Toxic Thinking | The Naked Marriage Podcast | Dave and Ashley Willis

We've always believed that one of the best ways to create more health in your marriage, in your life, in every part of your life, is really to connect with a healthy counselor over the years, to work through stress issues, anxiety issues, to just kind of help navigate life's different problems. And we're so excited to have a counseling partner now that's able to do this for you through the Internet. You don't have to go sit in an office. You can from your phone, from your computer, sit down with a licensed professional Christian counselor who is custom fit for you and for what you're facing and what you're experiencing.

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Toxic thoughts? Yeah. We've got a lot to say about it. The way you think has such an impact on your marriage, on every part of your life. This is a main theme in the Naked and Healthy book that Ashley just talked about, where we talk about mental health, physical health, spiritual health and marriage health and mental health. Of course, it's a really, really big part of it. And so we're going to dive into what that really means. So let's start. You know, the Bible says, as a person thinks in their heart, so are they. There's so much power in the way that we. The Bible has a lot to say about what healthy thinking really looks like. There's so many verses, so many passages. I know we've been talking a lot about our book Naked and Healthy, which is about health mentally, physically, and spiritually and health in your marriage. That's a great resource to help you think new thoughts. But I also want to mention another new resource available through ExoMarriage, which is a devotional on the book of Proverbs that I just wrote called Think Like Jesus that goes directly in line with what we're talking about today, how do we have a healthy mindset? How do we have thoughts like our Savior wants us to have? And so you can get that Think Like Jesus devotional. It's 30 daily readings, and you can get it at Exomarriage, or you can also get it on Amazon, and it's just a few minutes of reading a day. But I think that it points us back to Scripture in a way that can help us think new, healthy thoughts.

I love it. And please get that devotional. It's so good. David studied the Proverbs, really, our entire marriage, like, the whole time. I've really. Even before we got married, you. You've always studied the Proverbs alongside, like, whatever else you're reading in the Bible. And I would even venture to say he's an expert on the Proverbs. So I'm so glad to see that he finally wrote this devotional that's been on his heart. And I believe, you know, it's the book of wisdom, and it truly will bring more wisdom, godly wisdom into your life when you read that. So definitely get your hands on that.

Well, it changed, like, not to just keep talking about it, but reading the Proverbs changed my thought life more than just about anything else, because it just shows you how we're supposed to think, how we're supposed to act like what life is supposed to look like and what relationships and finances and what health is all supposed to look like. It's all right there. And so it's so helpful to me. I just wanted to create a resource to point other folks to it to find that same health. But we're not just talking about the devotional today. We want to talk about you. We want to talk about your marriage, your life, your thoughts, and how you can have healthy thinking.

