0:01

Good morning, my friend. Hope you're doing well. Dr. Lee Warren here with you,

0:05

and it's Wild Card Wednesday. We're going to do a little self-brain surgery today, and we're going to bring

0:09

you an operation from back in October

0:13

of last year about how we observe or perhaps create our own reality.

0:19

It's a mental perspective shift between what you feel and see and think and

0:24

what you actually are participating in the creation of in your life.

0:28

Some ideas from quantum physics today. They're going to be helpful to you. We got a new episode for Theology Thursday

0:33

coming, a brand new Frontalope Friday coming, some incredible interviews coming later this week.

0:38

But to get you ready for all of that, I'm going to give you back this episode

0:41

today for Wildcard Wednesday about the difference between how we observe our

0:45

reality and how we create our reality.

0:48

Let's get into it. Today, we're going to talk about quantum physics.

0:52

That sounds kind of nerdy. It is going to be nerdy, but I want to give you one

0:56

little thought lot process. We're going to take a hard look at the things that we've been doing because

1:01

remember one of our tenants of self-brain surgery is that the thing that you're

1:05

doing, you're getting better at. And so if there's some things that have been happening in your life that aren't

1:11

good for you or that you're not satisfied with, or if you keep feeling like

1:14

I need to make this particular change and it's just not happening,

1:17

then I'll just remind you of one of the truths that what got you here here won't

1:23

get you there if there is the new place that you want to be that's different

1:26

from where you've been, right? What got you here won't get you there. So if you are frustrated with some aspect

1:32

of your life, and this could be, I want to get in better shape.

1:35

I want to stop drinking alcohol. I want to stop doing this. I want to start doing that. I want to repair this relationship.

1:40

I want to break through this wall in my marriage, whatever it is.

1:44

Or if it's something because of a massive thing that's happened to you and you say,

1:48

I'm really at a place where I'm recognizing Recognizing that being stuck in

1:53

this grief pattern or being stuck with the trauma response that I have to what

1:58

happened to me in the past isn't serving me well.

2:03

Okay? If you're tired of everything being so hard, you're tired of being so

2:07

tired, and you just say, God, I'm ready for a new thing in my life,

2:11

then we're going to have to make some decisions, right?

2:14

So if it's a new thing November that's coming, and I'm just going to introduce

2:17

the idea today, then we're going to have to recognize that there are some old

2:21

things that we're going to have to get rid of.

2:23

And not all of those old things are bad, okay? It's not bad to be mournful about

2:28

the massive things that you've been through. It's not bad to be...

2:33

A little out of shape or a little bit stuck in some kind of issue,

2:36

not necessarily sinful. But if you recognize, if it's time for your heart is saying,

2:41

hey, I've got to break through. It's time for me to move. God is calling me.

2:45

It's time. My family needs me to step up. It's time for a new thing.

2:50

And if that's you, if you're feeling that call, the new thing November is going

2:53

to be for you. We're going to do that. We're going to apply neuroscience and faith in a way to help us break through

2:59

whatever it is that's been holding us back. And there's going to be several key key scriptures, and several ideas from science

3:04

that are going to work together to get that done for us. We're going to have

3:06

some incredible guests coming up in November, too. Today, we're going to talk about one idea from quantum physics that I think

3:13

will be helpful in this context of how do we overcome the idea that our life

3:18

can become about one particular thing.

3:20

We talked a lot in my new book, Hope is the First Dose, about how grief can

3:24

become an idol, about how certain things in our lives can become bigger and

3:28

more powerful than God. And I want to give you a concept from quantum physics

3:31

that will help you to understand that a little bit more clearly.

3:34

And it's something to do about it that's also from quantum physics, okay?

3:38

How we can hold two realities in tension between each other.

3:43

In just a few minutes, I'm going to tell you about yesterday. I want some cool things that happened yesterday.

3:47

And we're going to do all that in about, I don't know, 20, 25 minutes.

3:51

I want to give you some context and some precepts and some ideas.

3:55

And we're going to start with quantum physics. And I'll tell you why in just

3:58

a minute. And before we do any of that, I have one question for you.

4:03

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

4:08

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the

4:11

neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense.

4:17

Are you ready to change your life? Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

4:22

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,

4:25

take control of our thinking, and find real hope.

