Rewiring for Rest

00:00 Father, thank you for the privilege of what we get to do today. Adam and I come to you as brothers, as sons, and we thank you for the daughters that will be listening as well. And we pray for them. We pray for everyone. We're mindful that there are people that will have empty chairs around the Christmas dinner table this year. And we're mindful of them. We pray for them. Pray that you would bring the prodigals home. And Father, we honor you as we roll this podcast out. What a privilege it is to do this together and to enjoy this amazing season. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. It's Wednesday, December 17th, 2025. We get to do this. This is episode number 15. This is the life we've been blessed with.

00:43 This is a gift for you. We get to do this. This is a chance we cannot miss. This is the life we get to do this. I was singing it this morning. I was singing it? It sounds in your head. It does. It does. That's why it's called a hook. Yes. It hooks you for sure. Like biscuits and gravy sticks to your ribs. Like mold or fungus clothes. Never mind. So we're in the Bridge Church studios right now. They're doing a lot of construction. Oh, my gosh. There's contractors all over the place. Yeah, I was in here yesterday recording some Christmas and New Year's greetings with the staff. And we were all kind of high, I think. I think I'm there right now. What do they do?

01:28 Is that varnish or? It's varnished. They did all the doors, baseboards, trim in the life center, which is connected to this building. And it's literally down the hall, the entryway. So all that toxic smell just floating in. It's just filling this place. It took me right back to when I was, I think, maybe nine years old. We were on vacation, and it was raining, and so I was in my room, and my parents had bought me model airplanes to have something to do. And I built nine, no, five model airplanes in one day with the door and windows closed. And I'm like, mom, I don't feel so good. Like, oh, Lord Lou

02:09 was dangerous. So many cool things when we were kids were dangerous. You know, toys, stamped metal, gash, hate stitches, you know, just for playing with a toy truck. Oh, this is so perfect. What a perfect lead-in. So on Monday, I had my Sabbath because, you know, you and I both work on Sunday. And you had Sabbath as well. You deserve Sabbath. Which, you know, man, when you really get to do it, when you really, really, and there's like no social media, you know, the phone only of someone, you know, texts me, I won't even open it up unless, you know, if it's a text group, ignore it.

02:45 Right. And so what I try to do on these Sabbaths, I try to read like think pieces, longer things, you know, just to kind of get out of the cycle that I always seem to be stuck in. And I'm going to get to the things we had as a kid in a minute because I found someone actually emailed me because I will check my email, not for show things or anything like that. And someone sent me one article by a Dr. Roger McPhillin, who has been a clinical psychologist for 20 years. And at some point, well, I dove deeper into things he has written. And at some point, I realized he's a believer, which kind of blew me away.

03:28 And I'm just thinking, you know, my prayer always, when I talk about daily bread, Lord, give me guidance and provision. And I never think of provision as money or anything like that. It's resources. Give me the guidance of what you want me to do and give me the resources to do it. That's why I've become so much more laid back about prepping for my shows because I just pray. I said, God, just show me. And of course, my job is to recognize when he's literally throwing something in my face, like this, this, this. So this came from such a roundabout way. I'm like, that's interesting. So I started to read this. And this is where I get into as a kid. When I was a kid, I had a lot of knives.

04:07 Did you have a knife? Do you have knives? Oh, yes. I had Swiss Army knives. That was kind of the, you know, that was the ultimate. And that's what I asked for Christmas. I want a Swiss Army knife. Buck knives. Buck knives. That's a big deal. Yeah, I had hunting knives. I had like bayonets. Crazy when you think about it. Well, but is it really? And as I'm thinking about this, of course, you know, the Swiss Army knife in particular had a saw. It had two different blades. It had scissors. Mine also had tweezers and a toothpick. Exactly. You know, I think, I don't know if I had the magnifying glass, but because you can get them.

04:48 They were like that. That wouldn't fit in your pocket if you did that. But of course, it was a great tool to do things with. But I was thinking about it. I have cut myself or hurt myself with a knife many times. times. I think, I mean, everybody can agree. Scar there, still there. Scar here, still there. I did that with a guitar string. I cut myself. Guitar strings are lethal, by the way. When they go, they go. So I'm thinking, you know, yeah, a Swiss Army knife, that was the tool that we had. Great tool, could do a lot of good things. I mean, I literally, at one point, this is how dumb I was.

05:28 It was winter and someone had crashed into a light pole and it had broken and fallen over and right there exposed with all these cool electronics. I'm like, I want that. Now, luckily, it was cold, so I had my gloves on. I'm like, I want this unit. And so I start with the Swiss Army knife sawing on it. And all of a sudden, huge arc. And the blade was literally melting out. I blew a chunk out of the box. Oh, yeah, I blew a chunk out of the melted. I can't believe I'm still alive after some of the things I've done. But if you look at it today, we have a great tool called the phone.

06:07 And you can also get cut by this great tool. This is the analogy I was making. And if you or I back in the day, if we touched our knife or used it 5,000 times a day, the likelihood we hurt ourselves at least twice a day is pretty high. And that is the average amount of time a Western person touches their phone on a daily, daily basis. 5,000 times you're touching your phone. Spine bending. Touching your phone. Mine bending. No wonder I've got tendinitis right here. You know what I mean? I probably have screen tendinitis from my elbow.

06:46 So kind of the, if you carry this analogy of how the phone is a knife and it's cutting you, something happened this week, which we don't have to get into, but we had breaking, breaking. The terrorists were going to blow up five buildings in Los Angeles. Breaking, breaking, breaking, breaking. And at first, I'm like, okay, I know what this is. And I was kind of right because you look at the affidavit and they had confidential human source. They had an undercover officer. They've been following them for multiple weeks. They finally get out to the desert and they start trying to put together pipe bombs by making their own. These are like nut jobs. These are ideological nut jobs, not sophisticated bomb builders.

