My mind. He’s really loud!
Loud
/laʊd/
adjective: producing or capable of producing much noise, strong or emphatic in expression.
adverb: with a great deal of volume.
Origin: Old English hlūd, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch luid, German laut, from an Indo-European root meaning ‘hear’, shared by Greek kluein ‘hear’, klutos ‘famous’ and Latin cluere ‘be famous’
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I decided to write a series of posts on what Lauren Daigle’s song, You Say. Read the first post here.
The first verse of the song goes:
I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough
Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up
Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low?
Remind me once again just who I am because I need to know
image from google
The song verse above speaks to the battle of the mind that we all face as human beings. Voices, thoughts and/or imaginations that make us feel ‘negative’. The lives we live in our heads, in silence, which the devil tries to take advantage of. The opinions we have believed, that we are afraid to say out for fear of validating them or people thinking we’re foolish. The depressing thoughts. The thoughts of worthlessness, never being enough, never measuring up, never having anyone care etc. Thoughts that surface everywhere and we can’t seem to shake them. Lies we believe because we think if its in our heads, we’re the ones telling ourselves, then its true (but it is not). This voice that belittles and mocks and tells us we cannot amount to anything. The whispers that ask what the point of our living is, where we think we’re going.. etc. And when we finish listening to all the voice has to say, we are too paralysed to take action, to start that project, to write that devotional, put up that post… etc
In this verse of the song, the lies are identified for what they are. The verse calls to mind the fact that we place a little too much emphasis on these seemingly loud thoughts/whispers/imaginations and how over time we have listened to and magnified this voice in our heads so much so that we have taken it as our own. But, we can recognize these thoughts and imaginations for what they are and respond appropriately. In order to recognize the thoughts however, we have to be ready.
I listened to this message by Steven Furtick of Elevation church the other day and he used an example that really drove this home for me… His daughter, Abby, who is only 7 years old, wanted to show her brothers and her dad that she could swim the length of the pool while holding her breath. He advised her not to listen to the lizard (fear) in her head telling her she couldn’t, telling her to quit. After successfully swimming the length of the pool, Abby came up to tell her dad how the lizard was very loud and that she had told it to shut up!
Abby was ready when the voice came whispering, having been warned by her dad to expect this. Part of what fascinates me here is that she was able to take appropriate action because of what she had ‘heard’ from her dad. Had her father not told her not to listen to that negative voice, she probably won’t have finished the course…
Romans 10 vs 17
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (KJV)
I love how the Message translation puts it:
But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? (MSG)
How can we learn to fight if we are not prepared? If we are always caught unawares? How can we guard our minds and hearts when we do not have the proper armor/tools/Word? This is part of what the Holy Spirit does for us. He alerts us to these thoughts that are not in line with the word of God, even before they are fully formed, such that we are able to recognize and deal with them appropriately, according to the word of God. Still, in order to hear the Holy Spirit over the very loud voice in our minds, we require tuning in, practice in the form of reading God’s word, obeying the promptings of the Holy Spirit etc. The more we do this, the easier it becomes for us to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit alerting us in such circumstances. Unwholesome thoughts will come but we have to be intentional – about feeding our minds and spirits right – in order to be ready.
1 Peter 5 vs 8 sums it up this way:
Be careful—watch out for attacks from Satan, your great enemy. He prowls around like a hungry, roaring lion, looking for some victim to tear apart. (TLB)
Be sober [well balanced and self-disciplined], be alert and cautious at all times. That enemy of yours, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion [fiercely hungry], seeking someone to devour (AMP)
The end of this verse of the song is a plea, a cry for help which I believe we all have at one point or another in our lives. Help from the one who knows us, the one who made us and knows exactly who we were made to be. The world we live in today is increasingly complex, yet simple. We are easily living in the least ‘woke’ times, describing ourselves using a whole slew of nonsensical labels (and hashtags)… from people labels to social media labels to our own mind labels… We accept these tags and begin to conform to what we think is expected of us. We are like a baby eagle that is placed in the midst of a flock of chickens, and because the only other birds we see where we are, are the chickens, we start to strut around on land and peck the ground for food as they do. In the back of our minds we have the urge to fly, to soar, but we listen to that voice that says that we can’t so we shouldn’t even try. We take on the label of ‘Chicken’ and live miserably below our potential… If only we allow our wings to take us a little higher, we are bound to see more of our kind…
So we need that constant reminder of who we are, whose we are. We need to go back to our Father time and again. We need to continually ask the help of the Holy Spirit to bring to mind all that God has said of us. We need to love and re-affirm ourselves. We need to take our places once again, to find our voices back, to live again. We need to repeatedly pray to see ourselves the way God sees us, through the eyes of patience, grace and love. We need to stay connected to God.
In summary, verse 1 of the song teaches me to:
1. Recognize the loud voice in my mind for what it is (one litmus test is whether whatever it is saying is in line with the word of God)
2. Respond appropriately to the voice using the word of God.
3. Constantly remind myself of who I am, whose I am, with the help of the Holy Spirit.
What comes to mind when you listen to this verse?
Love,
Giantsparkle
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