Latest / In His Circle / How to Release Your Inner Critic and Break Old Identity Patterns | Ep 19

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How to Release Your Inner Critic and Break Old Identity Patterns | Ep 19 · In His Circle

• 0:00
  Announcer: Welcome to In His Circle, from women for women.
• 0:03
  Announcer: We're here to help you find peace in knowing you are in God's hands.
• 0:08
  Announcer: Our goal is sharing the Word of God in simple conversations.
• 0:12
  Announcer: We're here to help you thrive every day.
• 0:15
  Announcer: And now, here is your host.
• 0:18
  Tiffany Windsor: Good morning.
• 0:19
  Tiffany Windsor: I'm Tiffany Windsor.
• 0:20
  Mary Koning: And I'm Mary Koning.
• 0:22
  Tiffany Windsor: And today we want to talk about identity.
• 0:25
  Tiffany Windsor: And, Mary, will you start us off in prayer?
• 0:30
  Mary Koning: I will.
• 0:30
  Mary Koning: I'm thinking about our identity in Christ that once we surrender lordship, that I give over my lordship of my life, my kingdom of one, over to God, then I lose my identity in this world and become pure, blameless and forgiven.
• 0:47
  Mary Koning: And, Lord, I'm so grateful that we're loved with an everlasting love.
• 0:51
  Mary Koning: You will never leave us nor forsake us, so as we walk as new creations in Christ.
• 0:59
  Mary Koning: Lord, I thank you, I'm grateful for you and fresh starts every day In Jesus' name, amen.
• 1:06
  Tiffany Windsor: Amen.
• 1:06
  Tiffany Windsor: Our topic today, as I mentioned, is identity, and this started actually at church this morning because the topic was mind wars and I've experienced and observed some people lately that fit in with this.
• 1:23
  Tiffany Windsor: But let's start off with what are mind wars, Mary?
• 1:28
  Mary Koning: Well, just like pastor said, it's our inner critic, is the inner voice, which is brutal sometimes and the enemy of our soul.
• 1:37
  Mary Koning: So there's two things my inner critic building me up or breaking me down.
• 1:41
  Mary Koning: And then, whatever breaking down is happening, the enemy just jumps right on that to steal, kill and destroy.
• 1:47
  Mary Koning: Both of those are negative.
• 1:49
  Mary Koning: So if my thoughts are negative, then I know those two things are going on.
• 1:54
  Tiffany Windsor: What I loved was the initial description of life is moving in the direction of your thoughts.
• 2:00
  Tiffany Windsor: That is so important.
• 2:02
  Tiffany Windsor: Where are your thoughts right now?
• 2:05
  Tiffany Windsor: Are you thinking worried versus peaceful?
• 2:09
  Tiffany Windsor: Are you thinking negative versus positive?
• 2:13
  Tiffany Windsor: Are you thinking worldly versus eternal?
• 2:16
  Tiffany Windsor: And we went through the exercise of grading ourself of where we fall in the scale of one to 10, ourselves of where we fall in the scale of one to 10, one being the worried side or the negative side, or the worldly side, and 10 being the peaceful, positive and eternal.
• 2:33
  Tiffany Windsor: It was a great exercise to go through.
• 2:36
  Mary Koning: And I've done calendar audits in the past and audits of my work-related projects, but I've never really thought about a mind audit and that was really powerful and I started out really, really rough and ended much stronger.
• 2:54
  Mary Koning: And then I've also had much stronger years in the past where I've really made an effort to work on my thought life.
• 3:03
  Mary Koning: I notice if I'm not intentional, my thoughts go south, which is not good.
• 3:11
  Tiffany Windsor: Your faith should be making a difference in your life.
• 3:13
  Tiffany Windsor: When you go into your negative thought in your mind wars, which again might be worried, might be negative, might be getting caught up in the worldly things that don't serve you.
• 3:27
  Tiffany Windsor: I love this example of reminding us to turn to God in those moments because your faith should be making a difference in your life.
• 3:37
  Tiffany Windsor: That's something definitely in my past year, Mary, as I've done my 21 days of prayer and the Circle Maker has really been teaching me, when the challenges come up, to turn immediately to prayer and it is so incredibly powerful and effective and successful.
