Answer the Radio With Truth

4/8/2023

“Radio” = our spinning, chattering, or analytical noisy thoughts that are not of Christ

Turning away from the radio is a little bit like saying goodbye to a dying pet. The comfort and companionship we get from our old friend the radio — is very hard to let go of. “Man’s best friend” is not really a pet, but the radio. Just as an animal that is reliable and always with us when no one else is around is therapeutic, so is our radio of self-indulgence, self-justification, accusation and judgment, mopey, looping, fantasies, comparison, pride, fears, and more.

It IS hard to say goodbye to our constant companion, our therapy pet, our radio. The withdrawal symptoms are fascinatingly difficult and painful.

And yet... Jesus won’t compete with a willing addiction to your radio.

“Inner silence is for our race a difficult achievement. There is a chattering part of the mind which continues, until it is corrected, to chatter on even in the holiest places.” -C.S. Lewis

Their strength is to sit still. (Isaiah 30: 7 KJV)

Inner stillness is an absolute necessity to truly knowing God. I remember learning this during a time of great crisis in my life. My entire being seemed to throb with anxiety, and the sense of need for immediate and powerful action was overwhelming. Yet the circumstances were such that I could do nothing, and the person who could have helped would not move.

For a time it seemed as if I would fall to pieces due to my inner turmoil. Then suddenly “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19: 12 KJV) whispered in the depths of my soul, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46: 10). The words were spoken with power and I obeyed. I composed myself, bringing my body to complete stillness, and forced my troubled spirit into quietness. Only then, while looking up and waiting, did I know that it was God who had spoken. He was in the midst of my crisis and my helplessness, and I rested in Him.

This was an experience I would not have missed for anything. I would also say it was from the stillness that the power seemed to arise to deal with the crisis, and that very quickly brought it to a successful resolution. It was during this crisis I effectively learned that my “strength is to sit still.” (Hannah Whitall Smith)

To those who want to insist they cannot “turn off the radio” — they are mistaken. I know for certain. It would be to your Loss to believe THAT radio.

It is equally certain that the enemy’s radio will try again and again. "Big deal. Be Still. Know HE is God."

TRUTH answers the radio, if you aggressively Deal with the lies, and then Rest, ignore the radio attacks and cycles. Like Martin Luther to satan, “It’s only you. Big deal.”

Simple enough right? Like the guy in A Beautiful Mind, ask others in the hallway if you are imagining the guy with the black hat. Slow down and get input rather than drooling over the aroma like a dog and running like crazy any direction your flesh and pride want to drag you. Shut off your mind, trust others, and be Whole.

About the radio... waaaaaaay back, 15 years ago, we were talking about the radio and someone was helping me with mine. They reminded me how many “stressful” and “full of mind temptations” they have in a day and the intense issues and persecutions. They talked about turning the mind off. That you can, just like you can tell yourself not to take a piece of cake. They said they could literally sleep through a bomb because of training their mind. That they can rest at night, when it’s time to rest. I’ve always remembered that and it helped the tossing and turning and drilling down on my own thoughts a bit. You can literally tell yourself to stop thinking. :)

I thought of the radio when I read this scripture and so I wrote this down: the seed is God’s message... the thorny ground represents those who hear and accept the message but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the RADIO and the pleasures of this life. AND SO THEY NEVER GROW INTO MATURITY. But the good soil represents honest, good-hearted people who turn off the RADIO, and CLING TO TRUTH and steadily produce a HUGE harvest.

A LIGHTBULB moment... After having struggled with my particular radio noise for a year now, which literally messes with my chemicals and can keep me in my room for three days, completely unable to function... I’ve discovered something. I have let myself spiral this way because I slightly believed the radio. I thought I was shutting it down. But there was that tiny bit of doubt in my mind that maybe what the radio was saying was true. And that tiny bit of believing the radio opened the door to chaos.

Particularly with the radio noise of trying to figure things out and get things right and solve all the riddles in my brain, the answer is to shut down that radio and STOP BELIEVING IT. “But what about this and what about that? And what if I really do need to change in this and how do I know if I’m doing it right?!” STOP IT. Stop believing you have to figure it out and get it all right. RADIO RADIO RADIO. You will never change and grow that way. Change happens by communion, by being that little girl or little boy walking through the garden with Jesus. Open your hands. Be simple. “Jesus, I don’t know if there is something I need to change in with this particular topic, but would you please show me? I know I won’t be able to change by turning it over in my mind a billion times and trying to figure out how to do it right. I just want to commune with you. I just want to know your heart. I’m shutting down the radio noise and I refuse to believe it. I believe YOU, Jesus, and I believe you will take me where I need to be. I command myself to not believe or listen to radio noise. I’m simply going to move on and trust.” Jesus is the Prince of PEACE.

