I'm a thinker, there's more to this life, don't wanna be weaker
And fade in the night
I'm on a search for life, finding jewels inside of me
I'm on a search for life, for a love that's bigger than me
I'm on a search for life
Welcome to our session entitled The Shame Game
And in this session we try to get a handle on the fourth of these misbeliefs that are so easy for broken hearts to believe
We have been seeking to build a case for the fact that we were created in the image of God
And primarily our cry is for intimacy, firstly with God and then with others
That out of the loss that came through the fall, out of the loss of an intimate and deep relationship with God
Has flowed such brokenness that our hearts find it very easy to believe things that are not true
We looked at the performance trap, the fact that it is really easy to believe that unless you can achieve certain standards in your life
You will never be loved, accepted and valued
We looked at the approval trap, the lie that it is so easy to believe that unless certain people in your life
Give you okay messages that you can never feel relaxed, good about yourself
You can never feel free to relax and enjoy being who you are
And we saw last week the ease with which we believe the idea that when we make mistakes there ought to be punishment for that
That every wrong we do ought to be accompanied by some kind of a bad experience
We looked at the belief that flows from our moral make up that recognizes that certain things are wrong and that wrongs ought to be addressed
And these things compound in us to make it so easy to believe things that are not true
We have been looking at the fact that for every misbelief in the human heart Jesus has something to say to us
For our belief about performance he has the promise of justification
That he would give us the free gift that we would look as good in heaven's eyes as he does himself, a free gift
We looked at the fact that in the approval trap he would give us a relationship with God that can never be taken away
That God would become our friend again, that it would be safe for us to come home
That God would no longer be to us a judge but he would be to us a father
We saw the truth of reconciliation was intended to give us a tremendous sense of peace
Even when people who are important to us are maybe not approving of us or giving us the okay messages
Last week we looked at the wonderful truth of propitiation that Jesus has already dealt with the punishment issue
And that punishment has been disconnected from our lives
God does want us to change and he will discipline but it's got nothing to do with punishment
It's about healing and strengthening
And tonight we're going to deal with the endemic problem that people have with shame
Look to your notes for one moment and then we'll talk a little
We make mistakes, we are not perfect, we have a catalogue of experiences that have hurt us
We have habits and behaviour patterns we judge as unworthy but we have difficulty overcoming
This provides the ammunition for the belief that there is something wrong with us that can never be repaired
Remember in our second session on the fall we identified the origin of shame right there in the brokenness
That occurred in the garden with our first parents and is our experience to this day
Being moral beings we have an intense sense of self-evaluation
We weigh ourselves in the balances and something intuitively is aware that we are not perfect people
In fact the emotion of the human heart goes way beyond guilt
Now we describe guilt as an emotion that says to our hearts I have done the wrong thing
Guilt relates to the issue of behaviour, behavioural choices
But shame is a far more endemic and damaging emotion than guilt
You can do something about guilt, you can say sorry, you can confess, you can change a way of behaving
But shame goes to the very core of how you feel about you
And shame says it's not just that I have done the wrong thing, shame says I am defective to the core of my being
Shame has to do with who you are, not just what you do
In fact you could describe shame as a kind of soil that affects the human heart
When we come to the issue of shame, shame is more than just a feeling about behaviour
It's a feeling about who we are and it becomes as it were the soil of our soul
It's like poison soil and out of that soil all kinds of bad and ugly plants will grow
We looked at it during the cycle of addiction about the fact that when our hearts are wounded with a sense of shame
Our tendency will be to feel in that shame a great deal of pain
And that pain is the engine and the fuel of the cycles of addiction
So that ugly plants of addiction grow out of the pain of shame
It has a profound influence upon our lives and it is endemic
There is not a man or a woman alive who is a thoughtful, sensitive human being
Who doesn't wrestle with these kinds of feelings at least from time to time
And it gives the ground for us to believe this particular lie
I am what I am, I cannot change, I'm hopeless
The feeling that I'm a hopeless person
Now the impact of shame surfaces in many ways
For example a past mistake or sin can never be undone, therefore I have no future
Believing that kind of a perspective on your life
I'll never forget a story which my senior pastor Hal Oxley shared with me years ago
About someone who decades ago he had counseled wrestling with a nervous breakdown
The person had been a nurse and over a period of years had been promoted to higher and higher levels of responsibility
Until eventually she had a nervous breakdown
In sharing with her this person eventually began to utter through tears
I just can't be trusted, I just can't be trusted
At the back of that pain and that utterance was a story so simple that it's hard to believe it could have such an impact
Years before as a younger person she had gone into a store and stolen three cassettes
Stealing those three cassettes weighed on her conscience and said to her you are an untrustworthy person
So it went beyond the thought that you made a mistake to the idea you're a broken individual and a person like you can't be trusted
Then as the promotions in her career pushed her into higher and higher levels of responsibility
That inner belief that she was a broken person, that she was a defective individual and in fact could not be trusted
Weighed on it to the point where she finally cracked
The resolution to that situation was connected with the issue of the guilt that she felt about stealing those cassettes
Writing to the manager of the shop concerned, sending him a check for the amount concerned
Which I think at the time was about a five dollar check
And he wrote back to her and expressed his deep appreciation of both her honesty and her commitment to Christ that had been part of her later life
But here is an example of how shame can provide the belief system that will cause a person to be unable to bear the challenges of life
The impact of shame are feelings of inferiority, feelings like you'll be okay in life but I'll never be okay
You know you don't understand me, I'm not like you, I'm just more defective than most people
It results also in self punishing behavior, shame often leads to pain and sometimes what grows up out of the soil of shame
Is behavior that is actually patently self destructive
One of the worst things that we can do in trying to help people who are in the midst of those kinds of struggles
To get out of that by shaming them even further and it is not uncommon that we do that with children
Children who are adopting behavior patterns that are not going to be helpful
If they're adopting those behavior patterns out of the pain of their life, drugs, use of alcohol, immoral behavior
And that immoral behavior goes beyond just thrill seeking to the point where it's clearly self destructive
I mean not that any kind of immoral behavior is self destructive
But to try to correct that through a shaming process, what's wrong with you, questions like that
Don't you know how much you're hurting people?
Seeking through a heightening of the embarrassment to get them to let go of their self destructive behavior can be very unhelpful
It's the belief of shame, the brokenness within that makes them feel like they aren't anything that creates the problem in the first place
And we need to look to healthier encouraging ways of resolving the kind of behaviors that you could describe as self punishing and self destructive behavior
People who struggle with shame struggle with self pity
Life has turned out badly for me, I've had a lot of bad luck in my life
If only I'd been born at a different time or a different place or a certain thing had never happened in my life
I might have made it but I can't make it
It leads to passivity
People who wrestle with shame often feel that there's no point in them trying
No point in me going to school, I'm just too dumb
No point in me trying to learn disciplines because I don't have the character for it
The kind of passivity that says there's no point in me trying because you don't understand me, I could never change
Shame leads to isolation and withdrawal
Trying just becomes too hard for people who are deeply shamed
Not only too hard but also too dangerous, if I try and fail again it just compounds my sense of hopelessness
A loss of creativity
People who wrestle with a lot of shame often feel that they have nothing to offer in any area of life
It results in codependency
The sort of hopeless feeling that says I need you to fix me
I need you to make me feel good
What do I have to do to get you to do that because if you don't make me feel good I won't be able to
I don't have the power, you would have the power, I don't
Codependency, treating the approval of another person as if it has more power than the approval of God himself
And people who wrestle with shame often experience very bad feelings about their appearance
If only I wasn't so and then you fill in the blank
If only I wasn't so heavy, so light, so tall
If only I wasn't so dark, if only I wasn't so light
And what makes the shame game so dangerous is that it provides the fuel for low self-esteem
Which produces the emotional pain associated with escapism, addictive behavior and self-destructive behavior
The shame game is part of a cycle of despair
But again tonight we can say this, that God has an answer to this
God's answer to this inner false belief that I'm hopeless, I can't change
Is the truth in Jesus about regeneration
Now regeneration is a big word and I've given you a definition there, in fact two definitions
The word regenerate means to come into renewed existence
Or it can also mean to invest with a new and higher spiritual nature
God has something to say to every human being who would love to escape from this feeling or conviction
That I'm hopeless, no future for me, I just couldn't change
And that is the concept of bringing new life from outside you to inside you
Now over the past three sessions we've looked at the fact that Jesus has done something for us
That one of the promises that God has given us is that Christ is for me
He's done something for me
When we looked at the word justification
We looked at the fact that Christ lived for me, died for me and handed to me a free gift
Which is given to my account
All of his upstanding life given to me, put into my account as if I had done it myself
So that I stand in the presence of heaven looking as good as if I was Jesus himself
That's something Christ did for me, we call that justification
Then we look at something else that Christ did for me and that is reconciliation
He because of his death allowed God to take off the judges robe and the judges wig
He could cease from being the role of a judge and he could go back to the role of a father
He did that for me, he allowed friendship to be restored between me and God
It's safe for me to go home, he did that for me
Then we looked at the issue of propitiation
He by standing in my place, by being judged, by paying the death penalty, he bore the roth, he did it for me
He was my burnt offering, he carried to the place of judgment and bore the judgment in my place
That allowed God to look at my life as if there was nothing left to judge
It's not that God ever overlooks anything, it's that it's already been dealt with in him
That is something that Christ did for me
Now what shame does is shame focuses upon who we are
And even after saying all of this we can say to ourselves
Yeah well I guess Jesus did do that for me and I'm thankful that I look as good in heaven's eyes
As he does and I'm thankful that God can be my friend
And I'm thankful that the punishment thing has been dealt with
But the fact is I'm still a dud, I'm still a deadbeat, I mean that's what he did for me
But when you look at me the fact is I really am hopeless, I just can't change
There's never going to be actually any change in me
But the work of Jesus and the work of God for every broken human being
Is not confined to what he does for us
There is another end to this spectrum of what God does for broken people
And that is Christ in me
And what we're talking about tonight goes to this end of the spectrum
Shame says well you can say all you like about this and we're very grateful for it
But the fact is while in Christ I might be all of this, in Lillardale I'm a deadhead
In my house I'm a deadhead, I'll never change, I'm no good
And then God has something to say to you and that is called regeneration
He wants to now talk to you not about something he's just doing for you
He tonight wants to talk to you about something he's doing in you
And he wants to bring you incredible encouragement about the future because of Christ in you
And this is the extraordinary promise of regeneration, I am not hopeless
I have been born again, now many people have heard that phrase born again
Born again Christian, what on earth does that mean?
