How to Live a Spirit-Led Life in an Overly Influenced World

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Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey friends, Heather Creekmore here. Thanks for listening to the Compare To Podcast today. We are in a series called Over the Influence. And today we're talking about how influence has been there since the very beginning. I mean, if you're around my age, perhaps you remember having a swatch watch or having to shop at Benetton or wearing a certain brand of jeans or or standing in line for a Cabbage Patch doll, which, okay, let's be honest, they weren't the best dolls ever, but everyone had to have one. There's no question, no matter what era you grew up in or where you grew up, you are, you have been influenced. It's unavoidable. In this series, I wanna encourage you, even though it's pretty much impossible to live completely influenced free, and in fact, and we'll talk about this in today's show, we do want wise counsel and healthy outside voices speaking into our lives. But the way scripture prescribes us to live is a life that is spirit-led. And the reason why I'm doing this series is because I believe that so many of us Christian women are are hearing those outside voices around us louder and more, shall I say, instructional than we are able to hear the Holy Spirit. And so through today's episode and the rest of this month, we're going to just be looking at what it means to be spirit-led and how we can be over the influence, right? Instead of living under the influence of all these pressures, all these voices, how can we live a spirit-led life? I'm praying that This series will encourage you. If it does, would you consider leaving us a five-star review wherever you listen to your podcast? Even just subscribing, following the show is a huge encouragement to us, and it helps the algorithms show this episode and this show to more people. Hey, thanks for listening today. Let's get right to today's episode. Hey there. Well, again, I'm so glad you're here today. And if you are new to this show, let me invite you personally to go to improvebodyimage.com. We've got lots of great resources. I've got free Bible reading plans on the YouVersion app. I've got several books and new ones coming out soon. I've got so many podcast episodes and blog posts. Like if body image comparison, the Christian life is of interest to you, then I hope you'll connect with us at improvebodyimage.com. So in the last episode, we talked about this truth that everyone is influenced by something. The question is, who or what influences you the loudest? And today we're going to shift. So I gave you a homework assignment if you listened to the last episode, and that homework assignment was to just pay attention to what's influencing you. I would love to hear how that went. Drop me an email, heatheratcomparedtoyou.me, or connect with us on Instagram, social media, and tell me How that went. Did you notice? Did you notice all the voices of influence? But today we're going to shift it a little bit. Not from the question, are you influenced? Because I think we all know the answer to that. But to the question of when did this start? Did you actually ever get a vote? Did you get to choose this? You really didn't. And so today we're going to talk about where the influence began. And how it began before we were really aware. And then what it means to be spirit led. And how that's different from just being less influenced. Because here's what I hear a lot. Like, oh, I know I'm overly influenced. So I'm going to cut down my social media time. I'm going to spend less time on Instagram. I'm going to take Facebook off my phone or TikTok off my phone. Like those are all good, healthy choices. But it's not the same as choosing to be spirit led. That's choosing to be less influenced. influenced. And oh goodness, I mean, there's so many other ways that we can be influenced that just putting, shall I say, heavier, tighter controls around influence doesn't necessarily fix it. So one of the most fascinating things that happens when I work with women one-on-one in coaching or when women join our coaching groups is that we do have to talk about your family of origin. And we are so careful because when we talk about the families we came from, We never want to shame or blame our parents. We can't blame our parents for the issues that we carry with us today as adults. Now, they might be able to shift some light on the ways that we struggle and perhaps the why we struggle with particular things, but we never blame. We are adults. All the women we work with in coaching are adults. And so we name things, but then we take responsibility and ownership for our response to those things. But here's what's so interesting. We think about influence and being aware of the influence. The family you grew up in taught you things that maybe they didn't even intend to teach you. You just learned something. a definition of normal from the family you grew up in. You learned what normal communication style is, normal conflict style, what success and failure means according to your family. You learned how to handle emotions, whether or not it was okay to express emotions. You learned what is valuable. Now, Some of these things are like silly, right? You maybe learned the correct way to load the dishwasher or you learned that mopping always has to happen with soap and water and a certain kind of mop. or mopping has to happen with a sponge and certain cleaning products, right? Like we learned how to do household chores. We learned how to cook things. We learned what constitutes as a lot of spice in certain recipes. We learned what arguing