Bandaids for Broken Bones (S13E56)

Introduction to Dream

0:00I've had this dream a few times, and this is pretty graphic, but I have to tell you because I want you to understand how vivid it feels to me. In this dream, I'm a Civil War battlefield surgeon. I'm wearing one of those white butcher's aprons, and I've got an amputation saw in my hand, and I'm moving from patient to patient performing those battlefield amputations. Then I'll wipe the blood off my hand and go to the next patient, and then the scene kind of zooms out, like you're watching a Gettysburg movie or something, and I can see from over my own shoulder. Then I'm outside my own perspective, and I can see that I'm operating on myself,

0:32and I keep working to try to amputate the limb, and it keeps bleeding, and it keeps being a problem, and it keeps not getting better, and I'm getting shorter, but I'm not getting well. And just over and over and over, I've realized that I'm operating and operating and operating, but nothing's getting better. It's just taking longer and more painful, and it's futile, and I can't fix what's wrong with myself. In this dream, I can't solve my own issue.

Episode Theme

1:01And friend, that's what we're going to get into today. This episode is about putting Band-Aids on broken bones. It's about this situation where we're treating the wrong problem with the wrong operation. And it's not a particular operation that I'm going to teach you today. It's an observation about operations that we do. Band-Aids on big wounds. Band-Aids on broken bones. It's when we do the wrong thing, and we're wondering why we're not getting the right results. That's what that dream makes me feel like. And so if you look at our society today, and if you look at your individual life,

1:34and if you're honest with yourself, it's just like the dream I've been having. We find ourselves wounded. We've got these big problems, and we keep applying the wrong surgery, the wrong medicine, the wrong anesthesia. And then we say, well, every time I feel this way, I'm overwhelmed, and I can't make progress, and that's why I drink alcohol, or that's why I spend money, or that's why I do this. I'm violating our commandment about self-malpractice. I'm violating our commandment about not paying the tomorrow tax. I'm violating the commandment about no self-anesthesia. And we think every time I feel this way, I turn on the television.

2:06Every time I feel this way, I turn to a physical relationship I shouldn't be involved in, or pornography, or gambling, or shopping, or whatever. And I just don't feel any better the next day. And every time I feel this thing, I do that thing, and it never works out, but I keep finding myself doing it. And it reminds me of that passage in Romans 7, where Paul throws up his hands and says, the stuff I want to do, I can't do, and the stuff I want not to do, I do it anyway, and I just don't know what's going to happen. Who's going to save me from all this mess? And then we say, you know, instead of changing what I do, I just keep doing more of the same thing,

2:41or I change it a little bit, and it just doesn't work out. And I say, well, if this type of thing doesn't work, maybe another type of similar thing will do it. Maybe if a little bit of alcohol isn't doing it, maybe more will. If a little bit of shopping won't do it, maybe more will. Or maybe a different website I can click on will make me feel something different. And we just keep trying the same things over and over and over. And instead of actually fixing the problem, we're applying Band-Aids to broken bones.

3:13We're applying little Band-Aids to big wounds. We're performing battlefield amputations when what we really need is antibiotics. We're doing the wrong thing and getting the wrong result, and we're treating the wrong result by doing more of the wrong thing. And if you look at society right now, we're seeing a lot of this happen, applying the wrong treatments to the things that are really wrong.

Book Recommendation

3:38I read a book a while back, several years ago. In fact, it was one of my top five books. I used to do an end-of-the-year list of all the books that I'd read and what my favorites were. And in 2022, Eugene Peterson's book called Run with the Horses was one of my top six books. Maybe I'll bring that back again someday, the best books that I read for a year or whatever. But that book just blew me away. I heard it first from my friend Mark Vrogap, who's one of my favorite writers. In fact, his book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercies, is one of the best books I've ever read about suffering and lament.

