Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss the intersection between theology and psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their particular stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
41. I Believe, Help My Unbelief pt. 1
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We kick off Season 4 with a timely exploration of goals, Lent, and the deeper workings of the human heart. Drawing from neuroscience and Christian spiritual formation, we unpack why 80–90% of our daily actions originate in the limbic system and how that reality reframes change, healing, and sanctification.
We define the “inner world” of the heart—emotions, memory, and subconscious patterns and the “outer world” of visible behavior and public image. Then we trace how triggers actually work: the amygdala fires before the prefrontal cortex weighs in, while the hippocampus matches present cues with past experiences. That’s why willpower collapses when stress, fatigue, or loneliness hit. We share a powerful client story about sleep, loss, and “missing out,” we show how reframing memory can quiet the alarm and open space for compassion, choice, and genuine transformation.
We also connect this science to one of our favorite statements in scripture “I believe; help my unbelief.” This captures the tension between what we cognitively affirm and what our bodies fear or doubt.
We talk habituation, Romans 12, and practical steps for aligning belief with behavior: noticing triggers, naming stories, practicing gentle exposure, and meeting younger parts of us with kindness. The aim is integration—a life where the mind and heart move together and love becomes the new normal.
If this resonates, listen now, share it with a friend and leave a review. Subscribe for the full series as we get practical about transforming the inner world with wisdom, compassion, and hope.
Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_02We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_00We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.
Goals Versus Heart Formation
SPEAKER_02We're glad you're here. Well, welcome back to the Story Matters Podcast. This is our fourth season, episode one. And it's been a few weeks, so we're glad you're here. And we are excited about starting this season with a series. We're aware that, you know, it's going to be Ash Wednesday when it's released. We've been kicking around for a little while this idea of goals and resolutions, but then as time went on, we realized, oh, we're getting farther away from New Year's. And now we're at Lent. And the thought began to occur to me that a lot of what we want to say about goals when juxtaposed to what we're doing with Lent, which is mostly based on a fast, it feels like it's emphasizing what we want to talk about, which is the formation of the heart, the wellspring of life. You know, we're always in this podcast wanting to bring together the best of psychology with the richness of our theology. And so today we're going to just start a series on what does it look like to form the inner world? How do we do that? And why do we do that? And how do we see the inner world and the outer world integrating? One of the things we've talked about, Emily, you and I, is that we notice that there can be almost a double-mindedness when we think one thing, but then internally something else is happening. So we want to jump into that.
SPEAKER_00Before we get too far, I would love for you to explain what you mean by inner world and outer world.
SPEAKER_02Sure. So inner world, the most common phrase is heart. When you move into like the 1960s and 70s, it became very vogue to say subconscious, especially with like neurolinguistic programming. I did some research and that really came out of the late 1800s, but it kind of was in the modern use there. So, you know, subconsciously I want to blah blah blah. You know, what we're saying is like this part of me that I don't have thinking around, this part of me that seems to have a mind of its own, if you will. And so, as you know, in our work with studying trauma, where neuroscientists are much more comfortable rather than using subconscious, they'll use the word limbic system. And it's the part of the brain and the system, the various components of it, which work underneath the cortex, underneath the part that we are aware of. So, in a way, it is an aspect of the subconscious, but what we've talked about in previous episodes, like on triggers, is that when the limbic system is going one direction and the prefrontal cortex is going a different direction, you know, we can feel out of sorts. We're our bodies behaving or we're doing things not in line with what we think to be true and know to be true, which is a type of double-mindedness. I know that phrase is a large phrase and encompasses more than that.
SPEAKER_00And so that's the inner world. How would you describe the outer world?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so the outer world, I don't want to be married to these phrases, but the outer world, as I'm just thinking of it, is the things we would call the conscious mind, what I'm aware of or conscious of, things you can see and touch and name.
SPEAKER_00Right. And so actually, you just mentioned New Year's resolutions. So would you say outer world as the behaviors and the practices that we may want to change? Is that what you're saying is outer world, but the inner world is kind of at war in terms of our desires or our subconscious part?