sounds like. I heard the funniest story, and it was about a man who was so careful to never raise his voice with his children. And He was really upset with one of them and just whispered like in, you know, the very loud whisper, like, I can't believe you did that. And the son was like, dad, why are you yelling? I mean, I don't know what you grew up with, but that would not have constituted yelling in my family of origin, right? We all have different definition of normal and that's influenced us. And maybe you experienced this as you perhaps got married and you realized that your husband's definition of normal is very different than your definition of normal. And there's lots of kinks to work out there as to which way is quote unquote right. But then we also have this greater influence of just like the culture, environment, like the geography, the era, the socioeconomic context in which you grew up. Like you learned things from people around you, from the place you grew up. And as we absorbed all these lessons from our geography and from our families, we began to make assumptions. We began to make assumptions that the things we learned were universal, right? That everyone values thinness or weight. Everyone is afraid of being fat or being fired or not having a lot of money. We learned that these specific things to us were universal. Everyone has a goal to be the best. Everyone has a goal to go to a certain kind of college. But the truth is, none of these things are actually universal. These are just things that were part of the culture we grew up in. They're part of the ways we have been influenced. Now hear me, I'm not saying they're bad. They're not all bad. There's some good lessons and values that you were taught. But I think until we actually pause and take a look, kind of, I don't know, just like zoom out and And say, okay, what is it that I actually believe? And then ask the question, where does that come from? Is that a value that matches scripture that aligns with God's word? Or was that a value that my family held? And even though it was a Christian family, we adopted this other value that was really more aligned to our community and our socioeconomic status and the people around us and what they valued. That's a value we adopted. But it's not necessarily a biblical value. And these values, friends, they are scripts that are planted in our brains from a very early age. We decide who's good, who's bad, what's valuable, what's shameful. What areas are most important for me to excel or succeed in? We talked briefly, I think last time, about the ruler exercise that's part of the 40-day journey. Y'all, if you haven't read my 40-day journey book, grab it now. There's a video. that's linked in the text of the book to this ruler exercise, but this ruler exercise is just so helpful in terms of opening your eyes, especially if comparison is a real issue for you. Open your eyes to the specific area in which you are most tempted to compare yourself to other people. And it's a little bit more complicated than that. But what we find in the ruler exercise is we find this deeply held value. And if we dig further, we find this deeply held value actually came from growing up. Maybe it was your parents that taught it to you or teachers or coaches, but This value you've held for decades maybe didn't come from scripture. It came from family of origin or the culture, socioeconomic context you grew up in. And it's now the driving force behind you comparing yourself to others. And if you can identify it, oh goodness, it makes it so much easier to kind of back your way out of the comparison trap and understand what's happening a little bit more when you do tend to compare. And what I want us to notice the most in things like the ruler exercise, but just even in talking about the ways we're influenced, things we notice about the ways we're influenced, is this reality that these things aren't necessarily bad, but we tend to make these influenced areas, areas where we understand the world through a certain lens, we understand the world in a certain way, we tend to make these more important than just flippant thoughts or this is my way, your way, our way. We kind of deeply digest these things and we make them beliefs. Now, if you saw Inside Out 2, I don't know if you saw the first Inside Out. Okay, there's a teen girl named Riley and in Inside Out 1, we meet like all her emotions and Joy is trying to keep her from ever experiencing sadness. It's a super cute movie. But in the second one, she gets the teenage emotions. But what's really interesting about the second one is it kind of goes one step further. And I guess it's Disney's version of brain science or Pixar's version of brain science. But it talks about how she'll have an experience. And the experience doesn't just like become a memory like all the other memories in Riley's brain. The experience gets sort of digested in the brain to where it goes to a place where it becomes a core memory. And the core memories affect Riley's beliefs. And so I'm going to be a little vague with this because I'm not remembering the actual specifics here. But like if some mean things are said to her, then the core memory becomes like these mean things being said to her. And she internalizes these as beliefs that she is whatever these mean things that were said about her, these identifiers that she is not a kind person or that she's not a good hockey player or that she's not a good friend. And these become beliefs that she holds about herself. And so it's real cute in the movie because the joy, the key emotion is trying to keep these bad things from becoming core beliefs for Riley. So she doesn't