Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss life at the intersection of Theology and Psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their life stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
54. "It is what it is" or Do We Have a Choice? (S5 E2)
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That flat feeling behind “it is what it is” usually isn’t wisdom or maturity. It’s often a clue that we’ve slowly lost agency and think there is no choice in the matter. Ryan and Emily share a three-step practice that helps us notice choice points earlier, hold paradox with clarity, and make decisions with more honesty before God.
We offer a simple, practical framework you can use right away: bind alert (notice the internal bell), choice awareness (admit you have options), and paradox acceptance (hold complexity long enough to choose with wisdom). We also connect this to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and the “choice point,” then move into Romans 7 and 8 to name the tension between flesh and Spirit without pretending it isn’t there. The gospel doesn’t promise a struggle-free life; it promises grace, clarity, and freedom to choose in love, even when the choice is costly.
If you’ve been stuck in patterns you can’t explain, start by following the symptoms back to the bind, then practice naming the options out loud.
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Welcome To Story Matters
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_01We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_00We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.
SPEAKER_01We're glad you're here. So,
Why We Miss The Real Bind
SPEAKER_01what we're doing with this series is we're trying to help ourselves and you as listeners engage something that we often avoid, and that's a paradox. There are so many places in our lives that can and do have uncertainty that often we fly right by and fly right through because of our own proclivities, the ways we survive childhood, and any number of reasons, but we'll just move through the areas that really, and if we're honest, what we'll call binds, they're places where we probably should pause, pray, and examine, seek to make it a good choice. But often we don't even notice them. We're blind to them. And the reason for that is because it's costly and it's just easier to our system to keep moving the way we always have. And as we said in the first episode, often it's the symptoms that we'll notice long before the actual binds. And one of the reasons we've said we don't even notice these as binds is because it feels like there is no choice. And so the way we wrapped up episode one and we want to now zoom in on this topic is the goal is not to start having a ton of uncertainty and a lot of confusion. It's rather to begin to open up our road to agency and the fact that we are called to actually make decisions where we often think we have no choice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think sometimes the fear is that we're gonna become too analytical or our daily life is gonna be clogged by all these pauses and decisions. And I think the rebuttal I already hear is it is what it is. You know, this situation is what it is. And that phrase alone isn't necessarily bad. But if it means, therefore, I'm not gonna deal with this, let it go, move on, then I think that's actually the mentality that's keeping a lot of people stuck. And our goal at Story Matters is to really open up freedom, not only our choice, but being aware of the wisdom we need to make good choices all the time, because every one of us are faced every day with several choices we may not think we are even in a moment of choice. But we are, whether it's emotional or logical, we're constantly making decisions and choices.
Work And Family Choice Moment
SPEAKER_01I want to give an illustration. I actually was meeting with a client before we recorded this, and what we were talking about, this topic felt apropos. And so I just said, Hey, we're gonna record a podcast tomorrow on this. Let me share with you what we're talking about. After we had our conversation, I said, Would you mind if I use some of that example? And he was fine with it. And the situation is his wife was leaving town and so had a lot happening at home with kids and getting ready. And he had a meeting for work and the headquarters is overseas, so the timing was off. He's pretty high up at the organization where, in one sense, he was needed at the meeting, but in the other sense, he probably could have said, Hey, I got something else I need to do. And when I brought up the concept of binds as being things we often completely miss, because in our minds, it's like, sorry, this is like you just said, it is what it is. I have to be at work. And you can hear another type of person saying, Sorry, my family life comes first. We all have our proclivity, right? But he said, it's funny when that occurred, he never really considered actually going home, even though his wife had hoped he could, because he said that to me wasn't really on the table. He just knew he had work to do. But as we unpack this concept, he realized it would have been helpful if he could have noticed it and paid attention and said, wait a minute, this is a bind. I'm actually in a choice moment where I have a bind. And what we discussed was had he been able to put that into words, and here's what we're talking about paradox. It becomes a paradox. You know, we use this word paradox, meaning what am I supposed to be? The good husband or the good employee. We're called to do both. The reason we're saying a paradox is not a mystery, is that a mystery is like, okay, Jesus is both God and man at all times. But when I'm with my spouse, when I'm with you on a date, if I'm like, I'm also at work, you'd like, well, that's not good. And if you're at work and you're like, well, my mind's also somewhat at home. And that's so a paradox is you end up choosing one or the other, but it's just it's very difficult, or it's not immediately evident which choice to make. And by naming the bind and making the choice, even if it's the same one, well, I am going to stay at this meeting, it's so much healthier than just by default, never even acknowledging that there was a choice. And so to him, uh, he just seemed to like it lightened his load a little bit. Wait a minute, I have agency. I can look at this, I can talk to my wife, I can lay it out pray. And even if it's just a few breaths, a few moments, or if it's a long conversation, it's always gonna be better and healthier because so often the road we just naturally travel down is not the best road for us. It's the familiar road, it's the one we've always gone down.
