The book, Soul Detox: Clean Living in a Contaminated World by Craig Groeschel was very good! I read it over my Christmas and New Year holidays. It had some very inspiring and eye-opening quotes and I felt it deserved its very own blog entry/review.
My desire to even read this book came from the realization that cleaning yourself up from the outside in was not only backward but just not working, at least not long-term. To truly change it has to be from the inside out. How do we change what's inside? Well a good start is by what we are putting in us, through what we see, listen to, read, believe and immerse ourselves in. This book explains that we are surrounded by "toxins" that assault us daily and just as you do detox to remove toxins from our bodies we must do a soul detox to remove those toxins from our soul.
What was really neat is that many of the places I highlighted in this book were things God had just shown or told me. Being the extremely stubborn person I am, I guess He knew I need confirmation that yes, this is what He was telling me. Like the whole taking steps thing. As I posted on New Year's Day, I felt He was telling me to just take it one step at a time, one day at a time. And this was covered in the book as well.
My first marked place was on page 12, the author was talking about how back in the day people didn't realize the dangers of second hand smoke. So they smoked in the house and unintentionally subjected their children to the toxins of the smoke. He wrote, "I'm convinced that many of us are living in this same kind of dangerous trap with our spiritual health. We know something doesn't feel quite right, that we're not growing closer to God and following Christ the way we would like, but we can't put our finger on it. Even though we believe in God and want to please him, we find it hard to serve him passionately and consistently. We want to move forward spiritually but fee like we're running against the wind. We want more -- we know there's more -- but we just can't seem to find it." This immediately hit home with me and I was hooked.
Later in the same chapter he talks about the process of how if you drop a frog in boiling water it would jump out. But if you put the same frog in barely warm water and slowly increased the water you could eventually boil the frog and he would stay in it until he was dead. "In our culture, the water temperature increases daily. Without realizing it, we slowly become acclimated to a toxic environment full of poisonous influences. As the water temperature rises, we keep pretending we're soaking in a hot tub having the time of our lives, never dreaming that we're scalding our souls. As we become scarred and desensitized to what is right and wrong, good and evil, life-giving and live-draining, we lose sight of our first love. We move away from God one degree at a time." Oh, so easy to fall into this trap. My "fun" was slowly scalding my soul, searing my conscience.
The whole book spoke to me, but to avoid simply retyping the book out, I'll try to stick to just the parts that really jumped out at me. The next one was on page 40. "The root of most sins we commit outwardly is the false beliefs we embrace inwardly. In order to experience a life of purity with a clean heart, we must identify and reject the toxic thoughts that keep us from God's best. We don't need Dr. Phil to tell us what God revealed to us in his Word thousands of years ago: your thoughts determined who you become. Proverbs 23:7 says, 'For as a person thinks in his heart, so is he' (NKJV)."
"If you want to live a clean life in a polluted world, you must remove the seeds of poison from within. Practice taking every thought captive. Ask God to identify and help remove the life-draining ideas and images from your mind. Fill your thoughts with his truth and the beauty of his goodness. Renew your mind and watch your faith grow in ways that will astound you." To this end, during our church-wide 21-day corporate fast, I am choosing to not listen to secular music. I can't pick up the Christian station in my car but I can listen to Pandora in the car and on my work computer. (ps - if anyone wants to bless me with a year subscription to Pandora, that'd be cool...lol)
While encouraging us not only to listen and put in our minds what is good, he also encouraged us to speak life-giving words to ourselves, our circumstances and those around us. This tied in well to last week's sermon where Pastor Steve was basically saying the same thing about what we speak. From the book, "Your words, whether externally spoken or internally absorbed, shape your future."
He also talked about the things in our life and how we let them make us feel. He used the example of if you drove up to a friend's house in a rusty clunker or a new sports car. One you might hunker down and hide in, the other you'd be blaring your radio, honking your horn and feeling hot. "Unquestionably, in either car, you are the same person. But the way you feel about yourself likely would be worse in the clunker and better in the shiny sports car. Why? Because you've smoked the culture's cigarette and inhaled the lie." Referring to the lie that things are what define us....."Your things and your money don't make your significant, but you believe they do." Our significance should come from God. "Jesus said, 'Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions' (Luke 12:15). You are not what you have. You are not where you live. You are not what you wear. You are not what you drive. (For me right now I'm having to add, you are not your job position.) You are who God says you are. You are his child. You are a join heir with Christ."
Moving on to the things we watch. He was talking about how this kid knew his mom didn't let him watch movies with questionable things. But he begged about this one movie, saying it only had a little bad spot, and all his friends were watching it. So the mom said fine. He was very excited over this. On top of saying he could go, she then proceeded to make her son his favorite batch of cookies, only she added a tiny bit of "extra" ingredient, dog poo. The son smelled the brownies and eagerly ran in the kitchen for some. She cut him a piece and just as he was about to eat she told him it had an "extra" ingredient. Dog poo, but she assured him it was only one tiny little bit in the otherwise very good brownies and she was sure that little bit wouldn't hurt him at all. At that point he realized he wouldn't be seeing that movie with his friends after all. "Ask yourself, is there a little bit of poop in the media you normally enjoy? Do your friends lead you into places or situations that stink? How about the television shows you watch regularly? Think back over what you've watched this past week." I loved all the examples he gave and his tongue in cheek responses to answers we often give.
On page 192, "If you don't think anything is wrong with all the cultural influences that invade your life daily, chances are that you're interpreting right and wrong through a distorted lens." Yikes.
He then changes gears to make sure that we aren't confusing what we do and don't do and rules and religion with our relationship with Christ. "In its purest sense, Christianity is not intended to be one of the world's major religions, but rather it is supposed to be a relationship with the one, true, living God through his Son, Jesus." He says, "some scholars even argue that the root of the word religion means 'return to bondage.'"
While wrapping up the book and tying it all together on how we can use this information to make a change in our own lives, he tells the story of Moses and God calling him for a purpose and Moses thinking he isn't qualified. "Moses immediately focused on his inabilities rather than God's unlimited abilities. He looked at his limited power rather than God's unlimited power. You might be temped to do the same thing. When God shows you something that he wants you to change, you might hesitate and think, 'I can't do that.' But God will do the same thing to you that he did to Moses - get right up in his business: 'The LORD said to him, Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD?' (Exodus 4:11)." A few paragraphs later he continues, "When God shows you what he wants you to change, don't you think he's going to help you get it done? Don't you know that he put this book in your hands at this particular time in your life for a reason?....If you're reading this and you know what God wants you to do, then put this book down and go do it! Seriously. Someone said, 'Delayed obedience is disobedience.' Don't you dare delay! If God has shown you how he wants you to live differently, if he's revealed what you need to give up or what you need to embrace, then do not disobey him by procrastinating and waiting until 'the time is right.' The time is right, now. The time is right now!"
And in conclusion of his book, "Think about what could be different in your life and in the lives of those around you if you quit making excuses, if you lived with God intentions and let go of your own agenda. If you truly want to live a cleaner, purer life, a more Christ-centered, Spirit-filled life, then it's time to take the next steps that you know to take. Do what you can do and trust God to do what you can't. My prayer is that right now, God is speaking to your heart and making his message loud and clear. Can you hear him? Now, go - in his strength and by his power - just do it! Godspeed!"
I hope these excerpts from the book encourage you to read it for yourself, as I'm sure there are points in it that might speak to you differently than the ones that spoke to me. But if not, then hopefully take these highlights that spoke to me and let them speak to you as well.
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