Six Things I've Learned About the Radio

1. Don’t listen to the radio to analyze its arguments and refute them. It’s a trap. Just turn it off.

2. Don’t talk back to the radio. It has a speaker but no microphone. It won’t listen to you, so you don’t listen to it. Just turn it off.

3. Don’t expect God to turn the radio off for you. Do you ask God to help you eat a banana? Or make a dentist appointment? Both of those things are significantly harder to do than turning off the radio. Turning the radio into some kind of (hyper)spiritual battle gives it power it doesn’t have. “Oh, it’s only you.”—Martin Luther. God’s already given you everything you need. Grab the knob and turn left until you hear a click.

4. Don’t think that whining to others about the radio will help anything. I’ve done that for decades and it has NEVER helped. Know why? Because the radio can’t be “fixed.” It already works all too well. Whining about it just amplifies it. Turn it off!

5. The radio is not your cross to bear. Take a look at a picture of a cross. Then take a look at a picture of a radio. See any similarities? A cross is for other people. A radio is just a radio. JUST TURN THE STUPID THING OFF.

6. And the “Free Time” gained when you do shut it off is AMAZING! The “Free” time to worship and pray and care for others is — even more motivation to keep the stupid thing clicked off! The “Rich” can find themselves “Richer and Richer.”

Why all of this discussion of controlling “the radio”? Because it is foundational in anyone’s Future and Destiny.

We are CREATED “in God’s Image.” We are sentient, thoughtful CREATORS—as is God. The wrong Tree was the Tree of knowing stuff, thinking stuff, having opinions and desires about ourselves, and about others, about God, and about stuff. The Word, the Logo, was with God, IS God. The Word, the Idea, the Thought became flesh and blood and dwelt with humans.

We can and we will be “creators.” In God’s image.

The supernatural Path, defined all of the way back in the Garden, is NOT the natural man flesh path of thinking and comparing and wanting and judging. It is the other Tree where the SUPERnatural, God-likeness Dwells: LIFE AND LOVE AND BEING, rather than knowing and opining and lusting.

A Fruit of the Spirit is SELF-CONTROL. God empowers us to CHOOSE His Life over ourselves.

The “creation” (or “destruction”) dwells within us all who were Created in His image. We are a coin stamped with his likeness, a sculptured figurine, a rag doll that is capable of “coming to Life” as Pinocchio and the Velveteen Rabbit and Neo came to Life under certain conditions. Even the stories that capture us as little children are the Eternity that is written on our hearts.

The Destroyer insists we THINK THINK THINK about ourselves and our stuff, that we plan and compare and wrestle over things as mystical as “our reputation” and as temporary as “the cares and worries of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches.” “THINK THINK THINK” and “WANT WANT WANT” in this present age, he says.

RADIO!

Don’t.

The POWER OF GOD lies in an entirely different “mechanism” of LOVE that YOU can access — IF you utilize the Fruit of the Spirit, the Full Armor of God, to intentionally alter what you lean on, believe in, and want.

As we stand in front of a pane of glass, a picture window, our eyes can focus on our reflection or our eyes can see straight through into the creation. It’s a choice.

12/2/2024

I’ve talked to a couple of dozen people who refused to identify as “radio” or “motor” their destructive thoughts and feelings about themselves, about situations, or about others. Their unconfronted thoughts and the noise they continue to allow to play—rather than cast down—is “the exception” and “not really radio”—and they seem to not care if refusing to cast down this radio destroys their life or other people’s lives. “I beg you” please reconsider and capture every single radio or motor that is not inside of Jesus character and all about Jesus?

“But I BEG you ... For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down, demolishing, strongholds, casting down, throwing down, imaginations, motors, radios (‘judgments, computations, reasonings, arguments’) and every high thing (‘the created sphere above the earth in which supernatural powers rule, all arrogance, every proud conceit, like a fortress with high walls and great towers’) that exalts itself against the knowledge, truth, character of God, bringing every, totally, completely, every thought into captivity, utter, complete no-negotiating prisoner to the obedience (‘compliance, submission’) of Christ, the anointing, the anointed one.”

Radio at the Tree in the Garden: “God’s trying to cheat you!”

Turning off the radio of Satan that exalts itself against God’s Plan and Love: “Oh Father! You’ve given us each other, and a Garden, and Life. THANK YOU!”

•  What Do You Do With a Radio?