It means that Christianity is not just a mind thing
It isn't just learning some new stuff and committing yourself to a different creed
A lot of people think that Christianity is just another creed
But the promise of God is this, I won't just give you some new things to believe
I'm going to bring a renewed existence and plant it inside you
I'm going to invest inside you a new and higher spiritual nature
I'm going to do something in you that will change who you are
Something eternal has begun inside me
I want something of his own being within my being
I can change, God is at work in me
I will ultimately be like him
Now I want you to see what the Bible has to say about this wonderful promise
That God has made to us and is making to us
For everyone who wrestles with the internal bogey man of shame
That isn't going to leave you struggling with that
He is working inside you to change things
Let me turn to some passages in the Bible
First of all I'm going to turn to the book of Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1
And make some comments and you can take notes as we go
First of all in Ephesians 2 and verse 1 the Bible says
And you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins
You hear that? He made you alive
It's an interesting thing that when I first opened my heart to Christ
It was at the bottom of a quarry, it was a Friday morning
God had been speaking to my heart all week and the night before he had said to me
I want you to be a minister, just I heard one single sentence
I went to work the next day and for four hours I struggled with the thought
Will I allow God to have access to my life?
I bawled and groaned and moaned and tried to figure out a way
To be friends with God without actually doing anything he said
It took me about four hours to figure out that wasn't going to cut it
And about 11.30 that morning I said out loud
Maybe I might hate every minute of this but I will do what you want
I will yield my life to you
And I guess for me one of the first indicators I had that something had happened to me
Was the fact that I had one of the filthiest mouths of any person I ever knew
And foul language used to just run out of my mouth like a tap
And that day it was as if someone turned a tap off
It just didn't come out anymore, it was something that happened to me
The Bible says he made us alive
Yes it's true we have failed, we've made mistakes
In fact there is an aspect of shame that is quite true
I am a broken person, I don't have to pretend I'm not broken
To deal with the issue of shame
I am broken but a new life has begun
That's the extraordinary thing, a new life has begun
Christ is not only at work for me, he is at work in me
And it's as dramatic as raising a person up and starting inside them a brand new life
In Ephesians chapter 1 Paul the writer of this letter has a real cry
That the believers would have their eyes open to something
He says this, therefore after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus
And your love for all the other believers
I never cease to give thanks for you and I mention you constantly in my prayers
And I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory
Would give you a spirit of wisdom and open your eyes and reveal things to you
In the knowledge of him
That the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened
That you would know what is the hope of the calling he has called you with
How valuable you are to him
And finally he says in verse 19
And what is the extraordinary greatness of his power
Which is toward us who believe
It's the same power which he worked in Jesus
When he raised him from the dead and seated him in heaven
The same power that rose Jesus from the dead
And lifted him to sit in a place of authority over everything
That same power is at work in anybody who will receive Christ as their Lord
You know I don't know how far you've come in these past weeks
I'm not sure where all of you are at this point in this series
But let me say this to you, if you have never yet opened your heart to Christ
If you've up to this point thought that it was all just about creeds
And mind stuff, attitudes of the mind
It is partly that
But I want to say to you if you have never yielded your life to Christ
You need to understand that in doing so
The promise of God is that he will not just give you information about the future
But he will bring power into your present
The world is filled with people who discovered that when they truly
With their whole heart allowed God to plant the life of Christ inside them
That something changed
That an energy and a life came into their experience
That would have been impossible simply by an exercise of will power
By just focusing the energies of your own personality
And if you have not yet opened your heart to Christ
Let me encourage you
That everybody who does can discover that there is an extraordinary power at work in you
Now let me explain a little about how that happens
Some people, especially if you've been a Christian for a while, get a little confused about what I just said
Especially when you still have struggles
The Bible puts it this way in another passage
If anyone be in Christ they are a new creation
All things have passed away, behold, all things have become new
And when they hear that some people are encouraged and others are discouraged
Because they say listen
Al, you're just saying to me that there's this whole brand new life that God wants to put in my life
But I'm still struggling, I'm experiencing pain
Does that mean that maybe my relationship with Jesus isn't real?
Maybe I've missed it
Well that is always a possibility
But it's not necessarily the case
Because you have to understand how God creates new things
If you do, you might not be quite so discouraged
In fact you may be thrilled when you hear how it is that God makes a person a new creation
In 1 John 3 verse 9, that's not the Gospel of John
That's a letter called 1 John which is later on in the New Testament
John writes to Christians and he said
He said I want to explain to you something about being a believer that you may not understand
He says this
Whoever has been born of God does not sin for his seed remains in him
And he cannot sin because he has been born of God
What does that mean?
First of all let's unpack what John just said and get it up into 90s English
For the English of today
John says this
Whenever God conceives a new life and brings it to birth
You won't go on and on and on in your old ways
Because God plants his seed inside you
His seed remains in you
The first word seed in the Greek is the word sperma
Now immediately some thoughts are conjured up
The same God who created physical regeneration
Created spiritual regeneration
How does a new life begin? A new human life begin?
God invented a process whereby a man would have in his body
Sex cells, sperm cells that contain a random sampling of 50% of his own genetic makeup
And when conception takes place the sperm cell containing 23 human chromosomes
Takes together with the female sex cell, the ovum containing 23 human chromosomes
A random sampling of half of a mother's genetic makeup
And in the moment that the sperm and the egg combine
In that instant all 46 human chromosomes combine in the conception of a new child
And in that instant all the information necessary to create an entire human life is instantaneously present
And not one bit of new information will ever be added for the rest of the life of that person
All that will happen will be that the genetic information that is there right from the moment of conception
Will simply unpack itself little by little
Now at the moment of conception you may have there a champion full forward
Or a marvelous woman who will one day swim for her nation
You can't tell, it's just a single cell, 46 chromosomes
Yet all the mental, physical attributes are there written in tiny chemical sentences
And all that will happen for the rest of her life or his life is that those chemical sentences will be unpacked
And they will have an opportunity to be manifested and developed
But not one new thing will be added from that moment on
All you have to do is nurture, keep alive, provide the right environment for that little package of genetic information
You could have a 6 foot 5 champion, a woman who will one day win an equestrian gold medal jumping fences on her favorite horse
You may find a professor or a woman who will be a heart surgeon
Because that's how God does stuff
He plants seed inside, his sperm abides in us
Watching that single cell over the next 9 months you'll find that as each cell divides and multiplies
It takes with it the same genetic information
And as the cluster of cells increase specialization begins to happen
And you'll begin to find out of that little blob a shape begins to form
And eventually little limbs will appear
You'll see cells forming a heart and blood vessels and nerves will appear
9 months later if things proceed normally a child will be born
But even then not all the information will be unpacked
You'll take the child home and notice that there's no teeth in there
Now mothers know enough not to immediately burst into tears and rush back to the hospital and say
Doctor, doctor, there's no teeth in this kid
Everybody knows that teeth unpack over time
But they're in there
And of course if they're not in there you're not going to get them in now
And that's one of the tragedies of the problem of interrupting the transmission of good genetic material
Once the damage is done at that point it is impossible to repair
We need to get it in there from the start
And there all you have to do is feed that child
And months later a little toothy peg will appear
Two years later there'll be so many teeth you'll be up all night rubbing Bongella on their little gums
Trying to get them to go to sleep
And if you've got a young boy there who gets enamored by the fact that his latest rock star's got a beard and a mustache
At the age of seven he can weep and wail all he wants
And he can even get involved in fasting and prayer
But he's not going to get whiskers to come out until the genetic potential is unpacked over a period of time
And as that is unpacked all the capacities that were in there at the beginning
Will one by one begin to manifest themselves and come to their fullness
As long as you provide the right environment
Now this is what the Bible is saying
When God visits you and you open your heart to allow Christ to start new life in you
By trusting him, by inviting him into your life
This is the promise he says
Anybody who gets conceived and brought to birth by God
Won't go on and on in their old ways
There will be changes and this is why
Because God's sperm
God's moral and spiritual nature
Will be transmitted into your innermost being as if it was sperm
And there it will join with who you are
And over time if you just don't destroy the life that is there
If you were to just nurture that life
If you were to just provide the right environment for that life
Over time that life will grow and break out
And be revealed not only to you but to everybody else as well
God has invested in those who put their trust in Jesus
A new spiritual nature
And given time and encouragement
And an atmosphere for growth, you will change
I mean part of the proof of that
Is that I'm standing here giving these lessons to you
If I had thought at the age of 18 that I would ever be doing this
I would have been appalled
I would have been shocked
I could not have imagined that I would want to be doing this
When I was 18 years of age
But at the age of 19 I opened my heart to Christ
Now it took me 7 years, 7 years of walking with Him
Till my desires began to turn
I didn't want to do my life plan anymore
I began to want to do other things
And a lot of the values that I had have simply been overwhelmed
As new ones have grown up from within
And it isn't that I've got a tick list of things I have to do
And every morning I get up and beat myself to do my tick list until I've got it done
Something happened to me