That's right, because our thoughts shape our life. I mean, they really do. And thoughts are powerful. I mean, they really are powerful. And I think that, you know, in the Bible, one of my favorite verses about thinking is, you know, taking your thoughts captive. And I love that visual because it's basically saying, you know, don't let your thoughts capture you is another way to look at that, because I know what it feels like to have my thoughts capture me and to be ruled by my thoughts. And, you know, I've talked on here. I'm not gonna camp out on this too much because I talk a lot about it in Naked and Healthy. I talk a lot about it through other podcasts. But when I was going through a Four year battle with anxiety and depression. I literally felt like I had no control over my thoughts. I did. And just every day I'm feeling the weight of that, feeling the sadness, feeling the anxiety, and just racing thoughts that were just taking over my life. It took my energy away. I mean, I didn't even feel like the same person. I literally, like the commercials say with medicines for anxiety and depression. It says, like, do you not enjoy the things you once enjoyed? And I literally didn't enjoy the things that I had once enjoyed. And I just kind of. I felt like less than half of myself. And I felt like I was losing in all aspects of my life and especially in our marriage. And it was just so debilitating. But I'm telling you, those verses about taking my thoughts captive and replacing it with God's truth, I would cling. I mean, those are verses I would cling to. And I want to say this. One of the most powerful things that I was encouraged to do, and I believe Dave encouraged me to do this. My counselor encouraged me to do this. And another resource, I know we're sharing lots of resources today, but there's a book called Praying God's Word by Beth Moore. And in this book, she encourages readers to do this and actually has perforated cutouts where you can actually do this very easily. But what it is is putting God's Word on cards, written out, and then placing them where you know you're gonna see them. Because when you are in a battle for your mind and it is a battlefield, you have a hard time clinging to that because there's so much vying for your attention. And so for me to take those negative thoughts captive, those shameful thoughts captive, and replace it with God's Word, I needed to see it. I'm a very visual person. I needed to see it around me. So I posted these scripture cards in my car. I posted them in the bathroom. I posted them on our bedside table. I still do this sometimes. I've gone through seasons where I still do it. And literally just surrounding myself, you know, with His Word. It says in the Word too, to write His Word on your walls. I mean, that's kind of what we were doing, is just surrounding myself and our family with his truth. And it helped me. I mean, little by little, those thoughts were, you know, they were just pushed out by God's Word. And that's what we have to do. We have to get rid of toxic thoughts. Because you may not be in the middle of a battle with anxiety and depression, but you can still have. You know, Dave calls it stinking thinking. I think somebody coined that term years ago. But like, it really shapes your life in a negative way when you're constantly just having, allowing those thoughts that are negative and that are not from God to kind of make a little home in your mind. And that's what they do. And those are the thoughts that are your go to. Like, if you constantly think, I'm never gonna get through this, or I'm always gonna fail at this thing, or my marriage is never gonna get better, or my spouse will never love me like he loved that old flame, or, you know, this situation that we're going through in our home is just never gonna get better. We're always gonna face these demons in our life. Like, when we constantly have that thought as our go to, then we're gonna feel defeated. But when we replace those negative thoughts, those toxic thoughts with God's word, we're gonna feel uplifted. And again, it's going to shape our life towards God's will and not towards the negative things. You know, when I was going through Christian counseling, I remember my counselor telling me that literally, thoughts make a ridge in our brain. And so it's kind of like the road. It makes a little road in our brain and it tends to be a go to. And so for us to change those thoughts and make a new ridge, make a new path for those neurons, we have to really have these new thoughts. And I'm telling you, it works. It's a real thing. It's not only, you know, something in your mentality. I mean, there's a physical response to this.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, your thoughts are powerful to shape very. To literally shape your brain and then consequently to shape the way you view the world, the way you act, the way you think, the way you feel. So we need to take our thoughts captive, like Ashley said. And we do that. We do that because I think sometimes we feel like, well, I don't have any control of what I think. Like I'm powerless over what goes into my head.

I felt that.

And we've all felt that at times. But, you know, I read a book by Max Lucado where he's a great pastor and teacher, and he said, you're the air traffic controller of your brain. He said, you know, you can't control which things are just kind of shooting overhead, what birds are flying overhead, what crazy stray thoughts are flying around. But you get to control which thought to land in your brain and also which ones have to take off and leave and so. And you might think that's overly simplistic, but I do think we have such power to determine which thoughts get to stay in our brain, which ones get to land there and stay there and live there, and which ones have to take off and leave and go somewhere else. And if we're feeling powerless there, I think part of how to, like, recharge our mind and give us the power spiritually and mentally to do that. And we talked about this in a previous episode about spiritual health, is to really put God's Word in our mind. Let God's Word be what shapes our thinking, because that's the one place we can always trust to be true. In a world where it's hard to know what's true, what's real, God's Word will never lead you astray. And when we put the Bible into our minds, whether we're reading it or we're listening to an audio Bible somewhere, when we're putting His Word into our mind, it heals us. It heals our minds, it shapes our thoughts. It gives us more strength to be able to control and be kind of the gatekeeper of what's coming in, what negative thoughts are coming in so we can keep them out. And God wants you to be able to have peace in every part of your life. So if you feel like you're living in chaos, even though the world around us might be in chaos, if you feel like that chaos has made its way into your brain, into your life, then it's time to do things differently. Because Jesus came to give us peace, and he doesn't want you to walk through life feeling all the chaos of the world. He wants you to have peace in the midst of it.