07:30 So they're they're, you know, they're using, you know, they're grinding up gunpowder, you know, grinding up fertilizer and all kinds of different stuff. They had PVC pipe, not very effective. I mean, it will blow, but it, you know, it's not going to shred. And they had no caps. So they arrested them on a technicality of not registering explosives or something like that. Now, that's okay. And they should be doing that. I think they could have knocked on their door earlier and said, yo, son, what are you doing? What's going on? How do we stop this? So instead, they spy on them, everything until they've done something they can catch them on. The thing that bothers me, though, is the, look what we did.

08:15 We did this. Because what it really did is made us all afraid. It just scared us all of, you know, and of course, it fits into all these narratives. The Red-Green Alliance, ISIS, 9-11 style attacks, Islam, all of this stuff. Whereas I honestly, as a citizen, at this point, would rather prefer, do your job. Thank you very much. You don't need to do a press conference about what they were doing because you are literally scaring people, which of course is what is used continuously to program our minds. And that's where Dr. McPhillin comes in. MacPhillin? Yes, McPhillin. Yeah, McPhillin.

09:00 And over 20 years of being a clinical psychologist, he noticed that people have certain scripts. Some are we're born with. They're natural scripts, such as, you know, flight based upon fear. And, you know, our natural state from the early days is, I think there's a tiger there. Should I run away or stay? Well, you're always going to choose run away because there's really no penalty for running away if it wasn't true. But if it was true, you didn't run away. You get eaten and you're dead. That's way down at the brainstem level of very primal. So he wrote these articles and it was kind of based upon a book, which I'm familiar with.

09:42 And this is how the Lord works, man. He brings stuff to me. And I'm going to be looking at my screen a lot, Jimmy, because I tried to break down a whole Sabbath day into a short podcast. And the book is by a guy named Napoleon Hill. And he wrote an interview with the devil, Outwitting the Devil. Have you ever heard of this book? I've heard of Napoleon Hill. Well, Napoleon Hill was famous because he wrote Grow Rich, Think and Grow Rich. Right. Now, do you know when he wrote that book? 1939. Wow.

10:22 But in 1938, he wrote this book, which did not get published until 73 years later. Now, at the time, this is newspapers, radio, movies, no television yet, no internet, obviously. So when he, so his wife refused to let him publish it, she said it was too dangerous. And if you really, and I have read this book, and there's a three-hour audio book. You can get on YouTube. It's well worth it. So he didn't publish it. When he died in 1970, the manuscript, of course, she had the manuscript. She said, no, we're not going to publish it.

11:01 When she died in 84, her nephew, who was the president of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, he was like, okay, we should publish that. And it came out in 2011. But the words are still valid today. And because there's an audio book, and this is what's interesting. Mofax, when I had Mofax with Adam Curry, we did 100 episodes. He had actually pulled some clips from this audio book. And of course, I'd forgotten about it. But then I'm like, wow, all right, Lord. So you've already clipped it for me. I can just bring this into the studio. This is good. So, again, 2011, this is when this came out.

11:42 Sounds like a good time to bring it out because smartphones were ubiquitous. Social media is exploding. The architecture of capture was well in place. And this is kind of where this took me today so we can understand how we are being manipulated, what is happening. And of course, you and I know that there is truly only one manipulator behind the scenes, and that's the enemy. That's the devil. So I'm going to play a couple of these clips and then we'll go into the articles. Now, the premise behind this is that just like God, when asked, the devil can't lie. He can say, you really don't want me to answer that question, but he can't lie, which is an interesting.

12:21 And by the way, this guy, remember, all believers in this, but it wasn't apparent to me initially because I wasn't a believer, so I didn't see all this stuff. And he has to address him as your majesty. That was the only rule the devil had. So here's a little introduction: what the devil says he is. You should know I control 98% of the people of your world. Do you not think that entitles me to rate as royalty? Start by telling me where you live, then describe your physical appearance. My physical appearance. Why, my dear Mr. Earthbound, I have no physical body. I would be handicapped by such an encumbrance as those in which you earthbound creatures live.

13:02 I consist of negative energy, and I live in the minds of people who fear me. So you have the universe divided up with God. Is that your claim? Not my claim, but the actual fact. Before this interview is finished, you will understand why my claim is true. You will also understand why it has to be true, or there could be no world such as yours, no earthbound creatures such as you. I am no beast with a forked tongue and a spiked tail. But you do control the minds of 98 out of every 100 people. You said so yourself. Who causes all the misery in this 98% devil-controlled world if you do not? I have not said that I do not cause all the misery of the world. On the other hand, I boast of it.

13:46 It is my business to represent the negative side of everything, including the thoughts of you earthbound people. How else could I control people? My opposition controls positive thought. I control negative thought. How do you gain control of the minds of people? Oh, that is easy. I merely move in and occupy the unused space of the human brain. I sow the seeds of negative thought in the minds of people so I can occupy and control the space. Sound accurate to you, Pasco. Wow. I love the voice. Yeah, it's very dramatic. It's very good. Yeah. Excellent. So, you know, 98%, that sounds right.

14:25 I mean, probably not 98% all the time, but when you think about it, man, it's pretty deep. So now the crux here. What tricks and devices does the devil use to control our thoughts? Because it's all about this, ultimately. And of course, I did some work. We'll talk about it later on on finding scripture that relates to all of all of these things. Yeah, oh, I got to bring it back, brother. I'm a newbie, but I'm working on it. I'm seeing the scripture appear before my face as I heard this interview. You must have many tricks and devices by which you gain and hold control of the human mind.

15:08 To be sure, I employ tricks and devices to control human thought. My devices are clever ones, too. Go ahead and describe your clever tricks, Your Majesty. One of my cleverest devices for mind control is fear. I plant the seed of fear in the minds of people, and as these seeds germinate and grow, through use, I control the space they occupy. The six most effective fears are the fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age, and death. Which of these six fears serves you most often, Your Majesty? The first and the last, poverty and death.

