How to Reach Spiritual Tipping Points

15 Oct How to Reach Spiritual Tipping Points

Understanding the brain can guide and accelerate spiritual growth.

There are over 100,000 miles of electrical wiring in the brain, and every time you think a thought, it travels along a path in that electrical wiring.  If you think the same thought twice, it takes the same path.  If you think the same thought a hundred times, it takes the same path and a thousand times… the same path.

Each additional time you think that thought, the brain changes, and it strengthens that thought, making it easier to think it next time. 

It is like walking across the lawn. If you walk across it once, it makes no permanent impact. Walk across the lawn a hundred times, it creates a path… a thousand times creates a rut. The more you walk, the deeper the impact.  Same with the brain.  

In addition, if you have opposing thoughts, those old thoughts will weaken as the new thought is strengthened.

We can encourage new neurological pathways

For example, let’s imagine that you work for a difficult boss, and you have thought a thousand times that your boss is a jerk.  But let’s say the Holy Spirit goes to work on your attitude convincing you of three important things:

1. Your boss may have had a difficult childhood with critical and demeaning parents, and that if you had experienced the rejection he did in childhood, you might be worse than he is. Or maybe there is some other reason why he is so difficult, and you should give him a break.  (Romans 15:1)
2. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves and do unto others as we would have others do unto us. So, if we were in our neighbor’s shoes and would appreciate it if someone gave us a break, we should give him a break. (Luke 6:31)
3. Scripture says we are to serve our boss as though we were serving Christ.(Colossians 3:22-24)

So, let’s say we reduce those thoughts to three affirmations that we review daily on our way to work:

1. Don’t criticize someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes.
2. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
3. Serve the Lord by serving your boss.

Each time you think those new thoughts, you strengthen them, so the more frequently you reinforce them, the stronger they grow.

We can discourage old neurological pathways

However, the old thoughts of your boss being a jerk have their own very deep neurological pathways, and for a while it doesn’t seem as though the new affirmations are working.  Whenever there is a trigger, your first thought takes the old, unhelpful neurological pathway instead of the new, helpful one.

But there is hope.  There is a type of neurological glue that holds these thoughts in place, and there is only so much of that glue to go around.  So, as you reinforce the new thoughts, the brain takes glue that is holding the old thoughts in place, and uses it on the new thoughts.

The result is that the new thoughts get strengthened by repetition, and the old thoughts deteriorate through neglect, like the jungle taking over the Mayan pyramids.

We can reach a spiritual tipping point

As the new pathway is built up and the old pathway deteriorates, eventually it becomes easier for the brain to take the new, helpful path rather than the old, unhelpful path, and at that point, you have a spiritual tipping point.

You experience a surge of spiritual growth that doesn’t happen any other way. 

It may seem sudden.  It was not.  It was built on constant reinforcement over time, perhaps with little apparent benefit until you reached the tipping point.

Conclusion

Knowing this has been a powerful incentive for me to hang in there with Bible memorization and mediation, and the review of strategic spiritual affirmations, when it doesn’t seem as though anything positive is really happening.  It helps me believe that it is, and will eventually pay off.

How long does it take?  Depends… on how strong the old pathways are, how faithful you are to reinforcing new pathways, etc. In a book I’ve mentioned here on the blog before, Switch on Your Brain, Dr. Caroline Leaf suggests that the most profound change happens when we engage in strategic neurological reconditioning exercises for 2 to 3 cycles of 21 days each.  

I just hang in there until I see the change I want.  

Perhaps you have heard of the ten-year overnight success.  In business, in sports, in the entertainment industry, ten-year overnight successes are common… perhaps the rule.  Someone seems to come out of nowhere and suddenly experiences success.  But the success is not sudden.  It often is ten years or more in coming. 

Elon Musk, for example, seemed to come out of nowhere when he invented and produced his line of elite electrical cars… the Tesla.  But he has been focused on the same vision since he was a teenager.  Throughout his teenage years, he read two books a day.  More than a decade before starting Tesla he studied physics at the University of Pennsylvania and then battery technology at Stanford, both in preparation for building an electric car.  He has been working toward his vision for over two decades. 

That is often a parable for change in the Christian life.  As we send positive and helpful information through the brain, it creates, reinforces and strengthens neural connections that physically change the brain over time.   When the positive and helpful input begins to replace negative and unhelpful input, we reach a spiritual tipping point and see a surge of spiritual growth, and we are the ones who suddenly become a spiritual ten-year overnight success.  

Hang in there until you see the change you want.

Reinforcing specific Scripture passages in our brain is a necessary strategy for reaching spiritual tipping points. For help with that strategy, download my free video Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You.

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