Limbic System And Double-Mindedness
SPEAKER_02What I would say is, you know, David Brooks wrote a book called Second Mountain, and he's talking about what does it look like to build virtues that are lasting? And he has this kind of interesting concept of eulogy virtues versus resume virtues. Now, if you took the resume virtue and extend that to Facebook virtue, Instagram virtue, a lot of our goals really center around those arenas. Will I look better? Will I seem better? Will I sound better? And there are plenty of people who set New Year's resolutions that are aimed at the inner world. So we're not trying to throw that out. But so often, if we're honest, even those goals have an outer world effect. You know, I want to be known as someone who fill in the blank.
Nonconscious Behaviors And Responsibility
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think we've talked about like an internal dialogue of what I do and don't want to do. So I just want to make sure I understood before we kept the conversation going. And I think as we jump into this, you and I face a little bit of opposition, not harsh, but just kind of the questions of what do we do and why do we do it. And then, of course, when we work with clients, we come up against people putting pen to paper and doing the hard work of engaging the why behind a lot of their experiences and behaviors. It seems like what brought us to this topic is that there's a misunderstanding in most of us that we're living out of a cognitive, conscious brain. You know, the term limbic system is something that I don't think all of us are familiar with, but as I've become more comfortable using that terminology, it feels right to make sure we all have a really good understanding of what that even means.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so neuroscience, though it won't give an exact number, estimates that roughly 80 to 90 percent of our daily actions are initiated non-consciously. Now, by daily actions, they would add reactions and emotional responses and even habits. So, in other words, 80 to 90 percent of the things we're doing on a daily basis and reacting with, etc., come from a part of our brain that isn't the thinking brain. And why this is so important is we are responsible for it in a sense. Of course, when we talk about the flesh, you know, the sin nature, where does it reside? We would name that it doesn't necessarily reside there, but it certainly has rain and room there. But really, this is where story is so important because this is the part of our brain and part of our being that has been and it continues to be developed by what we're doing rather than what we're learning.
SPEAKER_00This is why interacting with those reactions, emotional responses, habits, the why, that's what we're doing is it's not just your story matters, it's your history, your emotional experiences, your brain that holds all the memory from how things happened if you did certain things. That's why interacting with these things are so important because so often we don't know why we do things.
SPEAKER_02I love what you said. Sometimes we don't know why we're doing it. And I think that's true. I think sometimes we do something and we're like, where did that come from? But honestly, if we just pause and think, a lot of the stuff we know right where it came. Like we meant to do it. Like I didn't think it, but I meant to do that. You said that, and I became angry. And I'm not like, wow, where did that come from? I'm defending it. It's because of what you did or whatever.
SPEAKER_00I think I meant more the behaviors of like, yeah, I don't really know why I'm a an Ennegram number, whatever, or I don't really know why I hate those things. I don't really people that haven't engaged their history or they haven't engaged their limbic system, they're like, Well, I don't really know, but I am.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Makes total sense. And I would then add what I thought you meant as well. There are times where like we've heard like Kurt Thompson talk about his wife says, every time we go back to your parents' house, you act like you're 15. That would be in a moment where it's like, why do I do this? So there are those. There's the formative things that we have no idea how they happened, but then there are the things that we do and engage from our emotions and our actions that again, we don't know where they came from or how to change them, but we know that they're there and we do them. And I think that what we're getting at is how do we engage this part of ourselves that I think for the most part, the Western world often has bypassed. I'm not saying always, but the conventional wisdom, the plausibility structure of our society is knowledge transforms you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's the part I can't figure out if it's my demographic geography, our denomination, but it seems like there is a pretty sound and strong messaging that we are humans that can be mind over matter. We just have to decide what we want, how we want it. We just have to think, I want to change this or I want to be this, and I will be it. You know, you can do anything you put your mind to. That is just not wisdom. If neuroscience is true and there's a limbic system or a subconscious that is really informing 80 to 90 percent of our behaviors, don't you think it would be worthwhile to say, well, what is my limbic system? What does that even mean? First of all, we need to unpack that. And what does it hold? What is the information in my limbic system? That's where I become passionate about our work. I think people don't think it's necessary to look back or it's productive, but wouldn't it be productive to find out the source? What's informing the part of my brain that gives me 80 to 90 percent of my behavior?
