SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, and welcome to our podcast, Revelation Within on the Go. I'm Heidi Miles Maepherson, one of your hosts, and the owner and lead coach of the RevelationWithin.org industry.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

And I'm Christina Motley, your other host, also a Revelation Within coach, and Heidi's partner in all things Revelation Within. And we are so happy to invite you to join us for this episode of Revelation Within.

Naming The Inner Critic

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Ah, so silly. We're so glad you're here with us today. Yeah. Welcome, welcome. If self-compassion feels like a foreign language and self-criticism feels like your native tongue, you're not alone. Today we're gonna name that voice and ask what Jesus does with it or what he wants to do with it. We're gonna talk about that. Okay, so can we just agree that being a Christian woman does not make unite yourself? I'm a mean church lady to myself.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Oh, right. I mean, this is so that is such a valid uh truth. I think it really is. You know, you can have the fruits of the spirit for everyone else and still bully yourself in the mirror, not even once a day. We're talking over and over and over and over and over. That is so true. We are so hard on ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

We are all right. So come clean. We're doing we're doing this series of coming clean. What does your inner critic Christina say these days? Like if she had a catchphrase. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Um, girl, you are looking old. Do you really need those glasses all the time? Um, your body has changed so much. Might as well just forget about it.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

All right, all right. That's this can't possibly be a good thing to have you do. So right there. Yeah, for me, it has to do what? There's another crack in your face. Or another, I don't know what these pimply things are, but anyway, there's yeah, that's just so much fun.

Why Self-Compassion Feels Hard

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Well, or what about things like productivity? You know, you used to be able, Christina, used to be able to do so many things in one day. What has happened to you?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah, yeah. For me, it's oh, here's another example of how aging has fogged my brain.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, or it's like, oh, you used to be so sharp. I mean, you have to have raise your soup for breakfast. I mean, there's so, oh, yeah, this is not taking us down a good road, Heidi.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

No, no, no. Why is it always harder to offer compassion inward than it is outward? I mean, we say nice things to other people, we have compassion, we don't like to see our kids beat themselves up. We don't like to see our friends in like say things to themselves, self-deprecating things, our husbands. Why is it so much harder to offer ourselves that compassion than it is to offer it to others?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yeah, it's true. I mean, why do those thoughts fill our brain? Why do we have to fight so hard against them? And there's so many of them, they just go on and on and on. And then where did we learn this? You know, did someone tell it to us? Did we learn it by ourselves? Uh well, I'm sure Jesus didn't teach it. Yeah. I mean, I don't think he did. Where did we learn this from?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

I think that culture has a little bit to do with it, TV, what we saw on TV. I I was born when there were still black and white TVs. Yes. You know, uh yeah. Culture, family, you know, the whole dieting world. Oh my gosh, there's a lot of self-deprecation in the dieting world, even church performance. There's a lot of, you know, arms crossed and fingers wagging and comparison with others. Oh, yeah, definitely. And then there's that ever-elusive thinking that we can disappoint God. We can't, but we don't act like we know that. Right. We didn't wake up this way.

The Real Cost Of Shame

SPEAKER_01 4:41

No, no, I mean, I think think back, it's like we can't really uh remember being a baby and coming coming out of the womb. But it's like, how old were we? I'm picturing a baby coming out of the womb saying, I'm awesome, look at me go. I've got a brand new body and everything's good. My brain is brand new. And look at me. No, but it's like, what age did all of this start happening where we started feeling insecure about ourselves, bad about ourselves, and we started thinking those thoughts. And honestly, I mean, I was a school teacher of young, very young children for a long time, and it does start young. It does. You know, you hear that little five-year-old trying to work on his handwriting, and he says, I'll never get this. I'm terrible at this, you know. Just like a woman in her 60s talking about losing weight. It's the same thing. I mean, it starts, it starts pretty young, and it's it's hard to see that, you know. We don't want to see that. It's hard for us to hear that from these little ones, but that's where it begins. So, I mean, what do you think about this? What do you think self-criticism actually costs us? Oh, is there a cost? Oh, yeah. If if it's all secret in our heads, maybe it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Well, my take on that is like in our mind renewal, we teach that what you think, especially again and again, is gonna impact what you believe, and what you believe is gonna impact your actions. Yeah. So if I'm thinking from the time I'm three, that uh, you know, like a lot of our parents don't mean to. I remember them hitting me on my rear end gently and lovingly saying, Big fat bottom.

unknown 6:36

Well, you know what?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. And that was a little kid. You're supposed to have Chubby Joe when you're a little kid. Anyway, so I think that when you put it all together and you think about the way we speak of ourselves to ourselves, I think it costs intimacy. It keeps us aloof from our own thoughts, the thoughts that could honor God. It keeps us that way with ourselves and with God. And shame turns us inward and downward instead of upward and outward. I mean, think about it. How many of us have isolated because of one thing or another? But shame is at the heart of it. It can have to do with the way you feel you look before when you get dressed to go to church and you just say, forget it. I'm not even gonna bother going because I don't like the way my clothes fit, or it can be any number of other things. We isolate, we go inward and downward instead of upward and outward.