A life came into me beyond willpower and determination
Although willpower and determination have their place
A life came into me that has changed who I am
The fact that I'm here tonight doing this is evidence of the fact that
Not one of us is hopeless and cannot change
Because in Christ is a new life
It starts from the inside and it works its way out
Now the key then becomes for us understanding how to nurture that life
You've got to provide the right environment
And the life of God demands a certain kind of environment for it to grow
You need to be aware of that
Let me give you a very simple example
If I was to take a small little salmon in the right environment
Put that in the right place and in the right temperature and with the right feeding
It will grow to a 25 pound monster
But put it in the bottom of your bird cage and watch for a while to see how this thing is going to unfold
You won't ever get to see a 25 pound salmon
You'll get to see a little withered up piece of thing that will very soon disintegrate and be gone
That isn't the environment for a salmon and if you put one in the bird cage you'll never see what it could be
And sometimes that's what life does to us
You take a life and you put it in a destructive and unhelpful environment
And you can warp and hinder, even twist out of shape, that which was always intended to be
But with a healthy environment things can be repaired
And with a healthy environment is things like honesty
Honesty, an atmosphere in which there is an openness of heart and a willingness to hear and to reflect and respond and change
In that atmosphere, Jesus put it this way, blessed are the broken, the honest, the ones who mourn, the ones who are emotionally honest
The meek ones, the ones who can be taught, they're the ones to whom the kingdom comes
Honesty is a profoundly important element
Secondly, if we're going to develop, allow this stuff within us to develop, we've got to be fed by truth
Ricketts is a disease that strikes particularly children who are malnourished
God's put the potential in there to have strong straight bones
But if you deprive them of the necessary nutrition, strong straight bones will not be the outcome
If you are going to grow, if what God planted in you is going to have a chance to fulfill itself, you've got to be fed on truth
It's like bread
Jesus put it this way, man cannot live by normal bread, natural bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God
In other words, he said, I know what I need to feed on and it's not primarily bread, bread's a helpful thing
But I need something that feeds my soul and my spirit and truth is like food to our inner being
If you don't feed on truth, then what God planted in you will not be manifested
It will not reveal itself and you'll be disappointed
But to feed on truth is to guarantee that what God put in you will be growing and growing strong
Thirdly, you need affirming relationships, the soil of our lives as we saw before, the soil of shame must be replaced by the soil of love
The Bible says rooted and grounded in love, that's the only way for heart to grow
God created us such that love is one of the most important elements of a healthy life
Fourthly, we need the power of the Holy Spirit and isn't it interesting that when Jesus described the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives
He said, I will send to you another person like myself, the comforter
Isn't it interesting, he did not say, I'll send to you a sergeant major
I know what you guys need to grow straight and strong, you need a sergeant major, someone that will really discipline you, make you stand up straight
Make you do it the right way
Now he knew that one of the greatest needs we would have to be strong healthy people would be a continual diet of encouragement
Parents, when you understand what it takes to grow healthy people, then you've got to provide that kind of environment in your own home
If your home for example is unduly focused on discipline, it will not produce healthy people
There has to be a stronger element of encouragement even than of things like discipline in order to produce healthy people
And finally, it just takes time
Teeth and whiskers do not grow because of intense effort
They are in the genetic code, if you feed and hang around long enough
Of course the ladies are not one bit interested in whiskers, the whiskers part
I guess we throw that in because I'm a man doing the talking
But the fact of the matter is that various aspects and elements of our physical being, of our physical bodies
Just don't bloom into their fullness until time passes
No amount of gritting of teeth and determined effort can make our bodies mature faster than the genetic code has been built to do
So we need to allow the fact that God has built within us by His Spirit
Things that will come to pass as time passes and as we exercise ourselves in Him
Let me read to you one last passage of the Bible
In the book of Titus, chapter 3 and verse 5
We'll start at verse 3
For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures
Living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another
That's what these people once were
And maybe as you heard that you could say, well maybe that's how I am today
Or that's how I was five years ago
But no matter if that's even where you are today
When the power of Jesus begins to bloom inside you, things will change
You aren't hopeless, you aren't locked in forever because God has provided a way out
The Bible goes on and says, but when the kindness and the love of God, our Savior, toward man appeared
It wasn't by works of righteousness which we did
But according to His mercy, He helped us, saved us
Through the washing of regeneration, through the washing of a new life
Which was imparted to us and a renewing of the Holy Spirit
Whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior
That having been justified by His grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life
We used to be verse 3, but there is new life
You are not hopeless, keep feeding, keep breathing, keep relating to God
Keep loving God and life will win over death every day, it will win
Life will ultimately win
You don't have to live with a feeling of shame that says, I can never change
The false belief is, I am what I am, I cannot change, I'm hopeless
The consequences, feeling shame, hopelessness, inferiority, passivity, isolated
But here's God's answer
In Jesus, He will put life inside you that over time will simply bust out and change things
And the end of that is a joy and a victory and a confidence and a whole new level of peace
Here is my healing declaration
Now I can say this with confidence because it's mine
But maybe some of you have been doing this course and tonight would be the night for you to say to God
God, if these things are true, I want to open my heart and say to Jesus, Jesus, put that life in me
I want to trust you, I want things to change
And if you will, this can become your healing declaration too
In Christ, I have become a new creation
God Himself has invested new life within me
And there is an awesome power at work in me that will go on working until Jesus comes again
I am not hopeless, I can grow and I am changing daily into His image
I do not need to be ashamed
Now it would be my prayer today that this session would help you to see something about the possibilities of a life in relationship with God
I hope it blesses you, I hope it encourages you
And I hope more than anything else that if you have not yet opened your life to Jesus, maybe tonight you will
God bless you
I am a thinker, there is more to this life
Don't want to be weaker and fade in the night
I am on a search for life, finding jewels inside of me
I am on a search for life, for a love that is bigger than me
I am on a search for life
Welcome to the session entitled The Rebuilding Process Part A, tonight we are going to be looking at the important issue of how healing actually comes
Let's take a moment and we will do a little review
Firstly we have been saying that we were created in the image of the God of eternal relationship
Secondly, that because we are created in the image of a God of eternal relationship, we are created with a deep cry for belonging, acceptance and value
And we were intended to find that in relationship with God
The fact is we have been saying that we are never going to cease longing for and searching for these three needs to be met
Acceptance, value and belonging
We want to be accepted, we want to be valued, we want to belong and that will never go away
And the fact is that we have been created to find that in the presence of God
And we have been created to have those needs met, this becomes the essence of our search for life
We have also said that a deceiver lied to our parents and they ruined their relationship with Father God
Their behavior required Father to stand in the role of judge, the human heart shattered and it reverberates with shame and with fear to this day
We considered the fact that this shame base, this feeling like there is something broken and it can't be fixed
Causes pain and generates and drives the cycle of addiction
By creation we build our sense of value and the conditions for love and acceptance and belonging by reflection
We can't fulfill those needs ourselves, we were created to find them in relationship with God
And when we don't find it in relationship with God it doesn't mean we stop the search
We tend to substitute others for God, the God we miss so badly and this causes us to get involved in the whole issue of approval addiction
The tendency to codependency and in these abnormal surroundings our broken heart finds it so much easier to believe the truth
To believe lies than it does the truth
In our condition of being broken we find it really easy to believe that unless we can get our performance up to a kind of an acceptable level we're never going to be anything
We find it so easy to believe that if certain other people don't approve of us we'll never be anything
We find it easy to believe that people who make mistakes deserve to be punished and that there's a lot of punishment coming our way
We find it easy to believe that we'll never be any good
But we've also been saying that Jesus is the beginning of a brand new life
By his life, his death and his resurrection he has contradicted the claims of the performance trap
Released us from the need to be a people pleaser, released us from the fear of punishment
And promised that he'll never stop working in us until we are forever healed
We've looked at those four remarkable truths, the big words of justification, reconciliation, propitiation and regeneration
And these four gifts from God stand as the foundation of our future hopes and the rebuilding process
Now we've said this before but we need to remind ourselves of this
You were wounded without trying, you were wounded without intention
But you must cooperate in the healing process, you could write that in in that space
You must cooperate, you're going to have to make deliberate choices if you want to be well
You can get broken accidentally but getting well is going to require a deliberate process
Now it's not uncommon at this point in the course for a common kind of a cry to emerge
And that is, Al, a lot of what you've said makes sense
I identify these cries within my heart, I identify a lot of the brokenness and the pain that you've talked about
I see addictive cycles in me, I see this problem with the performance trap and this approval addiction
And I see this negativity in me that expects punishment to come my way
And that the feelings that I'm broken and I'll never be well
But I don't seem to be able to get a grip on this healing you're talking about
My emotions still hurt, I don't like myself very much
And even though I like what you've said and I'd love to experience more of it
I'm still struggling with my thoughts, my feelings, my behavior, the way I talk
And the question is this, why and where do I go from here?