Scripture, Ambivalence, And Belief
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and right now, listener, if you're still with us, you're like, okay, so where are you going? What do we do? We're not supposed to do New Year's resolutions or goals. And let me say, of course, I think goal setting is very important. But what we're really trying to say is how did God design us for sanctification, this side of the fall and this side of heaven? We're in the already and the not yet. And one of the most famous verses in all of scripture that has gained so much popularity around this topic is said in basically five words, I think. I believe, help my unbelief. And so many people love that. We love that, you know, the story where the man is approaching Jesus to heal his child, and Jesus asks him if he believes, and he honestly says, I believe, help my unbelief. I've always understood that, and I still do, is it's something of ambivalence, right? Like I really do believe, but there's this part of me that doesn't. So we would call that a type of ambivalence. But we'd also we'd also say, I think if you wanted to drill down, my thinking brain believes in you. But right now, my feeling part, my body, my limbic system is doubtful. And I'm gonna need some real help here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my history. Like I I've seen people die before. I've experienced sickness, I'm fearful, I'm not in my right mind, or I'm not regulated. He's saying, in that space, I don't believe.
SPEAKER_02And what I'm wondering is most of us would think that was fixed. He was the child's healed, and now you only believe no, right.
SPEAKER_00I mean, and that's where we love where Paul goes into Romans 7 or James and his first chapter of like being double-minded, we all have a constant wrestling of what we believe in in our cognitive brain and what we don't believe in in our subconscious or limbic brain, or vice versa. If I believe I'm going to be abandoned by everyone that loves me in my limbic system, but my cognitive brain says, no, they're great people. I'm gonna always be having a hard time with relationships. I'm gonna not commit. So we have to understand what is our limbic brain informing us of.
SPEAKER_02So just let me remind the listeners, if you want, just a quick review of what is meant by limbic system. When information comes into us through our senses, it goes to the thalamus, which sends it two directions. One is to the amygdala, which is called a fire alarm. That's sort of the entry point to the limbic system. And the other, the high road is it gets sent back over to the prefrontal cortex, which is behind your eyes. That's the high road because that's the part that's going to really assess and think, but it takes a millisecond longer. In the meantime, the amygdala gets to choose is this scary or not? Because that's the first thing. Do we need to run? Do we need to get out of here? Do we need to flight or fight or whatever? And if at first blush, it like a smoke in the kitchen, it is, it begins to activate. However, just a millisecond later, if the prefrontal cortex lets the limbic system know this is not danger. It's smoke from whatever, burning stake or whatever it is. And then what happens is because it passes through a region called the hippocampus, which has your long-term experiences cataloged, it knows, it's able to take the data from the prefrontal cortex and say, okay, we had this experience, and this is completely safe or whatever. And then the amygdala can turn off the fire alarm, and then the different processes can start to subside. That's a trigger and that's a hyper-aroused state. But the limbic system isn't just for only fire alarm, right? It's where emotions are. It's a lot of the things like passions, reactions, emotional responses, habits, and addiction. So the point is we are heavily reliant on that hippocampus. In other words, we're heavily reliant on our lived body experiences. And this is why story matters. You have a lifetime of stored realities that the day you believed on Jesus and prayed the prayer didn't disappear.
SPEAKER_00Right. Just recently, we were discussing concepts we hear or arguments we hear, and just even throwaway comments. And this is what really hit me. We have a hippocampus part of our brain that holds memory. If we don't think we have long-term memory, then we're actually living like amnesia patients. We have memories that influence our motivation, that connects our memories to feelings, the way we bond with people, rewards or shame that comes from certain behaviors. So I think the long-term memory part is just really important because we hear so much. I don't need to look back, why look back? And it's like, well, wouldn't you want to understand how history has written like the coding of your brain that that informs 80 to 90% of your behavior? And then you know what you're interacting with. Because the idea is we don't want it to run our systems without our own knowledge. We want to be able to, that's the double-mindedness is that we don't know we have this limbic system. So our cognitive brain is just always kind of in war. But learning it allows us to interact with those feelings and reform, especially as a believer, looking through scripture and our adoption and new creation, we get to go interact with our history.
