what I have to do that day, but like, oh, man, I gotta get up. Yes. I gotta get myself going. Like, let's get out the WD-40. Let's get out of bed. Let's get going. So, but, you know, I think there are some people who are very naturally morning people.

You know, there are some people who are like, I'm up at six. I'm ready to go. There are others of us who are, I think Kyle phrased it in the terms of we don't, you know, we don't believe in God before lunch. Yeah. I mean, that's not... Or before your first coffee of the day, maybe, depending on the person. Yeah, that's absolutely true. So one of the images that Kyle uses in the book that I think is so helpful is that what we do in the first 10 to 15 minutes of the day is building the track that the train of the day is going to run on. Yeah, that's a good one. I think that's a good way to think about it, that when we start to, when we sit there, it's going to define our neural pathways for the day, that plasticity window he talked about. Yeah. You know, and we'll get into some specific things we can think about as we begin to process how we can think better about the morning, but when you look at your days, when you look at the way your morning starts, how do the things you think about first impact the way your day goes? Oh, for sure. Yeah, I think, you know, the way, the things I listen to, the things I decide to read very early in the morning or, you know, whenever I tend to get up, whatever the day it is, like they do like have the ability to kind of create the track for the rest of the day, you know, because I know that there's times when, like, you know, I could be driving into work and, you know, if I'm listening to a podcast of something that's making me anxious or, you know, and it can even be something entertaining, right? But if it's not something that's going to be helpful or encouraging to me, or at least putting me in the mindset of, like, Like, you know, like my job today is to minister to people and if I'm not thinking about those

things, you know, and if I'm not putting myself in that mindset early in the morning, I tend to be more mentally drawn towards things that are going to frustrate me, you know, because oftentimes for all of us, it doesn't matter where you are, where you live, like you're going to run into conversations or people that are going to be frustrating. Like there's going to be situations, no matter who you are, where you live, that are going to be frustrating, you know? And it sounds silly, you know, maybe it sounds super spiritual, but the times where I'm able to listen, either if it's to a sermon or I've read my Bible or I'm listening to a worship song or a set of worship songs in the car or wherever I am that morning, it sets me up so much better to handle those situations than when I'm listening to almost anything else. And I can't help but feel like there's, you know, there's something to that. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And, you know, one of the things that I believe Kyle talked about in the sermon is, you know, just waking up with that initial thought being, you know, thank you, God, that I'm up today. Yeah. Yeah. Sense of gratefulness for the day. Sense of gratefulness that, okay, this is another day that you have me here. For sure. And, you know, I think that is a hard transition to make in your day, because some days you do kind of wake up and open your eyes and think, oh gosh, here we go. Yeah. Here we go, baby. Like, let's, you know, I got to get up and get moving. And, you know, that doesn't set you out with a tone of gratitude, right? That almost sets you out with a tone of, you know, resentment of like, oh, I can't, like, I can't believe I got to go deal with this today. Yeah.

That's a great point. And I think, you know, for so many of y'all that are watching this right now, you know, we get to, you know, read your letters that you send us all the time. And we love that you do that. Please keep sending us those letters. Write us those things. You can find the address to our church in the description of our weekend service videos. And, you know, but, like, that would, like, Brandon, for a lot of our Pando viewers, like, it's that same type of monotonous thing every day. And I can imagine not only with that, there's probably not a whole lot of things you guys can control, you know, just in your day to day of, you know, who am I around? Who might I be approached by? I'm, you know, kind of dealing with a family thing, you know, from the outside. But I think, like, to your point, you know, it kind of doesn't matter where we're at in life or where we're living at the moment. Being able to start our day with a sense of gratefulness and gratitude and trying to get there, you know, really does set us up better than getting up and having that thought of like, here we go again. Because I imagine for so many of our Pando viewers that, you know, I can imagine that's probably the emotion and the feeling a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that's why, you know, the passage Kyle talks about in Lamentations is so helpful for us, because, you know, when Jeremiah writes Lamentations, like, he is in the middle of something he wishes he could get out of, right? Like he has been warning the people of Israel for years, like, if we don't turn back to God, things are going to go poorly. And they do. And thus it happens over and over and over again. And, you know, the Babylonians have come in, they are destroying Jerusalem.