SPEAKER_00I love the way you described all of that in such a practical
Three Steps For Everyday Binds
SPEAKER_00way. And in this episode, we want to make it really simple for our listeners. And so we've come up with three steps to practicing what we're talking about. So the first one is bind alert. We're gonna call it bind alert because, like we said in our first episode, we really do live in constant binds during our daily life. We just don't call them that. But if we are alert to them, just a ding. Like when you think about an alert, it's just that little bell goes off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we were driving to take our youngest daughter to work, the three of us, and we live in a town where one of the roads goes right through LSU campus, and the map was just telling me the fastest way or whatever. And it didn't say there was a closed road, it didn't say, but it had a reroute, and I barely noticed it. And the closer we got, it realized, oh, they've closed that part of Hall of Fame is the road off because of the lights on stillwater. Lights on stillwater. And it's just funny because I remember getting frustrated. I just assumed it was wrong and I was going the right direction. I know where I'm going. What's it thinking? But it feels like what we're talking about. I'm just gonna go this way. This is the way we do it, everything's gonna be great. And then all of a sudden you kind of look up ahead and there's roadblocks and traffic, and you know, that's what we're talking about. These binds exist. Are you alerted to them? And we need to be. We want to grow in that, right? Because otherwise we're gonna have these symptoms of stress and frustration.
SPEAKER_00Well, and maybe with your illustration, we would say, are you alert to them with enough time to make a wise choice versus the panic of, oh, now we're gonna be late, you know? So our three steps would be to have the bind alert, then choice awareness. And that's simply having the awareness that you do actually have a choice. And then that third one is paradox acceptance. So that's our framework as we get started with this series. Bind alert, choice awareness moves you into paradox acceptance.
Choice Awareness Through The Choice Point
SPEAKER_00So I think we've unpacked binds. We're gonna do a little bit more as we go, but Ryan, let's talk about choice awareness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, one of the things that has been very helpful for me recently was um studying a modality called ACT, which I think we've talked about in a previous episode. And if you actually see a book about act, it looks like it's an ACT manual because they're all capital letters, even though it's pronounced ACT and not ACT. It stands for acceptance and commitment therapy. And without going too far into it, the book I was looking at had an exercise called the choice point. And so the idea is when you are clarifying your values and your commitments and you know them well, and you're in tune to your own body and system, you'll notice or hope to notice these places, these moments where you actually have to choose to go toward the goal or away from. And it sounds so simple. And of course, as Christians, we would say this is like James, you know, in chapter one, verse 14, he says, each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed. And just this idea that something can come up for us and we can get lured and tempted. And so the world that we're engaging right now are not necessarily particular sins, but maybe places where our patterns take over. So these areas where we gravitate down a natural path that if we could look at and examine with more clarity, we might say, Yeah, that's where I'm stuck, or that's where healing could happen. And what's going on is we're not paying attention, the mind alert's not happening. But when it does, then what we have is what you just shared is a choice awareness. And that is so important. And we spent some time there in the first episode that often I think we ourselves or we'll hear clients say, I have no choice. And that's what you a moment ago alluded to. It is what it is, and that's very true. Like at times, I have to go to work, honey. Or you might tell a child, like, Daddy cannot beat your soccer game. I there's no way I can do that. I can't afford that. It's just like it can't happen. And I remember years ago, probably a little bit much more naive, I was a young man talking to an elder at a Bible study, and he was saying he's got some blood clots, and his actual job at the time was to do international flying for his organization. And there were other divisions in this organization, and he actually had some of those other roles. But at this moment, he was flying internationally to set up business, and it was on those flights that he was at the greatest risk for blood clots. And I just said, Well, have you thought about talking to your boss? Genius. But I'll never forget the visceral bodily revulsion to the very thought. Not at me, but at the thought. It was like this part of him took over in just three seconds. I could never do that. And I felt like back off. This is no fly zone. Don't tread here. And I think that's what we want to address. Where are yours?