I really want to make progress, how does that happen?
Well it is time tonight not only to remind ourselves of the healing process
But to begin to understand how it actually unfolds so that you can cooperate with it
We've already mentioned before the healing process demands a number of elements
Firstly you're going to have to hear the truth, Jesus put it this way
If you know the truth, the truth can set you free
Secondly you're going to need to hear the truth in an atmosphere of encouragement
Thirdly you're going to have to give yourself time
We talked about this in the session on shame, the way God puts things in seed form
And they tend to unpack over time and you just can't hasten it
Sometimes you just have to be prepared to walk the pathway
Fourthly we've talked about the fact that we need to tap into a power bigger than the power we have within ourselves
And some people that is a problem, they say well how do we do that?
Well tonight we're going to talk about that
And fifthly we've recognized that you must maintain certain attitudes
You're going to have to maintain them, humility, emotional honesty, gentleness
You're going to have to be desperate to be well
You're going to have to hunger and thirst after it
All of the things we talked about in the arena of healing
But tonight we're going to look at how does that healing actually come
What is it that I need to cooperate with in order to find this healing that you've been talking about
Well first let's put something on the table
Jesus claimed the authority and the power to heal broken and wounded hearts
In fact the very first thing Jesus did after he was baptized and he began his ministry
Was to quote a passage of the Bible as his job description
The Bible records that he came out of the wilderness where he'd been tempted by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights
He went to a synagogue, he opened a book and he said I want to tell you where we're up to in history
The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor
He sent me to proclaim release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind
To set free those who are downtrodden and to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord
Jesus said my job description is healing people
That means the first thing we need to recognize is that healing is not just a matter of you trying really hard
Healing is a matter of you connecting with Christ
And Jesus made it really clear that there are a number of elements involved in the healing process
First of all we need to recognize that healing is partly a spiritual issue
And I know for some Australians that represents a problem because we're not that familiar with spiritual stuff
Well what do you mean by a spiritual issue Al?
Well I mean it's like it has to do with another world, with another kingdom, a kingdom not of this world
Spiritual stuff is God's stuff or the stuff of another realm
And Jesus said this, the spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor
And when Jesus said that he said you need to know something about this whole healing process
Firstly there is going to be a spiritual aspect to the healing process
You're going to have to get connected with spiritual stuff, stuff like prayer, stuff like a relationship with God
If you're ever going to be fully well, you're never going to do it just because you know some things
And you're exercising your will and you're trying hard, it has to do with spiritual stuff
The spirit of the Lord is upon me
Jesus declared his mandate to usher in healing that was brought in by the power of God's spirit
And we've got to understand that there is a key role in the realm of the spirit in the healing process
You as a human being are not just made up out of atoms and molecules
The Bible declares that there is a spirit within you, something that responds to and relates to God's spirit
And it is through that realm that you're going to need to receive some of your healing
And I'm going to explain that in just a few moments
But there's more than spiritual stuff involved in healing
In fact, when Jesus quoted that passage, he was actually quoting a passage out of the Old Testament called Isaiah 61
And in that passage, in Isaiah 61, really there's some interesting insight to what's involved in the healing process
And as we read it, we get some insight into what you and I are going to need to encounter in our healing process
Let me read to you a couple of verses from Isaiah 61
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners
To proclaim the acceptable of the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God
To comfort all who mourn and to grant to those who mourn a garland instead of ashes
Then a little later on he says, and they will rebuild the ancient ruins and raise up former devastations
Now as Jesus quoted that, he gave us an insight into four elements of the healing process
Firstly, the realm of the spirit, you're going to need that in the area of healing
But then he also says, part of the healing process is about good news to the afflicted and that is the thinking realm
We need to recognize that it's not all just about prayer
Some of it's about understanding things and that's why we've been bringing truth to you
Because sometimes healing comes in through the thinking element of our life
He said, I came to tell them good news
He went on to say this, I've come to bind up broken hearts to comfort all who mourn
Some of the healing has to do with the area of our emotions
He also said this, I've come to rebuild the ancient ruins, the devastation of many generations
Sometimes the healing that needs to come is in the realm of our behavior
The spiritual realm, you've got a few lines there on your book
Why don't you take just a couple, put a few words on those lines around that little diagram
That will help you understand what we're talking about
In the spiritual dimension here, we're talking about things like faith, conscience, a relationship with God
They're things that relate to the spiritual realm
When we're talking about the thinking realm, we're talking about ideas, the way we reason and the way we think
That's part of the healing process, the way you think
There's also going to need to be healing in the realm of your emotions
And here we're talking about hurts and happiness
The issues that relate to your feelings
And finally, this issue called behavior, the kind of choices you make
The kind of actions that you do and the kind of lifestyle you live
As I just said, one of the reasons people need healing and one of the ways in which healing needs to come
Is that in past generations there have become very unhealthy practices, unhealthy ways of living
For example, dysfunctional families are often dysfunctional because they have copied ways of relating badly from one generation to another
The Bible calls it the devastations of former generations, broken down foundations in people's lives
And one of the ways in which healing needs to come is to relearn ways of doing life, healthier ways of doing life
And these four areas are going to be involved in the healing process
Another passage in the Bible explains it in a slightly different way and we'll take just a moment to add that to the mixture
So you can get an idea of what's involved in you becoming a healthier person
It's found in the New Testament in Ephesians and chapter 3
The Bible records these words
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father
That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith
That you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints just how big the love of Christ is
That you may be filled with all the fullness of God
People ask the question, Al, why after hearing all that you've said am I still not very healthy yet?
Why do I still feel the wrong thing, do the wrong thing and why am I still struggling?
Well this passage of scripture says there's a number of issues involved in people getting to the point where they can get a grip on this new life
The first is sometimes they need to be made stronger on the inside
We've been damaged, our emotions have been damaged or the way we think has been damaged
Or even our willpower has been damaged by bad decisions in the past
And the Bible puts it this way
We need first of all to bow our knees before the Father
This reminds us again of the realm of the Spirit, we need help from God
Secondly he says that you might be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man
In here, in your innermost being, something needs to be made stronger
We're going to talk about how that can happen
He goes on to say that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith
Now I've left a couple of gaps there because that word heart means the hidden spring
That Christ may dwell in the hidden springs of your life
Not the inner springs, but the hidden springs
It's as if the heart of a human being is like dozens of little springs, motivations, hopes, longings and desires
And the way they bubble up inside you kind of causes you to live the kind of life you have
Now this is what the Bible is saying
Some of those inner motivations that spring up and cause you to be angry or hurt or react badly
They're going to be healed by Jesus becoming the flavor of that hidden spring
That Christ may dwell in your hearts or that these hidden springs, these motivations become Jesus flavored
And the Bible says that happens through faith
It happens through understanding and accepting new ways of reacting, new ways of responding
And that takes time, it's part of the healing process
That the innermost being, your hidden springs become more Jesus like
And finally he says here's another issue in the healing that you may be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love
In other words that the internal flavor of a life must become love before health can be your experience
And the fact is many of us have not had very love filled hearts
You've experienced a lot of fear, you've experienced a lot of rejection, there's been a lot of anger, a lot of hurt
But not a lot of love
And here the Bible is saying love has to become part of your makeup
And as it becomes part of your makeup, love will be a healing element in your life
Now God wants you to get a grip on this new life
And in this session what we're going to be doing is focusing kind of on these two areas in the healing process
And in the next session, our final session, we're going to be focusing more on the thinking and behavior side
But for a few moments we're going to think about how healing can come into a human life
Through the realm of the spirit and through the realm of the emotions primarily
And as we do that I'm going to clean this blackboard and we'll look at this next section together
Let's take a few minutes to try to understand the idea of strongholds and what role they may play in the healing process
Now by nature we're already broken people and we're already tuned to the negative
And we've seen that it's really easy in that circumstance to believe lies
And depending on who we are and how we're wired up, different lies affect different people in different ways
But experiences and these little kind of roots here are a depiction of the way experiences can like feed an idea
Kind of like the roots of a tree, so that should a person for one reason or another kind of begin to feel shaky about living
I remember a woman that I spent some time with a few years ago in a counseling situation who was grappling with feelings of suicide
Now the more we talked, the more it became clear that at the back of this urge to commit suicide there was a belief
And the belief went something like this, life is too hard
Now that's an idea, life is too hard, now that wasn't an idea that resonated with me but it resonated with her
Partly simply because of the way she was wired up, but in a broken world, in a difficult world where a lot of things go wrong
It isn't hard to believe an idea like life is too hard
But then imagine that that idea, that kind of impression about life would start to be fortified by different experiences
So for example, she comes from a home in which there are lots of arguments between her mum and dad, arguments at home
And that kind of feeds the feelings of insecurity
Then tragically has an experience of sexual abuse and that's an experience that kind of feeds the idea that life is too hard
Then in class on a number of occasions she finds that she has made the butt of jokes and humiliation reinforces the idea life is too hard
Grows up into her teen years and has again a very hurtful experience of really liking somebody thinking that she's special and then finds herself dropped by her boyfriend
And these experiences, these hurtful emotional experiences kind of feed this idea so that while the idea was believable before, now it becomes a strongly held idea
And once that has been fortified by experiences in life, you can describe that kind of an idea now as a stronghold because it really resists any contradiction that says you can live a successful life, you can be healthy
This feeling, this inner kind of a feeling, this conviction about life says no you can't, life is simply too hard
And we need to recognise that many of us sitting here tonight could well have this kind of vague impression about life or about ourselves
That would have been easy enough to believe regardless of any other events in life but have now become fortified until this kind of a negative conviction about life or myself is so strongly held that it's kind of going to fight
It's not going to give up without a fight, we call that a stronghold
It really helps when you can finally identify these because you realise you've got a war on your hands and you aren't going to get well, you aren't going to become healthy just because you want to be, you're going to have to fight and win ground for something like this