Thought Patterns Shape Actions

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, well, and it is it is so important that we think about what we're thinking about. And so I just mentioned maybe it doesn't matter if it's secret in our minds, and that's that's what I told myself for many years. I just said, you know what? Uh I think I'm just gonna try to hate myself into some kind of positive change. And I'm not gonna do it out loud in front of my students or in front of my kids or even my husband. I'm just gonna do it secretly and see if it makes a difference. 45 years later, that did not help at all. In fact, it made things, it makes things worse and worse and worse and worse. What we think really matters. It matters so, so much.

Scripture Against Condemnation

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yes. Romans 8:1. I love this verse, as you know. We come back to it again and again. There is therefore, I love the way it starts. There is therefore now, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You know, condemnation, it feels familiar, but that doesn't mean it's holy. No, it's not holy. In fact, the way I look at it is if I want to treat myself and be towards others Christ-like, as much as possible, then I want to treat myself and relate to others like Christ would. And the Bible says in John 3:17 that God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, yeah, but that the world might be saved through him. So I don't want to treat myself or others at all with an attitude or spirit of condemnation. That's not Christ-like, not at not at all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yes, and Psalm 10313 says, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. God doesn't mother or father us with criticism. He doesn't, he really, really doesn't. That's that's a very human thing. So, how is Jesus meeting you in this right now? Not how you wish he would, but how he actually is.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

One of the ways he is, and I can I can be honest to goodness, truthful. I don't have to make something up, and that's through his word, I see again and again what is Christ like? Like I just mentioned, and like for instance, God demonstrates his own love for us in this that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's Romans 5:8. And there's a lot of other verses like that throughout the scripture. You know, God called me before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined me to be adopted. These verses, that's from Ephesians 1, these verses, and so many more just like them, speak to that tendency that I have to pick on myself. And I keep coming back to these verses and the truth that they speak of, as well as I have never successfully hated myself into one single solitary positive change. Uh self-deprecation is not sanctification. Nope, nope, nope.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

How about you?

SPEAKER_01 11:00

You know, I think one of the one of the ways that God is really, really speaking to my heart and has been for a while. This is like an ongoing process for me is my identity. Where does my identity come from? Yes, I am. If my identity comes from being a teacher or being a mom or being a coach or being a wife or being a daughter, and you know, seasons change in our lives and things fall away. Um, and it's like, well, you know, I'm not this anymore, or I was this, but now I'm this, or I used to do this well, but now I feel like I'm, I mean, there's constant change happening, and we put so much pressure on ourselves, depending on our roles and what we think our identity is. And that was me for years, and I'm still in process, certainly. But if I go to the word, as you said, Heidi, so important, the word is right there, right there for us to access at any time. And if I go there and I ask God, who do you say that I am? I want to know who you say that I am and how you see me. I want to know your perspective because the world says X, Y, and Z, the enemy says blah blah blah. Um, and then I have my own terrible, awful, condemning thoughts in my mind. Lord, what do you say? And we have we have an amazing resource, and maybe you've seen this before. We have a list by scripture, you know, has scripture references that tells us exactly who we are and how God sees us. That has been life-changing for me. Now, if I've if I've only read it once, that's not enough.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Right.

Mind Renewal And True Change

SPEAKER_01 12:51

But I need to fill my mind with those thoughts. And that's what mind renewal is. If I'm filling my mind with God's thoughts, with his perspective, my heart is turned toward him, and the pressure comes off of myself. And it's like, oh, wait a minute, I can be totally dependent on you, Lord. You know that I'm not perfect, you know that I mess up all the time. But this is how you see me. I'm your girl, I'm your beloved, I'm your chosen one, I'm an heir to the throne. You call me friend. And that blows my mind. That's amazing to me. And if I if I think on those things enough, I really do believe them. And it really does affect my actions. It changes the way I do things, the way I relate to people, the way I make decisions, the way I work. It changes what my quiet times look like. It changes everything. So I'm so grateful, so grateful for God's perspective.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

If anybody wants that list and you don't have it yet, you can go to teamlife is good.com forward slash identity and download it. That URL again is teamlifeisgood.com forward slash identity. So that you can get that entire list.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

It is so, so important, so good. You've mentioned that you've never hated yourself into any kind of positive change in the same way. I've never bullied myself into holiness or into genes that actually button.

Invitation Over Striving

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Same here, same here. You know, transformation is a product of renewing our minds. Romans 12, 2 tells us that be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It is not the result of self-critique. Absolutely not. If you're listening and you're exhausted from being hard on yourself, Jesus isn't asking you to hurry up, get it together. No, no, no. He's asking you to come closer. In my many years with horses, one of the things I have learned about these lovely animals is they love invitation rather than to be driven somewhere. And I think God knows that's the way we are, and that's how he operates with us. He invites us, he doesn't drive us into holiness, he invites us to come close to him and draw in near to him. Self-criticism is always gonna say try harder. Whereas Jesus says, Stay a while, abide, rest here.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Oh, I love that, Heidi. I love that. Here's the wild part compassion bears more fruit than correction.

Teaser For Next Series

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Yeah, you're not behind, you're not failing. You are beloved. So, what we have on top for you all next time, we're gonna start a little series about the lies that steal our peace. And I think you're gonna recognize yourself in the best way, and you're also gonna hear what we can do about it and victors. Yay!

SPEAKER_01 16:11

That sounds really, really good. We are so glad that you've been here today. And we would love to invite you to our next podcast of Revelation Within one.