believe these things about herself. But we can learn so much from this cartoon because, goodness gracious, as I work with y'all, as I coach women, as Tara coaches our groups, so many times we will talk to women who will say things about themselves as if they're just like a blanket true statement. Like just so matter of fact, like this is what I believe about myself. And they've never stopped to question why they believe it. They've never stopped to ask where it came from, who influenced that thought, which became a belief. And so that's part of the reason we're looking at this today, because friend, you need to know what you believe. This is what my new book is on. It comes out February 2nd. I'm so excited about it. It's called, Did I Say the Right Thing? And a million other micro fears that keep Christian women stuck. It's available for pre-order on Amazon right now. So if you want to go check it out or pre-order it for a price guarantee, go for that. But we're talking about beliefs in that book and just how easy it is for us to believe that we already believe all the right things. And yet we have these blind spots. We've got these little worries about the ways we look or the ways we act or the ways other people perceive us or pleasing other people. And those little worries, I call them micro fears in the book. are actually what reveal what we really believe. We really invest in some of these micro fears. We really live our lives trying to temper all of these micro fears instead of leaning into the truth of scripture. And so that's why this is so important. But here's what I also want you to hear. Just labeling things, just being like, oh, I see. Here's the belief. It came from this. Now I understand. Awareness is not the same as freedom. I think this is one of the biggest traps of modern psychology. It's that we have believed... There's that word again, that if I could just understand something, that's the same as being healed from something. If I can just understand why I am this way, then I'll be fine. I just need to understand it. And I just think about Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. All your ways acknowledge him. He will make your path straight. Lean not on your own understanding. I cannot understand something well enough to heal myself, right? Jesus is the healer. And so while, okay, maybe there's some benefit to being like, oh, okay, that kind of makes sense. That's why I struggle. Nope. I can't stay in that spot just naming and being aware. I actually have to go to the healer and say, oh, here's what I'm aware of. I'm aware that this is my track history and goodness gracious, I am tempted in this sin and this sin and this sin because this is kind of the path I've been on. God, forgive me and help me. Help me set me free. from these things. Now, hear me. I'm not saying there's no benefit to examining your life, examining what's influenced you. In fact, I think of the unexamined influence life that runs on autopilot is a little bit of a dangerous spot to be in, right? We do need to examine, you know, David the Psalmist has searched my heart, right? Like we do need to be aware of these things. But that's not where our process ends. The examination gives us a chance to choose, right? It gives us a chance to say something like, oh, okay, like that's what I learned. That's what was normal in my family. That's a voice that I absorbed and maybe even still hear every time I look in the mirror or whatever. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. It certainly doesn't mean that it has to be God's truth, right? And so acknowledging these things gives us an opportunity to put into practice like Romans 12 to being transformed by the renewing of our minds. There's so much data out there about like the neural pathways and how malleable they are, but you have to know what the pathway is, what you're always thinking in order to be able to change that pathway, right? With the Holy Spirit's help. But renewing our mind starts with noticing, okay, wait, this is the pathway and it's shaped because this is what I was told over and over again from an early age. I was influenced by this. And that's not aligned with scripture. And this isn't right. And every time I have this thought, I need to do something to replace the thought. Now, remember, taking thoughts captive is not where we start. Go listen to that episode. It was just a couple weeks ago. Taking thoughts captive is not where your healing journey begins and ends. It's an important part. But I think too many times as Christians, we've been told, well, just take the thought captive and you're good. And I think it's more complicated than that. Awareness alone, though, tells you what's been steering. It tells you, boy, I have been really influenced by Instagram. But then we got to take the next step and talk about who should be steering, right? As Christians, we should be living a spirit-led life. life. So in John chapter 15 and 16, Jesus is talking to the disciples and he's basically telling them that they need to abide in him. He's telling them how to live. And then eventually by John 16, he's telling them like he's going away and he's going to die and he's telling them some hard things. And in 16, 12, he says this, I have much more to say to you more than you can now bear. But when he, the spirit of truth comes and that's the Holy spirit, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will only speak. He will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the father is mine. That is why I said the spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you. So this is Jesus kind of explaining the Trinity. He's saying the Holy Spirit's