15:49 At one time or another during life, I tighten my grip on all people through one or both of these. I plant these fears in the minds of people so deftly that they believe them to be their own creation. I accomplish this end by making people believe I am standing just beyond the entrance gate of the next life, waiting to claim them after death for eternal punishment. Of course, I cannot punish anyone, except in that person's own mind, through some form of fear. But fear of the thing which does not exist is just as useful to me as fear of that which does exist. All forms of fear extend the space I occupy in the human mind. This kind of made me think. This is really good. Yes. Go ahead.

16:34 Two things. Well, I've got scripture, but you probably already pulled this scripture, so I'm going to let you do your scripture first. But I want to show you something. Sometimes in my downtime, I love, I'm fascinated with neuroscience and its alignment with scripture. So much of what neuroscience is beginning to discover, you can go right back to the word. So listen to this. Neuroscience reveals that complaint or negativity, as the devil just said, or your majesty, as he used to be called. We'll let him slide for that slide. Neuroscience reveals that complaint rewires your brain like trauma. Dude, you already jumped three steps ahead. That's perfect. I just read this yesterday.

17:16 I was riveted to this because as a pastor, I deal with positives and negatives all the time. And I'm constantly trying to tell people, live up in a down world. So look what it says. I love it. It says, just 60 seconds of negative talk floods your body with cortisol, shrinks the hippocampus, and strengthens fear pathways. Let's uncover why venting isn't harmless. It's disguised brain damage. Wow. Okay. Before we move on, because that's coming right after the next clip, and then I'll dive into some of the neuroscience of it. Wow. Now Satan talks about the two principles that he uses to control people.

18:01 My greatest weapon over human beings consists of two secret principles by which I gain control of their minds. I will speak first of the principle of habit, through which I silently enter the minds of people. By operating through this principle, I establish, I wish I could avoid using this word, the habit of drifting. When a person begins to drift on any subject, he is headed straight toward the gates of what you earthbound call hell. Describe all the ways in which you induce people to drift. Define the word and tell us exactly what you mean by it. I can best define the word drift by saying that people who think for themselves never drift, while those who do little or no thinking for themselves are drifters.

18:45 A drifter is one who permits himself to be influenced and controlled by circumstances outside of his own mind. He would rather let me occupy his mind and do his thinking than go to the trouble of thinking for himself. A drifter is one who accepts whatever life throws in his way without making a protest or putting up a fight. He doesn't know what he wants from life and spends all of his time getting just that. A drifter has lots of opinions, but they are not his own. Most of them are supplied by me. A drifter is one who is too lazy mentally to use his own brain. That is the reason I can take control of people's thinking and plant my own ideas in their minds.

19:25 So I'm not even going to go down the Chat GPT route on that one, but you understand that concept. Absolutely. The doctor in his articles wrote about this drifting, and that's kind of how I, even though he didn't write much about the book, that's why I went back like, oh, drifting is actually in that book. Interesting. Okay. And. he calls it the agentic state. And the agentic state concept is based upon the Milgram experiments. The Milgram experience, you might have seen this somewhere old YouTube video where you have someone, a volunteer off the street, or answered an ad in the paper.

20:02 They sit down behind a console with levers. And on the other side of a darkened window, there apparently is someone connected to electrodes. And there's a guy in a lab coat, and he says, okay, zap him with 100 volts. And although the volunteer cannot see the other person, they can hear him crying out of pain as the voltage increases. And obviously, it's a setup. There's no current being sent to this guy. But what they discovered is that if there's a person in a lab coat, 90% of the people will actually administer something that said deadly voltage because the person in the lab coat at a laboratory said to do it.

20:50 Wow. The minute you turn the guy in the lab coat into a guy in a sweater, only 10% do it. The minute you take it out of a laboratory and do it in a strip mall, only 10%. So the default state or the agentic state is a psychological condition where an individual surrenders autonomy to perceived legitimate authority. Wow. Now, they replicated these experiments many times over the years. In 2009, they did it, and results were virtually identical to the 1960s. In 2010, another Milgram study was done, and 81% of compliance came when the authority was a TV host.

21:32 Wow. Now, think about COVID. Think about people being isolated. So you no longer have a group. You no longer have a social network next to you that you can actually communicate with. Wow. So the modern application of control works with authority influencers. These, of course, are the new TV hosts. And these mechanisms enable complete control. And of course, you're basing it all on fear. And so when 9-11 happened, everybody was like, yeah, we want the Patriot Act without even knowing that it was the most unpatriotic thing in the world.

22:17 Exactly. So our good doctor here talks about how our brain works. And he says you have the neocortex. It's the newest part of our brain. And in our, I'll just say evolution, although I don't mean evolution, but that's the part that's been trained the most through inputs, responsible for language and logic. This is very ineffective for influence. The limbic system, emotion and memory, but the brainstem, that's the ancient command center. And that's where we have these scripts. And when I say script, it's like a computer script. Right. Or almost like a prompt. You can see it as a chat GPT prompt for context for people.

22:58 But when you write a script, you program something. The computer does something based upon that script. So built into our system, and I'm glad God did it because otherwise we'd be eaten, is your flight, fight, flight, or freeze. But then we have life scripts. And these life scripts are things that are programmed. So by the way, the core scripts, you can't change those. Right. Those are unchangeable. So neuroplasticity, that's going to be for these things that you're about to talk about. Yes. Things that can be changed or altered. Well, and you literally imprint it. You literally write these scripts in your brain. You suppress anger to avoid punishment.

23:41 That's a childhood script. Overperform to earn love. Yep. Major childhood script. Avoiding conflict to prevent abandonment. Now, these scripts don't update automatically over time, but they are updatable, or at least you can control when they're triggered. So when we use our phones, these things, yeah, they're tracking what we're doing. What they're really doing is they're measuring when these brainstem scripts are triggered. And they do that just by watching what you pause on on a scroll, of course, what you play, what you interact with. They don't really even care who you are. They care about triggering these scripts.

