Inner Critic
There’s a lot of talk in psychology about your inner critic, the voice that constantly tells you you’re not good enough, that what you do is not good enough, and that who you are is insufficient.
It is assumed that the inner critic is simply a part of you. For some, the inner critic plays a big role in their inner dialogue. For others it is just a little nagging voice in the background that pops up on occasion, but isn’t given the authority to make decisions for them.
Many mental health professionals will tell you that you can go back in time, look at your history, and you can pinpoint with great precision where that inner critic came from.
In the natural, carnal, documentable reality, this philosophy and practice works. You can look back without too much effort and identify who first told you that you can’t do anything right. You can look back at where perhaps your brother or sister always seemed to do everything right while you kept getting it wrong.
You can rehearse with great detail the moment the little boy on the playground told you you were ugly, your math teacher asked you if you were really that stupid or just pretending that you didn’t understand, or the moment the cheer coach said that you were just a little too heavy to be on their squad.
You might even be able to describe what kind of a day it was, if it was rainy, snowy, or a bright beautiful clear sky. You likely remember exactly where you stood and who was around you when it happened. You might even be able to identify the type of cologne your teacher was wearing. It is as though that moment became a four dimensional memory involving all of your senses.
Even something as simple as words spoken over you can cause a “post traumatic stress” response in your body. When these memories repeatedly cause the stress response in your body, psychology will label it a PTSD or a disorder caused by the recollection of the event.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. That’s a nice thought, but it is not biblical.
Proverbs 18:21 tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat it’s fruit.
Proverbs 12:18 tells us that the one who speaks rashly is like the piercing of a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
James 3:5-6 says that even though the tongue is so small, it boasts of great things. Even a forest can be set ablaze by a small fire.
Words hold power.
Words hold the power to keep us stuck or set us free, depending on which words we choose to agree with, but whether it was a little boy on a playground, a math teacher, a cheer coach, your brother or sister or even your mom or dad who said those words, those words have roots that go beyond that person.
Every word spoken either came from a seed of eternal truth or deception.
Every word that we say or even think spiritually has a root, it either came from the God of all truth, or the father of lies. Period. I’ve come to believe that we as humans do not have ANY original thoughts. Every thought we have ever had has a source, and even if we can identify the mouth it came from, that does not identify the source. Even the most godly person you know can unknowingly speak words that did not come from God and lead you to agree with the enemy.
Learning to identify the spiritual root is much more effective than blaming the thought on our inner critic or someone in our past. When you learn to identify the source of the thought spiritually, you can permanently disarm what pop culture refers to as the inner critic.
The only way to “know, that you know, that you know” whether a thought comes from God is to KNOW the voice of God. Jesus says in John that He is the good Shepherd, His sheep know His voice. He goes out ahead of them, and they follow because they know His voice.
John 10:11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.”
John 10:14 “I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.”
John 10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
John 10:4-5 “And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”
Read that all in context…John 10, the whole chapter, then ask the LORD, “God, how can I know your voice?”
How can you know that you know the voice of God?
I want to have you try something. Right now, right where you’re at, close your eyes and imagine yourself saying your name.
That’s what God sounds like.
Now again, close your eyes, and imagine yourself saying your name.
That’s what the enemy sounds like, so how do you know the difference?
1) The most important factor in being able to discern the voice of God is knowing what He says in His Word, the Bible. When God through the Holy Spirit speaks to you, He will never disagree with the written Word of God, the Bible. The first question to ask yourself when you have a thought that you are not sure if it comes from God is to ask does this thought disagree with what is in the Bible?
If what you are thinking disagrees with the written Word of God, the conclusion would be that either you are wrong, or the Bible is not true. I tend to assume that I am the one who is wrong.
When I lived with all of the symptoms of bipolar, I would have many thoughts that felt so real to me that I would say I know the Bible says (insert biblical truth), but I feel like (insert the lie).
Now, I am stubbornly unwilling to entertain thoughts that disagree with the Bible.
2) when I accepted, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit came to live in me, and I became a new creature in Christ, so if the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, then that is the fruit of my spirit.
This means that any thought that I have that disagrees with my new character in Christ does not belong to me. So if I have thoughts that are angry, resentful, impatient, or if I am feeling like I don’t have self-control… I know that thought did not come from God and so I cast it down.
3) Philippians 4:8 tells us what we should be thinking about. Finally, Brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think on such things. If the thought that I am meditating on does not fit that description, I have to question whether that thought came from God, and most often the answer is probably not.
4) I spent years of my life wrestling with behaviors that I did not want to do, but I felt like a slave to those behaviors and thoughts. John says that who the Son sets free is free, so if I have a thought that disagrees with my freedom in Christ, I remind the enemy who I am and walk forward in freedom.
When you realize that the devil is a defeated foe and that literally the only power he has in your life is the power of suggestion, you become far less willing to entertain his suggestions.
You do not have an inner critic. You do have a critic, an enemy, but his suggestions come from outside of you and can only get in if you let them in.
I do not have an inner critic. Sometimes the LORD is confronting behavior that is contrary to my character, but that is not a critic, that is conviction, and that is for my benefit.
The enemy is not trying to convict you of wrongdoing so that you can do better, he is seeking to destroy you through condemnation. Don’t let him.
For the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
Revelation 12:10b-11
It doesn’t matter what the enemy says because he is already defeated. What matters is that you refuse to entertain what he has to say. He only gets power when you agree with his suggestions, so don’t.