Soulfit: Grace For Yourself

We ask a blunt question about what our self-talk sounds like and why we tend to offer grace to everyone but ourselves. We draw a clear line between conviction that restores and condemnation that shames, then challenge ourselves to respond the way we would respond to a best friend. 
• noticing how criticism becomes our default inner script 
• defining self-grace without turning it into a cop-out 
• separating conviction from condemnation using Romans 8:1–2 
• recognizing distorted “mirrors” like comparison and past mistakes 
• learning from John 8 and the balance of truth and grace 
• naming perfectionism as a moving finish line that drains joy 
• dropping labels and turning “stones” into stepping stones toward restoration 
I encourage you and I challenge you to ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend?

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

What Does Your Self-Talk Say

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I have a question, and you probably think, oh, we didn't prepare for it, but that's okay. You don't have to answer it. It's just for food for thought. If I were to follow you around all day and record every word you spoke to yourself, would I hear encouragement or criticism? You don't have to answer that. But just to be thinking about what would I hear? And I think that'd be a challenging question for a lot of people. Wouldn't it be interesting if we could record all of the thoughts and then to see what they were all day long? Since we have like a gajillion and one different thoughts, not different thoughts because they're repetitive, but we have a lot of thoughts. But what would they be? And I think probably a lot of us would say overwhelmingly that they're more often than not criticisms, not necessarily as much encouragement as we would hope that we give ourselves. It's a lot more criticism. And so we're going to talk a little bit about how do we extend grace.

Why Self-Grace Feels So Hard

SPEAKER_00 1:10

How do we do that? And the interesting thing about grace is, and we talked about grace the other day, that we're really quick to extend it to others. But many times we are a little slow, if at all, to extend grace to ourselves. You know, when it comes to us, when we make a mistake, ourselves, and we hear things like this. That little voice in your head says the things like, you should have known better. It says, You're not good enough. It says, you'll always mess things up. It says, look at everyone else. It says, why can't you get it all together? Like, come on. And after a while, we stop questioning, is that true or is it not true? We stop. And because it just keeps going over and over and over. It's like a when we when we find that favorite song that we like, we hit it on repeat and it just plays over and over. We do that same thing with those things that we aren't giving ourselves grace for. And we're gonna talk too about grace and not using it as a cop-out. And we're

Conviction Versus Condemnation

SPEAKER_00 2:35

gonna talk about the difference between that. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the difference between conviction and condemnate con. I can say big words, huh? Condemnation. Condemnation. Yes, condemnation. I still don't think I'm saying it right, but you know what I'm talking about. So one of those is the enemy's favorite trick to getting us to confuse conviction with condemnation. What's conviction? Conviction, if you ever heard somebody, I'm really convicted to do this. Conviction comes from God. A conviction says, and think about the things when we mess up. What does it mean when we're convicted? Maybe the conviction says the choice wasn't healthy. Let's make a correction. Maybe the conviction from God is come back to me. Maybe the conviction is let's grow from this. The conviction points us towards restoration. It's going to move us forward. Where condemnation comes from the enemy. It says things like, you're a failure, you're hopeless, you'll never change, you're never enough, and you're not ever going to be enough. It points towards shame. And in Romans 8, 8, 1 through 2, it says, Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. So it doesn't say less, condemnation. Still can't say that word. It just says no, no condemnation. Because God corrects us because he loves us. Kind of like when our kids did something wrong. We say, now what's the better choice we could make? Now, what did you learn from that? And God does the same thing for us with his conviction. Like, okay, what did you learn? Was there a better option? Where the enemy uses, condemns us because the enemy, the devil, wants to keep us stuck. Think about if you've ever been in seen one of those carnival mirrors, those carnival mirrors that if you stand in front of it, it'll make you look tall, it'll make you look all distorted and kind of wobbly. It'll let make you look short, make you look wide, all the different things, and they'll have different ones you you go and look in. Did you ever look in one of those and look at it and go, that's exactly how I look? Probably not, because the mirror is designed, it's desired to be designed to be funny and distort to make the reflection not accurate, not who you are. Yet every day, and and if you're in walk and talk this week or sit and talk, we're gonna talk about some of those same things that we talked about this week, and we're gonna, and why do we keep going over those? Because they're so important. And just because we hear something once doesn't mean we do anything about it. Sometimes before we begin to make changes, and I think on average, before somebody takes action,

