Book Details
- Author: Shelly Beach
- Publisher: Moody Publishers (2009)
- Category: Women, Christian Living
Discerning Reader Editorial Review
Reviewed 09/14/2009 by Leslie Wiggins.
Recommended. Through personal example, Beach demonstrates how to replace sinister self-talk with God-centered self-talk.
Shelly Beach kept a full ministry schedule. Looking back, she believes she kept herself busy as an escape mechanism, a distraction from dealing with what lurked in her heart and mind. She knew that the person she put forth for others to see and the person who dominated her thoughts were not the same. She describes it as "spiritual schizophrenia." But it was during an intense time of suffering that Beach began to deal with the conflicting voices in her mind. While lying in a hospital bed, she did not have anything to distract her from the voices she heard in her mind. "A parallel awareness stirred in my thoughts," she writes. "I was arguing with myself. How strange was that? I was actually telling myself conflicting things that couldn't possibly both be true." The Silent Seduction of Self-Talk is the story of how through suffering God taught Beach how to stop silencing His voice, learn to listen to Him, and control her thoughts.
I began reading this book thinking that it was about how to stop negative self-talk and "access the power of positive thinking." On the contrary, this book challenges the reader to assess her perception of reality. Are our thoughts in line with what is actually happening? Are our beliefs shaping our lives or vice versa? According to Beach, "we allow our thoughts to shape us, rather than consciously choosing to shape our thoughts. Consequently, we ignore the fact that our mind often becomes a battleground between truth and lies." With the help of a counselor, Beach learned to look at her battles and ask questions that helped her see what she was actually telling herself, then to evaluate her motives and goals. She learned to step back from her thoughts and ask herself, "What are you saying? Is it really true? What is the truth behind the truth? What am I really telling myself?" To illustrate this, Beach shares a personal conversation she had with her husband about a credit card balance. In her retelling of this conversation, she reveals her thoughts behind her words, her motives, and how she was able to control her emotions and her tongue so that she did not sin against her husband.
Another thing Beach learned as she employed these checks and balances on her thoughts was that the roots of her sin go much deeper than she ever realized. To understand this better, she guides the reader to understand an often overlooked truth regarding the fall of Adam and Eve. We talk about the fall as though sin didn't enter the picture until Eve at the apple, but the reality is that the first step in Eve's sin occurred in her mind. All of our sinful words and deeds begin with a sinful thought or motive. Beach encourages the reader to use the presence of evil thoughts and desires as the cue to start praying. She explains that God already knows what we are thinking, so there is no reason to hide our thoughts from him. Using 2 Corinthians 5, Beach explains how to take thoughts captive by confessing what we're actually thinking, own up to the sinfulness of our thinking, and then ask for God to help us think right thoughts, to think the way He would want us to think about a person or a situation, and to think about Him rightly.
Beach shares many passages of scripture that helped her peel back layers and layers of pride, indifference and godless thinking. She explains how the love of God in Christ revolutionized her thinking and relationships through something as simple as thinking before she spoke. She writes, "For the first time in my life, instead of being crushed by guilt for my sin, I felt exhilaration. With each new revelation and confession, I felt a surge of hope. God was talking to me. He was answering my prayers. He was changing me. Self-talk that had once seemed random had become a stream of prayer. My communication with God had gone from a few points of time in my day to a steady stream of conversation." She had moved from being shaped by her sinful thoughts to shaping her thoughts through the power of God and His word.
Despite a couple of places with awkward wording and chapters that seem to belabor the point, I appreciate the overall message of this book. Learning to discern one's own thoughts and motives, and repent when they are sinful is an important part of growing in grace. I appreciate the emphasis Beach puts on using God's word as the standard by which we judge our thoughts and to which we strive to conform our thoughts. Each chapter ends with a couple of pages of serious soul-searching questions, scriptures on which to meditate, an anecdote, and a scriptural prayer. The book concludes with ten appendices, including self-assessments (to work through while reading the book) and a list of scripture references sorted by common needs.
This book will may be most helpful to (but not limited to) women who are struggling with thoughts that are condemnatory of others, who struggle with pride, whose perception of reality is always negative, who are angry a lot of the time, who gossip, who are losing a battle against shame, who are manipulative in their relationships, who feel like they are controlled by their thoughts and feelings, and those who doubt the goodness and sovereignty of God.
