Grace Thoughts

Tim Kelley: But that very day, good old Uncle Laban went out and removed the male goats that were streaked and spotted, all the female goats that were speckled and spotted or had white patches, and all the black sheep, and he placed them in the care of his own sons. He took his sons away and took them a three days' journey from where Jacob was. Meanwhile, Jacob stayed and cared for the rest of Laban’s flock. Don't worry about Jacob. He had things under control.

Jacob took some fresh branches from the poplar, almond, and plane trees and peeled off strips of bark, making white streaks on them. Then he placed these peeled branches in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink, for that was where they mated. When they mated in front of the white-streaked branches, they gave birth to young that were streaked, speckled, and spotted.

Jacob separated those lambs from Laban’s flock. At mating time, he turned the flock to face Laban’s animals that were streaked or black. This is how he built his own flock instead of increasing Laban’s. Whenever the stronger females were ready to mate, Jacob would place the peeled branches in the watering troughs in front of them and they would mate in front of the branches.

He took these speckled and spotted branches and put them in the trough so when they are mating and they're looking at these speckled and spotted things, their little lambs came out speckled and spotted. I'm not going to say any more about this because this could go way south really quick, this whole conversation. But it was amazing that it worked.

There is a principle that I want to bring up here. The principle is this: what we set before us on the outside matters what happens on the inside. Get your minds out of the gutter. If I set something before me on the outside, it impacts me on the inside. I'll use the term "gates." I have different gates into my body, but two main gates: the eye gates and the ear gates. What I look at and what I hear on the outside has an impact on the inside.

What am I putting before the gates? What am I gazing at? What I see, in a sense, will impact me and eventually become what I become. Back in Bible times, they didn't have anywhere near the distractions we have today. Sundown meant you went to bed. There was nothing else to do. There was no Netflix. There were no iPads, iPhones. I remember growing up when they had three or four channels. Black and white, you turned the knob. No remote control. How barbaric is that?

I had to actually change the channel manually. I remember the first color TV that I saw. Dudley Do-Right was what I saw. It was amazing. Look at that color! These are all distractions. They had no radio. They had family and books. That's what they had. The assault on the mind wasn't anywhere near as what we would think.

Information is processed by electrical or chemical impulse. I won't get too biological here and I know we could add a lot to this story, but just understand how we're fearfully and wonderfully made. I have a phone number, 544-4000. Anyone else know that phone number? Pizza Hut! Do you know what branch? 66th Street. Why do I remember that number? It's an important number.

When something is important, inside my brain are these things called neurons and cells. They have one part, the cell body, that's like your processing center. They have these little things called axons and little things on this side called dendrites. What happens when I think? I'm talking right now and I'm memorizing things, thinking things. These thoughts come to my mind and one stimuli goes from this cell, goes in and receives it through the axon.

It is processed through the cell body, shoots back out through the dendrites. There's a little space between the next cell and it's called a gap. They call that the synapse gap. Depending on how important that message is, it shoots that little electrical impulse to that next cell and it goes on to the next a billion times over to complete a thought.

When I drive home, I go up 66th Street. I go there every day. I drive by the post office, stop at all the lights. I don't remember any particular drive that I have home, but my brain is just sending these impulses as I drive home. At some point, if I rear-end somebody, I'll remember that. So will they. That little electrical impulse becomes a little chemical dump. Depending on how traumatic it is and how important it is will depend on how much chemical is dumped.

Most of us remember our wedding because I was dumping a lot of chemical during that time. You remember the day you were married at the fear of death because there was a chemical that was produced at that point. This is what post-traumatic stress is. It is when the eye gate or the ear gate sees something or hears something that they weren't supposed to hear or something that was traumatic. It dumps this chemical into that little gap and it changes the way that we respond and we react. I'm oversimplifying this, but that's what happens.

Talk to somebody that was in the room when we lost our daughter and I didn't even know they were there. They were standing next to me. My brain shut them off. Talk to another person that I didn't even know my wife did when they were there, and they looked at my wife and said, "Mrs. Kelley, the only thing I ever remember from that day is you screaming." That was a chemical dump. She heard it, saw it, and her brain changed forever. I'm not even really talking about things of that magnitude.

I'm talking about things, small stuff, life stuff, stuff that we live in. The frustrations, the fears, the anxieties, the pressures, all those things. But that's how the brain works and we're fearfully and wonderfully made. God made us that way. Our eyes and ears were never supposed to see certain things or experience certain things, but they have because of the fallen race.

Here's some research on some types of depression from an insight journal. The most promising is a theory that chemical imbalances actually stem from our own thoughts and actions. Everything we do and every thought that goes through our minds happens as a result of production, release, absorption, naturally occurring chemicals in our brain like hormones, neurotransmitters, and amino acids. That's the chemical dump that we talked about.

Sometimes these imbalances, if I can make it oversimplified, thinking in a negative realm or a different realm over a long period of time creates a certain rut of thinking, a groove of thinking. I train myself to think that way. I train myself to see black and not white. I train myself to see that glass half empty and not half full. I train myself to see the negative in the positive instead of the positive. How we choose to think over certain things over a long period of time is important.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT, is probably the most effective known counseling methodology in the counseling world today. Basically, it just means we want to learn how to think right. When I see the negative thing over here, which is big and gloomy, I want to replace it with something over here that isn't. I want to take the negative, whatever that negative is, and replace it with something different.

I want to train myself not to make that my foundational thoughts, but make something else my foundational thoughts. That's what the word meditation means. I practice the way that I think. A little kid being screamed at by an aggressive, physically abusive father scars that little kid. That baby is scarred. They're going to go into adulthood with those scars, with those wounds.

It is not that they can't be healed of them, but if they're not addressed, if that little child never allows the beautiful fragrance of the Word of God to address those things in their life and change the way they see themselves. How do we battle this? This came from a Jewish manual. As a child, you were introduced to the Scriptures. There was nothing more enjoyable in the entire universe than tasting, receiving, and accepting the words of God and making them part of your life.

This is how Jewish boys were introduced to the Scriptures. From ages six to 10, they would memorize Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. By age 10, they'd memorize the entire Torah. These are the commands, decrees, and regulations that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you. You must obey them in the land you are about to enter and occupy. You and your children and grandchildren must fear the Lord your God as long as you live.

If you obey all his decrees and commands, you'll enjoy a long life. Listen closely, Israel, and be careful to obey. Then all will go well with you and you'll have many children in the land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you. Listen, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

You must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands, the Word of God that I'm giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you're at the home, when you're on the road, when you're going to bed, when you're getting up. Tie them to your hands, wear them on your forehead as reminders, write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

That sounds easy there because there were no distractions. They came in from plowing the fields and they ate and went to bed. There was no Netflix. There was no Redbox. There was no iPhones. Our kids and adults, too, look at them like a drug. It's like a vortex, sucks them right in. The Lord is saying here, "I want you from a young age, for my people, to put before their eye gates and their ear gates my Word. I want you to feast on my Word."

I don't want you to feast on the world. I don't want you to feast on the wound. I don't want you to feast on the infraction. I want you to feast on my Word. If you'll accept my Word and take my Word on the inside, I can do a work for you internally and externally. He wanted his people to have a more than casual relationship with their Bibles.