4:08He's been on the podcast a few times, and he recommended that book. And he's one of those guys, Mark Vrogap and Lisa Warren, my wife, and Dennis McDonald, my father-in-law, they're pretty much the three people. If they say, hey, you need to read this, I'm going to read it. And Mark said, read Eugene Peterson's book, Run with the Horses. And I did, and it just blew me away. And it was so important, and it's going to be relevant to what we're talking about today. And so I would highly recommend Eugene Peterson's book, Run with the Horses, because it's going to help you with this idea of applying the wrong surgery to what's really wrong with us.

4:42Because we're never going to get the right outcome if we're doing the wrong operation. We make the wrong diagnosis, we treat it with the wrong procedure, and then we're flabbergasted when it doesn't work out. If we really want to get better, we have to get the right thing happening. We have to get really good at diagnosing the problem and applying the right treatment if we want to have the right outcome. There's this verse in Isaiah chapter 43, 18 and 19 that says, see, I'm doing a new thing. Forget the former things, I'm doing a new thing. And that's what I want us to do. Stop being frustrated and stuck of applying the wrong procedure to the wrong problem.

5:16And let's make a decision that we're going to get better at making the diagnosis. We're going to get more diligent about applying the right treatment. And we're going to get more effective in experiencing the right outcome to the things that trouble us. Because that's how we're going to become healthier and feel better and be happier. That's how we're going to achieve healing and hope and higher performance. Today I'm going to give you Band-Aids for broken bones. That's our self-brain surgery for today. We're going to stop putting Band-Aids on broken bones. We're going to get after the things you really want for your life.

5:47We're going to stop getting in our own way. Stop wiping the blood off of our aprons and realizing that we're operating on ourselves and we're getting shorter, but we're not getting better. And we're going to start doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. Let's get after it. Hey, it's your friend, Dr. Lee Warren.

Action April Introduction

6:10I am so proud of you for being here to do this hard and holy work. I'm going to give you a fist bump or a little bro hug and say, hey, good job. Good job for showing up. This is hard stuff. It's not easy to do this hard and holy work. And guess what? It's Action April. We haven't done Action April in a while on the podcast, but we're here in a new month and it's time to embrace what Isaiah 43 says. Forget the former things. Stop being so stressed out that we keep trying and we keep failing and we keep doing the wrong operation and we keep just covering our frustrations up with the same anesthesia and paying the

6:45tomorrow tax over and over. And we begin to believe this is just who I am. And friends, self-brain surgeons don't think that way because we know that we're becoming new all the time. Our brains are reorganizing and structurally changing in response to our thinking. So if we're stuck somewhere, we just have to back up and get metacognitive and start thinking about our thinking. And then we'll begin to write the kind of brain that we want to have to help us be the kind of people that we want to be. I'm so proud of you for showing up to do this. So good job. Let's get after it.

Metacognitive Episode

7:14OK, again, this isn't one of those episodes that's going to give you a particular operation. This is kind of a metacognitive episode about the idea of when we do the wrong thing for the wrong problem, we get the wrong result. OK, so that's that's the overarching metanarrative of this episode is we're just trying to understand that putting Band-Aids on broken bones, putting little Band-Aids on big wounds isn't the path to healing. And I want you to be about healing and hope and higher performance.

7:47So we have this this problem, right, where we have a big idea, a big dream for our life, where we used to have all this hope and something came along and happened and we've got this wound now. I've got this gaping hole in my heart where my son used to be or my marriage used to be or my family used to be or my job used to be or my whatever, my beauty, my talent, my my athletic ability used to be. And now it's not there anymore. It's a gaping wound and I need surgery and everything I'm trying isn't making me better.

8:17I'm just kind of amazed that I keep doing these things and are not working out. And so what then? That's that's the that's the problem, right? It's the problem for all of us. There's this psalm, Psalm 23, about the valley of the shadow of death, about how the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters, right? The problem is right after we're in the green pasture and the still waters, where do we go? The valley of the shadow of death.