24:26 And as I, you know, I'm not going to show all my research here, but there are real brain scientists behind algorithms. And it's not just we want to give you an ad. It is literally we want to trigger these scripts, but governments do. do this, corporations do this. The science of propaganda, the science of marketing, all of that. Exactly. Every single thing that we touch in life is some, and that's back to the FBI. And it may be even unwitting on their behalf, but not on the enemy's behalf. He's doing this. He's like, yeah, go out, do a big press conference, make everybody afraid. And of course, in comes

25:08 haughtiness and pride of, you know, I'm proud of our FBI. Our men and women have done. Why don't you just do your job and not tell anybody? They don't do that. Exactly. So these, if you realize what these scripts are doing, then you can, with scripture, you can start to think about them and combat them. So this is where I, this is where I spent the most of my time. So the mechanism. Algorithms feed apocalyptic content to generate terror. But here's the thing: fear is not just an emotion, it's a creative force.

25:48 When you obsess over these things, you are actually, just like you said before, we got into those clips, you are actually creating more of it for yourself, for others. So when you're reposting, you're sharing the chemtrail picture, you're talking about the elites at Davos. You're actually helping this negative energy build in your own mind and in the minds of others. So Job 3:25, what I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true. Wow. That's exactly. That's exactly it.

26:30 Exactly. So that manifesting it. This is, again, it's, and I think that with social media, people who are driven by negative evil forces, they have, they figured out that it's better to just show everybody what I'm doing because then everybody will be talking about it and it can literally manifest it. The great reset, you'll own nothing and you will be happy. How many times you and I not repeated that? Exactly. We're actually kind of helping their agenda by doing that. Proverbs 27, 19. So I'm sorry. So this is the feedback loop.

27:07 You know, what you damn, damns you back. Fascination with the enemy's plan creates a reality tunnel to where your brain seeks evidence to confirm this is all happening. That's what they call confirmation bias. Proverbs 27, 19, as a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the real person. Proverbs 4:23, guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Man, when I another translation says, for out of it flow the wellsprings of life. Yeah, yeah. Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage in, garbage out.

27:49 So when terror hijacks the nervous systems, this is where we willingly trade freedom for safety. Wow. And that's happened throughout history every single time. Over and over. Hebrews 2:15 and set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying, which is exactly what Satan was talking about in that interview. Wow. And aren't those the two most powerful in today's society? I'm going to be poor or I'm going to die. Yep. And I was lucky in 1990, I got rid of the poor part without my knowledge of God doing that for me. And then the fear of death, well, now that I know where I'm going.

28:30 I mean, that's... Let's go. I think that's the easiest for believers. Poverty still is there. Galatians 5:1. So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law. So this goes right back to all the inputs that we're getting. And man, it's amazing. The 15-minute city, all of this stuff is happening. We are psyoping ourselves. The enemy is so smart. Mental health, the therapy culture,

29:07 telling people that you're broken or you're chemically imbalanced. It really takes away your divine creative authority to heal yourself, to have the Lord and Lord, the Lord Jesus to heal yourself. It patholicizes spiritual emergence to keep consciousness locked in low frequency. Timothy 1:7. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. This is the one. the one that hits me the most. Like, we don't have to be afraid of this stuff. He has given us this power. Romans 12, 2, one of my favorites. Don't copy. This is NLT. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

29:53 So the solution is, of course, the creative energy of love, which above all is the number one most important one. 1 John 4:18, such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. Matthew 5, 14, you are the light of the world, like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. So when I put all this together, it's obvious what we have to do. We have to guard our hearts. We have to guard our minds. We have to zig where everyone's doing a zag. And the big, I think one fear that was not known at that time is the fear of missing out.

30:36 That's a real, that's a real fear. People feel like they're disconnected from the conversation. Whereas as believers, we can just have conversations about the word and God and Jesus. And we can have conversations, but the fear of missing out is just a huge one. So 2 Corinthians 6:17 has some advice for us. Therefore, come out from among unbelievers and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord. Do not touch their filthy things. So now my phone feels pretty dirty right now. 1 Thessalonians 4:11, make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands.

31:17 Now, this is not easy for everybody, but for young people listening, there's going to be so many more opportunities in this world for you to work with your hands, which America, historically, we've been farmers, we've been ranchers, we've been physical builders of things. There are going to be millions of jobs for people who have trained to do things with their hands. Apprenticeships.gov, there's a million apprenticeships being created. It doesn't seem to me that college is a great way to go at the moment. It seems like you're not really going to go down a path of anything except poverty, which, well, there it is.

31:56 You're locked in. You can't even go bankrupt and get rid of that loan. And your spiritual bankruptcy. Moral bankruptcy. So now I'm looking at prayer as technology. It is literal. It is literal programming. You can write computer scripts for yourself. Prayer as technology aligns with the source, bypassing the algorithms and the experts. Matthew 18, 20, this is an important one. For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am among them, being with other people. Like you and I, when we have these catch-ups on Wednesday, man, I just feel good. Same.

32:39 I just feel good. No matter what we're talking about. Matthew 9:20, because of your faith, it will happen. And Philippians 4:6, don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. This can help you replace anxiety with spiritual creation, with love that will get you out of these things. Every comment, every like, every retweet, every boost, you are literally empowering the enemy to hurt you. You are cutting yourself with the modern-day Swiss army knife. Amen. What do I say to that, brother? That was a full-on discourse.