4:28

This is where we learn to become healthier feel better and be happier this is

4:32

where we leave the past behind and transform our minds this is where we start

4:37

today are you ready this is your podcast this is your place this is your time

4:43

my friend let's get after it.

4:45

Music.

4:50

All right, you ready to get after it? It's Self-Brain Surgery Saturday. Here we go.

4:53

I want you to think just for a minute with me about quantum physics.

4:57

What in the world, Dr. Warren, are you? Why are you always talking about quantum

5:01

physics? Well, let me tell you why. Years ago, we thought that science was neatly divided into all these different disciplines.

5:08

There's chemistry, there's physics for the real nerds, there's mathematics, there's biology.

5:14

Guess what we're learning? as we go deeper and

5:17

deeper into understanding anatomy and physiology

5:20

and biochemistry guess what we're

5:23

learning everything collapses into physics it's fascinating

5:27

what i mean by that the more we learn about how cells work for example the more

5:32

we recognize that cells are electrical organs and the more we learn about the

5:35

electricity and the electromagnetism of cells we learn that they have an incredible

5:39

ability to communicate with one another how do they do that that through signals.

5:43

What are those signals made of? Electrical phenomena.

5:47

Those microtubules that we talked about a few weeks ago on Microtubule Monday,

5:51

we did a whole episode about the way that synapses happen in your brain, in your nervous system.

5:58

These little structures called microtubules, guess what?

6:01

They turn out to be like little antennas that send signals back and forth to each other.

6:05

Through the physics of your brain, they send chemical and electrical signals

6:10

to each each other and that's how they find each other to make synapses.

6:14

So they're like little antennas in your brain. And that all comes down to electrical

6:20

engineering, which is based upon physics.

6:23

So everything in your body turns out really at the base of it to be physics.

6:28

And that shouldn't surprise us because right there in the first page of the

6:31

Bible, God says, what's one of of the first things we hear fiat luis let there

6:36

be light right god is a chemical engineer he's a.

6:43

Photosynthetic engineer he's an electrical engineer he's

6:46

a mechanical engineer he's an interior designer he's a great physician he's

6:49

a neurosurgeon he is whatever you are he's the creator of that concept okay

6:54

so god started the universe with physics so physics then really backs up to

7:00

ultimately become the origin story of our universe, of our brains, of everything.

7:06

And the evolutionary biologists and all those people got it wrong when they

7:11

explained how one species might become another given enough time.

7:16

And you've learned all about in school how survival of the fittest and Darwin's

7:22

theory of evolution and all those things. And that's all fine and dandy. but let's say even if you can develop a model

7:28

that might explain how over thousands of years one species might make subtle

7:33

evolutionary changes based on advantages and survival and all of that to turn

7:37

into a different species but let me ask you a question does survival.

7:42

Explain a rival? Of course it doesn't.

7:45

If you back far enough up in astrophysics, in quantum mechanics,

7:51

in biology, if you back far enough up, ultimately the question becomes,

7:56

where did the starting materials come from? Where did the beginning impetus, the input of energy come from?

8:01

Where did all that come from? At the beginning of it, there has to have been something thing that set all

8:07

that in motion, that provided the materials and provided the laws that govern the reactions.

8:13

And ultimately, there had to have been a physicist at the back of all that.

8:18

And I would submit to you that it wasn't Stephen Hawking.

8:21

There was a great designer back there at the beginning that set all this in

8:26

motion. So let's just presuppose that. And if you're not a believer, it's okay.

8:30

I would encourage you to go read some of the modern work that's

8:33

happening in string theory and see if it doesn't say sort

8:36

of that it's blowing up every other aspect of science and

8:39

all these assumptions that people made that eventually we would figure out

8:42

how nothing could create something well guess what they're doing now they're

8:46

starting to say gosh this really does look designed we're going to have michael

8:50

gillen on the show phd astrophysicist from cornell he's also a christian who

8:55

converted himself with science while he was training with carl sagan at at Cornell.

9:02

And Michael's going to show us a lot about that. Okay. Now that's an aside.

9:07

I want to talk about quantum physics just for this little idea.

9:11

So quantum physics is the study of the very small, what happens at the subatomic

9:15

level inside your cells, inside your electrons, inside your atoms.

9:19

And we used to think it was just electrons, neutrons, and protons.