8:49And guess what the psalmist says? Even when I get to there, I will fear no evil. So what if we said to God, hey, I want the green pasture part, OK? I want the streams of living water part, but I don't want any of that valley of the shadow of death bit. I don't want to go through that. I don't want any of that business, OK? What if we said, hey, instead of that whole valley of the shadow of death thing, I'm just going to stay here in the pasture, OK? God, I'm going to drink this water. I'm going to lay down here and I'm going to have a little glass of wine. I'm going to turn on Instagram for a while.

9:20I'm going to I'm going to just hang out here and do some shopping on Amazon. Now, God, I want your blessings, but I don't want to go into that valley, OK? I don't want any of that. And if you look at our society right now, we have people who are avoiding the pain. They don't want to go through anything hard. They give themselves a trophy for doing nothing. They don't want to go through the hard stuff. But what do we know from neuroscience? It's actually the process of going through the hard stuff that makes your brain able to go through harder things later. That gives you the willpower and the drive to overcome stuck feelings.

9:53And when you feel like you can't get out of a funk, that ability to switch into gear comes from your mid anterior cingulate cortex. And that happens because you have in the past gone through hard things. You get that resilience and willpower and drive by being willing to push yourself in uncomfortable situations. So when we refuse to do that, when we cover ourselves up with numbing agents and shopping and alcohol or whatever, or anything that takes our eye off the ball of the place that God wants us to be because we don't want to go through the hard path to get there.

10:24Then we wonder why we can't be happy. We wonder why we're not feeling fulfilled. We wonder why we're spinning our wheels. We're doing all these things to cover up our pain and turn our minds off and chase after material stuff. And we're not getting happier. And we're not finding hope. And we're not achieving peace. And we're not getting to that place where God sets a table in the presence of our enemies. Because we have enemies, but God isn't setting the table for us there because we're numbed out. We're avoiding, we're fighting online about stuff that doesn't matter instead of pressing

10:56into the parts of our lives that will lead us to the love and righteousness part of that passage. See, God sets a table and anoints our heads with oils in that passage so that we can finally get to the place where we say, hey, you've been good to me. Your goodness and mercy are going to follow me all the days of our life. The only way we know that, the only way we get to a place where we know he's going to keep following us and he's going to keep providing for us and he's going to keep taking care of us is because he got us through the valley.

11:28So if we're never willing to go into it, then we won't be able to trust him when we're in it the next time against our will. We can't get there to the peace part if we're not willing to go through the hard part. And I'm not saying go looking for it. I'm saying you have to walk through the valley to get to the other side. OK, that's what I want you to know, that you can't really get to the resilient, hopeful place where you know that you're wired to go through hard stuff and you can start to see

11:58that legacy part like we talked about in the last video, going about being true all the way down. You can't really get to that place until you've gone through the hardship, until you've gone through the battle that gave you the wound and you've done the surgery, the right one to finally start healing. You can't get to that place where you remember that you were able to survive and that you found the right treatment. But you're just going to bleed out and things are going to keep getting worse if you keep putting Band-Aids on your broken bones and your big wounds.

Jeremiah Verses

12:29Because, friend, God says you've got to go through the valley to get to the blessing that he has for you on the other side. Now, that's the self-brain surgery piece, is understanding that the valley and the wounding isn't the end of the story. And we don't need to avoid all of that. We need to press through it so that we know we can trust him the next time we have to go through it. There's three verses in the book of Jeremiah that I want to share with you today. I got this idea from that book from Eugene Peterson, Run With The Horses.

13:00So the first one is Jeremiah 12, verse 5 and 6. In the Message Translation, which was also translated by Eugene Peterson, who wrote the book Run With The Horses. So it's really cool that he did all that work. In the Message Translation, it says it this way. Jeremiah, if you're worn out in this foot race against men, what makes you think you can race against horses? If you can't keep your wits during times of calm, what's going to happen when trouble breaks loose? Listen, friend, this is a question for all of us.