A Client Story Rewriting Memory
SPEAKER_02God does have a way for us to heal our limbic system. Not completely the side of heaven necessarily, but I think just to use one verse as a kind of precursor to a later episode is Romans 12, 1 and 2, where Paul, based on the mercy he's already unpacked, brothers and sisters offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. And some of these verses sound like, oh, like four or five times in my lifetime, this big thing's gonna happen. I think Paul's teaching very much that on a regular basis, you're gonna come up against what Paul has already named from Romans 7 and 8, the flesh or the law of sin and death, though those aren't the same, they're very much interplay. And when we do come up against our limbic system where we feel afraid or feel like running or feel like fighting or whatever, by staying calm and by obeying the Lord's commands in those moments, we will have transformation. In other words, there can be the rewiring and new experiences are formed. So we'll spend more on that later in another episode. But the other thing that I wanted to name is how story, why we think it's so important in this process, is that often the way we deal with heartache in order to feel safe is in our thinking brain, that is in our analytical side. So not only the cortex, but the left hemisphere. However, I have watched time and time again, I'll just give an example. I asked the word permission to share this story. I have a client who would come home from a long day's work and when he put his youngest child to sleep, he would lay down with the child and sometimes just fall asleep. Or at other times it'd be just on the couch, maybe watching a show fall asleep, and then wake up and everyone had gone to bed, and he would be there'd be frustration, anger, where'd everyone go, kind of crankiness. Not even that big of a deal. But it bothered him. And he had casually told me a story earlier in that session about how he thinks he doesn't have a good relationship to sleep, because the story he's been told is when he would go to his dad's house, the parents were divorced, when the mom would pick him up, the dad would say, Well, he's asleep in the back room, I guess. We don't really know. And the mom would say, Yeah, he didn't make you take a nap. And so his interpretation of that is, I don't have good sleep hygiene because I was never taught. So as we rehashed later the scenario of sleep and frustration, I said, something I already knew was his dad passed away when he was 16. He loved his dad. And when he was really little, he really loved being with his dad. And I said, Is it possible that you went to the dad's house and didn't want to sleep? And your dad didn't want you to take a nap. You want time together, but eventually you would get exhausted and fall asleep, and then wake up in your mom's car, you know, and all of a sudden the tears are flowing. That's it. That's it. I miss out. I fall asleep and I miss out. And just naming that and experiencing that emotion brings such healing. And so this is why story is so important because the way that's been encoded in his hippocampus, that's how it was. Now it's been rewritten more accurately, and there's more beauty and more humanity in it. And so that's why we do this work. It's not here's three steps to better sleep, or hey, you wake up and you feel cranky, here's a couple of techniques. Not that those are wrong, but how much more fully healed are you when you can realize the genesis of that heartache?
SPEAKER_00Wow. And even thinking about the word crankiness, what if it's just a a sadness when you have that story and a person wakes up and everyone's gone or the fun evening is over? I wonder if his memory, his limbic system remembers waking up in a mom's car and time with dad is over, and there's a sadness, but we interpret it as crankiness. And then we usually just have that cop-out word of I'm just tired.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So, really, what we're naming is when we can get into the kind of lived body experience where so many of our, let's just say, for lack of a better term, our ways were formed. Often those are the places where we can see the deep rewiring happening, where the spirit can really move for what we're told happens is rebirth. But rebirth is not, there is the justification of rebirth, but there's an ongoing transformation, Romans 12, 1 and 2 says. And it's really when we find these places that are still operating according to something of a former manual being brought to the reality of who we are in Christ. But in the words of a great movie, there will be blood.
SPEAKER_00What does that mean in context of what you're saying?