coming, but the Holy Spirit doesn't act on his own. The Holy Spirit acts in step with God and Jesus and is guiding us in the truth of God and Jesus. Let's hop back just a few verses to 16 verse 7. And this makes it even clearer. Actually, I'm going to start reading at verse 4. But I have said these things to you that when the hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you. I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me. And none of you asked me, where are you going? But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Okay, the disciples are sad that Jesus is saying he's going to leave them. But then here's a clincher. Verse seven, nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper, there's a capital H on that helper because it's referring to the Holy Spirit, will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in me, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer, concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. I'd encourage you to go read John 15 and 16 for yourself. But what I want you to take that pertains to what we're talking about today is this concept that God it is to our benefit. It is to our help that God has sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of us, to be a voice of conviction, but also a voice to lead us, to guide us in everyday life. Now, friend, think about this truth, right? Like if you're like me, In this culture, as soon as I'm unsure of something, I go to Google. I'm not proud of that. But as soon as I want to know something, I go to Google. Maybe some of you go to Chat Now or Claude, right? We have answers that we can get in an instant. But here's the reality, right? First of all, not all of those answers are good. And if you keep looking long enough, you can probably find the answer you want to find. Like, Like, I don't know, you discover something in your body and you really don't want it to be anything you have to go to the doctor for. So you probably find three articles that are going to say, go to the emergency room right away. And then one article or two or three more that are going to say, no, that's fine. That's a blah, blah, blah. And that doesn't require medical attention, right? Like we can find whatever answer we want to find if we search long enough. But because of the Holy Spirit, we have access. to God and Jesus in a way that should really blow our minds, right? We can pray and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us and the Holy Spirit is going to check with God. That's what it says. Like that, that's pretty impressive. Like that's better than consulting the world's best dietician or the world's best doctor or the world's best child psychologist. Like we have access to the almighty God. And being spirit led means that we are consulting the Holy Spirit to help us to become the primary voice directing our thoughts, our decisions, even our desires, right? And that's a different voice than culture and comparison and maybe your family of origin, right? And emotion. And it's not even about willpower, right? Because we can deceive ourselves, right? The heart is deceitful. Who can know it, right? Don't just rely on what you think you internally know. No. Oh, our hearts are messy. It's the Holy Spirit who needs to lead us and guide us. And so this is what it means to be spirit-led. Galatians 5.25 talks about keeping in step with the Spirit. And what that implies is that, like, this isn't a one and done. You didn't become a Christian because say like, God, I want you to lead my life. And then you get to go do whatever Instagram tells you what to do. Friend, this is daily, minutely, hourly, right? Keeping in step with the spirit. And you friends, it is messy. I had a mentor once that did this like little dance of being spirit led. And she would show how you could take like two or three steps with the spirit. And then like you have a decision that just totally wrecked your day. Like you just really, you messed up. And you kind of get off course, right? And you're dancing backwards and sideways and you're way off, right? And the important thing is when you recognize that you're off course, that you're no longer being spirit-led, that the decision you made was probably not led by the Holy Spirit, then you repent and you get back on course. It's not a straight trajectory up and to the right. You're going to get it right perfectly. You just, oh, you've decided to be spirit-led today. You're going to be spirit-led forever. Yes, that's a goal, but oh friend, no one's going to do it perfectly. It is going to be a messy, oh Lord, I messed up again. Help me. Oh, I messed up again. Help me. But we know from Romans 8, 14 is that those who are led by the spirit of God are the children of God, right? It's, this isn't performance language. This is relational language that says like, really, if we're going to call ourselves his sheep, we have to listen to the voice of the shepherd, right? I can't say I'm a Christ follower if I spend more time following what I've learned from influencers online than I spend following the Holy Spirit. And remember what the Holy Spirit says will always align with scripture. Holy Spirit is not going to tell you to do something that doesn't match scripture. So if you feel like the Holy Spirit is telling you something that doesn't match scripture, no, that's not the Holy Spirit. Okay. And that's why it's important to have accountability and wise counsel and Just be able to have someone who knows God's word and you can say, hey, I feel like the spirit's leading me to this. Do you think this matches? Do you think this sounds right? And that person can speak into your life God's truth and say, yes, that