13:30If we're worn out in this foot race against people, if other people are stressing us out all the time, if we're so tired of being so tired of everything in our life and we're being worn out by every little trial that comes along, God says, how are you ever going to handle yourself against the horses when they come? The stuff I have in store for you, the big things I have for your life, there's going to be some valleys and some trials. And if you're getting worn out now, you're not going to be strong enough to go through that. Now, if you'll let me be your strength, that's what he's saying, not that you need to toughen

14:01up. He's saying, let me give you the strength to equip you to deal with what I'm calling you to. And if this is tearing you up now, if you're not able to get into the cognitive place where you can work through this and know that you're equipped to get better, you're designed to heal, you have a process to rewire your brain so that you can go through these things. If you're not able to handle that and you just keep numbing yourself and diverting your attention and treating the pain with the wrong operation, then you're never going to be ready, God says, for what I have for you next.

14:31That's what he says. It reminds me of Proverbs 24, verse 10. So if you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength? Basically, God's saying if you're having trouble when life gets hard and you're just fading away, you're opening up a bottle of wine or you're going to the wrong website or you're turning on the television, you're texting that person you ought not to, or you're compulsively gambling or whatever, if that's what you're doing, instead of pressing in and going through and getting the help you need to make it through, then you're going to struggle when you get

15:02to something even harder. Because the bad news is all of us suffer more than one massive things in our life. All of us go through more than one period of difficulty. So if you let one of them wipe you out and you're stuck there, then you're not going to be able to handle the next one that comes along. And God says, I've got a process by which I can equip you for that. My book, Hope is the First Dose, by the way, is all about that. Okay? My new book, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery, takes that stuff and goes deeper into

15:32the how do you fix it process. Hope is the First Dose introduced you to the idea of self-brain surgery and gave you a treatment plan for dealing with these massive things. And then the new book gives you all this practical stuff, including the Ten Commandments. So check that stuff out if you want to find out about Hope. Hope is the First Dose. It's where I first started thinking about all these ideas. Okay? So when we think about what do we do when massive things happen in our lives, when times of trouble come, it's this idea that we need to start applying the right treatment. Because we want to be ready when there's horses to deal with, when there's hard things, harder

16:06things, deeper valleys, longer struggles, worse diseases when they come along. Because I have to say, anything you've been through already in your life, guess what? You made it through. Because you're here listening to this podcast, I can confidently say that unless you're in the middle of your TMT now, unless you're right smack in the middle of your massive thing. And if you are, I feel you. Okay? And understand, nobody's saying that you need to stop grieving and get after this business. There's a process. There's a timing that you have to go through if you want to heal properly.

16:38Okay? But if you went through something hard in the past and it knocked you down and you haven't been able to get back up yet, the first thing I want to say is congratulations because coming to this podcast is your sign that you're strong enough to do this work to get back into your life. Okay? That's your sign. Because if you were still wiped out, you wouldn't have bothered to come and search and find this podcast. So congratulations. But the second thing is, though, that the idea that you can be wiped out in a way that you never get back up again, that is neurologically untrue.

17:11Because if you can make yourself just do one hard thing, you begin to wire your brain and your brain rewards you by saying, okay, I can do one hard thing. That means I can do another hard thing. Even if it's a bigger hard thing, you'll be more equipped. And every time, because of Hebb's Law, because of neuroplasticity, every time you make yourself do a hard thing, your brain gets better across the board at doing hard things. And then two things happen. You begin to get confidence that you're the kind of person who can go through hard things. And you begin to get more resilience and grit and endurance and willpower for the harder

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19:16That's backed up not only with the neuroscience now of what happens in your brain when you go through hard things, but it was always backed up by Romans 5, verses 3-5 that we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. That's how you get your brain ready, friend, for what you're going to face in the future. That gives you this reliable set of tools, and instruments, and procedures, this ability to kind of come and think through these things, and learning strategies for what I'm going