Avoiding Pain Versus Real Healing
SPEAKER_02Most of us don't want to look at pain. And so it's easier to just use our reasoning mind rationale. In fact, this happens with clients all the time. Well, do such great work, and then especially with men, and then there comes this moment of like, whether it's several weeks or even a year or two, however long it is, where it's like, I think I can figure it all out. I have to remind a client, like, remember what we're doing here, remember why we do this. And I need that. I love to think my way out of everything. And this thought of having to go to hard places, sad places, memories I don't necessarily want to rehash to see healing. We can be repulsed by that and say, no, let's just stick with more of a technique or something else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because techniques feel like a more productive thing to do when it's time to make a new year's resolution, or what are you gonna give up for Lent? Or whatever, you know, it's your birthday and you're gonna start a new year. Do you have any plans? Like, okay, I'm gonna have a technique. So here's some terms we might use. I'm deciding to, I'm planning to, I'm going to really have have the willpower this year to fill in the blank. And those are all terms that we use that are 100% logical. Okay. But then your limbic system is what's going to inform what you're actually going to do when you're under stress, when you're tired, when you're lonely, when you feel hungry or hangry, when something is threatening, you know, even subtly, just socially, there's a situation happening and you feel there's some tension in a relationship. These are gonna be limbic conditions that are gonna set you up for your behavior that if you don't know why, and all that I decide, I plan is going to be powerless. And so we can continue to live powerless lives and just keep making new plans or finding the new book or 10 ways to become a better person, whatever. You know what I'm talking about. So we find it completely unproductive to just ignore the body, the 80 to 90 percent of what's informing your decisions, and just say, Well, I'm resolving.
Willpower, Stress, And Powerlessness
SPEAKER_02It's interesting. There's a quote that I had heard, so I went looking for it. It's attributed to Kierkegaard, and apparently he didn't make this exact quote, but it's been paraphrased as to be from him. And I think it goes along with what you're saying, and it's important what I hear you saying, Emily, is there's a reason why we need to know these things. And so here's what Kierkegaard says. First, the mind says no, then the heart says yes, and finally the mind says yes. And I think that's important because not just around areas of discipline or will or behavior, but even beliefs. I mean, how many beliefs are culturally influenced, right? We all think we're going to the original source, and we know I'm studying in the reality. I mean, I'm talking now about like cultural shifts, right? Political shifts, etc. And it's a very important thing to just understand, just like we would with advertising, we're influenced. That doesn't mean we have no power. That's not my point. And we're going to talk about that, the ways God has oriented us to where. We can exert influence over our limbic system in his name. But I think we have to have the humility to recognize so much of what drives us has been deeply formed, both from our story, but also from the culture we're living in.
SPEAKER_00I want to talk about the mind, heart, mind thing that you just said. Yeah, go back. That's fascinating. So I want you, listener, to think of a word that would be in the Bible as something we either shouldn't do or God doesn't want for his people. Okay. Think about what Ryan just read, that quote mind, heart, mind. So in our mind, we are as followers of Christ, we do not believe in, okay, fill in the blank. I'm gonna let you guys just think of a word. Okay. I'll say lying because that seems easy. I don't believe in lying. Okay, that's mind. Then go heart. I don't want them to know the truth about me. I am so ashamed of what I just did that I'm just gonna kind of fudge the truth. And then my mind goes, I do believe in lying. Okay, that seems silly, but like seriously, okay, let me just say this. We believe in change. We believe in God's containment of his law, that we should, we should have our mind inform our limbic system, and it doesn't shape our mind. We believe in reading God's word and holding to that. So we're not just like, hey, just go with whatever you feel. Does your limbic system make you feel this way? Then don't do that. We're not saying that.
SPEAKER_02Can I give my dumb example? Okay, I think is more common in our world. Lying is super common.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02Just this story from when I was in like seventh grade, and everyone started wearing peg jeans and Converse that didn't match. And I thought it looked so stupid. So my mind is like, no.
SPEAKER_00And so we all had that with style. We're like, I will never wear that.
SPEAKER_02And then I remember being on the escalator with the bags in my hand with my mom. And what I had were jeans I was gonna peg up and my first pair of Converse, and maybe a um a denim jacket.
SPEAKER_00This is I don't know if our younger listeners would know what pegging your jeans is.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. Well, what you do is you and this is a guy, the guys are doing this, but you know, you just fold it over, then turn it up so it's tight. Anyway, yeah. The point is, I remember going to school so proud of what I had on. So my heart now and my mind were both going, yes.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So mind said no, heart said yes, because I want to fit in to inform mind, yes, I do not like this.