SPEAKER_00Where are these places where it's like I could never Yeah, because we've talked about creativity is similar to vulnerability in that you have to be able to spread out on the table all the options, even if it doesn't feel like an option at the time, creativity says, well, it has to at least be said, or we have to play with that idea. And then if you say no, that's not an option later, then you know you've at least addressed it. You know, we've told the stories about being art majors and having graphic design critiques, and you're like, oh, I don't want to have to go back. And but if you've said, yeah, I actually did try green and it didn't work, then you've done your due diligence. But there is a block in most of us, in some area of our life, that we haven't really said, what are all my options? And I think that's the essence of freedom that Christ, and this is this the risky part of the gospel, is there is freedom. And then, you know, for some of us that have that legalistic bent, it's like, oh no, give me give me the law, tell me what to do. But what if we rethink a lot of moral and social political ideas and just go, well, yeah, let's lay it out there and be creative and always bring it back to God's word. But there's a lot more freedom in how we interact with people and how we live our lives and relationships and how we do business than I think most of us are giving ourselves.
SPEAKER_01And what we also covered in episode one that I think is so important for the idea behind a choice, is we talked about how Jesus in John chapter 10 in the chapter on the Good Shepherd, says, I lay down my life for my sheep willingly. I'm doing this. And that's important because, in one sense, we know in Philippians 2, where Paul tells us Jesus, though he was God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. And he volunteers, essentially. I'm volunteering to go do this thing to save and rescue our people. And there's really no other option. Jesus is the only person in the Godhead who could do this. And the only way we could be redeemed is through God Himself coming down. And yet it's still considered him volunteering. And I think that's powerful. And I know that it's not exactly the same for us when bad things happen, but there's something powerful about a choice. I remember years ago reading that about self-discipline. You know, when we say I have to, that's shame language, shoulds and oughts. But when we say I'm choosing and going back to this person on the airplane flights, he may still decide that's the right thing for my family, for my career. The doctors say it's gonna be okay if I wear this or do that. But how much healthier is that? Or how much better is it for my client to, as he acknowledged, to actually talk to his wife and say, well, here, let me just kind of lay out what this would look like.
Flesh And Spirit As A Paradox
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay, I want to pose some complexity that you and I have talked about as we were thinking through this season, that I still need a little bit of clarity around. In Romans, it's six, seven, eight, it's all in that middle part of Romans, there's a lot of talk of flesh and spirit. When I started thinking about paradoxes, because that's kind of what we're trying to move into, is that you know, there's two good things. It's not like a bind where it's like both are bad. Well, you can't say that about flesh and spirit. If there's a war in your mind of what should I choose, what should I do? And the other day I said to you, yeah, but flesh and spirit, that war within us, so to speak, that we talk a lot about, that's not a paradox because they're not both good. To which you said, a pretty powerful statement that I want to unpack. You said, No, it's not about being good. They're both true. And so if you have two truths, which is the essence, that's the definition of paradox, is that two truths can exist at the same time. But then I'm like, well, wait, it's not capital T like good truth, like that your flesh is not true. Help me understand more about when I'm living out of the flesh, my body feels like this is true. This I want to do this. Am I making sense? Yeah with this this complexity.
SPEAKER_01First of all, when you said binds are both bad, I don't I think what makes the bind bad is the middle. It's like I have a hot air mass and a cold air mass, fine, they're both fine. But because I have both, they come up against each other. That's bad.
SPEAKER_00Oh, true. Work is not bad. Family life's not bad when they come.
SPEAKER_01I'm a seventh grader and I've got to study all night. That's not bad. Oh, I also have a bunch of friends that are gonna go out to dinner tonight. That's not, you know, it's the fact that they're cold. Yeah, and I and now I'm stuck. How do you hold both?
SPEAKER_00Which is the essence of holding death and life of Jesus in our bodies from Second Corinthians. I don't think flesh is death and life is.