That's right. You may have heard us talk about this. I had a book come out last April called Peace Pirates where we talk about what God's peace really is. Because I do think that we have such a misunderstanding of what peace is. We just think it's the absence of chaos, but that's not it. When you study the Bible, peace literally means breaking the authority that has been established by chaos in your life. So it's really what we are allowing to have authority in our life. And God is the only one we can trust with having authority, true authority in our life, like where our life is going. We wanna go, you know, towards his will, because he's our creator. He. He brought us our spouse. He gave us our families. You know, we want to trust him because he's the One who created us. And so whenever we feel like we're just, you know, being just shaken to the core in our life and that there's nothing we can do about the chaos. We have to cling even, even harder to the Lord and know that he's going to break that authority. It may not change our circumstances. We may still have, you know, people who don't want to get along with us. We may have workplaces that are crazy. We may have people in our own family who are trying to just cause strife in the midst of our families. But even so. Cause we can control those things all the time. We can still cling to the Lord and know that he's our authority. And when you cling to God and you know, he is greater than whatever it is we're facing. And that those thoughts, those people, whatever it is in our life that we feel like is kind of toxic, that we can give the authority, surrender our life and be right under God's authority and know that he can bring us personally and as a couple, he can bring us peace. Because we can have peace in the midst of the chaos. Because peace is much more about what we're giving authority to. And, you know, I just love that image because we see this all throughout the Bible when, you know, we even have the disciples on the boat with Jesus, and he's at peace while they're all being shaken around because he's at peace with God. I mean, he himself is God the Father and the Son. And, you know, they're all freaking out and they're like, jesus, why are you not freaking out? And he kind of looks at them and he's. You know, I kind of imagine him being like, I'm with you. Why are you scared? Like, I'm the Son of God, like I'm the savior of the world. But, you know, he. In that moment, he kind of lets him feel it for a little bit so that he's like, look to me, cling to me. I'm your peace. But then we know, as the story goes in the Bible, that He does calm the storm. And he says, peace, be still to the waters. And the storm immediately goes away. And that's how God works. You know, sometimes he gives us the peace, be still. He miraculously, you know, helps our finances turn around. He miraculously brings peace to a relationship that's been broken for years. He makes our wayward child come home. And, you know, those things do happen. But more often than not, he actually just calms our hearts and brings us peace in our hearts. And it's a peace that is in the Bible, it says is beyond understanding. We can't make sense of it because it's just a gift from God. And peace is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It's one of the fruits of the Spirit. It's probably my favorite fruit of the Spirit because I feel like when we're at peace in our mind and in our heart, and it is a mind, heart kind of peace that God gives, it's like we can face any trial because we know that God is our authority. We know that he's in control. And even if everything seems to be falling apart around us, that he's going to use it for our good and his glory. And ultimately everything is going to be okay because we're with him and we're in line with Him.

Man, that is so good. You might just want to like, rewind. I don't think people rewind anymore. But listen to that part again because we need to be reminded of these things, like so many of the truths in life that keep our thoughts head in the right direction. It's not learning something new as much as it's reminding ourself of something we already know. You know, God's word has been unchanging since the beginning. And so it's not like he's keep editing it and rewriting and adding to it. He's reminding us of it. And the more we go back to it and remind ourselves of those truth truths, the stronger we can be. And I think part of what keeps us on that path is just you as a husband and wife. You know, you've got a great advantage in this area because, you know, a single person, you know, they might not have that person that they can. They can bounce thoughts off of and that someone that's walking so closely with them that they can see or sense when something is off. But with you and your spouse, you can check in with each other, you can say, you know, something. Seems like maybe you're discouraged or you're distracted or you're anxious. What can I do to help what's happening in your mind? Let me know, like, what are you thinking? What are you feeling? Let's process this together. Let's pray about this together. Let me encourage you right now. Let me share what I'm going through and let's do this together. And there's such strength in that. You don't have to do it alone.