Culture’s Pull: Mind, Heart, Mind
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and as silly as that is, I would challenge you as a listener to ask yourself, how often does advertising or style influence us? Just on with morally neutral topics, right? Just typical things, food and clothing, and how often little control we have, something kicks in, right? And whether I want to fit in, I don't want to be on the outside of the tribe, I want to be the one that's the star. I mean, there's different layers in there, but the bottom line is whatever your personal system, then there's the the non-conformist. I'm gonna go the other direction. That's my story, you know. All of this is deeply ingrained processes that are tied to, I'm gonna say it, trauma often, the way you navigated the waters of your childhood, whether they were super choppy or not. All those processes are at play in how we navigate the waters of our current life as well.
SPEAKER_00Okay. That sounded amazing, and I love it. But you went from peg genes that you hated him, then you liked him, and then you bought them to trauma. Help me connect those dots.
SPEAKER_02I would just say the obvious, and I maybe already named it, you're a seventh grader, you're super vulnerable to cultural influence. So you because you don't want to be made fun of for your awkward body or any other number of things you can be made fun of. And so to survive or thrive, one of the easiest things you can do is have the right clothes, right? As soon as the heart sees that, as soon as the limbic system sees that, the mind's starting to go, okay, I I can see what you're saying. Like there can be an agreement there. And then the limbic system, the heart in this case, what we're saying wins. I get this outfit and I like it. And now my mind has no choice but to, I mean, because I'm wearing it, to go, yeah, this is the way it always was. I love it. What do you mean, you know?
SPEAKER_00Okay, then this is a great little test. How many of us listeners, and you and I, Ryan, we see something you mentioned a minute ago, a non-conformist. I don't want to fit in, like I don't I want to be different. What if you didn't have the resources to go get those pegged genes or those Converse and you came from a family that your mom and dad would not get those for you? Could you have said to kind of be able to metabolize the narrative, I just don't want them. I just don't like them, even though you were wanting to fit in.
SPEAKER_02Well, this is the story we told of our neighborhood friend that all of a sudden didn't like skating.
SPEAKER_00I can't go, and so I'm not.
SPEAKER_02The bottom line is do we have the humility to name there's influence? Because if we don't have the humility to name there's influence and there's weakness, then we will be susceptible to the double-mindedness. And that's what we're gonna get at when we look at James 1 in a few episodes. But this idea that while we want to learn and grow in what we know for sure, we need to make sure that it's getting into our heart, into our inner being, our inner world, or that limbically it's shaping us. And one of the primary ways how that's done is gonna simply be the word habituation, right? It's it's exposure over and over to the things that may at first be unpleasant. So to circle all the way back, what I want for myself, for our listeners, for anyone I work with is this am I willing to see formation at my core places where anxiety dwells, where depression lives, where all sorts of things that can plague me and things I don't want to feel ever, am I willing to be going through processes such as even writing a story or opening up with someone in order to see these places healed?
Habituation And Formation Practices
SPEAKER_00Okay, so I think I hear you summarizing that the New Year's resolutions mentality is that I'm gonna think I'm gonna do this, but I'm not gonna really come in contact with my subconscious or limbic system of desire and memory. I'm just gonna resolve to do something. But we're pushing for more of a lint mentality of what are your desires? What makes you tick? Like, what if you did a discipline like fasting from something that brought you way more aware of your desires that let you understand your own story and your own body and your own limic system better? Because I think the quote that was coming to me when you were talking was, and I've heard of several different people saying a version of this, but to know God is to know thyself, or to know thyself is to know God. I know Calvin said it. There's been a lot of different people that have used it as a launching pad, and it's a pretty hard concept, and it can feel a little dangerous, but I think we're getting at that today in saying, again, back to your quote of mind and then heart and then mind. You know, I don't believe, I do believe I do. Our mind must be informed by our limbic system. But to understand our limbic system is to understand a new intimacy with God. So now we're we're knowing God in a much deeper way when we know our cravings and we know our fears and what's making us tick, then we can cry out to the Lord of God.