33:21 God brought this to me. It's so true. And what's weird, you and I have not talked about this, but I've been tracking down this same line. I'm pulling up stuff that I've got sitting here. Your brain was never designed to replay fears on a loop. That's not wisdom. That's a stressed nervous system. And I mean, it just goes in. I love, I love neuroscience because it's just biblical. It is. It is at its core. I've been reading things on the power of music and prayer. Both of them are powerful alone. You put them together. Yep. And I love what one commentator said.

34:01 He said, there's a reason why when you go to church and you're singing and you're praying and you're connecting with other human beings, you're worshiping something bigger than you, someone, that you walk out different. Straight up. And it's like, it's every dopamine dump times a thousand. And that's why you leave going, I feel safe again. I feel free again. I feel, and it dawned on me when I was reading this. this why I love church so much. I've always said I'm a church nerd. I'm a church junkie. I love being with God's people because it's what we were just talking about. Iron sharpens iron.

34:43 Scripture says straight up. So one man sharpens the countenance of another. So there's something, he says, do not neglect the assembling of yourselves together. Book of Hebrews. So there's all these clues in the scripture that's saying everything neuroscience is starting to discover. But the Christians that are involved in neuroscience, like I really like this one doctor. Her name is Dr. April Joy, and she's got like 15 letters behind her name. But she is so scriptural and on fire, but she brings neuroscience to show how it's working in your body, the physical side of it, of prayer and worship.

35:24 Prayer, worship, scripture. You know, there's a lot in neuroscience right now about rewriting scripts. You just said it. But scripture is one of the best ways to rewrite the scripts of your life. You literally just copy the script into your brain. That's it. You speak it. You declare it. It's what we've been saying for decades. You load it into your memory banks. And it literally rewires your brain. And I'm big on positive and negative. I've always been a, I've always said I have a, I'm allergic to negativity. When I get around negative people, I feel a life sucking out of my body. It's like stick a siphon in my heart. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I can't stay in those environments very long.

36:06 And I'm not just like some happy-go-lucky rose-colored glasses guy. It's just for whatever reason, I knew it intuitively. I knew it spiritually inside, even if I didn't know it consciously or cognitively. That when I'm around positive people that are, I always say speak life, leak life, you know, be a leaky bucket. It all goes back to what we're talking about. It does. And I learned it because the Lord took me down these paths and also because I was raised around some negative people. Yeah. And I just had this aversion to people in my family that were negative. And I just pushed back. And I don't even know why. It was something inside of me said, get away from that.

36:48 Yeah. So there's a lot of interesting study inside the positive script that you created, but you were fortunate to have that script created and you can build on that and refine it and make it even better. I have to trust that the Lord did that for me even pre-Jesus. He was doing things deep in me. Of course. A deep work. Pre-Christ, pre-salvation, where he was already working things out. Do you think he had a plan for you, Pastor Jimmy Pruitt? He may have. This is what I was telling her. Is that possible? I was telling our staff and staff meeting. I said, don't think for a second that God didn't see any of this stuff coming. You know, everybody's screaming, oh no, Islam's taking over. Oh, no, Richardson, Texas, Sharia law on the streets.

37:31 I said, we act like God vacated the planet. Like he doesn't see what's happening, like he's not in control or something. And I just, I kind of just brought it pretty strong to my staff saying, guys, we can't get worked up about this stuff. Don't let narratives spin you out. Or don't, if you keep repeating them, you are only enhancing the power of the negative. Your brain doesn't determine whether this is positive or negative. It just responds to whatever stimulus you give it. That's right. That part of most of your brain's not emotional. There's only one little section of your brain that registers emotion, morality, darkness, all that.

38:14 But most of your brain, it's just an organ and it's simply responding to the stimulus that you give it. And if we, and I was talking to Tina about this last night, and I said, if you ever notice, I said, when you say something to Pastor Jimmy, there is always one beat longer than anyone else I know before he responds. And I know because you're running processing. Very much. You run processing. And I just guessed, I said, he's probably thinking, all right, what would Jesus respond? But you may not be thinking that consciously now. You've trained your brain, but it's very noticeable. I mean, when you stopped your, when you ended your discourse and dropped the mic, I waited until the mic hit the ground.

38:59 I'm going to pause right here because it may be an awkward pause on air, but I'm like, no, no, no, I can't just say something. Yeah. Because we've cheapened words through social media and clicking, and everybody's a top writer now, and everybody's a podcaster and all influencer. We've lost the value of words. Good one. And so this is why I love reading. reading The Dead Guys, Oswald Chambers. Yes. Every word drips with weight. You can't just read a ton of his stuff. You have to take your time. Oh, you got to take time, just one page per day. One page, one sentence sometimes. It's like, oh, I need to, and I'll clip a lot. You know, I send those out all the time.

39:44 I sent one this morning, actually, about Christmas. But I'm constantly trying to read those who wrote with more weight, with more gravity, because words are so cheap now. Well, and that's part of what the Sabbath is for me. It's like, I need to look, it doesn't even matter what I want to read something. I don't want to listen, even I, although I will, but I want to read something that is thoughtful and long and has is not a response or a promotion or anything. That's good. But it's hard, you know, to quiet your mind. It is. And you have to quiet your Swiss Army knife.

40:22 You got to put that thing away. And man, what happens then? That really truly feels to me like this is the state I need to be in. I need to be thinking, aware, aware that the Holy Spirit is giving me ideas, that God is talking to me. Oh, I see you, enemy. No, no, no. Get thee behind me, Satan. You talk to yourself out loud. Yes, I do. I do, too. On my walks, my prayer walk every morning out loud. In my office, I'm constantly saying, saying, say, that's good. You're going to be okay. Don't let that bother you. I mean, I literally just, it just comes out, and I've gotten more natural with that over time.