I mean, we. How many times have we had these conversations, you know, and it all, you know, when I went through that bout with anxiety and depression, it was towards the early years of our marriage, and Dave would come to me. And at first, I'll be honest with y', all, I did not open up to you. And it wasn't because I didn't trust Dave. I totally, 100% trusted Dave. But I just felt ashamed. I think there's. You know, the enemy would love to keep everything you're feeling in the dark. He wants you to sit with your nasty, toxic thoughts. I mean, imagine yourself in the midst of a junkyard with so many all around you, just sitting in the muck of your toxic thoughts. That's what he wants for your life. But God says no. You come out dirty as you are, stinky as you are, with every toxic, horrible, horrendous thought you've ever had, and you bring it to me, and I'm gonna make you new. I'm gonna make you new. And I. You know, God used Dave in my life during that time to really bring me out. And Dave's right, you know, when you have a spouse, that's what we need to be for each other, that we are that safe place. I can't. I mean, I know we say it all the time, but we're that safe place that will love each other no matter what and really bring whatever we're dealing with to the light. And these toxic thoughts do need to be brought out into the open first with God. You know, go to God. Confess it to him. He already knows anyway, and just say, lord, I can't get these thoughts out of my mind. At least I feel like I can't right now. Please help me renew my mind. You know, give me strength, Lord. Give me a new mind. You say I'm a new creation, that the old is gone, the new has come. Help the new come into my life because I keep on clinging to the old. You know, help me loosen my grip, let me let go of these things, and then give me the strength and the courage to go to my spouse and tell my spouse what I'm dealing with. Because, you guys. I mean, these kind of moments when we're dealing with some really toxic thoughts, it's hard. And it sometimes can be embarrassing, you know, to share that with your spouse because it can be awkward, especially if you haven't really been having these honest conversations for a while. But let me tell you, it can be really a game changer in your marriage because it really gives your spouse this access to your life that maybe you haven't given them before. And it brings you closer. It really. God brings you closer. I mean, those hard moments are some of our closest moments. I feel like where we really grew through it. I mean, it's not easy and like I said, it can be kind of messy. But just bringing your spouse into what you're dealing with and then taking it further and getting the healing, you know, whether it's counseling or, you know, whatever it is, whatever next steps you need to take to get your mind right, it's really amazing what God can do in bringing a couple together through that.

It really, really is. So lean into each other, lean into God, feed your mind the right things and check in often when you feel like your thoughts are leading you astray and just center yourselves back on the truth of God's word. You'll be heading in the right direction.

We have some great news. Want to watch or listen the Naked Marriage Podcast Without Ads the Naked Marriage Podcast is Now available on XO now without ads. Support this podcast in ExoMarriage and get ad free access to the naked marriage podcast. Plus you get access to everything else on EXO Now. Courses, conferences, live events, over 600 marriage experts, and hours and hours of marriage content. Visit now.xomarriage.com naked to start your free trial and use the code nakedpodcast to get 25% off your first month. Also as an extra bonus, get access to the podcast the day before everyone else. That's now xomarriage.com naked to start your free trial and use the code NakedDpodcast to get 25% off your first month. Visit xonow.com naked to start your free trial and use the code nakedpodcast to get 25% off your first month. Also as an extra bonus, get access to the podcast the day before everyone else, which is awesome. That's xonow.com naked to start your free trial and use the code nakedpodcast to get 25% off your first month. As you know, spiritual health is one of the most important parts of your health and one great way to have better spiritual health is more by reading God's Word daily and making this a daily habit for yourself and for your family. Well, we have the perfect partner to help you do this. It's called the Dwell App and it's an audio Bible app that we have fallen in love with. Dwell's mission is simple to help get you in the Word and stay in the Word with several inspiring voices, Bible translations and original background music. You are going to love listening to spirit scripture.