They are basically burning the city to the ground. And he's looking around at everything that's going on. And most of Lamentations is just this prayer of complaint, of lament, of like, God, why is this happening? And, you know, he's very honest with God in a way that I don't think we always are. Just in chapter three, verses 13 through like 18, it says, he shot, speaking of God, he shot his arrows deep into my heart. My own people laugh at me. All day long they sing their mocking songs. A little bit further in verse 16, he has made me chew on gravel. He has rolled me in the dust. I cry out, my splendor is gone. Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost. And you think about, you know, him having to get up and face that sort of day. I feel like, God, you've taken everything from me. I feel like I don't have any hope. I feel like I've been eating rocks, because I'm not getting any sustenance. I'm not feeling like, God, this is helping. And so, oddly enough, one of the reasons why I think we have trouble with some of those negative emotions or getting to that place of gratitude is because we don't give these emotions like this over to God. Why is it that we struggle to do that? Why is it that we can look at passages like that in Lamentations and be like, well, I would never say that? Yeah, you know, I think it's, you know, I think sometimes we, I think we come from a place of like, ah, like God doesn't want to hear about that or like, you know, that may seem disrespectful to talk about those things. Ah, I don't want to really want to process that right now. And I think that the thing to remember for all of us is that, like, God wants the, God wants pure, pure is not the right word, He wants honest prayers from us. Like, He wants the honesty coming straight from our heart. And

so when we think about prayer, you know, there are going to be times when we're going to have really difficult things we're processing through. And I think one of the things that I would challenge all of us, you know, in our prayer life are, like, there is no one better in existence to process your deep internal pain with than the Lord. Like, there's no one else, you know, thank the Lord that He's equipped people like counselors and therapists and psychologists to help us navigate through some of those things and good friends and, you know, but for a lot of us, maybe someone watching this, Brandon, has never had someone like that in their life. And that's a very fair point. But one of the things to remember is that, you know, every single time, you know, you kneel, close your eyes, or just start to pray, like you have the ear of the creator of the universe right there is going to be listening to you. And just being able to process through, you know, even if you're starting your day and you're you know, God, I'm afraid of what's coming today. I'm frustrated. I'm scared. Again, there's no one better to process that with than the Lord. And a lot of times, like, you can do that. You can, I mean, you can do that audibly, or if you have a notebook, like being able to write down prayers in a notebook and be able to write out what you're feeling, especially first thing in the morning, and then just asking God to help you, right? And then to do that day over day, and then the next day, you know, write, you know, how God helped you through that day, because I think that's one of those things that helps us no matter where we're at. Yeah. You know, there's a great verse in, I think it's 1 Peter 5, 7, where Peter says, you know, cast all your anxieties on God, because He cares about you. And sometimes we just kind of think of that in like the generic sense, right? Like, oh, just generalize anxieties. But I think we can personalize that in a sense, like cast all your anxieties about specific things on God, because He cares about those things. For sure. You know, something I once encouraged someone to do was, like, you just need to put some blanks in that verse, like cast all your anxieties about blank, because God cares about that same blank. For sure. Like cast all your anxieties about your future on the Lord, because He cares about your future. For sure. Cast all your anxieties about your family on the Lord, because He cares about your family. And I think, you know, one of the things that lament helps us do is to say, hey, this is what I'm worried about. This is what I'm anxious about. This is what I'm concerned about. God, I give that over to you, because I know that you care more about that than I do. That no matter what I care about—

Which is crazy to think about. Yeah. No matter what I care about, God cares about it more. And, you know, I need to give that over to Him and trust Him to work in that and move in that. And I think that's what Jeremiah is doing here, is just saying, like, God, I care about the people of Jerusalem. I care about what's happening to us. Do something about this. Move and work. For sure. And I think for so many of you that are watching this on the Pando app right now, a lot of the letters that we get from y'all are about prayer requests. They're asking for us to join you in prayer, a lot of times specifically for your families, whether it's spouses or parents. And I know for so many of you, because of the situation that you're in right now, you can't physically be there to help. But Brandon, I think this is, it comes back to what we're talking about, is man, there is no one who would love to talk with us about that more than the Lord. And so, you know, that's where y'all, we're one in the same in the fact that we always have things going on in our lives that we need prayer for. And being able to have like a written journal of what you're praying about can really help increase your faith and your trust in God, because, you know, there may be some things that he decides, like, hey, not like this thing that you're praying for, like it may not be taken care of right now, you know, but over the course of time, you may see him working in unique ways where you're like, I see him working, but, and it's not completely solved yet. It's not finished yet, but I see him working. And then there are going to be other things that you're like, man, I'm going to look back to January 12th of 2025, and when I wrote this thing down, like, God is the only one that I talked to about that, and he answered that prayer. And when you're talking to other people about Jesus and why you've put your faith and trust in him, you can point back to those moments, because, you know, what can someone say to that? Nothing, right? It's your testimony. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I wrote this down, and I saw how God worked in it, and this is, this is a exactly what he did. So one last thing I want to talk about. So Jeremiah doesn't stay in this place of lament, right? The central passage in Lamentations begins in verses, well it's in 322 through like 327, where Jeremiah just writes this, the faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness. His mercies begin afresh every morning. I say to myself, the Lord is my inheritance, therefore I will hope in him.