41:01 And then, and then I read about self-talk in one of these neuroscience journals, and they're saying that that trains your brain. You rewrite your neural pathways by talking to yourself. It's also the enemy can't read your mind. You have to tell him out loud, otherwise, he won't go away. Have no trouble telling him out loud. That's something I learned a couple months ago. Oh, I got to say it out loud. Okay, I can read it. That's right. That's where the force is. You know, Jesus didn't think about stealing the storm. He didn't think about raising loud. He said, be quiet. He said it. And when he cast out demons, he didn't think about it. He said it. Good point. There's power in that. Good point. So I love what you're saying, Adam.

41:42 I mean, gosh, you just dumped a massive dump truckload of information and content. But it's something we need to, as blood-bought believers, we don't check our brains at the door. At all. We don't check our intellect. We don't check our ability to reason. We don't check our questions. We need to be okay. So right now, you've probably seen this. Kirk Cameron's getting slaughtered on social media. All because he and his son had a conversation about hell on their podcast. His son asks him a question. Now, you won't read this from everybody else. Well, of course. They'll put an 18-second clip out there, and now we're vilifying Kirk Cameron like he's the Antichrist.

42:22 So I actually lost his faith. I haven't seen it. I saw like some promotional YouTube thing, like, oh, Kirk Carter asked. So I actually don't know exactly what it is. So I appreciate you telling me. Well, I watched, he did a rebuttal to it online this morning, and I watched part of it. I catch the whole of it. I want to watch the rest of it. But he's saying, he's saying he's so shocked that people got all bent out of shape about this. He said, all of his old mentors are calling him, checking on him. So what exactly did he say that was so controversial? His son asked the question. He said, his son said, Dad,

42:59 he didn't say, Kurt, Dad, help me understand what the Bible says about hell because I'm having a hard time believing that a merciful, loving God would banish someone to hell for not believing in them and then they be in torment for eternity. Is that what the Bible says? And so Kirk and him did a deep dive right there in their podcast, going through their Bibles and finding scriptures that either supported it, hinted toward it, or said something different like, well, maybe, because it does talk about destruction. And so Kurt, they were just postulating out loud. Yeah, they're just, they're going through it. They're thinking through it. They're processing out loud.

43:40 And people are just like taking notes, going, oh my gosh. Kirk Cameron just said that there may not be eternal torment for people. Oh, he doesn't even believe in hell. I mean, people just had to run away with this. So there wasn't even really a conclusion. They're just going through it. And so, okay. I can't wait to listen to the rest of it. But here's what I realized. I did the same thing. I started going, Annette, did you hear this about Kirk Cameron? And she goes, I did. I just read something about him. Kirk Cameron said that he looked at the stats. He said there's more views on people who were talking about him saying it than actually listening to the show.

44:19 he said, That is telling to me. And he said, I'm so disappointed in the church and Christians who came out and slaughtered me, but didn't listen to the whole program because there's context. So he was kind of rebuking people for saying, you know, to say, you didn't even listen to the show. You heard a clip and you made a determination about my face. And I'll bet if you listen to the clip, they're exactly what we've been talking about. It is. It hits you right away, right in writing you see your factors. Straight up. He said, people are just trying to get more likes. They're trying to get more bumps. And he said, which is idolatry, which is haughtiness, pride, darkness, darkness.

45:00 Yes. I have found my, and honestly, I rarely, I'm hardly, I don't know a lot of what's going on right now. I'm hearing things kind of after the fact. Like, I'm not getting the breaking news version of it. I'm getting it like three days later because I'm just decided not to swim in that cesspool. You know, we had a growing up, we lived out in the country, and so I can wear boots legitimately. So I'm an imposter. No, I was thinking of somebody else. I won't say their name. It's somebody I love. I've just had a film. That's good. It's good. Random. So we had a septic tank. And I remember my parents saying, don't ride your horse over the septic tank.

45:43 Don't ride your motorcycle. I mean, I'm always like, you know, just looking for a jump. So every time I'd take my horse around that side of the house, I'd tell my brother, he's on his horse. I'd say, hey, hey, don't go over it. Because what had happened, it started to sink. Yeah, of course. And then some bad, really bad stuff. Crap can happen. Crap can happen. That's exactly right. You said it nicely. And so I remember it kept getting like over the years that we lived there, it got worse and worse. And my dad finally said, man, we got to do something about this. So they brought a guy out. He comes out with a big, you know, front end loader. He digs it up. Oh, my gosh. So when I talk about swimming in the cesspool, I think about a septic tank and how gross and sick it is.

46:29 Because when they open that thing up, because they put a new tank in, it's a visualization of it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable to think that that's just a few feet from the house. You know, all that nastiness. Well, think about what's not just a few feet from your house, but in your hand. In your hand, in your pocket. Yes. Everywhere you go. I mean, the visceral reaction all of us have, and I've had it when I've left my phone somewhere, panic. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I don't have my phone. Am I panicking because I'm worried about somebody taking my phone or am I panicking because this thing that has become a habit is now not in my hand.

47:07 You know, that's interesting because we've been talking about texting. And inherently, the whole idea of texting is an asynchronous communication. And you and I have that down pretty well. Yeah, yeah. There's not a lot of emotion involved. But also, I'm not going to, you're not upset if I don't respond right away. But if I don't respond by two in the afternoon, you're going to see if I'm alive. Are you okay? Are you okay? That's it. But people have gotten into this habit of, I got to respond. I got to respond. Someone says, I'm bad about that. Yeah. Anytime tells me every day, you don't have to answer that. I'm going. I think I do. It gets to the point where my daughter, who will be showing up tomorrow for Christmas, I'm very excited.

47:45 Awesome. Now, she also lives seven hours away, time zone-wise, and she has a demanding job when she's on the job. She's not. But also, she is, she's 35, and she's figured it out better than me and most of my friends and peers. She's like, nah, dad, no. I had to step away from it. So she might not respond for a day, for a day. And I'd be like, you when your daughter lives halfway across the world, it's a little disturbing. But, you know, she actually helps me calm down. I know she's alive because it says online or it says last online three hours.