• 3:59
  Mary Koning: I find that I know what works and try something different that doesn't work or not, tapping into that power that's available to me and how the Lord tells us how forgetful we are, that we're like children and we need to come to him as children, which is we don't know all the answers and we don't know what's coming next.
• 4:21
  Mary Koning: But he does, and it's also trusting that our, our parent, being God, protect us and provide for us and supply for us what we need, and I want that it's peaceful need and I want that it's peaceful.
• 4:39
  Tiffany Windsor: One of the explanations that pastor said today was about neural pathways are our patterns, and so you have to walk a new path to create a new pattern, because if you continue to get stuck in the old patterns, it's going to be so challenging to try and walk your new path.
• 4:56
  Tiffany Windsor: I was in a situation yesterday where I was gathering with some people that I knew and some people I did not.
• 5:02
  Tiffany Windsor: I love to observe in situations, listen to the talk that's going on and how people are communicating.
• 5:08
  Tiffany Windsor: I was stunned to hear some of the words come out of the women around me who are Christian women, and to hear their negative talk.
• 5:20
  Tiffany Windsor: I don't know that.
• 5:22
  Tiffany Windsor: It was a situation that didn't really warrant that.
• 5:24
  Tiffany Windsor: So I found it very interesting.
• 5:26
  Tiffany Windsor: They were so comfortable speaking that way.
• 5:28
  Tiffany Windsor: I didn't try and step in and correct anything.
• 5:31
  Tiffany Windsor: So I'm just going to talk about it today, of what can we do in those moments to help our sisters, our circle sisters, to be able to shift that thought, because if they're so comfortable speaking to someone that they've never met before in that way, what are they doing in everyday life and everyday family and everyday work?
• 5:51
  Tiffany Windsor: That's the enemy getting into their thought patterns.
• 5:54
  Tiffany Windsor: I just pray that that stops for all of them and that the Lord speaks louder than the enemy so that they will shift that thinking in the moment that it starts coming out of their mouth.
• 6:08
  Mary Koning: And I had mentioned, out of the overflow of our heart, our mouth speaks and so you can tell what they are thinking by how they speak.
• 6:17
  Mary Koning: We have a choice every time we open our mouth Is it grateful or is it critical?
• 6:22
  Mary Koning: I try to walk that line of I don't want to be like happy clappy, just slapping some words I don't feel on it, but sometimes we have to speak it until we feel it.
• 6:34
  Mary Koning: Speak the word of God, the truth of God, even if I don't feel it.
• 6:39
  Mary Koning: I had mentioned loved with an everlasting love.
• 6:41
  Mary Koning: God will never leave us or forsake us, which means he will see us through every single circumstance and he is so creative.
• 6:48
  Mary Koning: He doesn't need my help for a solution and he also doesn't need worldly things for a solution.
• 6:55
  Mary Koning: So he's got infinite amounts of money and time and supplies and so when I think like that it helps bring it.
• 7:03
  Mary Koning: It's like a string.
• 7:04
  Mary Koning: It's pulling my mind up to where he is and a higher view of things, rather than looking around at this world and you know maybe what's on the news and the struggles friends are going through and trusting that God's got a great solution in mind.
• 7:22
  Tiffany Windsor: What's so interesting to me is I hear women who are caught in their old patterns and their negative thinking and they wonder why, and they don't hear themselves.
• 7:34
  Tiffany Windsor: When you don't hear yourself as you think, so you become.
• 7:39
  Tiffany Windsor: How important is it for you to change the patterns in your life?
• 7:45
  Tiffany Windsor: If it's important enough, you are going to seek the Lord and you are going to pray for the wisdom to come through in that moment and recognize that it's the enemy that's pulling you down.
• 7:58
  Tiffany Windsor: Honestly, I don't believe it's the worldly things per se.
• 8:01
  Tiffany Windsor: It's not your situation, it's the enemy getting in your head.
• 8:06
  Tiffany Windsor: First of all, what do you have to do?
• 8:08
  Tiffany Windsor: You have to be grateful for what you have, because if we are not grateful for what we have, I don't believe that we can turn that switch and walk the separate path.
• 8:17
  Tiffany Windsor: Create the new path, not the old pathways.
• 8:20
  Tiffany Windsor: I love this.