19:48to do. You plan ahead for the fact that you're going to have hardship. You use self-brain surgery. You use my book, or whatever tool you need to get yourself a set of things that you can keep in your pocket for what you're going to do when you run into that massive thing. Okay? That's what I want you to have, a rehab plan, a self-brain surgery plan, this confidence and ability that suffering produces endurance, and character, and ultimately hope. That's how you start putting the right kind of treatment on the problem. Now, go back to Jeremiah. God says, if you're worn out in this foot race against men, what makes you think you can

20:21race against horses? And here's something interesting that was happening in the book of Jeremiah. Okay? The people are in exile. They've been hauled off against their will from their homeland, and they're out in Babylonian exile, and they're under oppression. They've been dragged away from their homes. They've been pillaged. They've been in captivity. They're basically enslaved again. And the whole book of Jeremiah is about learning how to thrive when life gets hard. It's about learning how to bloom where you're planted. It's about learning how to be thankful for what you have, even when you've lost some other

20:52things. And that turns out to be one of the keys of overcoming grief. By the way, if you've lost a child or you've lost a spouse or you've gone through something really hard, from all my study, one of the things, and it was very helpful to me, is learning how to see that there are still good things, there's still some light, even when you're in your darkest moment. There's still some good things happening, even when the worst things are happening. So learning how to see those two things can be true at the same time is one of the keys to beginning to heal again, to beginning to not lose hope, to beginning to believe that

21:22there can be hope and maybe even happiness again in the future. And that's so learning how to be thankful for what you do have and not just thinking about what you don't have. Learning how to handle and wait during a season when God's got something later that he wants to give you while you're going through the valley of the shadow of death, that God wants you to do something now to be faithful in order to get that thing later. And the context here is that there was this preacher, okay? There was this group of preachers in Jeremiah who were going around telling the people that

21:53there was all this stuff happening that was good. And it reminded me of the popular progressive megachurch pastors, and there were these kind of early megachurch pastors. They were going around telling everybody, hey, you know, God just wanted you to be happy. God just wanted you to understand that everything's going to be okay and that the life's going to work out just right, and you should just be happy, right? And the problem is that Jeremiah comes along and he says, no, no, no. Now, that's not what God wants you to know right now. God is not saying, just don't worry, be happy. God is saying that I put you here for a purpose and a reason, and everything's going to work

22:29out, but not because you just pursue your own thing and do what you want and forget about God. That's not what he's saying. There was this guy in Jeremiah who was a prophet who was going around telling everybody that it's all going to work out and they just need to try to be happy and everything's going to be peaceful and that they don't need to worry about anything and just don't be so stressed out, just do your thing. And while he was saying that, the people were having a horrible problem where they had all these temples where they were doing these terrible, immoral, sexual things and they were calling it worship. And this fake megachurch pastor was telling people, hey, just do your thing, be part of

23:02the culture, do whatever they do. You'll just be happy. Don't worry about it. And he was encouraging people to be part of these horrible things that were happening. They were doing this stuff right there in public and pretending like everything was okay. And this guy was basically telling all the Israelites that it wasn't a big deal, that God was going to work out his purpose in you and you just don't need to worry about it. Don't be stressed about it. And he's going to bless you and everything's going to be fine. Sounds kind of like some of the more progressive pastors that we have now. Like, don't worry about culture. Just live your life and follow your truth and do your best.

23:35And it's not so bad. And maybe the Bible doesn't mean what it says and all that kind of stuff. You'll be fine. But things weren't fine. And God came along and said that the people like those pastors, he said, they're prescribing a superficial treatment for my people's mortal wounds. He's prescribing a Band-Aid for a big broken bone. He's prescribing a little butterfly dressing for a big open fracture. He's prescribing a little ace bandage for major trauma. And so the problem was that it's kind of like what we're doing in our society right now.