Now we need to add to that a second issue, the idea itself is believable for a broken heart, it's now been fortified by emotions but here's a compounding element
The fact is that these things can become pressurised from the realm of the demonic
The recognition that we do not live in a universe which is purely made up of God and angels, good guys and people
Already we've looked at the world view of the Bible that suggests to us, doesn't just suggest it, it straight out presents us with a world view that says we are living in a war zone and some of our enemies are unseen
Spiritual forces that don't like you and are very happy to see your life go very badly
Demonic pressure
These feelings can be pressurised from the realm of the spirit and when that happens this stronghold again increases in its intensity and becomes more challenging or requiring much greater attention in the healing process
Now we need to recognise that this could be the state for a number of us sitting here, please don't misunderstand what we're saying
We are not saying every emotional problem, every misbelief that bothers and troubles our life is demons, that is not what we're saying
But what we're saying is that in a hostile environment some of these strongly held misbeliefs can be energised from outside and give you more trouble than if you were in an atmosphere where that pressure was not being applied
You'd still have work on your hands but it simply increases the difficulties we face
And so there are now a range of issues involved in the healing process and here's the first one
Because this is an issue, the demonic realm is an issue, in the healing process we must know something about basic spiritual warfare
How did all this problem that we're talking about begin, how did all this brokenness begin, well it began with satanic interference, you can write that in on that page under the heading basic spiritual warfare
The Bible unapologetically proposes that every one of us are involved in a spiritual conflict, let me tell you about my personal experience in this area
I was a 19 year old university student when I encountered for the first time the reality of this
Now I had probably encountered it many times but this was the first time that it kind of got my attention
I was going out with Helen, the girl that I'm now married to and I had never known a day of depression in my life
I had not been a depressive person, I hadn't experienced depression
I was standing in the front yard of our home one balmy, I think it was about April or May, one balmy afternoon
When suddenly it was as if I had been hit by a black train
I went from feeling okay about life to within moments being overwhelmed by black clouds, my emotions became hopeless, I began to feel that I would never be happy again
And with it came a kind of a nagging sense that I needed to break up my relationship with Helen
In fact I'm convinced that that's what this pressure was actually all about, it was to destroy our relationship
I got in a car, I drove across to Helen and I cried and I said I don't think we can go out together anymore
And she cried because it didn't make any sense to either of us
But then I drove across town to my sister's home and there in that night we sat and talked it through
I was trying to understand why do I feel this bad, why do I feel so terrible, why has all my hope for the future gone
Now at that stage I had no idea that this was even a possibility
So it never even entered our heads to pray or to ask God for help or to do anything like that
And so I just suffered it, I just lived under that black cloud and it was a black cloud that used to visit me from time to time for years
I'd have to say that at this point the importance of you receiving Christ or being one who gets a handle on a relationship with Jesus
Cannot be underestimated for many reasons
But the key to beating this, the key to overwhelming this or the key to winning against this
Is that you must have a relationship with Jesus
And then you've got to know how to exercise that relationship with Jesus in a way that actually makes a difference against this kind of pressure
Now let me talk to the Christians for one moment
Some people who are Christians don't think that that's possible
That demons could have put pressure on someone who goes to church and reads the Bible
But let me say this, they managed to put pressure on Jesus
For 40 days and 40 nights he found himself in a life and death struggle with the realm of the demonic
In fact when Jesus began his ministry it was his first port of call
His first port of call was to deal with this, that was his first area of victory
Now if it can happen to Jesus it can probably happen to you
And we need to recognize that every one of us is living in a hostile environment where this demonic realm has to be tackled in the process of becoming well, of being healthy
I'll let you know how it happened for me
I had no idea that this was in fact what was pressurizing my life
Until some years later I had another one of these bouts
It turned up, it started on a Thursday night, it went all through a Friday and it just kept going on a Saturday
It was just day after day this kind of relentless feeling of hopelessness and blackness and there's no future for me
But this time it was connected to Helen and I opening our home for young people
And with that nagging kind of a relentless, hopeless feeling came this kind of pressure
Stop trying to help these kids, it'll never work
One Saturday afternoon in the middle of this black experience it sort of occurred to me that there was something kind of noble about struggling on and helping the kids even if I felt like this for the rest of my life
And I spoke it out loud, I said out loud, you know Satan I don't care if I'm going to be depressed like this for the rest of my life
I'm still going to try and help these kids
And suddenly the atmosphere began to clear
Now you've all had a shower and you've watched the fog kind of fill up the bathroom and then you turn off the hot tap and kind of the fog disappears and you don't know where it goes but it all disappears
That's what it was like for me that day
The spiritual atmosphere cleared and within 20 minutes I felt great
And my head was clear and I could make sense out of my day and out of my life
And that was the first time I twigged, hang on, what's going on here?
20 minutes ago I kind of yelled out, you know, I'm going to serve and suddenly I'm feeling different and this has gone away
Somebody's yanking my chain
That was the day I began to understand that some of this awful pressure, life is too hard, don't try, you can't win
It was in fact a demonic attack
And it wasn't until a few years later that I discovered how to maintain my health in this area
It happened on the way to work here at Mount Evelyn one day
I woke up in the morning and I was facing lots of challenges and I was driving up to the office one day and my mind was kind of challenged by all the things that were going to happen
And I felt that kind of, that hopeless feeling starting to try to roll in over my emotions
And I started to pray, oh God help me and the more I prayed the worse it got, oh God help me now
Because if God can't hear you unless you yell really loud I decided, well I started to pray louder, that must be the problem
The louder I prayed and the more I prayed the worse it got until it suddenly occurred to me that all my prayers instead of being prayers of acknowledgement were prayers of fear
God come to me, God help me and suddenly it occurred to me that God had helped me
And that was the day everything changed for me
Because you see the Bible gives us the key to basic spiritual warfare, it's right there in Revelation chapter 12
They overcame him, that's the devil, because of the blood of the lamb and because of the word of their testimony
First of all, for basic spiritual warfare you have to know that the death of Jesus on the cross cancels the right of the devil to interfere with your life
Now it doesn't stop him trying but it cancels his right, you have to know that
And all of the things we were talking about, justification, reconciliation, propitiation, regeneration, all of those are gifts because Jesus died on the cross
That's what that word means, the blood of the lamb
You've got to know that the devil has no right to do this to anybody who is trusting in the death of Jesus
But here's the second thing, you have to be willing to say it out loud
They overcame him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony, that's what I discovered in the car that day
And for the first time I began to speak out loudly, not prayers of request but prayers of confidence and confession
I thank you my Father that you have already beaten my enemies, I thank you that you love me
I was praying God come to me but he said I'll never leave you nor forsake you
I began to say God I thank you that I will never have to tackle a day alone because you said you would never leave me nor forsake me
And do you know what, suddenly that day this pressure lifted
By the time I got from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill in Mount Evelyn my mind was clear
My emotions were excited about the day and something had fundamentally changed
I had exercised faith in the blood of the lamb and I had backed it up with the word of my own testimony
And that is basic spiritual warfare
Everybody has to learn to do that if they want to remain well because the fact is we are hurting and broken people
Living in a hostile environment and there is a spiritual demonic realm that would love to take advantage of your weaknesses
And so if you are going to deal with this area then you must be prepared to deal with the realm of spiritual warfare
Now let's add to that a balancing word
Don't over emphasize it, some people see demons in everything, demons under the cabbages, demons behind the chook shed
There's demons in everything and when people begin to think like that, that's an unhealthy
We've got to recognize we're in a war but we need to recognize that it's basic spiritual warfare
Faith and prayer and loving God and saying it out loud that is our help and our strength in this area
But that's not everything, it's not all demons
Now even if a person like this does basic spiritual warfare they have still got a wounded heart
And they have still had hurts in their life that back up that wounded heart
And now we're going to need to do work at this
Work has to be done here and work has to be done here
This is in the realm of the spirit, this is in the realm of the emotions
And both need to be tackled if you're going to be healthy people
The healing process demands that you do both
Now experiences can really wound us in this life, they can crush us and they can damage us inwardly
Perhaps one of the most important testimonies that I have ever heard
That kind of weaves a lot of this stuff together is the testimony of my own brother
See we all grew up in the same home, we all went to the same church together
But our lives turned out very differently
My little brother became a heroin addict and nearly lost his life in that scene
He buried five of his best friends and if it hadn't been the day that they tried to kill him
By giving him tainted drugs he collapsed outside a medical center, he would have been dead today
My little brother grew up in the same home as us and yet he seemed to struggle
Struggled at school and then after he left school he struggled, got into the heroin scene
And it wasn't until he came to Jesus some five or six years later that things began to turn for the better
One day he began to ask God why do I struggle emotionally so badly
Lord what is it about me that kind of even though I'm a Christian today I often get faced by problems
And I crack or I feel kind of broken on the inside, weak on the inside
That was the day God began to help him to see that he had had some experiences in his life
That had damaged him emotionally and had supported these strongholds
The first was quite a stunning thing
Who could ever have imagined that an incident like this could change a person's life
He was in prayer one day and he said God I don't understand why I'm so weak or so vulnerable on the inside
In answer to that prayer he suddenly remembered an incident when he was five years of age
He was standing in the kitchen, my mother was talking to my elder sister
And explaining to her the events surrounding Neil's birth
That when she got pregnant with Neil she knew this would be her last child and she hoped that it would be a girl
Hoped that when he was born that she would have the joy of being able to raise a girl as the youngest
And had planned to name him Elizabeth and when he was born she had cried for three days
He overheard that conversation and he said that was the day I got in touch with what happened in my emotions
Because he said when I heard mum say that even as a child, now this isn't rational
But at the emotional level he said I felt in my stomach I've been born the wrong person
I'm never going to be able to please her, how am I ever going to make her happy when I'm the wrong person
He said he then suddenly identified that that painful emotion had followed him through secondary school
Had followed him through his teenage years and it was that gut inward feeling, that terrible inward feeling
That there was something wrong with him that provoked him at key moments in his life
And caused him to kind of react to it and change the direction of his life
We need to note this, experiences break us, crush us and damage us inwardly
And somebody's got to do the healing or we'll stay that way