SPEAKER_01So let me come back. It's a great question and hang with my thought process for a minute. I think temptation is assuming that whatever it is, if obeyed is sin, right? However, the problem with temptation, for example, let's say you feel tempted to spend more than you budgeted, or to go out tonight when you said you would stay in. There's a lot of gray areas or to skip the work meeting because your wife really could use your help at home, or we would use the language tempted there as well. And what we're saying is there is something in me that feels desirous right now. I want this. And desire is not sin. And one of the crazy things about temptation is a temptation is itself not a sin. Now, the action of it could be, you know, if I'm tempted to kill someone, it's well, that's not that's no big deal as long as you don't do it. It's a big deal. But here's what's going on in Romans 7 is so powerful. I think so much of what Paul's angst was over was he says, you know, so at least the law is good that I'm aware of that. But then he says, Wretched man that I am, wanting to do what he doesn't want to do, and vice versa, I'm just in anguish over this challenge. Instead of like wretched man that I am because I'm contemplating coveting my neighbor's wife. Or is it wretched man that I am because I'm wrestling all the time? And I and what he settles on is after he cries out to who will rescue him, thanks be to God in Christ Jesus, is okay, so in my mind I follow the law of God, and in my flesh I follow the law of sin and death, and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. In other words, I can actually experience things in my body and mind that oppose each other, and I don't have to ignore, like how often, listener, and Emily, I'll ask you myself, how often do we tell people about temptation? We don't go, I thought about I was at the store and I just thought about swiping a free candy bar or whatever your temptation is. I really thought about cussing out someone. The thought of doing that is shameful. We would never say it because to even name that a temptation has come into our being feels as though we've already done it. That would not be accepted. And yet the truth is, probably the greatest paradox is that as a Christian, we have both the Spirit of God in us and the flesh, the new man and the old man. That's a paradox. And of course, the flesh is bad. But what we're trying to say is at the point of temptation, it has the sensation of rightness. And what we're being called to do is awareness, right, of that temptation early on, and having the wherewithal rather than just reacting in shame because there is no condemnation. We can actually be alerted to this mind, move toward a choice awareness. And this is so important because sometimes what we think is sin may not be sin.
SPEAKER_00That's so funny that you'd say that. I'm literally thinking, well, I got another pushback. And I'm usually the one I feel like in our conversations that simplifies your complexity. And I feel like I need to push into a little bit more complexity. Because when I think about when you asked how often do we hear people say, I'm tempted, or I was tempted, it seems as though I come across people that are telling me they were tempted to do something, and that something they've told themselves is a sin. I was tempted to tell her what I really thought. And I'm thinking, let's put that on the table as an option. That actually sounds like a really good, like maybe you should have. I think sometimes people have imagined they know which one's the spirit in their life and which one's the flesh. But we often have just told ourselves this is the way I live, and to deviate is probably sin. That's one of the ways I hear people say tempted. And then I'm thinking that's not a temptation. That's actually you coming up against a choice. The other way I hear people saying tempted is when they kind of are admitting they did sin. I was so tempted to hate her.
SPEAKER_01No, I last night I got drunk. It was so tempting. Because part of me wants to go, no, you weren't. Tempted. You wish you were. Have you you know when we're in a conversation, we all do this?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I know what you're gonna say.
SPEAKER_01And then they go, and then I said and they say it, and you're like, Did you really? No, I thought it.
SPEAKER_00Yes. No, they say, and then I was like, You can't talk to me like that. You're like, Did you say that? Oh no, I thought it.
SPEAKER_01I thought, oh, darn, you should have said it. Well, I wanted to, but that's like the same thing I'm hearing when you say, I was so tempted. It's like you didn't get to the place of wrestling with temptation. Because here's what we're talking about. This is what's so important. And this is what Paul's doing in Romans 7 and 8. Is he bothered more that at times he covets, I shouldn't do that thing, or is he more is this too a nuance, but or is he bothered by the fact that the law is not enough and he still has temptation? He still struggles. And so when he says, at the end of seven, what I find is in my mind I follow the law of Christ, and in my body, my flesh, the law of sin and death. The law of sin and death promises no struggle. The craziness of the law is if you'll come to me, you'll have certainty. Me meaning the law.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I mean, in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, the sting of death is sin, and the power of the sin is law, and he means the law of sin and death. And I, in other words, the notion that you can get it right, the notion that you can figure it out. So Paul's coming in chapter seven to this realization oh, this side of heaven, I'll never fully have it figured out. And there's no condemnation. And then he says, for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00This is so big because if you think about what the law of sin and death means is the law of get it right or else.
SPEAKER_01God's law is beautiful, but what the law of sin and death says is, and you can have it without having the spirit, without failing, without needing the cross. It it can be yours, you know.
SPEAKER_00It's the promise that we could live life actually not needing Jesus anymore. Because you and I have recently said how powerful it is to think about most of our prayers are actually ways that we're just trying not to need Jesus anymore. And so this law comes along, and any legalism is hey, if you follow this way, you won't struggle.
