Say It Out Loud Series

Did you realize that most of us… before we say a single word out loud each day… we’ve already had a full conversation.

As we mentioned in the opening sermon of this series, psychologists say the average person has somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day.

And the reality of this truth is that a shocking number of them are negative. But here’s the part that gets me: most of those thoughts aren’t new… they’re repeats.

So imagine this.

What if you carried around a small speaker all day… clipped to your belt, playing your thoughts out loud.

Every time you made a mistake, the speaker blurted out:

“Nice job. You always mess things up.”

Every time you compared yourself to someone else:

“You’ll never measure up to them, stop trying.”

Every time you felt overwhelmed:

“You’re failing. Everyone else has it together but you.”

Now… let me ask you this question… If someone else spoke to you the way you speak to yourself, how long would you let them stay in your life?

Most of us would call that abuse. We’d set boundaries.

We’d walk away. And yet… we let that voice live rent-free in our minds… day after day.

What’s even more dangerous is that some of us have learned to spiritualize it. We confuse humility with self-hatred. We confuse conviction with condemnation. We confuse being “realistic” with being relentlessly negative.

But Jesus never spoke to broken people the way we speak to ourselves. He spoke life. He spoke identity. He spoke truth that healed instead of putting labels on people that crushed them.

And today, the question isn’t whether you have a voice shaping your thoughts…The question is: Is that voice leading you toward life—or slowly draining it from you?

Because life-giving attitudes don’t start with pretending everything is fine. They start when we stop agreeing with every negative thought that crosses our mind… and start letting truth speak louder.

Today is week #4 in our series “Every Thought Captive” based on the book and sermon series by Kyle Idleman. In his sermon, “Say it out Loud” Kyle brings up the amazing story that is found in the Old Testament in the book of Ezekiel chapter 37.

We’re going to take a look at that story and draw some spiritual truths from it, that I believe will help us to continue taking every thought captive.

Look at verse 1 and 2 The Lord took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with bones. 2 He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor. They were scattered everywhere across the ground and were completely dried out.

So the first truth is this… often times in our lives…

1. God brings you face to face with your thoughts.

Ezekiel is led back and forth through the valley and he doesn’t just see the bones… he studies them… and he see that “They were very dry.”

Now… that phrase matters. What it shows Ezekiel is that this wasn’t a recent loss. This was a long-term defeat. These bones were “dry”.

What we often try to do is, we will often try avoid hard thoughts. But sometimes God brings us right into them.

Now… Why would a loving God want you to do this? It’s because you can’t renew what you refuse to confront. If we don’t learn to face some hard stuff and call it for what it is… we can’t take it captive and renew our thinking about it.

Let me ask you… What thought has been “very dry” in your mind?

Maybe it’s a belief you’ve carried for years. Maybe it’s a label you’ve accepted. Maybe it’s a narrative you keep repeating

Now… again… like we discussed last week, God doesn’t expose dry places to shame you… He reveals them so He can redeem them.

Let me ask you this? How many of you have you ever avoided stepping on a scale after the holidays? And you do this… because you know what it’s going to say… but you still blame the scale.

“This thing must be broken.” No—it’s just telling the truth you didn’t want to face.

God does the same thing spiritually. He doesn’t bring us into the valley to shame us… He brings us there to show us what’s actually going on.

Remember what we mentioned last week, “You can’t heal what you won’t reveal.” Well, that is still true this week.

Some of the strongest believers carry the driest bones because they’ve learned how to function without ever facing what’s dead on the inside. God walks Ezekiel through the valley because renewal begins with honesty.

I don’t know if anyone here has every been involved with Alcoholics Anonymous but the first step in getting better is this…