I was one day spending time with Helen in prayer because she had been kind of miserable that day
I guess it was clear that she was having a kind of a low day and kind of unusual for me
I was sensitive to that and tried to find out what the deal was
The more I spent, we talked it over, the more intensely she felt her own pain and eventually she was crying
And out of the tears came this sentence, it's my fault, it's my fault
Now I realized something was kind of erupting out of her emotions in a way that she hadn't cognitively
Or from the thinking levels of her life been able to put it all together
So I prayed for her and I said, Lord you need to show her why is she struggling like this
And suddenly the memory came, she was eight years old
She was standing in the kitchen with her mother
She'd overheard a conversation between her grandparents about the imminent death of her mum
And in those days back in the 50s people tended to treat death and sickness like a family secret
And so nobody ever got it up on the table and just talked about it and kind of did the grieving process
They kind of quietly kind of whispered about it, no one ever really confronting what they were really feeling
And as a result it's kind of like you feel you're in the middle of some secret that nobody's willing to talk about
She overheard the secret and when she talked to her mum she said, mummy you're going to die
Her mummy had kind of looked at her with grief and not so long after that she was dead
And somehow in a child's system of logic her saying that to her mother and the death of her mother were connected
And somehow she felt partially responsible for her mother's death
And I want to say to you that those kind of emotions, these damaging hurtful experiences
Have the power to kind of influence the way we feel about life and the way we do life and they need to be healed
Sometimes these vague internal impressions, you know, they're beliefs that you can't quite put a name to sometimes
Emanate from even before birth and I know that the scientific evidence for this is not yet strong
But there have been some fascinating anecdotal experiences that I have kind of tucked away in my memory bank
I'll tell you one of them
I was one time sharing on the fact that wounded emotions affect the way people's lives unfold
And there was a woman present at that talk that day who kind of felt like the talk related to her but she wasn't sure why
She had a teenage daughter at that stage who was probably the most painfully self-conscious young girl I had ever known
She was attending the Christian school where I was a teacher at that time and she was such a fearful child
She used to hold onto her mother's skirts and walk around behind her mum
And sometimes you wouldn't even know the child was there because no matter where she walked the child kind of steered herself behind her mum
And she was so painfully self-conscious that when she came to our school the staff needed special instruction to know how to relate to the child because of her sensitivity
Now that night mum went home and somehow she kind of felt that the talk about wounded emotions related to her
And in the middle of the night she woke up, sat bolt upright in bed and back into her memory came the incident that took place during the pregnancy with this child
She was 45 years old, she was a deacon in the Baptist church, she was embarrassed about being pregnant
The last thing in the world that she wanted at the age of 45 was another child
And she said I remembered beating my fists on my stomach and crying with frustration
Now she said when the child was born of course all that was forgotten because well that's behind you now and now here's the thrill of the child
But she said that night I suddenly remembered what I had done, this pounding and I cried out to God in prayer
Lord have mercy upon me and she said the extraordinary thing was in the morning when she woke up the next morning her teenage daughter was observably different
And something had happened in that prayer in the middle of the night
In some way, and this is mystical stuff, I don't pretend to be able to explain it to you
But in some way in the impression of that worm a kind of an impression had come into this child's emotional makeup that life was really hard and very dangerous
Now an amazing thing unfolded in that it wasn't that much longer before the mother gave her, shared this experience in a camp where we all were
She said I want to share the experience I had and that day her daughter was in the back of the audience and heard her mother share that story for the first time
And now the daughter came walking down, tears running down her face and for the first time prayer was specifically made for this emotional struggle that she had
And all I can say to you is the healing has been so profound that she became a street worker, a street evangelist with YWAM
She used to go out the streets and conduct outreaches, I mean the change from being painfully self-conscious to kind of a boldness and a self-confidence was extraordinary
She became a radiant young woman and what we're saying is that these emotions can have significant impacts on our lives
Now what can we do about it? How do we go about receiving healing?
Firstly, in ministering to the bruises and hurts in the hearts of those seeking to rebuild we have found the following principles to be effective
Here we go, number one, receiving Jesus can be one of the most healing experiences that you will ever know
My brother was caught in the drug scene, still living that life in the drug scene when he was caught up in a drug bust by the Commonwealth police
He said to the police, what can I do, what's the best thing I can do for myself?
They said this will go best with you if you put yourself into a drug rehabilitation center
And so off he went to a drug rehab center and for four or five days he remained at pleasant view
But he woke up one night and he looked out over the ward full of broken people and he said, what's happened to me?
Is there any way out of this? And suddenly the thought dropped into his mind, if God's real maybe there's a future for me
He checked himself out of the hospital that night, got out on the open roads in the middle of the night
and by the most amazing coincidence an old school friend picked him up and drove him right across town and brought him to my little sister's home
And there at four o'clock in the morning he knocked on her door and then fell in weeping on the carpet
The next day she took my little brother to meet a minister, friend of mine
And there that day a minister said to him, if you ask Christ in your life it can be the beginning of your healing process
That day my little brother said to Christ, Lord I've been wrong, I need help, come into my life
And on that day his healing process dramatically began, it wasn't the end of it but it was the beginning of it
And I do need to say to every one of you, I don't know all of you and I don't know those who are doing this by videotape
But you need to know this, part of the healing process for every broken heart is to come back into friendship with God
This spiritual realm, you can't handle it alone but the Bible says in the Gospel of John
As many as received Christ, as many as received him, he gave them power to become the children of God
First step to your healing process is this, you must receive Jesus, get this functioning in your life
Get your heart back under the helping umbrella of God's grace and let the love of God begin to do a work in you
Now it may be that you've never, don't know how to do that but I guarantee that if you were to say in your group tonight
If I wanted to be, to give my life to Jesus, could somebody help me, I promise you there will be someone in your group that's already done that
And they would be able to pray with you and help you to do it
Receiving Jesus is the first step to the healing process
Here's a second one, the Bible says in James 5 and verse 16
Confess your faults one to another and pray for each other that you may be healed
The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results
It's amazing the power that keeping something to yourself has
Listen, the Bible says this, here's another step to take
Tell somebody about what you've been through, tell them, tell someone about what you're struggling with
That's part of what the small group experience is really about
And I do hope that in our small groups tonight that if anything here that we've talked about kind of resonates with you
That rather than kind of secretly trying to wrestle with it on the inside, tell someone out loud
Saying things out loud has tremendous power
I'll never forget an experience I had in praying with a young man who had had a same sex encounter as a teenager
Not all same sex encounters are homosexuality
All kinds of strange things and mistakes are made in life
And sometimes people have same sex encounters and then assume that that's homosexuality
And that was kind of what was happening in this young man's life
He was kind of feeling sick at heart and ashamed and wondering what that experience meant about him
I'll never forget the day that he told us out loud what he was struggling with and allowed us to pray for him
In just bringing things out into the light and sharing them
It's amazing how they tend to lose their power to be the bogey man in your life
And that night when he told the truth and said this is what happened, I did this, I felt like this about it
When he told the truth, shared something that he'd done that had been deeply concerning to his conscience
Suddenly the power of it was gone and that night the love of God touched his life and that man went home
And I know from that day to this has never had to struggle with that again
Healing can take place when you tell the truth and ask people to pray for you over an incident
Here's a third thing, the issue of forgiveness
You want healing for wounded emotions, you want to be healed
You need to be aware that there can be a key to healing in forgiveness
Now forgiveness can be a process that takes time
Sometimes like any wound a betrayal needs time to heal
But the Bible does say this, that it becomes critical to your health to be willing to forgive
I remember with tremendous joy a couple of years ago we had during our recovery stream here
A precious lady who joined our recovery classes, medicated and in the hands of a psychiatrist
She came to do one of our courses with his permission and there for a number of weeks
Because she was so heavily sedated, was incapable of taking part in the discussions
But she was simply kind of present there in the teaching and in the group
But something she heard one night sparked her awareness of her deep need to get her bitterness between her and her dad off the table
And after wrestling with that whole issue, wrote her father a letter and posted it
The extraordinary thing was this, when she posted that letter something in the matrix of the pain and the hurt began to break
And within four weeks that sweetheart of a lady was free from any need for medication
You see the forgiveness somehow kind of unlocked what was all meshed and seemed insoluble
Forgiveness is a miracle, it's like blessed are the merciful, they're the ones who get the mercy
When you know how much God has forgiven you and you begin to extend that mercy to others
It can unlock and release some of the most devastating experiences you've ever known
Forgiveness is a tremendous power in the healing process
Here's another one, the word of God is a great key in the healing process
You know my young brother was praying that morning when he finally kind of remembered about that incident with my mum
He was in prayer one day because he was tired of all the emotional turmoil
And he said to God why do I feel like this and that's when he remembered that incident at the age of five in the kitchen with my mum
Well when he saw it, it made sense, he could see the chain of events, he could see all of the ways that emotion had resurfaced in his life
And turned him down some side alleys
But he said to God I don't know what to do about it, what do I do about this
And into his heart dropped a thought, read Psalm 139
Now he had never read Psalm 139, I don't know if he had, he didn't know what was in it
And so he opened a Bible and he turned to Psalm 139 and listened to the words that God wanted to tell his wounded heart
The heart of a young man who had from the age of five kind of got this bad feeling that he'd been born the wrong person
That somehow he was never going to be able to please my mum because he was born the wrong person
But listen to what God had to say
For you formed my inward parts and you wove me together in my mother's womb
I will give thanks to you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made
Wonderful are your works and my soul knows it very well
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth
Your eyes saw my unformed substance and in your book they were all written
The days were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them
How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God
That passage from the Bible said to him this belief you've had, this stronghold
For him the stronghold was how can I ever succeed when you've been born the wrong person
Doesn't make any sense to an adult but when that's supported by painful experiences it kind of makes some sense
And that word went straight to his need and began to release him from the pain of it and set him free
The word of God is like that, the word of God kind of goes to where your misbeliefs are
And pierces them through and begins the healing process
Now here's another thing, spontaneous divine drama
What do we mean by that?