SPEAKER_01Listener, I think this is what we really want for our hearts and for you is if we could have an appetite for the complexity, if we can have an appetite for uncertainty, which is a paradox, accepting the paradox. If we can get to this place where we go, oh my gosh, a part of me wants to do X and a part of me wants to do Y. And sometimes both parts are good, and it's really a paradox, and we just need to move toward them. More often than not, if we've not noticed the paradox, not even named the bind, it's because our body is saying one of them is evil. It's evil to ever question your parent. So don't do that, and that's not true, but our body thinks it's true because of the way we were raised, the vows we made, the agreements we made, the soul ties, the loyalty structures. And we're trying to get to this place where you go, wait, time out. Let me be true to what's coming in the form of what we might call a temptation. And it's this bind, it's a bind alert. There's actually another side here, guys. And that's where we have this word, this phrase choice awareness. And the more we can get to a place where we go, right now, we're making a decision. My mom or my dad or my boss just use a very passive aggressive comment or attack kind of ridicule me, and I'm aware I've learned, I've studied, I get it now. I have a choice now. I can actually say, hey, that that's not okay. But I don't have to do that. Now, before we got to the choice awareness, before the bind alert, it's just you operate the way you operate. We talked last time about the fool, and you and I were laughing in the car because it's like, how is that like? Where is the sin and the negativity in the fool? Do you remember this? Mm-mm. Fool, you know, answer the fool according to the folly list, he be wise in his own eyes. Answer not the fool according to his folly list, you become like him. And we what we kind of laughingly said is some people are like, I answered the fool. Because that's my tendency. I'm gonna go after him. I'm gonna let him have it online or in person. And that can be sin. But it felt good. Or, you know, I just didn't confront. I just didn't want to say anything. I felt, you know, I didn't want to become like the fool. Like you we can use the scripture to really protect our proclivities.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I do remember that now. Because, and I think in that conversation, what you were saying about both are true, but that I push back both, no, not both. The flesh isn't true, like capital T truth. We're we're supposed to be truth seekers. But you were saying, but in our body, it feels more true to ourselves.
SPEAKER_01And when the devil, you know, when the devil shows up, he doesn't look like the devil, you know, in the garden. It wasn't like, hey, by the way, I'm the personification of pure evil, so here I go. It's you know, the idea behind a temptation and the way our flesh works, the scariest thing is it can look and seem as good or even better than the things that we feel are sinful that aren't. If I think it's wrong to ever say a curse word, but I don't have any problem slandering. So the thought of gossip and slander feels arousing, and I do it and it's no big deal. I almost said, damn. You know? And so the point is we're very confused, and that's why we have to learn to slow down and go, wait, I'm feeling two conflicting things here.
The Cost Of Naming Options
SPEAKER_01You know, so we have a bind alert, and then we do the what you were saying about creativity is like, what would it look like?
SPEAKER_00Well, as we talk through these three points, it can feel like, what why am I doing this? This feels like laborious, this feels like it's gonna clog my day. I'm gonna be too much mental energy. I don't feel like doing this. It is what it is. But the umbrella over all three of these points is that this is the way of wisdom.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is the path of righteousness, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this is hungering and thirsting for shalom. We've done our shalom arc. And listen, if you haven't heard that, if you're new to us, we encourage you to go back to season one. That shalom arc really unpacks the ways that we have been harmed and we show up to this world with harmful behaviors because we're trying to get back to some kind of rightness without Jesus. So all of this bind alert, choice awareness, paradox acceptance is about Jesus, which is wisdom. To go, how do I live with the cross, the death and resurrection of Christ actually in my body, giving me awareness to what I may think is a oh no, I can't do that, which actually may be more right than the things I've committed to that feel righteous, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm not an expert on Homer. You know, I did go watch The Odyssey with my daughter, and you know, to the best that I can grasp from what I saw in the great movie was it has a similarity or an overlap with Moses and the Israelites in the desert. It's Odysseus's own frailty and missteps that cause the length of time he's away from home. And there's something powerful in that. If you want to say the devil or the flesh or just evil in general, convinces us that God doesn't really want us to have great things and to flourish. And so anything we do that's righteous or that's shalom-oriented will probably not be great or fun. Or that's the enemy. When we go down the path of least resistance, not even naming that there's another option, that's when we find ourselves stuck in the desert for 40 years. Why am I on my third marriage? Why do I keep losing my job? Why do I keep losing relationships? Why am I struggling with this or that? Again, I don't want to blame all the problems of our life on just our behavior, but certainly our unexamined patterns, our unnamed binds, play a huge role in a lot of the things we struggle with. And that's why the reason we don't name the bind, going back to bind alert, is it's painful. It's a dying to self. It's like I've got to actually consider something that feels so costly. Like if you wonder where your binds are, one way to do it is just ask, what would it cost you to not do that? You know.