9:22

That's what you were probably taught in school. Now we know there's a whole host of subatomic particles. There's dozens of them

9:28

that they've already identified. Baryons, pentaquarks, mesons, axions, leptons, musons, neutrinos,

9:34

bosons, all these little particles that make up neutrons, electrons, and protons.

9:39

And I've always said that one of the reasons that science points me to faith

9:43

instead of away from faith is that when I look further and further into the

9:47

nervous system, every time we get a new technology that allows me to zoom farther

9:51

up, I've got a better microscope, I've got some kind of fluorescence, some sort of technology that allows me to

9:57

look at some phenomenon on a deeper level, guess what we find?

10:00

It's more complex than we thought. We think we're going to be able to break

10:03

down and look inside a cell and say, oh, now I understand how that could have happened.

10:09

No, we actually, when we look deeper, we find more questions and more organization

10:14

and more structure and more design.

10:17

And we say, holy cow, this is way more complex than I thought it was.

10:21

There's no way this happened by accident. So same thing happened in physics. They thought, okay, we got it figured out.

10:27

We understand how atoms work. There's protons, electrons, and neutrons. Well, guess what?

10:32

There's millions, at least dozens of particles beyond that that are smaller

10:37

that provide the structural building blocks of electrons, protons, and neutrons.

10:41

Why am I telling you this on Cell Brain Surgery Saturday? Why do you care?

10:45

We'll get there in a second. Before we do that, I want to tell you about yesterday. I had unbelievable conversations

10:50

yesterday with Tish Harrison Warren, who's one of my favorite writers.

10:55

We talked about lament. We talked about advent. We talked about what to do when

10:59

life gets really hard. Part of that episode is going to—I'm going to hold it

11:01

until just before the start of Advent. We're going to have two episodes about Advent shortly together,

11:06

right before we get there on the calendar.

11:09

It's going to be incredible. So we have that. I had an incredible conversation

11:13

with Greg Pruitt, who for years has been the president of an organization called

11:17

Pioneer Bible Translators. These people go out. They serve in the mission field. They get to know a culture

11:22

that doesn't have a written language. They serve those people, work among them, build houses for them.

11:29

Our son Josh spent a year in Guinea, West Africa with Greg back in 2004 before

11:33

I knew him, before I knew Josh. Even in our blended family that would come to pass later,

11:39

Josh served a year after high school in Guinea, West Africa with Pioneer Bible

11:43

Translators, with Greg Pruitt working side by side building huts and providing

11:47

medical care and teaching people hygiene and first aid and all kinds of things, hunting for them.

11:53

And what they do is they learn a language, and then they work to develop a written

12:00

language for those people. Then they teach them how to read and write, and then they translate the Bible into that language.

12:07

And so ultimately, they're equipping people to have a written Bible in their own tongue.

12:13

Which is incredible. And this has happened now for hundreds of languages.

12:16

And so Greg's on the show. He talks, he has a recent book called Extraordinary

12:20

Hearing, and it's about how to hear God. And we're going to have three episodes coming up about how to hear God.

12:26

One's going to be with Pete Greig, who wrote the other best book I've ever read about that topic.

12:31

And then we're going to have Greg, and we're going to do a kind of a twofer

12:34

idea or threefer idea about how to hear God.

12:38

One from me and two interviews, Pete Greig and Greg Pruitt. We're going to bring those to you soon too.

12:43

As we get into new thing November, one of the things that needs to be new is

12:46

a refined sense of how to hear what God wants for you in your life.

12:50

Okay. So we're going to do that. Two great conversations. And then to top it

12:53

off, had an hour long live radio conversation with my friend Susie Larson on her show.

12:59

And I'll bring you that link once it's available.

13:01

We just had the best talk and Susie's completely sold out on the idea of neuroscience

13:07

meeting with faith, sharing that content with her radio audience around the world.

13:11

Just such an honor to be friends with her, to learn so much from her.

13:15

And if you haven't yet read Closer Than Your Next Breath, Susie Larson's new

13:19

book, you've got to read it. Okay, read it before you read Hope is the First Dose or read it alongside Hope is the First Dose.

13:24

Just an incredible work of theology and scholarship and Christian living from

13:30

our friend Susie. And I can't recommend it highly enough.

13:33

And just had a wonderful conversation with her.

13:35

So I'll give you the links when they're available. So yesterday was just this

13:38

great day, and we just had all these great conversations.