sounds right to me if that's what he's leading you to. Or they can be like, no, whoa, red flags, red flags. I don't see this aligning with God's word. And friend, I think we miss out. I think a lot of us live stressed out, burned out, tired out. very fearful, very worried lives because we aren't spirit led, because we're just trying to make our own decisions based on this overwhelm of way too much information. I mean, how am I supposed to know what's right to eat? Like there's a very funny meme where she goes through like every single, like she's trying to eat breakfast and she goes through every single food and can find a video that says why that food will basically kill her. And I mean, we're talking about like from the creamer in her coffee to, Oats to eggs to gluten to gluten-free things. I mean, just every single thing. And it's like so relatable, right? Because if we try to follow the voices and the influences of the world, we are just going to be frustrated over and over again because the rules keep changing. And I'm not just talking about food. I'm talking about everything, right? Like parenting, there was a big shift a couple years ago to gentle parenting. And I don't really even know what that is, but I don't think it's biblical, but I don't know. I really don't know. But it was like, and then it went to, I think it's an acronym that stands for something not so good, but it was kind of like, I don't know, angry, consequential parenting. I don't know that that one's better. But it was like this big shift from being gentle to being like, whatever, suck it up, kid, kind of parenting. I mean, like every area of our lives now. There's someone out there with a voice speaking into how you should do it. And I just want your takeaway today to be, is the voice that's loudest in my life the voice of the Holy Spirit? Or is it the voice of these outside influences? That's the question I want you to ask today. That's the question I want you to sit with. And remember, being spirit-led doesn't mean that you have zero outside influence or you never listen to wise counsel. Like, that would be stupid. It just means that you are listening to the Holy Spirit and that Holy Spirit led life is giving you a filter through these other things that you are undoubtedly going to absorb. And the Holy Spirit's also giving you the opportunity to have agency and final authority. You get to decide. You get to decide what you're going to believe. You get to decide what you're going to do. You don't have to do it just because everyone else is doing it or that's the loudest influence in your life. So as we close today, here's the question I want you to also think about. It's just, it's the question slash like a little prayer, a noticing prayer, let's call it. What's one thing I sensed today that felt like peace, conviction, or a gentle nudge, right? Because that's how the Holy Spirit leads us. with peace, conviction, and gentle nudges. Remember we talked just briefly last week about the still small voice, right? The still small voice is how God spoke to Elijah, not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire. God was in the whisper, And so the whisper will show up as peace, conviction, or a gentle nudge. I also want you to be able to just see the difference between being influenced and being spirit-led. I'm going to just run through these real quick. But an influenced life reacts. A spirit-led life responds. Reacting is I'm pulled by whatever's loudest right now. Whatever everyone else is doing, that's what I want to do. Whereas a spirit-led life responding is pausing, listening, and then moving. Here's another one. An influenced life is shaped by approval. A spirit-led life is shaped by your identity, which is already given. You don't have to do certain things to be approved of and accepted because that's what everyone on Instagram is doing. No, you already have an identity in Christ. Here's another one. The influenced life chases the loudest voice. The spirit led life trusts the steadiest voice. Loud does not always mean true and quiet does not always mean unimportant. Here's another one. The influenced life is driven by FOMO, fear of missing out. The spirit-led life is driven by peace, even when it means missing out. Peace becomes your compass. It's not hype or urgency. You can be okay doing something completely different than everyone else is doing because you have a Holy Spirit-led peace. Final one here. Influence Life asks, what's everyone else doing? The Spirit-led life asks, what is God saying to me specifically right now? You can ask God how he's directing you and he will be faithful to speak. Friend, I hope this has been helpful to you today. Again, if it has, drop us a review, follow the show, share the show with a friend and have a discussion around it, right? That's how we really learn. It's not just listening. It's listening and acting. So I encourage you to share this with someone who... Have a good discussion around what it means to live a spirit-led life over an influence life. We're going to talk more about this over the influence concept next week when we talk about self-improvement versus self-focus. What is the difference there? We're also going to do an episode on the difference between wisdom and knowledge. Those two concepts, I think, get confusing. Hey, thanks so much for listening today. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing. and start living. Bye-bye. You can be our new podcast. It's proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to lifeaudio.com. Hey, and for more great resources, go to improvebodyimage.com. Again, so many freebies there. I hope you'll go check it out today.