SPEAKER_00Wait, say that again.
SPEAKER_01Allow yourself to have a choice. Well, I've got to go to my parents' house and help them do this, that, and the other. And you're like, hey, you don't have to do that. Oh, oh, yes, I do. Okay, well, you don't have to. No, I do. I have to do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when we were having that conversation about flesh and spirit, and I was like, well, flesh is never gonna be the good choice, but our body feels it's true. You said, This is actually the process we need to go through with any obedience, because then we're actually choosing. It's like our obedience becomes a choice. There's that beautiful hymn of undelible grace, come ye souls, that says his commandments then become our happy choice. Obviously, that is a process. We know that obedience doesn't always feel happy, but when we have weighed out what feels true, what is true, what's the path of righteousness, that's the process that we're talking about. We've named a bind, the bind within our own body of flesh and spirit. We've named maybe a bind that's coming at us from the outside, but we've said to ourselves, okay, I do have the choice. And then it's it's much more beautiful obedience.
SPEAKER_01And I love that. And to be clear, when we say you have a choice, we're not so much saying, you know, even though we are saying, hey, I don't have to do that. It's more of I'm gonna choose this because I believe I'm called to this. I believe this is what I'm supposed to do. That's a far greater and more powerful, happy choice than, well, I have to do this.
SPEAKER_00Well, obviously, if we're raising teenagers as parents, we're not gonna say to them when they're frustrated they have to leave for work, well, you don't have to go to work. So this could really be taken out of context because if they don't go to work, they're not gonna get their paycheck, they're not gonna pay for their car insurance, they're not gonna be able to drive their car. So, do you want to go to work? You know, so we don't just throw this around like you have choices.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you wouldn't do it as a technique for sure. But if I could get into my teenagers or my own head, if we could help, it would be to say, can we change our paradigm from I'm being being forced into this to, hey, let's remember this is what gives us the ability to have car insurance, you know, as a teenager or your cell phone or whatever, or just save up for car, whatever you're doing. And again, it's lifting their eyes to the truth because the reality is often our flesh, it's sort of like we want our cake and eat it too. I'm gonna go do the work. I'm gonna go down this path and I'm gonna complain. And again, you can complain, you guys can complain. But what we're saying is that we flourish when we name our binds. There's a part of me that really doesn't like my job. There's a part of me that doesn't want to go to work, right? There's a part of me that would needs to stay home and be a good husband. And we're moving from bind to paradox, and we're gonna do that through this choice awareness. And it has been said, whether it's an addiction like alcohol or if you're trying to change a diet or anything like in Alcoholics Anonymous, every day you're choosing freshly for that day. And that's a major theme in recovery. And so I think in scripture, where Jesus again says, I lay down my life willingly, let's say you're in the first century and you're being tied to the stake, and it's clear what's coming next. It is still said that many of the martyrs were like singing hymns. That's saying, I'm choosing this, I have agency by naming the binds, by looking at the paradox. Often we're going to do things against what we normally would do. And we're going to spend more time in the future episodes on specific paradoxes. It's really important that we kind of learn in our discipleship. These aren't just theoretical, interesting kind of puzzles to solve, but on a daily basis, we're coming up against these all the time. And most of us just are unaware because we're living lives of quiet desperation, I think Thoreau said, rather than lives where we are awake and alert because of the spirit, even in the hard moments.
Follow The Symptoms And Close
SPEAKER_00That's a beautiful way to end this episode. I am gonna just throw out two very practical things. At the beginning of this season, you mentioned anxiety, headaches, relational issues, some bodily and emotional alerts or symptoms. If this feels theoretical to you as you're listening and you're thinking, well, I don't know how to find my binds, follow the symptoms.
SPEAKER_01They're like the traffic alert.
SPEAKER_00The alerts, yeah. So look for the moment you have a piercing headache or a tight chest or kind of a repetitive fight with a loved one. Look for these things and take a moment, pause. That may be the bind that Ryan and Emily are talking about. The other kind of wrap-up is that we started Story Matters podcast because we work with people who want to change and grow. And we ask ourselves, well, what is our philosophy of change? How do people change? Sanctification is that word that we throw around how we become more and more like Christ, this side of heaven. I would say this three-part process we've given today is a pretty good summary of how we think people change. We're saying you've got to name your binds, you've got to make a choice, and then live in that wisdom of a paradox, and that's what I'm saying.