• 8:21
  Tiffany Windsor: Prayer is the place where God gets the microphone, as opposed to the enemy sitting on your shoulder and whispering things.
• 8:29
  Tiffany Windsor: When you go into prayer in the moment, it's going to be able to help you shift from the negative thinking that's being whispered in your ear.
• 8:40
  Mary Koning: It's a choice, isn't it?
• 8:42
  Tiffany Windsor: It is a choice.
• 8:42
  Tiffany Windsor: You need to make that choice more important than anything else.
• 8:45
  Tiffany Windsor: I was talking to you I think this was after church about oh, I don't have enough time.
• 8:50
  Tiffany Windsor: I'm trying to read the Bible this year, which I've never done in full.
• 8:53
  Tiffany Windsor: I've picked that, I picked the 365 days of creativity, I'm trying to read back through Circle Maker.
• 8:59
  Tiffany Windsor: And I said to you I don't have enough time for this, I can't keep up every day.
• 9:03
  Tiffany Windsor: And then, immediately, the message that came to me is get up out of your bed earlier in the morning, you have plenty of time.
• 9:10
  Tiffany Windsor: I realized in that moment I was being lazy because I can get up earlier and take care of all of this.
• 9:16
  Tiffany Windsor: It just has to be important enough.
• 9:18
  Mary Koning: And a choice, and I love that we choose to do things every single second.
• 9:25
  Mary Koning: And I had listened to a podcast which I love, Natalie Hoffman and she had a guest speaker on.
• 9:31
  Mary Koning: And Natalie talked about how she was so angry at her situation and the source of the anger ended up being lack of choices.
• 9:39
  Mary Koning: And so she really dug into that to find out what was the problem with the choices and she felt like she didn't have any.
• 9:48
  Mary Koning: And then that was step one.
• 9:50
  Mary Koning: But that's not true.
• 9:51
  Mary Koning: And then she figured out she maybe had two choices, but that didn't still feel like freedom, because the Lord has infinite choices, right?
• 10:00
  Mary Koning: And her guest said when you feel stuck like that, you need more than two.
• 10:04
  Mary Koning: You need to come up with at least five and show yourself that you do have choices.
• 10:08
  Mary Koning: They might not be the ones you want to take, but I pray the Lord will put a flashlight on your path.
• 10:13
  Mary Koning: In Psalms it says the Lord be a light unto your feet and a lamp unto your path.
• 10:18
  Mary Koning: I probably have that wrong, but it's just lighting up the next step.
• 10:22
  Mary Koning: So we don't need next year's plan or even next month's plan, we just need the next step.
• 10:27
  Mary Koning: Sometimes, especially if we're overwhelmed.
• 10:31
  Tiffany Windsor: So I ask everyone one more time what is your identity today?
• 10:34
  Tiffany Windsor: Are you identifying as being worried, negative, or are you shifting your thought and your prayers to bring you into peace and positive and feeling the eternal love of God in your life and a reminder that prayer is a weapon of heaven?
• 10:56
  Tiffany Windsor: I love that Pastor said that today.
• 10:58
  Tiffany Windsor: I pray for you that in the moments when you are feeling discouraged and you are feeling down and you're feeling like there's no one there to help you, God is always with you.
• 11:10
  Tiffany Windsor: You just have to turn towards the light of God, which is a different path where you're thinking may have been going and you will see what opens up for you, and I'd like to end with what Pastor said about Jesus in Mark, chapter 1, 33 through 36.
• 11:30
  Mary Koning: We aren't alone in how we feel that Jesus emptied himself of his God qualities so he could come to earth to know exactly how we feel.
• 11:39
  Mary Koning: And he was discouraged, and he was hungry and tired and lonely and facing insurmountable challenges.
• 11:48
  Mary Koning: He knows what you're going through and he knows the solution also.
• 11:53
  Mary Koning: So, lord, we just ask in Jesus name to help us know how to pray, and when we don't have the words, just the groanings in the spirit.
• 12:02
  Mary Koning: But, lord, give us a grateful heart, be the lifter of our face up to you so we can find hope and peace in your holy presence.
• 12:13
  Mary Koning: In Jesus name we pray, amen.
• 12:17
  Announcer: Amen.
• 12:17
  Announcer: Thank you for joining us for today's podcast.
• 12:21
  Announcer: Amen Amen.