And what Jeremiah is doing there is, I mean he's very literally taking his thoughts captive. He's saying like, no, I have to say this to myself. I have to remind myself that this is who God is. And he points to three things, right? He says the faithful love of the Lord never ends. That God's mercies are new every morning. God has new compassion today. Great is his faithfulness. That he's present on this day, right? That he is here, he's alongside me. And that he is my inheritance, that he is my portion, I think is how the NIV puts it. That he is what I need for this day. That on this day that I've woken up, God is already there, he's already present, he already has mercy for the day, but he already has what I need for this day. So when you think about how Jeremiah talks to himself and says, hey, it's God's love, it's his faithfulness, it's his sufficiency in this day. Which of those three to you reminds, gives you more of what you need to do in the morning? All right, so help me out. So that's love... God's love, God's faithfulness, and God's sufficiency for that day. Yeah. That's a great question. Maybe the faithfulness aspect of that to me, and maybe it's just the way it's hitting me right now, I think is so compelling. Because there are going to be things that go on throughout our day that we don't have control of, things we do have control of. And even for those of us that are followers of Christ, being a follower of Christ doesn't necessarily mean that he is going to, that our outward circumstances are going to change. Placing your faith in Christ may not mean that your prison sentence gets reduced, or you get parole, or that cancer is removed, or your mom is not sick, or your dad becomes the person that you want him to be. A lot of times, placing our faith in Christ doesn't mean all those things change. They might, but they... But the thing to remember is that in the midst of those things, God's going to be faithful. He's going to be faithful to me, he's going to be faithful to you, he's going to be faithful to his children. And a lot of times it doesn't mean that things turn out like we think they should turn out, but what we can trust in, Brandon, is that God is good, and he has a good plan, and he has good purposes, and that that helps me even when I don't have a good day, right? Because there's going to be days where you can reframe your mind and take your thought captive and take your thoughts captive, and you still don't have a good day, you know? And things are still hard. But to be able to then lay your head down on the pillow at

night and remember, like, okay, my day may not have been good, but God is good. He has a plan, and he's faithful. Yeah. You know, I've recently been studying some of the life of David, because we're going to have a study on that later this year. And at the very end of his life, David comes to this moment where he knows he's going to die, and he composes this song about how he's seen the Lord work in his life. And one of the very first lines is, you know, God is my rock. And you think about David's life and all the ups and downs and the twists and turns and all that, and David is like, you know, everything in my life was unsteady except for the Lord, that he was the rock, he was faithful, he was what I could build my house on to steal Jesus's image, because he did not move. I would say for me, when I think about those three qualities, I think God's sufficiency is really what helps me win the morning, is just to think, like, on this day, whatever God has for me is enough. Yeah, for sure. That doesn't mean the day is going to be great. That doesn't mean that everything's going to be the way I want it to be. But I know that when I lift my head up off the pillow, and whatever time it is, at the end of the day, I put my head back on that pillow, I know that he's been enough that day, that he's seen me through, that he's done what he wanted to do. And hopefully I've met him in that work, and he's been enough for whatever that day held. It's a good word. Well, thank you all for joining us for the Every Thought Captive podcast. We'll be back next week for our final episode, Walking Through the Book, Walking Through the Sermon series. So we hope you'll be able to join us then. Like Derek said earlier, click on the description below. You'll find a way to write in to us, share your prayer requests, let us know how we can be praying alongside you. But we'll see you next time on the podcast.