13:42

I spent the whole day thinking about you, and I heard from tons of people yesterday.

13:46

We got lots and lots of emails yesterday, some of them, as usual,

13:51

devastating and difficult.

13:54

People are going through hard things, okay? I got an email from a guy who got a phone call from his dad that his mother had committed suicide.

14:03

And Frank we're praying for you I know that's a difficult thing and you've been

14:08

going through this this hard thing this massive thing of losing your mom.

14:13

It's impossible. How can you move on, right? Another email from a gentleman

14:18

who he and his wife recently lost a daughter.

14:21

And he says, it just about killed me.

14:24

He says, my wife April and I lost our daughter in 2020.

14:28

I was devastated. I asked God to just please take my life. The pain was too much.

14:33

But then he worked a miracle in my life. And now I want to help other people

14:36

who are going through the worst pain of their lives.

14:39

He's reading Hope is the First Dose. We're praying for you, Cody.

14:42

We've got these kinds of emails yesterday. These people who are going through

14:47

massive things, massive, unbearable things.

14:51

And friend, if that's you, if you've been going through something like that,

14:54

I want to tell you a little story from quantum physics about a danger that you're

14:59

in, a real danger, and an opportunity, a possibility.

15:06

Okay? And quantum physics describes how if we're looking in the subatomic level,

15:14

if we're looking down small enough at how particles behave, and why do we care about particles?

15:19

Well, because they make up everything in the universe. So all the things about

15:22

you, this coffee cup I'm holding, made of particles.

15:25

My hand holding the coffee cup, made of particles.

15:28

Those particles are interacting with one another in a way that allows me to

15:31

hold this cup and have a cup of coffee, which I'm doing with you in real time.

15:35

So we care about particles because particles make everything else up,

15:39

okay? Here's what's interesting. When you look at how particles behave, they don't behave in predictable ways.

15:48

There's all these experiments about light. This, by the way, is the work that Einstein did when Einstein came up with general

15:58

and special relativity and all that work in the early 20th century that led

16:03

to nuclear bombs and microwave ovens and computers and microphones and all the

16:08

things that we're using now, handheld radios and all of that.

16:10

That really, the underpinnings of it is the math and science behind quantum

16:14

physics, or that explains the things that we can observe using quantum physics

16:19

about how the universe works. All that stuff that you use every day in your life came from quantum physics,

16:26

including the cell phone that you're probably using to listen to this podcast.

16:30

So it is relevant to you, even if you don't care about science.

16:33

But here's something interesting. When you try to observe, let's say light is

16:38

the easiest one to understand. If you design an experiment to look at what light,

16:42

how is light made up? What makes light, light?

16:46

And Einstein and other scientists realized that light kind of behaves like a wave.

16:51

Like it sort of acts like a wave. But other experiments seem to show that it

16:56

kind of acted like a particle. So is light a discrete particle that shoots out across space and acts like a

17:04

particle, like you could measure it and see where it is in time?

17:06

Or is it like a wave, like it behaves like sound waves do?

17:11

Is it a particle or a wave? Well, it turns out it's almost an infinitely complex thing.

17:17

Because what they figured out is that if you design an experiment to prove whether

17:21

light is a wave or not, 100% of those experiments will in fact prove that light behaves like a wave.

17:28

If you look at light with the intention of proving that it behaves as a wave, it does. us.

17:34

But if you design an experiment to look at light as if it's a particle,

17:38

to prove that light is a particle, 100% of those experiments will in fact confirm

17:43

that light is a particle. This is a conundrum, right? It doesn't make sense. How can light be a particle

17:49

and a wave at the same time? Well, they did these incredible experiments where they shot light at a slit

17:54

up against a wall, and they found light does in fact behave at the very same

17:59

time like it's a particle and like it's a wave.

18:04

They did this experiment with electrons, and they found that a particular electron

18:09

that you shoot at a target will, in fact, have properties that look like wave

18:14

and properties that look like particle. And then if you actually pay attention to what a particular electron does,

18:19

it can be in more than one place at one time. How is that possible?

18:23

It's possible because of quantum physics. Quantum physics describes a world

18:27

in which things don't behave like you're used to them behaving in the big observable world.

18:33

Okay? Why do you care about that? Well, let me tell you.

18:36

There's a thing in quantum physics that they have discovered that's called possibility waves.