48:30 So she was alive three hours ago. But all of this is the enemy. The enemy is throwing all of this into my head with a perfect tool. I want to play this last clip from the interview with the devil. Here's where the devil gives us 10 steps. He's actually telling us how to protect ourselves against drifting. So getting into that agentic state that we're talking about. And that's it, everybody. We're out of here. Time for lunch. Wrong button. Here we go. Protection against drifting lies within easy reach of every human being who has a normal body and a sound mind.

49:11 The self-defense can be applied through these simple methods. methods. 1. Do your own thinking on all occasions. The fact that human beings are given complete control over nothing save the power to think their own thoughts is laden with significance. 2. Decide definitely what you want from life, then create a plan for attaining it, and be willing to sacrifice everything else if necessary, rather than accept permanent defeat. 3. Analyze temporary defeat, no matter of what nature or cause, and extract from it the seed of an equivalent advantage. 4. Be willing to render useful service equivalent to the value of all material things you demand of life and render the service first.

49:56 5. Recognize that your brain is a receiving set that can be attuned to receive communications from the universal storehouse of infinite intelligence to help you transmute your desires into their physical equivalent. Reminder, 1938, okay, 1938, the days of radio. Yeah. 6. Theater of the world. Recognize that your greatest asset is time. The only thing except the power of thought which you own outright, and the one thing which can be shaped into whatever material things you want. Budget your time so none of it is wasted. 7. Recognize the truth that fear generally is a filler with which the devil occupies the unused portion of your mind.

50:39 That it is only a state of mind which you can control by filling the space it occupies with faith in your ability to make life provide you with whatever you demand of it. 8. When you pray, do not beg. Demand what you want and insist upon getting exactly that with no substitutes. Dude, just got to stop for a second. That just blew me away. The devil is saying, when you pray, you got to demand it, man. Reminds me of the message translation. It's like Eugene Peterson. Yeah, it's got that. But that went to it. When did Peterson write it? I mean, this is way pre-Peterson. Yeah, that was fantastic. It's 15 years ago. Two more to go. 9.

51:21 Recognize that life is a cruel taskmaster, and that either you master it or it masters you. There is no halfway or compromising point. Never accept from life anything you do not want. If that which you do not want is temporarily forced upon you, you can refuse in your own mind to accept it, and it will make way for the thing you do want. 10. Lastly, remember that your dominating thoughts attract through a definite law of nature by the shortest and most convenient route their physical counterpart. Be careful what thoughts you dwell upon. Wow. I'm looking at what year did C.S. Lewis publish screw tape letters.

52:07 Have you ever read that book? Of course. When did he write that? I'm looking. I'm curious because what year was this? 1938. 38. It's got to be around the same time, I'm thinking. When was 1942? So. 39, 42. Interesting that these concepts, thoughts. Right before World War II, things are ramping. You might just want to mention that. Things were ramping up all over Europe. Fear, fear-mongering, propaganda out the wazoo. Yeah. Was happening all over the world. The world was frozen with fear. Yeah. And here we are. Here we are again. The world may not even be that bad, but

52:49 so I'm really going to try to be to opt out to really be radical. And, you know, I've brought myself down. I still have a job where I need to understand what's happening, but I segment that time and I flow it through my brain into a system so I can get rid of it. Right. But really, once a day, scripture before screens, after I've done everything, after I've we've texted after the Bridge Men's Group daily devotional comes in. So I got all my stuff and anything extra I want to do. I will only go to news.google.com just to see what the headlines are.

53:32 Right. Which I find a lot more calming than going onto social media and knowing news from that, no doubt. And they're also a little behind, you know, so and that's it. And I really, so I know what everyone else will be yapping about. I already know it. I already know what you're going to be talking about. I don't care. Now, the trick is, you know, Bandi Beach, 15 people killed. Okay. The trick is not to, because even when you go in and are commenting like, this is horrible. horrible. You're just giving Satan more creative energy.

54:16 That's the big takeaway. And like the devil said, what are you spending your time on? Well, we know that on average, people spend about seven hours a day on their phone. On average. That's a lot. Digesting this steady diet of negativity, darkness, fear. Fear. See, I wrote this down. Fear is a space filler. That's what the devil says. Yes, space filler. Fear fills space. He's talking about not wasting time. And also, everything you see is fake. And I think this affects women.

54:54 Already it was really bad with fashion magazines in the 80s and 90s. But now every video is filtered. Everybody looks better than you. And a life is better than yours, which plays on the poverty mindset, on the fear of missing out, on making you feel low and down and no good. Even if it's a really positive story, I don't have that positive. I'm not doing that. It's just not good. So the phone, it's the Swiss Army knife. It's a great tool, but be careful how you handle it and how many times you handle it to reduce the amount of cuts, missing fingers, and exploding lampposts

55:38 that you encounter in your daily life. And the thing is, you and I have really reduced a lot of our scrolling time. I feel a lot better. Me too, and I don't feel like I'm out of touch. So true. So true. The scripture before screens thing, now it's worked into my daily work. So I don't even think of it. I used to just literally intuitively automatically reach for my laptop. I mean, it was like autopilot. And now I'm sitting there. My dog's like, what are you doing?

56:18 Where's dad? You're just sitting there. You're not doing anything. And it literally, because I'll just take time and I'll sit for 10 minutes. I may or may not put on some instrumental music just to chill, just to, you know, just wind down. And God just dawned on me. I have no tinnitus right now. Zebro. Amen. Whew, that feels good. How about that? Well, I was saying that, I was going, it just dawned on me. I have nothing. Because I used to say I would fill that space with music just to sort of cancel out the tinnitus. And when I said that, I automatically went there. And I'm like, wait, there's nothing there.