The Distorted Mirrors We Trust

SPEAKER_00 6:05

they have to hear something seven times. And and that's on average. Some of us take a lot of times. But we we look through ourselves in those distorted mirrors all the time. And you would get in front of that mirror and go, that is not me. There's no way I don't look like that. But yet we do it on a daily basis. We look through the mirror of comparison, we look through the mirror of past mistakes, of rejection, of unrealistic expectations. And eventually we begin to believe those mirrors. We begin to believe what we are seeing. But you would go into a hall of mirrors that are all those and never believe anything in it, unless you spend a lot of time in there and you don't go out and look at any other mirror. You begin to believe that is the truth. And the interesting thing about truth is oftentimes it's your it's our perceived truth. So when somebody says, I'm speaking the truth, well, that's their perceived truth. And so truth is kind of a funny thing sometimes when it comes to if we look at like mirrors, and and and if that's all you saw, that would be the truth to you. So, you know, the question is, whose mirror are you using? Because God's mirror tells us a very different

Truth Plus Grace In John 8

SPEAKER_00 7:35

story. And in John 8, 1 through 11, it talks about, and and I like this, I like this passage because it puts a lot on everybody. But in John 8, 1 through 11, it talks about the woman caught in adultery. And now we know that's one of the Ten Commandments. And so I'm gonna read the entirety of 1 through 11 because I think it's all important of what's going on. And Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, and at dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him and sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought a woman in caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. And the law of Moses's commanded us to stone such a woman. Now, what do you say? Moses' law says, We got to stone this woman. And they're waiting for Jesus to reply. And so they were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this those who heard began to go away one at a time. The older was first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where are they? Where'd they all go? Has no one condemned you? Not one, sir, she said. And Jesus' response, then neither do I condemn you. Jesus declared, go now and leave your life of sin. It doesn't say go now and live your life of sin. It says, go now and leave your life of sin. So Jesus didn't excuse the mistake, but he also didn't allow it to define her. He offered both truth, this is the truth, this did happen. But then he also offered grace. And many times we only give ourselves the truth, and we don't follow up like Jesus did and give grace. The little things. He says, Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin. And