18:43

When you think about a particular thing, an electron, a wave of light,

18:49

an event that may or may not happen, when you think about it,

18:51

there are infinite possibilities of what could happen.

18:55

The famous one is a guy named Schrodinger who described a box in which there's

18:59

a cat and a vial of poison. And until you open the box, it's possible that the

19:04

cat is dead because it drank the poison, or it's possible that the cat is alive because it did not.

19:09

And until you open the box, both of those things are equally probable.

19:12

But once you open the box, you see there is either a live cat or a dead cat,

19:17

and now the probabilities have collapsed into one reality.

19:23

But in the quantum physics world, the act of observation is what makes the thing happen.

19:31

It's the observer that turns out to be influencing the event happening.

19:36

That doesn't seem to make sense because you would say, well,

19:39

if a tree falls in the forest, it makes a sound whether or not somebody's there

19:42

to hear it, right, that old conundrum? But in the quantum world, phenomena and space and time are affected by the observer.

19:52

All possibilities exist in the quantum field, but it's the act of observation

19:56

that collapses them into probability.

19:59

There's a quote in this book, Genie and Your Genes, by Dawson Church from a

20:03

quantum physicist named Amit Goswami.

20:06

And he says this, In the realm of possibility, the electron is not separate

20:12

from us, from consciousness. It is a possibility of consciousness itself,

20:17

a material possibility. When consciousness collapses the possibility wave by choosing one of the electron's

20:24

possible facets, that facet becomes actuality.

20:29

So again, remember, if you design an experiment to look at light as if it's

20:33

a particle, it behaves like a particle. If you look at light and design an experiment to prove that it's a wave,

20:38

it does. us. So it's affected by your observation.

20:41

The reality of how it's behaving is affected by your observation.

20:45

Now let's not get too deep into that because frankly, I don't understand it

20:48

well enough to explain it to you. And here's where we're going to go with this.

20:52

When you've had a massive thing happen in your life, when you've been through

20:56

something really hard, guess what happens?

21:00

You begin to observe your life through the lens of that event.

21:06

And I'm going to bring this down to a fine point here because I don't want to go too deep into it yet.

21:12

We're going to. Michael Gillan is going to help us get there.

21:16

But if you look at my life before this was happy, and now this has happened

21:21

and I'm not happy anymore. My life before I got that phone call about Mitch was happy and the future looked

21:27

bright and all of that, and now Mitch is gone, my son has been stabbed,

21:30

and I'm now a bereaved father and that's all I'm ever going to be and I'm unhappy

21:34

and I'm sad and my life is broken by this thing.

21:37

If that's how I observe my life, I want you to remember one of the tenets of

21:41

self-brain surgery that we talked about. What you're doing, you're getting better at.

21:48

When you focus on and think about something, you make synapses that define how

21:56

your brain is going to think about that thing And the chemical response,

22:00

the neurotransmitter response, the hormonal response, the cellular response,

22:04

the genetic expression response, and your whole life begins to be affected by

22:10

the reality of the thought process that you have around that thing.

22:13

You make synapses that further automate that so you don't have to think about

22:17

it as hard to trigger that set of responses again the next time.

22:20

And over time, you create, as one of our listeners, Dana, says,

22:25

a superhighway, a rut in a trail that your wheel gets into and you can't get

22:29

out and you become an expert and an automator of the process of that thing being your reality.

22:37

And we talked in my book my hope is the first dose book about

22:40

tina tisdale who her massive thing was a pain syndrome that she had that she

22:45

believed there was still a tumor in her head even though there wasn't and that

22:48

became reality for her to the point that she ultimately took her own life because

22:53

she couldn't accept the idea that she could have pain and not have brain tumor.

22:59

She thought if she had pain there has to be a tumor and when she just nobody

23:03

could show her or convince her that there wasn't a tumor and she couldn't live

23:07

with that and she killed herself. Why? Because that thing, that massive thing of the residual pain that she had became

23:13

so big in her eyes. It was bigger than God.

23:17

It was bigger than any ability to heal or the rest of her life and her loving

23:21

husband and all the other things that she had going for her.

23:23

If she had the pain syndrome, she couldn't have anything else and that became her reality.

23:27

And every other possibility of her life collapsed into the reality that she

23:33

was defined by this residual pain syndrome.

