Latest / Max Lucado Daily Sermons / Change Your Life by Changing Your Brain- Minister Max Lucado

Transcript

Change Your Life by Changing Your Brain- Minister Max Lucado · Max Lucado Daily Sermons

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  Speaker 1: Hi friends, I'm Max Locato and welcome to Fresh Hope.
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  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you joined me for this final episode
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  Speaker 1: of this series that's based on my book, Tame Your Thoughts.
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  Speaker 1: Scripture tells us that we are being made new in
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  Speaker 1: the image of Jesus and this includes our minds. What
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  Speaker 1: does it mean to have the mind of Christ? Well,
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  Speaker 1: let's talk about it. A carpenter walks along a Galilean
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  Speaker 1: beach and he has spotted two fishermen. He doesn't just
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  Speaker 1: see them as they are. He knows the purpose for
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  Speaker 1: which they were created. So the carpenter invites them into
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  Speaker 1: his workshop. Come, follow me, Jesus says, as recorded in
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  Speaker 1: Matthew 4, 19. And I will make you fish for people.
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  Speaker 1: So Simon and Andrew immediately left their nets and followed him.
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  Speaker 1: Just as a carpenter today would restore a weathered antique chair,
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  Speaker 1: so the Judean carpenter sets out to restore two lives.
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  Speaker 1: His plan is simple. He will remake them in his image,
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  Speaker 1: just as Adam was made in the image of God.
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  Speaker 1: And in the last 2,000 years, nothing has changed. Romans
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  Speaker 1: 8 29 says, God decided from the outset to shape
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  Speaker 1: the lives of those who love him along the same
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  Speaker 1: lines as the life of his son. God is remaking
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  Speaker 1: you into the image of Jesus. Jesus felt no guilt.
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  Speaker 1: God wants you to feel no guilt. Jesus had no
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  Speaker 1: bad habits. God wants to do away with yours. Colossians 3.10 says,
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  Speaker 1: You have begun to live the new life in which
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  Speaker 1: you are being made new and are becoming like the
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  Speaker 1: one who made you. Note the phrases, being made new
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  Speaker 1: and becoming like the one who made you. Mark it down.
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  Speaker 1: No one has greater dreams for you than God. Someday
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  Speaker 1: you'll reign with him in an eternal kingdom. For that reason,
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  Speaker 1: do as Ephesians 4, 23 and 24 says, let the
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  Speaker 1: spirit change your way of thinking and make you into
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  Speaker 1: a new person. How does the Spirit of God change us? Well,
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  Speaker 1: He enrolls us in the University of Godly Thought, where
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  Speaker 1: we learn to take thoughts captive, test each message against
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  Speaker 1: the truth of Scripture, interrupt poisonous thought threads before they
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  Speaker 1: infect us, and think and act like Jesus. God will
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  Speaker 1: remake you by changing the way you think. Your brain changes.
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  Speaker 1: contains about 86 billion nerve cells called neurons. Inside those
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  Speaker 1: neurons are a structure called microtubules, too small to see,
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  Speaker 1: but don't be fooled by their size. They have been
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  Speaker 1: called the brains of the cell, and they are constantly
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  Speaker 1: changing and shifting. Every time you think microtubules provide mental
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  Speaker 1: structure to support that thought, they create scaffolding for the
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  Speaker 1: nerve cell and alter your brain. Now, this entire process
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  Speaker 1: only takes 10 minutes. From the moment you think a
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  Speaker 1: thought to the moment that thought impacts your brain, only
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  Speaker 1: 10 minutes are needed. You're just 10 minutes from a
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  Speaker 1: new you. God will give you thoughts to reshape your brain.
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  Speaker 1: I have two final invitations to help with this process. First,
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  Speaker 1: let God love you. Let God love you. Psalm 139
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  Speaker 1: says how precious it is, Lord, to realize that you
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  Speaker 1: are thinking about me constantly. I can't even count how
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  Speaker 1: many times a day your thoughts turn toward me. God
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  Speaker 1: never stops thinking about you. Not thoughts of condemnation, but
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  Speaker 1: thoughts of love. How would your life be different if
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  Speaker 1: you believed, I mean, really believed you were loved by
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  Speaker 1: God You know, faith in God's love has a therapeutic effect.
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  Speaker 1: One study identified belief in a loving God as the
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  Speaker 1: principal factor in the healing of HIV patients. It measured
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  Speaker 1: the amount of helper T cells. Those who denied faith
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  Speaker 1: in a loving God lost helper T cells three times
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  Speaker 1: faster than those who believed. The author of the study wrote,
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  Speaker 1: If you believe God loves you, it's an enormously protective factor,
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  Speaker 1: even more protective than scoring low for depression or high
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  Speaker 1: for optimism. So, I say again, let God love you.