Perfectionism Comparison And Heavy Labels

SPEAKER_00 10:50

again, why do we sometimes struggle with self-grace? It's because, again, what we talked about earlier this week is I gotta be perfect. If I can just do everything right, I'll feel good enough. If I'm perfect and I do all the things right, and sometimes we're trying to be perfect because we have that sin in the past. That again, in those pat in that passage, Jesus didn't define the woman by her sin. But yet we keep defining ourselves by our sin. So it's hard to give the self grace because now we're trying to live perfectionist to overcome that sin. And the the thing is, as we talked about, when we try to be perfect, the finish line keeps moving. It keeps moving a little further, a little further. And what happens if you have a finish line that keeps moving? I did an event one time, a Spartan event, and usually typically they're only about 12, 13 miles. This one was ended up being 16 miles. I was, you know, okay, 12 miles, okay. Maybe probably within the next mile, we'll be done. It kept going. And that was not only exhausting physically, that was exhausting, exhausting mentally. Like I thought, okay, we got to be almost done. I'm so tired. I don't know how much further I get in. And that's what happens when the finish line keeps moving. It creates extensive exhaustion because we don't know it, because isn't it different if you see a finish line and go, I can make it to there. But if you don't know where the finish line is, I had no idea where the finish line is. If they had told me, okay, another four miles, it'd have been tough, but I'd got it done. And I still got it done, but exhausted way beyond what I should have been. And so no matter how much we accomplish, perfection always demands more. And so we never reach it. Because no matter how much we've done, we got to do a little bit more. We got to do a little bit more because now everything we've done is now the benchmark. And so now we got to do even more. And now we create a new benchmark. Now we got to do even more. And so we never reach that moment of perfection because it keeps moving. And in 2 Corinthians and 10 through 12, when it talks about comparison, it says we do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who come command themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise. Comparison convinces us everyone else has it all together. They got it all together. And some of this you've heard before. Why do we hear it again? Because it's so important, and we do it all the time. And not only don't do it because of all sorts of things, but the Bible, again, we have scriptures that says we can give ourselves grace, we can move past our sins. Comparison will rob us of joy. As I said, when they measure themselves by themselves, compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise because they're stealing joy from themselves. Because when you compare two things, how can you be joyful? When you just have one thing and you go, I'm really happy with this. You can be much joyful, and you might be really happy with your life. Think if you lived on a desert island with the person you love the most, wouldn't life be the greatest? Because nobody else was around. You just compared it to the day before being together. But it gets stolen because we compare it to all the other things. And then sometimes it's hard to give ourselves self-grace because we carry all those labels. We carry those, we carry that sin with us, which is a label, right? We whatever that sin is that we asked forgiveness, we were forgiven for, we still put the little label on it. And we carry it around. And I I talked about earlier this week about having a ball and chain attached to your leg and dragging it around. What if everything that you are carrying is labeled on that ball? It could be it could be all kinds of things, whatever those are. And maybe it somebody said you're too much, you're not enough, you're difficult, you're broken, you're unwanted, you're a failure. And we keep putting those on that ball and it gets heavier and heavier and heavier. Just like we've talked about when we've talked about the backpack. And as I was thinking about the backpack and thinking about all the things we stuff in there, and I thought about what if those were rocks? What if those were stones of some sort and they had the label on it that we stuff in there? Maybe hurt in the past, maybe things that didn't go right, of a sin we had, because we keep, we don't want to deal with it, so we put it in the backpack. And eventually that backpack gets too heavy and we can't we can't carry it anymore because it's too much of a heavy load. What if we use those stones and we took it out of our backpack, we set our backpack down, and that the stone said, You're not enough, and we we put it on the ground. And then the next stone says, You're just a failure. And we take that and we put it on up to the next stone. And we begin taking those stones out as we look at them and we deal with them, and then we work on them and we put them down. And is what we have is if we use those stones of that were in our backpack, we take them out and we can build stepping stones with them. And as we build our stairs, we build it to a better life. We build it to restoration of being restored because we walk up those steps. It doesn't mean that we forget about them. Those things, though each stone builds us up to be able to take the next step up. I think on the brick streets out here, I think somewhere there's different names of people that sponsored a brick and different things. So when we look at that, this little brick by itself is just a brick with somebody's name on it that sponsored a brick. But when you put all those bricks together, what happens? We have a road we can travel on, we have a street we can travel on. You now have a pathway, a stairway to restoration, because you're using those as your stepping stone to a better life, to a better you. And we can only do that when we give ourselves that self-grace.

What You Would Tell A Friend

SPEAKER_00 17:35

And so I want you to think about a question. We started with a question, so I want to leave you a question. If if and you fill in, you take this as yourself. If my best friend came to me with the exact struggle facing, what would I tell her? Whatever struggle you're facing, if your best friend came to you and said, Hey, this is what I'm dealing with, what advice would you tell her? And then if that whatever advice you give her, why are you willing to give that grace to her, but not to yourself? Because just as you feel that she deserves that grace, you deserve the same grace, and you get the same grace because Jesus has given it as the passage was an example. And and that's what some of these are, they're examples because God knew what we were going to go through. Yes, maybe it's not, maybe it's not that sin that she experienced, but maybe uh all of us have that maybe that we go, I just can't be forgiven for that. You know, I don't know. Everybody, and if everybody was to be asked, without sin, who can throw the first stone on any of those? And chances are all of us have sinned, so everybody would have to walk away one at a time. And so just want to leave you with Jesus' response was then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin. So extend yourself some self-grace. It is to not give yourself an excuse or an out, but it is to say, What can I do better? It is to be convicted, not condemned. Because being condemned is the work of the devil. Conviction is the work of God. And how we respond to that will help, we'll decide if we're allowing it to be a conviction or a condemnation. We're given free will, so we're allowed that choice. So that the next decision is up to you. How will you decide? Will it be a conviction or a condemnation? And so I encourage you and I challenge you to ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend? And am I willing to do that and give myself self-grace for that? So we'll finish up in prayer and then you can get on with your fantabulous Friday. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for bringing all of us together, Lord. Just give us the strength, the the power to see that we are being convicted and we can be forgiven and we can move past our sins, we can move past our struggles to um restoration of life, that that we can do that just by asking you into our life, forgiving us for our sins. And we just pray to give us the strength to do that, give us the patience to do that, give us the understanding to do that. Um, and just to extend the grace to ourselves and that you extend to us every day. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you, everybody. Hope you have a wonderful afternoon, wonderful weekend. I'll see everybody on Monday. Thank y'all.