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YOUR TRIUNE BRAIN! So What? · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, man?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to talking to you today.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're continuing in this vein of your triune brain, my triune brain, our triune brain.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what I want to start off with today is so what?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, how is understanding the triune brain going to help me?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: How is it, you know, why are we talking about this, man?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why should I care?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I just want to tell you that I I have found that understanding the brain, the triune kind of functional nature of it, and how the brain was designed, how the brain functions, it has helped me personally with some things that I've dealt with and struggled through.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also helped me help others as a pastor and a counselor all these years.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So here's a here's a way to think about something.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: John 1 14, John chapter 1, verse 14 says this uh the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it ends with this phrase, this thought.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was full of grace and truth.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: What I found is understanding the brain is true.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's it's it's uh you know, it's it's it's factual, but it also brings grace.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: My understanding of the brain has helped me feel better about myself with some of the struggles I've had.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's helped me help others understand why why do I struggle with this and that person over there doesn't?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I struggle with this and my my siblings don't?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I struggle with this and my spouse doesn't?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um the bottom line is I believe grace and truth should be in equal amounts, in other words, lots of grace, lots of truth.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe the truth of understanding your brain has helped bring the grace level up.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna give you an example of that in just a minute.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's a saying uh in prayer circles about gap fillers that an intercessor, someone who's given to intercessory prayer, is a gap filler.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: They fill the gap for people between the person and their issues and God.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's an interesting way to think about this whole idea of grace and truth.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Gap finders.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, people that are good at saying, oh, well, you you know, you don't manage your emotions well, or you don't make good decisions, or you know what, dude, you you're just an angry, mean person.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: That would be what I call a gap finder, not a gap filler.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Gap finders are great at pointing at problems.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the deal, guys: gap finders are a dime a dozen.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but all you have to do is tap it almost anybody on the shoulder, and they'll be happy to find the gaps in your life and your behavior and your choices, and kind of just tell you what's wrong with you.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: But a gap filler, a gap filler is someone who sees what you're struggling with, who sees your challenges, who sees what what you want to be different, and you just haven't figured out how to make it different yet.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: But a gap filler says, you know what, I want to I want to be part of the solution.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I want to help.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I want to learn what I need to learn to be functionally valuable to you, you might say.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: All right, if we're gonna do that, and and I'm sort of we're still talking about the brain, we're still talking about the three parts of the brain, but I want to get for some of you, you know, there's always some people out there that fall in one of these four categories.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I found years ago when I was writing a course on Christian counseling, um, you know, I found that counselors, and if counselors do, we're all gonna kind of fall on this continuum, but counselors tend to fall in one of four areas, and I'm gonna give them to you, but I want you to think about where where you are in this, okay?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So counselors tend to fall in one of four areas, and that is the first one is a secular or non-Christian perspective or view.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: It means human reasons, the ultimate source of truth.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing out there but us, there's no absolutes, there's no spiritual dimension.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my guess is there aren't very many people listening to me that are in that camp, that perspective.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I call it the under spiritualized perspective.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, there's there's not a sense of God and and in our spiritual beings and all that kind of stuff.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second view that counselors tend to fall in, and again, it would apply to us also, is what I would call the uh hyper-Christian or hyper-spiritual.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where revelation supersedes reason, which I would probably agree with, but it doesn't like throw reason out the window.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: This would be what I would call the over-spiritualized.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of person who, when you're depressed, they say to you, well, you know, I think you just need to pray more and read your Bible more.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or they say to you, you know, uh, if you'll go home and put on worship music in every room of your house, I think you can drive that oppression out of your house.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so they they reduce emotional, relational challenges to this grossly oversimplified, hyper-spiritualized, uh I call them bumper sticker solutions.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um honestly, I I don't have a whole lot of patience for that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't, because it's very low on the grace and truth scale.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this person, if you're in the camp of being over-spiritualized, you reject any source outside of the Bible.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Any source outside of the Bible.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um you're not gonna enjoy me, probably, because I I do most of my reading from what I would consider secular sources, meaning people that don't either quote the Bible.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now they might be Christian, but why do I do that?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because they tend to be ahead of the curve on in these areas of psychology and some of those things.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the bottom line, guys, I want to help you.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want to help myself.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so under-spiritualized, over-spiritualized.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third group that um counselors tend to fall into is what I would call the parallel view.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: What in the world is the parallel view?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Parallel view is I I'm a Christian, I believe scripture, I believe all the tenets of scripture, but at the same time, I'm a counselor and I study psychology and all that kind of cool stuff.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the deal: I haven't really integrated the two.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a Christian out here in my everyday life, but when I step in that appointment with you, whether it's because of the fear of our current culture or what it is, I'm gonna so adhere to the dictates of our culture that I'm not gonna bring my Christianity in here.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do I occasionally meet with someone who's not a Christian?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And am I careful in how I word things?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do I maybe even ask them permission to pray for them or can I talk about God?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy to do that because I may nudge them toward a relationship with God.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm talking about is somebody who's solidly Christian, maybe even a well-trained counselor, but they haven't figured out how to marry the two.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I would call the very I mean the parallel view.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last, and again, this is um uh counselors tend to fall in one of these four groups, and the last would be what I'd call the integrated or balanced perspective or view.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where you're a solid believer, you you get outside of just the Bible, although guys, trust me, the Bible is is the book, it's it, man, it's the it's the bomb.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I read a lot of what I here's what I do.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I call it sanctified psychology.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I bring a lot of what I call sanctified psychology into what I'm doing.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe God's afraid of science.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta let that one sit on you for a minute.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, I'm afraid if they keep learning, they'll figure out I'm not here.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what, guys, God is there, and He's not worried about science dethroning him.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think we should be as afraid of it as we tend to be.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why am I saying all this?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I want you to understand your triune brain.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to understand what current and recent research has taught us, and I found it to be extremely helpful in supporting and encouraging my own journey and why I get trapped in ways that I do, and also giving me the ability to have grace and truth to be helpful in the lives of other people.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we're gonna do next week, we're gonna continue to talk about the triune brain.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like we're gonna be doing it for a little while, but what I want to do is talk next week about an example of how I apply what I've learned about the brain to anger, for instance, to someone who's got controlling issues, uh, OCD, obsessive-compulsive, depression, anxiety, all these different things.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna find that, yes, there's spiritual issues at stake or involved, yes, there's there's thinking issues as a man thinks, but we're also gonna find that the hardware through which we do all those things, the brain, plays a really, really critical part.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I want you to be aware of that for yourself, but I want you to be aware of it for other people also.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to it, man.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I will see you soon next week.