The Link Between Spiritual Self-Awareness and a Heart Change

Russ Ewell

Oh! Great question. Perfect. Because it leads into some stuff I think we should talk about before we go. How do go from being self-aware to changing our hearts? So the first thing is, our heart changes as soon as we become self-aware. So that’s the key. Like that self-awareness is a change of heart. When I read the Adulteration of Alcoholics book and did a lot of other work on my life, just doing that work changed my heart. And the way to think about it is that if you are going through life and you just think, and I’ve got people that I know like this, you just think school is incredibly difficult. It’s always hard. But then you get tested and you find out you have dyslexia and suddenly you’re like, wait a minute. Now I understand. And I know a lot of people who are older who in school, they were just considered dumb or, you know, unmanageable, all these terrible things. But what it was is the people in the classroom or the people in the school

were not paying attention to the fact that they had a learning challenge. And so self-awareness in and of itself can change your heart the same way having a test given to you to tell you what you may be struggling with as far as a disability or a learning challenge. I’m not sure, I can’t remember the current language that’s best used, but you have a learning challenge. The reason that that’s important is so that instead of you feeling dumb, you’re able to go, I just need

to have some facilitation. I need to have some accommodation to make it possible for me to be successful. And that’s what I like about the world we live in today, as opposed to the one I grew up in. There’s a lot more recognition that there’s different styles of learning and so we have to think about it the same way. When I understand myself better, I feel less stress about who I am. I’m more generous and gracious to myself. And I can also take advantage of the tools that will help get where I need to be, if that makes sense.

Now this funnels really well into what I want to do before we go. I think, you know, a lot of people are trying to tackle self-awareness and I think they’re going to work on it in their relationship with God, in their relationship with people, in life, but they want a blueprint. Well, how do I think about it? How do I process it? Let me read a scripture, Psalm 32:8. 

The Lord says, I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Do not be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control. 

Now I referred to this in our last podcast or one of our past podcasts but I want to go over this scripture and I want to allude to a few others. Again he says, Lord says, will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Psalm 32, 8 and 9. You can also go back and read Hebrews chapter 12 which in the NIV and I think the NASB and several of the

translations talks about the discipline of God, but I like the NIRV because the NIRV gives us, think, a better understanding of the original languages as opposed to the language and words we use today, and it uses the word training. God is like a parent, and He’s constantly, when He says He’s advising us and watching over us, it’s like a parent helping us to grow, helping us to crawl, helping us to talk. Helping us to get the skills we need to be able to become the human being, the adult, whatever that we need to be. And what it says after verse 8 is, not be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bed and bridle to keep it under control. The key to self-awareness is to be sensitive, not senseless. Awareness is knowing where you are spiritually, knowing where you are socially knowing where you are emotionally, knowing where you are intellectually. Do those kind of make sense, Mike.

Russ Ewell

Yeah, the way to look at the skills we’ll talk about is there are tools to help us get where we need to be. They’re not, they’re not the where we need to be. So time management is not the where you need to be. You don’t sit around and go, I’m bad at time. There are some really brilliant people who aren’t great at time management. So it’s not like, oh yeah, if I don’t have all these, it’s not worthwhile. What you have to do is you have to go, well, what do I want? What do I believe God wants to do with my life? Then let me look at the tools. We call them 20 and that’s what people go, that 20, that’s too many. just try to not count and try to enjoy. That’d be all I’d say.

Russ Ewell

Yeah, yeah.

100%. Well, I’m gonna think about, we’re talking about bands a lot. I like sports too. I’ll stay with the band analogy. You know, the Beatles, the E Street Band, James Brown’s bands, all these bands, you know, today bands like Coldplay or I learned about a new guy, I gotta go get his name that I’ve been sort of listening to. But you have drummers, you have saxophone players, you have lead guitar players, you have bass players, know, rhythm guitar players. You have percussion you know, and then you have piano. There’s all these instruments that when they’re together they make harmony. So what we have to think about is how do I create my team? So if I’m really strong in two of these 20 areas, I might want to, if I’m going to try to build a team that’s going to do something or reach a goal or we want to even have fun together, I might want to say, these are the kind of people I want to compliment me. So there’s a whole lot of ways to look at this and to enjoy doing it. But let’s just stick with the first one because I think the first one is non-negotiable. If you and I don’t develop self-awareness, we won’t even know who we need. And if we don’t develop self-awareness, guess who we won’t need? We won’t see our need for God.