23:37

Okay, when you focus on a particular observation about your life from the quantum

23:44

world, we've learned that every other possibility collapses and the reality

23:48

of the one thing that you've observed becomes what's real.

23:51

And if you think your life is defined by this massive thing,

23:55

friend, it will become defined by this massive thing.

24:00

It will. Every other possibility for your life will collapse into that one reality.

24:07

Now let me give you some counterpoints to that. God says, this world is going to be hard.

24:15

Jesus, I'm looking at Jesus right now, the Prince of Peace picture to my right

24:19

on the wall, and I'm looking right in his eyes, and he says,

24:22

hey, in this world you will have trouble. John 16, 33, in the back half of that verse is, but take heart.

24:30

I have overcome the world, right? So you're going to have trouble, but it's overcomable, all right?

24:37

But if you observe the trouble part and you focus on the trouble part,

24:42

you will create synapses. What you're doing, you're getting better at.

24:46

It's becoming easier and easier and easier to fix your eyes on the trouble.

24:50

And before long, you can say, my world is trouble.

24:54

Susie Larson and I yesterday talked about these kids that are wearing t-shirts

24:58

that label themselves, and it says anxious, depressed, abandoned, rejected.

25:03

They're putting labels on their chest, and they're wearing this identity that

25:07

something has happened in their life, and that's how they're defined.

25:10

And I want you just to pay attention now. People are always saying, I'm ADHD.

25:15

I'm obsessive-compulsive. I'm OCD. I'm neuroatypical. I'm divorced.

25:21

I'm cheated on. I'm abandoned. I'm bereaved.

25:25

I'm addicted. whatever it is, think about that for a minute.

25:31

If you are accepting a label, whether someone else has given it to you or whether

25:36

an experience or an event has given it to you or whether you've just given it

25:40

to yourself, an offhand comment by your dad when you were eight put a label on you that says dummy.

25:46

If you've accepted that, you're getting better at believing it and you are observing that reality.

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And if you're not careful, your entire universe, all the other possibilities

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that you could become or embody in your life will collapse into that one reality.

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Quantum physics shows us that. If you observe something carefully enough,

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every other possibility collapses and the one reality becomes the reality.

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We talked in my book about how a thing can become the thing that you can see.

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And this is the math and science behind it, friend.

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So here on Cell Brain Surgery Saturday, I want to give you a different idea. you.

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I want you to understand that your massive thing can be both a massive thing and a thing in your life.

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Just like light, in fact, turns out to be a particle and a wave.

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The secret is to not just observe it as if you're looking for it to be a particle

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and not just test it as if you're trying to prove that it's a wave,

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but accept the fact that it's both.

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Jesus not only said, that in this world you will have trouble.

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He also said, take heart, I've overcome the world.

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He didn't only say in John 10.10 that the thief comes to steal and kill and

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destroy because your life could collapse into that.

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I've been stolen from, I've been killed, I've been destroyed,

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I've been cheated on, I've been hurt, I've been cancered.

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I've been bankrupted, I've been pandemiced, I've been fired,

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I've been abandoned, and I've been overlooked.

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Your world could collapse and that could become the only reality that you can

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see. But guess what? It's almost new thing November.

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And it's time to, as Hebrews 12 says, cast off, cast off some of those things

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that have been hindering you. And if this idea that your world is defined by something that's happened or

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some label that's been put on you, then it's time to cast that off.

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Okay? Okay, it's time to cast it off, my friend.

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That's Hebrews 12. Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of

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witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily

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entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Okay, you get this.

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Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith.

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And fixing your eyes on Jesus then is like understanding that light can be two things at once.

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You can have this wounded Savior who's risen from the dead, but he still has his scars.

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And he's saying, yeah, I've got some wounds. And my wounds actually turn out

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to be the way that you can really know who I am.

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Or you can say, nope, I can't believe in a crucified Savior.

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That's not a good story for me. Life is too hard. Even the good guy gets killed.

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It's just too much. My life has been now defined by this massive thing.

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If you fix your eyes on the wrong thing, friend, it will become the thing that you can see.

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It will become the only reality that your universe can accept,

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and you will become really, really good at living around that story and protecting

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that story and letting yourself be identified by that story and building systems

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in your life of having other people serve that story.