You can go to this site Dwell Dwell App ionaked to get 10% off a yearly subscription or 33% off dwell for life. Having God's word in your mind, in your heart, in all the chaos out there in the world, this is such a beautiful way to stay connected to God and stay rooted in the Word. We are so excited to be partnering with Dwelling. So to get started again, go to this site, DwellApp IO Naked, to get 10% off a yearly subscription or 33% off Dwell for Life. 33% off means you're gonna save 50 bucks by using that code. So make sure to visit dwellapp IO Naked and commit to scripture for the rest of this year or for life. This is the most important, important thing you could be listening to. Put God's Word in your mind. Well, that leads us to the Q and A time of today's episode. And again, thank you. For those who send in questions@nakedmarriagepodcast.com and also write us on social media, you can find us Dave and Ashley Willis on Instagram and also find us on Facebook. We'd love to connect with you there. Today's question is this. It says, I really enjoy your show, and I'm so thankful I stumbled upon it. My question is, how do you feel patriarchy and submission play into the roles of husband and wife? As a husband, what kind of authority and biblical headship do I have? So this is a question. It is a great question. This is something we've talked about in more detail in a variety of places, past podcasts, videos, videos, YouTube. Right. So we have talked about this, and it is in today's world. In today's world, we look at the Bible as true and unchanging and relevant to every part of life. And also understand that the time in which it was written, the place in which it was written, was a very specific culture and time. And so the truth of it is unchanging. But we look at some of what was happening in the Bible and the time and the culture and the place, and saying, you know, what is equally applicable to where we are today? The passage that this person's referring to comes from several places in the New Testament, specifically Ephesians, Chapter 5, and a few other places as well, where God lays out a model for marriage, where a husband is listed as a head, Christ is the head of the marriage, and then it says, and the husband should be the head of the wife, and the wife must respect and even submit to her husband. And those words of headship and submission really now kind of rub people the wrong way sometimes, because in this 21st century in which we live, where there's, you know, women are equal and empowered and you know, what do we do with words like that. And so I'll give you just a few. We've again talked about this in more detail, so we won't do like an exhaustive scripture study. Here are a few things to, to factor in. Number one, Jesus is perhaps the greatest, most radical respecter of women in all of human history. If you look at throughout history, I'm convinced you will not find another individual who did more in his time, place, culture and then for history beyond his culture to elevate the role of women than Jesus did. He lived in a culture and time when women were looked at as little more than property. They had no rights, they didn't have a voice, they weren't allowed in the synagogue. A man wasn't even supposed to talk to a woman that he wasn't related to. And all through scriptures, Jesus is befriending women, he is healing women, he is talking to women. You know, one of his longest, his second longest recorded one on one conversation in the Bible is with the woman at the well. In John chapter 4. We see Jesus all through raising the value of women to the point where even it was women who were the first witnesses to his resurrection. And it was at a time when women's testimony wasn't valid in a court of law. Jesus is saying women's testimony, their voice matters so much, it matters infinitely. So some people look at Christianity as a whole with this broken mindset, taking some thoughts and views out of context, that somehow Christianity is misogynistic or holds women down, when really I would argue biblically, culturally, historically that, that Christianity and Jesus specifically has done more than any other leader in all of human history, and of course he himself is God in the flesh as well, to elevate women. So with that we lead into this specific question about headship and authority. This whole passage about authority and headship, it begins with the call for mutual submission. It says husbands and wives submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. So the first picture of marriage we get is, is it's like a husband and wife are two wings on the same bird. Christ is the head of that bird. He is the one who's leading us, he's the one who's, who's steering us. And we work in concert with each other as husband and wife in complete partnership, in complete unity and in complete submission, serving one another. Now that isn't to take away from. There is a very specific call for Husbands to have this role of headship. But when you look at the way that spiritual authority is defined in the Bible, it says, you know, the Gentiles, the non believers, so to speak, they look at authority as a role of power and of being able to control others. But authority, the way that Christ established it, is really rooted in service. And so when I see this call to headship as a husband, I don't see it as this authoritarian view that I can have to boss my wife around. I see it as the Bible points out, that I'm called to love and serve my wife as Christ loved and served his bride, the church where he gave his very life for her, that I need to be willing to live my life in such a way that I would be willing to lay down my life for her. That's the kind of responsibility that comes with being a husband, that I'm that sort of servant and protector and leader by my example. Now, there is an aspect, I believe, of leadership that is on a husband's shoulders, which means he will have a higher level of accountability as we all stand in judgment before God someday of how we led our families into a closer walk with the Lord, how we protected our families, how we were the chief Christlike servant, how we in many ways were the lead follower in our family that follow me as I follow Christ. As Paul said in one part in the New Testament, I think that's what a headship role means for a husband is saying, I want to lead us as a family and as a couple closer to Christ. I want to do it by the way I serve you. I want to do it by the way that I protect you. And I'm asking for you to support me and pray for me in that role as I do that for our family.