SPEAKER_02100%. And we can have compassion on those places when we know their origin story. And so while we also certainly cry out for help from God, understanding that we come by so many of these things, quote unquote honestly, you know, that usually means like from your parents. But what I mean is through experiences, through things that have happened to us and then our responses to those things. And we can have compassion on a four-year-old, on an eight-year-old, on a 12-year-old boy, a girl. And so I think what we're saying is if I could give a takeaway for this episode, it would be number one, admit and accept that the 80%, 90% thing is true, that we have this part of us that's the limbic system, the well from which so much of our life actually comes out of. Secondly, let's have awareness of that. Like, okay, now that I accept it, am I aware? Am I paying attention to the things that are coming up? And then I think as importantly would be to have compassion on those things, even the ones that we would call wrong or sin, to understand that we've come through heartache and that Jesus is the great physician and can bring healing, but he never uses shame. And so if we can have that mindset as we think about change and growth, sometimes we set a goal that's almost harmful, right? Because we're not addressing our full self. But we'll get to that in another episode. And as we move into Lent, we definitely just encourage any kind of a practice that will increase our awareness of self, as you said, Emily, which means our need of Jesus, as well as the actual response of seeking him for help because we're weak or we're needy. That really is the goal of this episode and the series.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, in conclusion, New Year's resolutions assume that we live from a cortex, the prefrontal cortex. While the season of Lent that begins with Ash Wednesday is assuming that we live out of a desire and we want to get to those affections or desires of the heart, so we do certain disciplines so that when we crave chocolate or when we crave certain things, we're actually crying out to the Lord, you know, in a different kind of a way. We're not saying New Year's resolutions are bad and Lent is good. We're saying at any given point in your year, when you're up against wanting to change or wanting to hone a certain behavior or turn away from a sin pattern, don't go at it thinking that you are a logical being.
SPEAKER_02I would totally agree. And when you do set those goals, and I'm again for them, just this line that I want to read that would help us to remember where change can be impacted the most. By the time your mind is making a plan, your body has already made a decision. So when we go into goal setting, we better remember that.
SPEAKER_00Can I say it one more time?
SPEAKER_02By the time your mind is making a plan, your body has already made a decision. What it's saying is if I'm living at a goal, that goal resides rightly in my conscious and my cortex. And it's something like, I'm not going to have chocolate. But then that day, you know, I felt tired, I feel lonely, I feel hungry. My body's making a plan that I'm not aware of. And so then what happens is if we aren't aware of this process, well, then the next thing I knew is I had a box of chocolates or whatever. So you had a plan, but was your body aware of it? Like were you were you in sync with what your body needed?
Lent As Desire Awareness
SPEAKER_00We we've had an episode on desire, the war with desire, because it sounds like in your little scenario that that body or that limbic system was making plans like in a bad way. It was desiring, you know, this you are such a good person in your brain. But then here comes this like evil body, and we've got to be really careful not to throw out desire.
SPEAKER_02Right. I love it. I love that. Yeah, it's actually trying to help us, it's mothering us, it's tending to us. And often it's a very young place that's like, I need a little dopamine, I need a little care. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00And so we're gonna talk more through how are some of the goals that we're setting actually damaging us, or how are we not paying attention to our story as we make plans and we'll we'll revisit Romans 12:1.
SPEAKER_02We'll also talk about parts a little bit because so often when it comes to sort of goal setting, you have like the Jekyll and the Hyde concept, like Mr. Hyde is your flesh and Jekyll's the doctor. But the truth is we're not just these two parts, one that's like you were saying, bad, and one that's good, but we, you know, the part that wants the soothing has a lot to offer, and we need to notice that.
Contact And Ways To Engage
SPEAKER_00That's right. We want integration, which we've done an episode on integration. We want to not be double-minded people, and double-mindedness comes from saying we believe something, but yet our actions and our heart are not in sync, and so it's a separate limbic mind. So we want to have a beautiful symphony of humanity working against a culture that says we're just logical people who just need to read more and believe more. But our goal for this series is I believe help my unbelief. Thanks again for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you have any questions or thoughts about the topics today, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached through our website, emails, and social media. Just go to Story Matters Initiative. If you're interested in doing individual or group work, we'd love to discuss that with you as well.