24:06We're saying, gosh, things are hard and I don't understand why I don't feel good and maybe it's because nobody's allowing me to live my truth or maybe it's because nobody's allowing me to define my own identity. If you don't let me be who I want to be, then I can label you and I can abandon you and I can reject you and I can kick my parents out of my life and I can do all that if they don't want me to be happy. And then we're going to say to everybody else, hey, you're the problem. You're the reason I'm not happy. You need to accept who I am and I need to just be able to live out my own truth. That's the superficial treatment. OK, our society is prescribing a superficial treatment for a mortal wound.

24:42If you're treating feelings, friend, you will never get to truth. You will never get to true happiness. If you're treating your truth, you'll never get to the truth. I'm just going to say it like it is. OK, it's countercultural. If you get the algorithm, put my channel in front of you and you've never heard anything like this, look into my eyes and hear me say, if you are treating your truth, friend, you are never going to get to the truth. Science is about pursuing truth, not a version of the truth, but the truth.

25:16In religion, faith is supposed to be about pursuing truth. So theoretically, then, if science and faith were both trying to get to truth, then they should kind of converge over time, right? If there's only a truth out there that can be discovered and we're trying to pursue it from one angle, faith and one angle, science, then those two paths should be converging. They should not be enemies. They should both be pointing towards something that's ultimately true. But guess what? If you watch the long arc of scientific history, it's the only thing that bends and changes over

25:48time. Faith and scripture never do. What God says is true 2,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, science gets to it eventually. Scripture doesn't bend towards the truth. Scripture points towards the truth. Science arcs towards the truth over time. Are they enemies? No. They're both aiming at the right thing, but only one of them has to bend any on the path. All right? So you can get worn out because what's going to happen if you keep trying to pursue your truth is that you'll keep trying over and over and over like I did in that dream to apply

26:23the wrong surgery to the patient and being sort of flummoxed when you're not getting the right result. And so this idea that we have over and over and over in scripture, this idea that we have over and over in our lives, this notion that if we just try one more thing, one more time, one more substance, one more website, one more text message, one more relationship that maybe finally we'll find the thing that's going to make us happier. This time it's going to make me feel better as long as everybody else will just do what they're supposed to do to make me happy.

26:53This guy in Jeremiah, he was the lead prophet of that idea that everybody's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. Just do what you feel is best and do what you feel is right. But friends, here's the deal. It's amazing to me how our society just keeps turning back around to the same old problems. There's a verse in the book of Ecclesiastes chapter three that says there is nothing new under the sun. And that's what we're seeing. The stuff that was happening in Jeremiah's day is exactly what's happening now. That's why Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun.

27:26And if you keep wondering why your life doesn't feel better than it has felt before, maybe it's because you've been applying band-aids to your broken bones. Maybe it's because you're applying the wrong treatment to the wrong diagnosis. And that's why you're wondering why it's never getting better. So Eugene Peterson talks about this pastor, how he's going around telling everybody it's going to be all right and just follow your heart and do your thing. And Peterson says it's not going to be okay. For that to happen, there has to be honesty and truth. That's what you're missing in your life. Again, if you're new here and this is starting to kind of ring in some place in your heart

28:00that says this sounds sort of true, what you're missing is not finding your path to happiness by pursuing your truth. What you're missing is the truth. The self has to be toppled from its pedestal. It's not about pursuing our own truth. It's not about pursuing what we think is going to make us happy because feelings are not facts. That's the second commandment of self-brain surgery. Feelings are not facts. They are chemical events in your brain. Friend, feelings are not facts. Eugene Peterson says there have to be pure hearts and clear intelligence,

28:33a confession of sin, and a commitment to faith and peace. That's the prescription. Instead of the wrong operation, the right one is pure heart, clear intelligence, confession of what's wrong, and a commitment to peace and faith. And God will give you peace that you can't find anywhere else. It's not a peace by getting along with everybody and avoiding the hint of anything unpleasant and wanting to lie down in the grass and drink the water but not go through the valley. That's the surgery that we've been doing as a society.