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I see this all the time, sadly, in my career with people with chronic pain whose

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entire family's sociodynamic has become revolving around mom's pain.

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And I see people carrying pillows for their wife to put their arm on just because

29:27

their arm hurts and they're just bowing down to mom's pain syndrome and I see people,

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dad has been through this thing and their whole life revolves around not setting

29:36

dad off and not triggering dad. Dad's had a hard day at work and let's don't get dad angry. He's going to be abusive.

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He's going to drink. Let's don't set dad off. I see that and it's sad.

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I see it in parents with people with kids with chronic illnesses whose entire

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marriage and life is defined by this child and their problem,

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which it has to be practically in some ways, right? But my point is this.

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If you can learn to look at Jesus and accept the fact that he has two observable

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realities, he's crucified and he's living.

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He's a man of many sorrows, but he's also growing in wisdom and favor and stature with God and man.

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At the same time, he's sacrificed, he's living, he's the lamb and he's the lion.

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If you can put yourself in that quantum reality frame where more than one thing

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can be true at the same time, that's how you can stop getting really good at

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letting the massive thing be the only reality that your life and your universe can be defined by.

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That's a little self-brain surgery. surgery, quantum physics operation for you today.

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We do things called radio surgery, where if you've got a particular type of brain tumor,

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I can, instead of doing open surgery on you, I can use quantum physics to shoot

30:49

some radiation beams and some gamma radiation particles into your head and treat

30:54

that tumor without burning up the rest of your brain. Okay.

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That technology allows me to help you without having to hurt you as much with surgery.

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And that came about because of quantum physics. Quantum physics can allow us to heat up our food.

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To make a cell phone call, to cure a tumor, or to learn to embrace the fact

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that life can be really, really hard, but it's also really, really beautiful.

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And it can help us change our minds and it can help us change our lives.

31:28

You can really become healthier and feel better and be happier again.

31:32

Remember, we're going to embrace Isaiah 43, where he says, He says,

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when you pass through the waters, I'll be with you. When you pass through the

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rivers, they won't overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you won't be burned. The flame won't consume

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you. You can go through massive things, my friend.

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But he says, fear not, I am with you. I love you and I'm with you. And I won't stop.

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Okay. Isaiah 43, 16 says, thus says the Lord who makes a way in the sea,

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a path in the mighty waters. He has a plan for you.

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And we're going to focus on Isaiah 43, 19. Behold, I am doing a new thing.

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Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness

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and rivers in the desert. If it feels impossible for you to move past this massive thing that's holding

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you back, it's just so important for you today.

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For me to let you hear me say, friend, it's not impossible.

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God is a God who does impossible things all the time. time and the one you can

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do today is take your eye off the massive thing and put it on him and say,

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if I learned to look at him, he's going to teach me that two things can be true at the same time.

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I can be a bereaved father and I will be, I'll be sad about losing Mitch for the rest of my life.

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But at the same time, I can have a life that is abundant and even happy again, because of hope.

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Hope turns out to be the first dose that will allow you to embrace these ideas.

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And if If it's too complex and too hard for you to understand, just trust me.

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I'm going to teach you, whatever you are, school teacher, plumber,

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bus driver, retired grandmother, paralytic.

33:08

I'm going to teach you how quantum physics and neuroscience can smash into your faith.

33:15

And you can understand how this incredible engineer and physicist who created

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you has a good plan for your life wherever it is.

33:23

And that plan doesn't usually involve removing your pain or healing your physical

33:29

disease right now. It doesn't always involve that.

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It involves him entering into your story and saying, hey, I'm not gonna remove this pain right now.

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I've got a long-term plan, a long arc that's gonna do that and I'm gonna wipe those tears away.

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But right now, I'm gonna come walk beside you and I'm gonna carry that load for you.

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And I'm gonna help you because two things can be true at once.

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Is we can be on a road that's marked with suffering and we can still say, blessed be your name.

33:57

And the good news, my friend, is you can start today.

34:02

Music.

34:08

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my

34:12

brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering

34:17

from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things. It's available everywhere books are sold.

34:22

And I narrated the audio book if you're not already tired of hearing my voice.

34:26

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

34:30

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org. They are supplying worship

34:35

resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the most high God.

34:39

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

34:44

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

34:48

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer.

34:51

And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,

34:55

every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60-plus countries

35:01

around the world. I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your

35:06

life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.