It means that the presence of God is so real that he can sort of give you like movies I guess
In your own heart, in your own mind that kind of explain how God feels to you
Let me tell you how it unfolded for my brother
As he read that, Psalm 139, he kind of could see in his mind as if it was like a delivery room
And he kind of sensed that God was there and that there was a birth of a child taking place
And he became aware the birth of this child is me
And as he was being born he heard a voice begin to say, this is the man that I have created
This is the man that I've created
He said that kind of a picture that filled his imagination was so real that it took the pain out of his life
And I have seen that take place many times
Now please don't misunderstand me
I'm not saying that you can heal yourself by trying to imagine something
But it is one of the ways that God makes real his love for you and his promises to you
Is that he can kind of spontaneously give you virtually a little living parable inside your own thought life
And when they come, when they happen for people, they can be incredibly powerful
I was praying for a girl one day who in her wounded emotions had an experience of sexual abuse
In fact as we were praying together she was crying and she said to me, I just feel so dirty
I felt her pain and I began to pray for her
But as I did I saw in my mind a picture of one of those Italian fountains
Kind of the very ornate things that kind of squirt water in every direction
And I had just said to her, as I'm praying for you I don't know why but I see a fountain
And she said, oh, she said, I see one too
Then I said, I just think God wants to kind of take you into that fountain
Oh, she said, he does, he's taking me in
Now this thing is kind of living for her
Oh, she said, I can feel the water, it's bubbling over me, it's making me clean
Now she's kind of screaming and turning this into a bit of a scene
And tears are running down her face
But you see what was happening for her, it was like a spontaneous divine drama
Because Jesus said this, the Holy Spirit will teach you all those things concerning myself
And sometimes, well all of us know this, we live in the age of movies
We know that if you really want to get someone's attention, nothing does it like a movie
Nothing kind of dramatizes something like the big screen
Now the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit is able to kind of take the truth of the Bible
And put it into a context just like Jesus did with stories in the Bible
And again, let me warn you, I'm not asking you to go home and try to make things up and heal yourself by imagination
I'm saying that in your prayer life this is what can unfold and this is what can happen
And this is part of the way in which healing can come for wounded emotions
And finally, there is affirming focused prayer
It may well be that some of you are going to face issues that are going to demand counseling
Some of you may need counseling for some of the wounded experiences that you've had
When it becomes clear to you what those experiences are
It's a wonderful thing when somebody makes a commitment to join with you
And take a wounded experience or a wounding experience and join you in a focused season of prayer
For the next seven days I'm going to pray for you
And day after day an incident is brought before God and prayed about
With affirming, caring, soaking focused prayer
Healing comes that way
Now I want to simply say to you tonight, you need to understand that there are a number of elements in the healing process
There is this realm of the spiritual, there is also this realm of the emotional
And the wonderful thing is that there is more than one way for us to be able to address those things
Now just before we finish I want to draw your attention to the notes on the bottom of page 9.4
How are we going to kind of discover what these issues are?
How are we going to discover what it is that we need to pray about?
Well it's really important to realize this
It isn't healthy to engage in long introspective sessions, navel gazing sessions
Kind of getting on the couch and trying to imagine all the bad things that ever happened to you
I got bitten by a cat when I was four, I fell down a manhole when I was five
And trying to catalogue or write out all the bad things that ever happened to you
Because often that is very unhelpful
It's going to take God to lead you to the moments that really matter
And as with my brother, that incident with overhearing the conversation with my mum and my big sister
If it hadn't been God that showed him that, he probably could never have remembered it
This is the important thing
Rather than indulging in long introspective sessions to attempt to uncover such issues
Simply become observant of your emotional reactions, your thoughts, your words and your behaviour patterns as they unfold in life
Notice what's happening to you and talk about it with God and talk about it with others
The flare ups, the over reactions and the memories can give us an indication that deeply hidden emotional pain is present
And if this is particularly traumatic, you may need to see a counsellor rather than trying to work through it alone
Well I commit this teaching into your hand and I pray that it will give you some guidance in the coming years of your life
As you continue to walk out your healing journey with God
I'm on a search for life
For a love that's bigger than me
I'm on a search for life
For a love that's bigger than me
I'm a thinker
There's more to this life
Don't wanna be weaker
And fade in the night
I'm on a search for life
Finding jewels inside of me
I'm on a search for life
For a love that's bigger than me
I'm on a search for life
Welcome to the search for life
This is the session entitled The Rebuilding Process Part B, The Renewing of the Mind
It's great to have you with us
And if you've been doing these sessions in the normal order, this will be for you the final session
However, you need to be aware of the fact that it won't be the end of the healing process
In many ways, it's kind of the end of the beginning of the healing process
Over these past weeks, you will have been gathering together a bag of tools that you're going to take with you for the rest of your life
And this session is going to be critical in the process of you living out a life in which healing becomes an increasing experience
Let's look at our notes together
In the course we have been undertaking together, our mission has been to seek to understand the forces at work
That affect the way we are doing life
It's been our goal to discover enough truth to allow us to make changes to the way we approach the issue of our search for life
Now, the process of change requires truth and encouragement, time, power and especially cooperation from you
In our last session, we looked at the critical issue involved in both the spiritual dimension and the feelings or emotional dimension of the rebuilding process
In fact, what we looked at the fact was that deep within our innermost being, there reside a set of beliefs
Those beliefs include the things that we have come to be certain would be necessary for us to experience acceptance
For us to be valuable people, valued by others and for us to be able to know that we belong
Now, people cannot be divided into segments, obviously, we are a human being, we are an entity that is complexly woven together
However, it kind of helps in understanding the issues involved in the healing process to consider that the healing process involves the spiritual dimension
It involves the feelings or the emotional dimension, it involves the cognitive or the thinking dimension and it also involves the behavioral dimension
Last session, we looked at the fact that there is an incredible source of help that can come into the life of any human being
when they allowed Jesus to connect with their spirit, the dimension of the human being which we could call the human spirit
We also recognized that this spiritual dimension is also a source of tremendous pressure
The recognition that there is a kind of a warfare involved over the spiritual dimension that pressures the way we think, pressures our feelings and pressures our behavior
And last session, we looked at the importance of understanding the basics about spiritual warfare
We also considered the feelings or the emotional dimension of our life, the recognition that people in their emotions can be crushed, they can be wounded
and that the issue of healing in the emotional realm becomes an important part of the rebuilding process
Now today, we want to look at the other side of the equation, although it's not really the other side, these things are so woven together
you cannot compartmentalize them, yet it helps us to understand in the healing process to think in these four categories
Now we need to recognize that these beliefs that occupy the hidden springs of our life become the very source of our life
and the source of why we do life the way we do
One of the Proverbs puts it this way, guard your heart with all diligence because out of it flow the issues of life
I guess we need to recognize that these beliefs reside in the deepest parts of our innermost being
and they have got there in a number of ways
One of the ways we've come to believe the things that we believe about human experience and about life has been from the teaching process
We have been taught certain things, people have said to us, don't do this or people won't like you
Do do that and people will like you
We have undertaken courses and gone to school and learned certain things about life
and in the teaching process we have learned to believe certain things
However, many of these beliefs are not there as a result of some kind of a formal teaching process
They are there first of all because we have spiritual foundations
We were created in the image of a God of relationship
and there are spiritual foundations that are woven into our being
You didn't have to learn them, you didn't have to be taught that acceptance is important
You were built that way, you didn't have to be taught that it is important to you to be valued
or it's important for you to belong or it's important for you to be kept safe
You didn't have to be taught those things, they were woven into you from the very beginning
and then added to those spiritual foundations you experienced in the context of relationship
certain reflections with which you have built a system of beliefs
They came by reflection in the context of family, in the context of culture, in the context of religious backgrounds
or religious experiences that you may have had church background
but very largely by experiences you have come to form a set of inner beliefs
Now this complex of beliefs tends to be triggered in our life
when our life is impacted by certain situations
As life unfolds and you and I bump into one situation after another
we find that there are certain emotions and ideas and thoughts and behaviors erupting from our life
and today we want to try to understand more of this side of the equation
the thinking and behavior aspects of the human experience
and what we can know about that that could assist us in the rebuilding process
Come back to our notes for just one moment
As we consider the rebuilding process we need to pay special attention to the important role
played by our thought life or played by the way we think or by the cognitive area of our maker
Now the Bible says in Proverbs chapter 23 and verse 7