29:05We're just trying to band-aid everything, to put a smile on it, to say whatever you feel, whatever you believe, whatever you have been, whatever you think, whatever you want, it's going to be okay. We're just going to tolerate it. We're going to love, and there's going to be tolerance and love, and we're all going to be happy, and we're all going to get along. And guess what it's producing? It's the worst mental health crisis in the history of our society. We have more access to therapy, more medications available, more resources, and nobody's getting happier. We're getting more anxious and more suicidal and more stressed out and more confused.

29:38And I'm not saying that you shouldn't be kind or loving or tolerant. I'm saying that you should understand what the truth is, my friend. And if you're wondering, not society at large, but if you're wondering why you aren't getting better, why things don't feel better for you, why you keep repeating the same behaviors and applying the same band-aid to the big broken bones of your life like I did in that dream, and if you're wondering why you're not feeling happier and you're not feeling more hopeful and you're not feeling more empowered and you're not feeling more at peace,

30:09maybe it's because you're applying superficial treatments to your own mortal wounds. Maybe you're worn out from struggling against men. You're worn out from being in times of trouble because your strength hasn't been based on his strength, which is the only place that we can really find any real strength. Eugene Peterson said, it's not a peace that's achieved by refusing to talk about painful subjects or touch sore spots. It's a peace that is won by learning how to pray. There's evil to be combated here, friend.

30:39There's apathy to be defeated. There's dullness that we need to challenge in our society. There's ambition that we need to confront in ourselves. There are persons all around us, children and parents and youth and adults, who are being trampled and violated, that are being hurt and despised, and any preaching of peace that turns it back on these is a cruel farce, okay? You need somebody to apply the right treatment to these big wounds and to stop believing that just following a path to your truth is going to make any difference for you because it doesn't produce a lasting peace.

31:12So this pastor was going around with lots of followers because he was saying things that they wanted to hear. He had lots of junior pastors studying under him. He had lots of fans and followers spreading the message because he was telling them a message that was easy to swallow, but it was the wrong prescription. It was a Band-Aid for a broken bone. Just get along. Just do what makes you happy, okay? But Peterson says, it's wrong to tailor your message to what people want to hear. It's scandalous to approve only what is applauded.

31:43It's disastrous to assume that only what is celebrated is genuine. There are times, friend, when the truth will receive a wide hearing, and there are times when it will not. And Peterson says, look at our society right now. What do you base your success on? Is it how many likes or clicks on Instagram or Facebook you have? Is it whether people hear your message and just give you a thumbs up, a like, a share, a follow? If that's what you're basing your happiness on, then something's going to happen where you're going to start worrying about the next time when somebody hearted it the first time and now they only thumbsed up it

32:15or now they only clicked the like button. And they used to respond to my messages by calling me or giving me a long text message, and now they just respond with a little emoji. And you start wondering and worrying about why you're losing the approval of these people that you're working so hard to be approved by. You're basing your feeling on whether you're okay or not based on how other people respond to you instead of knowing how you're defined by God and His purpose and His plan for your life and His belief of how worthy you are.

32:46Friend, you have to learn to live by the truth, not your feelings, not the world's opinion, not what the latest statistical survey tells us is the accepted morality or the most popular thing or what the advertisers tell us is the most gratifying lifestyle. Listen, we want to talk about self-brain surgery, okay? We want to talk about things that will change your life in a way that matters and moves a needle for you. And one of the things we have to learn how to do is tell ourselves the truth and be living in reality.