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  Speaker 1: In Mark's account of the rich young ruler, he described
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  Speaker 1: this love of Christ. The affluent man asked Jesus what
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  Speaker 1: he had to do to be saved. And note how
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  Speaker 1: Jesus responded in Mark 10, Jesus, looking at the man,
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  Speaker 1: loved him. Before Jesus spoke to him, he loved him.
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  Speaker 1: Before Jesus said, follow me, he said with his eyes,
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  Speaker 1: I love you. Peter and Andrew weren't chosen for their
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  Speaker 1: skills or talents. They were chosen because God loved them.
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  Speaker 1: God chose you for the same reason. We must start here.
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  Speaker 1: We must do what Ephesians 3 18 and 19 instructs.
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  Speaker 1: Take in the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. You'll give
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  Speaker 1: up on yourself before God will. You'll disqualify and discount
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  Speaker 1: yourself long before God will do the same to you.
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  Speaker 1: So let God love you. Then let Him lead you.
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  Speaker 1: Multiple times a day, we answer a fundamental question. Whose
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  Speaker 1: truth am I going to trust? Many messages that come
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  Speaker 1: our way are outright lies. And if we heed them
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  Speaker 1: rather than heed him, we become candidates for chaos. Healthy
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  Speaker 1: thinking is picky thinking. Just because someone says it, we
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  Speaker 1: don't have to believe it. Here's an example of why
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  Speaker 1: this matters. Passengers flying to Milwaukee glance out the window
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  Speaker 1: as the plane descends and they see words painted on
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  Speaker 1: a roof that read, Welcome to Cleveland. The message appears
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  Speaker 1: to be official. The lettering is six foot tall, written
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  Speaker 1: in a professional font. But the sign is a practical
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  Speaker 1: joke hatched by the fellow who owns the apartment over
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  Speaker 1: which the words were painted. Not everyone thinks the joke
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  Speaker 1: is funny. Some passengers freak out. Did they board the
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  Speaker 1: wrong plane? Did the plane fly off course? One airline
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  Speaker 1: makes a preemptive announcement. that the sign is not to
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  Speaker 1: be trusted, and the pilot is. Don't we need the
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  Speaker 1: same reminder? Our pilot has the final say over everything.
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  Speaker 1: Ignore the billboard messages. If he says you're forgiven, you're forgiven.
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  Speaker 1: If he tells you not to worry, why should you worry?
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  Speaker 1: Trust his truth. You know, false thinking can be devastating.
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  Speaker 1: Writer and psychologist Dr. David Stoop tells about a man
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  Speaker 1: who was sneaking rides on freight trains. And one night,
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  Speaker 1: he climbed into what looked like a boxcar and closed
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  Speaker 1: the door. The door locked shut, and he was trapped inside.
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  Speaker 1: And when his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized
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  Speaker 1: he was inside a refrigerated car. He pounded on the door,
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  Speaker 1: but no one heard him. As he tried to fight
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  Speaker 1: against the cold, he scratched part of a message on
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  Speaker 1: the floor of the car He never finished. Sometime late
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  Speaker 1: the next day, repairmen from the railroad found the man dead.
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  Speaker 1: He looked like someone who had frozen to death. The
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  Speaker 1: mystery was that the refrigerator units on the car were
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  Speaker 1: not working. The repairmen had come to fix them. The
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  Speaker 1: man died because his thoughts told him he was freezing
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  Speaker 1: to death. He trusted an untruth. Unless you up root
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  Speaker 1: false weeds and replant them with truth, your misguided thinking
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  Speaker 1: might also lead to catastrophe, to despair, defeat, depression. Trust
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  Speaker 1: the truth of God. Let the God who loves you
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  Speaker 1: lead you. Here's how it works. You didn't get the race.
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  Speaker 1: The tendency is to assume the worst. I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: lose my job, lose my retirement. I'm landing in Cleveland.
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  Speaker 1: God's truth interrupts the UFO cycle, allowing you to think, well, okay,
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  Speaker 1: I didn't get the raise. That's disappointing. But my life
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  Speaker 1: is in God's hands. If God knows when a sparrow
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  Speaker 1: falls to the ground, then He knows how to provide
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  Speaker 1: for me. See the difference? The natural mind naturally makes
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  Speaker 1: wrong decisions. The spiritual mind, the mind of Christ, which
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  Speaker 1: you have, will trust the truth. Being a disciple comes
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  Speaker 1: down to letting God change the way we live by
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  Speaker 1: changing the way we think. Let God lead you. Pray
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  Speaker 1: specific prayers about your specific thoughts. Take them to Christ,
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  Speaker 1: like you would take a broken chair to a carpenter
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  Speaker 1: and ask, can you please fix this? And he will.