Yeah, that was so well said, sweetie. I don't know if I can add anything else to it. I will say this really quick, though, and I don't think this man was asking from this perspective, but we've seen where some husbands, and I think this is why this has gotten a bad rap in our society, even among Christians, is there have been some husbands who have taken that verse and really have used it in an abusive way. Not necessarily physically abusive, but they've been mentally and emotionally abusive to their wives, throwing around this verse and saying, well, I'm the head, you do what I say. And we've seen this ruined marriages, literally. We have friends who now the husband has regret and says, I totally misunderstood what this verse was saying, and I was basically cruel to My wife, like a bully almost. And that's not at all what God calls us to, because before he even, you know, talks about a husband being a leader in any way, he talks about the love, the love that he needs to have for his wife and the sacrifice that he should be willing to make for his wife. And so it's a sacrificial kind of love that is leading that kind of leadership in the family. And so it is an important question, though, because I do think that, you know, submission, just that word alone just makes people have a bad taste in their mouth. But when we really look at what God was meaning in those verses, it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing for both to be submitted towards Christ and to serve one another, and for this hedge of protection to be over us first and foremost from God, but then a husband being that protector as well. It's a beautiful picture.

It is. And I think in our culture context, submission, people think submission, and they think of UFC fighters wrestling each other to submission, where one just surrenders because they've been beaten down. And they think, well, that must be what submission is. And it's. It's not biblical. Submission is an invitation for someone else to lead. And submission here, husband and wife, we invite Christ to lead us first and foremost. That's what it means to submit to him. And then within marriage, there are times where that spiritual leadership, where God is saying, I want you to support one another in this, and I want husbands, you to create such a safe environment for your wife, by the way you serve and protect her and that wives, you create a safe and inviting atmosphere for your husband by giving him space and giving him the support and respect to lead your family into a closer walk with Christ. And if you'll all do that together with a mutual attitude of service, love, and submission for one another, then Christ is going to be at the center of that marriage and your marriage is going to thrive. So there's more to it. You can find kind of more on these kind of topics in our books Naked and Healthy and our Naked Marriage book, as well as some of our past podcasts and blogs we've written. But hopefully that'll kind of give an answer to an often misunderstood concept. So I appreciate the question, and we appreciate all of you for listening. Thank you so much for being faithful listeners, and you made it all the way to the end of the episode. A lot of those people just, they quit halfway through. They don't even know what they missed. But here you are at the end of the episode. Still listening. Good for you. Extra stars. Extra brownie points for you guys. We appreciate you so much and we'll look forward to seeing you you next time.

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