33:17Be willing and ready to get to the place where God can prepare the table for us to give us the medicine and the bandages and the surgery that we need to get the healing that we must desperately have to have if we want to be healed and hopeful and perform better and become healthier and feel better and be happier. If we want to get to the rest and refreshment stage, we have to be willing to do the hard things, to go through the valley,

Conclusion and Call to Action

33:43and we have to stop applying Band-Aids to our broken wounds. That book, Run with the Horses, gets to the place where we finally understand that popularity or people telling us it's going to be okay are pursuing our own desires and our own version of the truth and our own wants and wishes. Those are superficial treatments for mortal wounds. He says it twice in Jeremiah 6 and Jeremiah 10, okay? Two different times. God says the people are listening to the wrong prophets. The people are listening to the wrong preachers.

34:14They're preaching peace when there is no peace. They're giving superficial treatments to the mortal wounds of the people, and they're wondering why they're getting weaker instead of stronger. Now, I had that dream where I'm chopping off a leg and wiping the blood off and turning just to the futile cycle over and over of doing this operation and not getting better, and it's just frustrating. I'm getting shorter. I'm in more pain. I'm bleeding more. It's more dangerous, and I'm just not getting better, but I keep doing the same thing over and over and over, and that's a terrible dream, but you know what?

34:45We're doing the same things in our lives, friend. We're getting to the end of the day, and we're wondering why we're so frustrated and tired, and we can't clear our heads, and we long for sleep, and we think that this thing will give us that, and we do it again, and the next day we pay the tomorrow tax, and we feel bad because we applied the wrong operation to the wrong problem. We don't sleep well. We have headaches. We have hangovers. We have debt we can't pay. We have relationships we've messed up with the choices that we made, but then we do it again the same day. We have a decision that we made that night that we deserve this thing,

35:18or this thing will make us feel better, or that person will make us feel better, and then we wonder the next day why we chose, again, to put the Band-Aid on the broken bones. So whatever's going on in your life, if there's something that you're carrying or that's slowing you down or hindering you, I just want you to remember that your brain is wired to help you heal as soon as you're willing to think about things in a different way, and the biggest shift, the first thing you have to do is to switch from the patient looking for something to make it better to the doctor who has the tools

35:51and the training and the expertise and the compassion to provide the right treatment, to do the right operation in the right way at the right time for the right reason to get the right outcome. That's what I want for you. It's Action April. We're not going to contemplate anymore. We're going to pick up the knife, and we're going to operate. We're going to learn how to operate our systems. We're going to learn how to operate our lives in a way that's consistent with God's design for our healing and our hope and our higher performance. Friends, stop putting superficial treatments on your mortal wounds, okay?

36:22I know this is speaking to somebody. Leave a comment or send us an email. Contact at drleewarren.com or share and like and make sure you're following so that you keep getting this throughout Action April. We are going to get stronger. We're going to get better. We're going to become healthier. We're going to feel better, and we're going to be happier because we changed our minds, and we changed our lives because it was Action April, and you got in the game, and you started doing the right operation at the right time. That's what I want for you. That's what this month's going to be about. We're going to go deep into the neuroscience. We're going to talk about faith more.

36:53We're going to have some really practical things on both the YouTube channel and the audio podcast. We're going to do some really tactical self-brain surgery this month, and you're going to finish April doing the right thing at the right time in the right way, and guess what's going to start happening? You're going to start getting the right outcome. If you haven't read my book yet, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery, I implore you to get it. It's got 15 tactical operations that will help you move the needle during Action April. It's time to get after it. This is a doing podcast. It's not just a listening podcast, so I want you to start doing these things.

37:26Read the book. Read Eugene Peterson. Spend some time in the Word of God. Start putting some good things in your heart to replace those negative thoughts that you're biopsying and getting rid of, and we're going to make some differences in our lives this month. We're going to find the not superficial treatments. We're going to stop putting Band-Aids on broken bones. Friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind, and one thing I want you to change your mind about today is to stop treating a bad feeling with a bad operation. That's the message for today. I am Dr. Lee Warren. We love you. We're praying for you. We're grateful for you.

37:57We're proud of you, and I just don't want you to forget that you can change your life in this way. You can start doing the right thing at the right time, and the good news is you can start today. God bless you. God bless you.