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  Speaker 1: Search the New Testament for one case of a dismissed request.
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  Speaker 1: You won't find it. You will find one person after another,
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  Speaker 1: one request after another, be they blind beggars or decrepit lepers,
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  Speaker 1: Jesus heard them all, and he will hear you. It
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  Speaker 1: simply falls to us to tame our thoughts. The Apostle
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  Speaker 1: Paul wrote in Philippians 4.8, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever
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  Speaker 1: is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure,
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  Speaker 1: whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent
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  Speaker 1: or praiseworthy, think about such things. Behind this admonition is
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  Speaker 1: the Apostle's conviction that we can choose our thoughts. We
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  Speaker 1: cannot always choose our situation, but we can choose our contemplation.
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  Speaker 1: Captain Gerald Coffey did. In 1966, his plane was shot
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  Speaker 1: down over the China Sea. He spent the next seven
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  Speaker 1: years in a Vietnamese concentration camp. He was tortured. stretched
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  Speaker 1: on ropes. He spent hours in pain and years in isolation.
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  Speaker 1: In his book, Beyond Survival, he describes how every Sunday,
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  Speaker 1: senior officers would send a message through a whispered voice.
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  Speaker 1: It was time for worship. The prisoners would stand, unable
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  Speaker 1: to see one another, as they softly repeated the words
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  Speaker 1: from the 23rd Psalm. Thou preparest a table before me,
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  Speaker 1: In the presence of mine enemies, thou anointest my head
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  Speaker 1: with oil, my cup runneth over. Coffey wrote, I realized
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  Speaker 1: that despite being incarcerated in this terrible place, it was
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  Speaker 1: my cup that runneth over, because I would return to
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  Speaker 1: a beautiful and free country. The captain found peace in prison. How? Well,
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  Speaker 1: he chose to choose his thoughts. Christ will help you
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  Speaker 1: do the same. He has a grand dream for you,
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  Speaker 1: my friend. He is shaping you into an image of
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  Speaker 1: one worthy of walking the streets of heaven. And it
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  Speaker 1: all begins with a simple choice. Tame your thoughts. Thanks
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  Speaker 1: so much for joining me. I hope these messages have
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  Speaker 1: been helpful, and I pray the tools we have talked
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  Speaker 1: about bring you peace, confidence, and a new way of thinking.
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  Speaker 1: Always remember, God has given you the power to change
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  Speaker 1: your life one thought at a time.
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  Speaker 2: You don't have to stay close.
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  Speaker 3: As long as you're somewhere out there, that's enough for me.
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  Speaker 3: I don't need to hold you near me. Don't need
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  Speaker 3: promises to keep. Just the thought that.
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  Speaker 2: You are breathing somewhere in this world I see.
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  Speaker 3: Even if I'm not beside you Even if you never
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  Speaker 3: know There's a quiet kind of comfort Just in knowing
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  Speaker 3: you still glow.
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  Speaker 2: I don't need forever I just need you to exist.
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  Speaker 4: You don't have to stay with me You don't have
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  Speaker 4: to feel the same Just as long as you're still
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  Speaker 4: out there Calling softly through my days You don't have
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  Speaker 4: to look my way You don't have to be my home.
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  Speaker 3: It's enough to know you're living In a world.
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  Speaker 4: I'm not alone.
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  Speaker 3: I won't chase you through the.
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  Speaker 4: Distance Won't disturb your chosen life. I'll just keep you
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  Speaker 4: in my silence like a star that shines at night.
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  Speaker 2: Through the dark and through the blue.
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  Speaker 4: I still think of you. You don't have to feel
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  Speaker 4: the same Just as long as you're still out there
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  Speaker 4: Calling softly through my days You don't have to look
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  Speaker 4: my way You don't have to be my home It's
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  Speaker 4: enough to know you're living In a world I'm not alone.
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  Speaker 2: I don't need to be your light I don't need
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  Speaker 2: to cross your mind All I need is just the
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  Speaker 2: truth That you're somewhere Still alive.
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  Speaker 4: You don't have to stay with me you don't have
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  Speaker 4: to feel the same just as long as you're still
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  Speaker 4: out there calling softly through my days you don't have
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  Speaker 4: to look my way you don't have to be my
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  Speaker 4: home it's enough to know you're living
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  Speaker 2: In a world I'm not alone