56:58 Whoa. That's cool. Praise God. Couple of things. Can I land us on a scriptural note? I have the airfield inside. No, no. So good. So, number one, this comes from, I love this doctor. I mentioned her a minute ago. Dr. April Joy. She has some really fascinating studies on this. And I'm trying to find out where I was because it was good. Where is it? I lost it because I jumped out to look at that. Oh, here it is. A couple of things. This is, again, she's into the neuroscience world. She says this. She's talking about positive things that you could say that you need to say to yourself.

57:42 Tell yourself. And if you'll say it enough, your brain will just go with it because it's just going to take whatever you're giving it. So give it things like this. I can change. Because there'll be people listening to this that are already feeling bad. Like, oh, I'm such a pessimist. I'm so negative. Oh, I tend to be critical. Well, the whole world's critical right now. We're being trained by social media to beat their critical, yes. We started with American Idol and all those shows where Simon Cowell, thank you very much. Although he's flipped the script a little bit, but man. So I can change. That's the statement. You need to say to yourself and tell yourself, oh, I can change. I can change. That was actually the big revelation for me with Anthony Robbins. Oh, yeah.

58:23 When I had those early power talk tapes, the one thing. I like that guy. Yeah, I've always liked him. His reinforced statement was: you can change how you feel in an instant. I love that. That's all up to you. It's in your mind. It's in your soul. It's in your brain. He was doing neuroscience before there was neuroscience. So I can change. Your brain is designed to grow and rewire. Neuroscience calls this neuroplasticity. Scripture calls it renewal. So I'm going to repeat a scripture you shared. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Romans 12, 2. I love use the NLT version, which is my favorite. By changing the way you think. I love that. It's powerful. And it's there thousands of years ago.

59:04 Could you hold? it down over there, baby? No, it's just the door. No, it's not. No, it's okay. Don't worry. We're good. Hey, y'all. Annette. Dame Annette's in the room. She came in and opened up the door. The fans are blowing. Like, my hair is windblown now all of a sudden. Save the cargo, Captain Baines. Be sure and slam that drawer. All right. So, number two. I'm in trouble now. So, number two, this challenge has meaning. I found these to be really good. When the brain finds meaning, stress response is quiet and resilience increases. Purpose calms the nervous system. And I call it getting the why before the what. Oh, I'm not busy at all, honey. Excuse me.

59:51 Hey, man, you guys are running an organization here. We're working. Things must go well. Absolutely. When the brain finds meaning, stress response is quiet. Purpose calms the nervous system. Listen to the scripture, Romans 5, 3, and 4. Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character. A couple more. Tell yourself this: I'm not alone. I am not alone. The brain interprets connection as safety. Even believing support exists. Even believing support exists lowers fear responses. Yeah. And that's so true. Yes, absolutely. Look, if I know you're in my court, you've got my back. Even if I don't see you all day,

1:00:32 just knowing that makes me feel safer. That's right. That's what the power of community. And here's the scripture: Hebrews 13:5. I will never leave you nor forsake you. That's a God's promise to us. Psalm 34:18, the Lord is near the brokenhearted. Two more. These are quick. These are so good. My thoughts are not always facts. You and I have talked about the difference between truth and facts. Truth is truth. It's eternal, but facts are temporary and subject to change. Thoughts are automatic brain activity. They just happen. Wisdom begins when we learn to examine them. In other words, don't take everything you think as truth. It may not be. It's not always right. Sometimes we have stinking thinking, as Zig Ziggler used to say. Back to Milgram.

1:01:14 Remember that when you're getting it from someone you perceive to be an authority, someone who says, I have the receipts. I've done the research. I know what I'm talking about, or wears a lab coat. Be very wary of what you're accepting as truth. And this goes back to what you've taught me a lot. I mean, really, question everything. Yes. I grew up in a first responder's home, so I trusted authority. He worked for the county. He was a county, you know, Lubbock County fireman and firefighter and government. I worked in the social work system. My paycheck came from the state of Texas. So all of us, you know, we've had these authority pieces in our life, and we just didn't question them. Ever. I do now. So we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

1:01:59 2 Corinthians 10:5. I love that. Psalm 42, 5. Why are you cast down, my soul? In other words, ask why. Why? Why? Why am I feeling this way? I love asking Jesus, Jesus, is this true? Man, that one question will set you free. You know what's funny? The number one thing people post on X Now at Grok, is this true? They're literally those add-ons now, Grok. And then Grok will answer. And by the way, they take that as truth because it's on the World Wide Web. It's got to be true. Last one. Hope changes my brain.

1:02:37 I love this. Yeah. The power of hope. Hope changes my brain. Hope activates motivation pathways, strengthens emotional regulation. It anchors the mind toward the future. I love that. That is cool. Hope anchors the mind toward the future. Romans 15:13, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. Last one, Hebrews 6:19. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul. There it is. Beautiful stuff. And I got to say, the devil's top 10, they were spot on, man. It was good, wasn't it? So your majesty had, he nailed it, man. 1938, man. That was so powerful. That's very cool. Yeah. Man, thanks for bringing that today, brother. Are you kidding me?

1:03:22 I cannot tell you how this aligns. We haven't even been talking about this. No. So you come in with all this. I'm going, oh, you're talking about neuroscience. Yeah. Well, from 1938, 39. Do you think there's a coincidence in the kingdom? Maybe the Holy Spirit's trying to say something here. Get these guys in the room. Get them on the mic. It's so weird that you came from a completely different from early 1900s perspective. And then I've been reading about neuroscience through the Christian, the worldview, Christian worldview, because there's a lot of other stuff out there. But we're landing in the same spot. That's so cool. I'm kind of blown away, brother. All right. So what? why don't we land this plane? Thank you to

1:04:04 Dr. McPhillan. Thank you to Dr. Milgram. Come on, that's right. Retardation on the lever. Here we go, everybody. That's it. Thank you very much. Check us out on the Godcaster app. We'll be back next week. We get to do this, and we love it. This is a chance we dare not miss. This is the life we get to do this.