As a man, as a human being thinks in his or her own heart, so is he
You get that? As a person thinks, so they are
Now obviously there are limits to that, if I think that I'm a pig it doesn't make me a pig
but I may act like a pig, if a man thinks pig like thoughts
then his behavior is going to be somewhat less than human
and the New Testament or the Bible in the New Testament puts it this way in the book of Romans in chapter 12
and this is important you should jot a couple of notes in the blank spaces that are available for you
First of all in Proverbs as a person thinks that's how they're going to be
and secondly the Bible says this and do not be conformed or pushed into the mold of this world
but be transformed by the renewing of the mind
So here the Bible is saying in the rebuilding process you need to know this as you think
that will be a significant part of the way that you are
and the Bible goes on to say that life could be transformed by the renewing of the way in which you use your mind
Now our thoughts reveal what is going on within the belief system of our lives
and the way we think erupts from these deeply held beliefs within our heart
and they also have a profound impact on the way we feel, on our emotions and the way we perceive ourselves
and ultimately the beliefs erupting through our thoughts and through our emotions
will compound into a way of behavior or the way we act
and this little chain of events goes something like this, it's the beliefs that lead to the way we think
The way we think tends to form our emotions and out of our thinking and our feeling that's the way we do life
that's our actions
Now to say that in a different way we often interpret the situations we encounter through our beliefs
You might like to write that in
To talk about our belief system is simply just another way of talking about these hidden springs
the inward motivations that make us what we are
and once our beliefs or these hidden springs, these inward springs have been impacted by a situation
they will tend to trigger certain thoughts, what we believe in a certain situation triggers a certain way of thinking
and our thoughts in turn tend to be reflected in our emotions, our feelings and also in our actions or in our behavior
Let me give you an example
You go down to the supermarket and as you're wandering through the supermarket you may not be aware of the belief system that's residing in your heart
You're simply there to pick up a few groceries but you took a child along with you
and as you're walking down one of the aisles the child reaches out and grabs a box of crackers and pulls them out
and an entire display collapses to the ground and causes quite a degree of commotion
There's a situation
and suddenly you're aware of a number of behavioral issues, your stomach goes into a knot, it cramps
your face breaks out into an embarrassed flush
your hand almost involuntarily reaches out and smacks a child across the back of the head
and the question is why, why that flurry of activity?
Well, at the back of it all was a belief
deeply hidden in your heart as a result maybe of formal teaching but probably more
as a result of the spiritual foundations, your need for acceptance, value and belonging
along with all that you've observed and picked up by watching others do life
you formed a belief system and the belief that you've held deeply within your heart
maybe you've never identified it or ever said this out loud
but deep within you hold a kind of a belief that says something like this
good parents have kids who don't go into supermarkets and make a real mess
Now if you believe that, if that has become part of your belief system
then when you take a child down to supermarket island, they reach out and create a bit of a problem
suddenly your belief system intersects with that situation
and before you know it, the thoughts, almost involuntary thoughts are
what kind of a person will these people think I am?
Your emotions immediately feel the fear of the possibility of being devalued
of being rejected, of being shamed in public
your stomach goes into a knot
your hand reaches out to try to bring to an end or at least to somehow demonstrate to all these people
that I think this was a terrible thing too
all of that flowed out of one thing
and that was a deeply rooted belief that erupted in a certain stream of thoughts
a stream of emotions and a stream of behavior
Now it's easy to deceive yourself about what you really do believe
or what the condition and the state of your heart really is
but there's one certain method to discover what your belief system actually is
and that is just to watch what happens as you do life
I'll give you an example
There's a tightrope walker by the name of Blondin
who one time established this spectacular display of tightrope walking
across the river right beside the Niagara Falls
and he stood up one afternoon and asked the crowd
having successfully walked across the tightrope and back again to all of their oohs and ahs
he said how many people believe I could go across this tightrope with somebody on my back?
and the crowd screamed they said yes, yes we really believe that, that's wonderful
he said who would like to be the first?
at which point we discovered that that wasn't really a belief that was held very deeply by many of them
as they all took a backward step allowing some other fool to be the guinea pig
you see it's our situations in life that provoke the inward beliefs that we have
and that's what produces much of our thought life
the eruption of emotions and the kind of behaviors that we actually do
we need to recognize that not all of our beliefs are consciously held
you could write that in your notes
not all of our beliefs are consciously held
not all of our beliefs are rational
and that's where we don't want to overestimate how much of our belief system has actually been picked up in some kind of a formal teaching process
many of them as we've been seeking to underline through this whole course
many of them are simply the consequence of doing life with spiritual foundations that were woven into you
broken by the lack of ability to see and know God face to face
and then trying to fill in the gaps of what is going to make life happy and livable for you
on the grounds of the reflections you've received and the experiences you've had in all of the different areas of life
not all of the things that you believe are rational
you could write that in
many of our beliefs are unconscious assumptions
I'll give you two examples to that
I remember once catching a fish out of a dam on a property up in the northeastern parts of Victoria
and as I came back to the house with this beautiful four pound redfin
that would be a certain number of kilograms but I don't know how many
and I was leaning up against a door proudly displaying my catch when one of the people in the room said
well that's almost as big as the thing that's coming to talk to you now
and seeing their gaze had fixed on a part of the door near my shoulder
I turned to see a large huntsman walking across the door towards my shoulder
and I can only describe what happened to me next as freaking out
I could not explain the emotional terror that I felt
my behaviour was quite weird
I leapt into the air, threw my fish, dashed outside and kind of stood there angry, shaking and kicking a tree
trying to get the fear out of my system
now there is no rational basis to that response
a huntsman spider, while not perhaps a pleasant thing
certainly is not the scariest prospect that a human being could face in this life
if one was to look at it rationally, the spider is relatively small
all I needed to do was take off a shoe and I could have killed it instantaneously
it had little power or desire to do me any harm
but somewhere deep within the belief system of my heart
there resided something that reacted very strongly in that circumstance
and I guess many of us have experienced similar responses to different situations
that would identify the fact that some beliefs reside within us
that do not necessarily relate to the rational
many times you can ask people what their belief system is and they will give you
what they really think is their belief system
but you can never be sure that's really what they believe
if you ask a man for example, tell me what do you think about women?
what do you think about women in leadership?
and a person may trot out his logical view
he may present to you certain ideas he's picked up from the newspaper
or he may reflect to you a growing conviction about certain logical propositions
but you'll never really know what he believes about women in leadership
until he finds a woman as his boss
or he watches a woman promoted into a position of authority instead of him
suddenly you'll discover what his belief system really is
and we need to recognize that many times it's only the situations of life
that are going to reveal to us what it is that we really do believe
we've been noticing throughout this course that the misbeliefs that we have looked at
misbeliefs like I'll never be cared about unless I can perform to a certain level
I'll never be anybody unless I can please certain people in my life
I'm a failure, I deserve to be punished
people ought to get what they deserve and what I deserve is punishment
I'm a hopeless person, I can never change
many of these misbeliefs that we've looked at are not well defined in our thought life
it's not as if they exist out here on the surface of our thought life
readily accessible and easily explainable
nevertheless because they do reside within us
they impact the way we think and the way we feel and the way we behave
every single day of our life
now in order for an emotion to persist and in order for a behavior to persist
our belief system must continue to provoke certain thoughts
and it is so important that you understand the chain of events
beliefs are the things that trigger the thoughts and emotions and they result in your behavior
now here are two problems
the first problem is this, that this chain of events
the fact that situations touch our belief system and cause us to think and feel and behave in certain ways
the fact that that chain works against us as powerfully as it could work for you is a real problem
if you can have appropriate beliefs, if your beliefs accord with reality
those beliefs will help you
because whenever you're faced with a situation
your appropriate beliefs stir appropriate thoughts and emotions and result in appropriate behavior
the problem is this, that that chain of events can work as powerfully against you as it can work for you
the person in the supermarket who's lashing out in uncontrolled anger
at the normal behavior of a child springs from a deeply rooted belief
about what makes for a worthwhile citizen or a good parent
and that chain will work as powerfully against a person as it can work for them
secondly here's another problem
that these beliefs, the beliefs that we hold
and the emotions that so often tend to drive us in our life
cannot be accessed directly
you should write that in
I can't just get at a belief and pull it out
when you own a computer and it's got a hard drive and the hard drive's not working well
you can like pull the hard drive out and replace it
you can't do that with beliefs, it is not such an easy thing to access deeply held beliefs
you can't just get at them and change them
the second thing is true about emotions, emotions are difficult things to access
you can't access them directly, let me give you an example
no matter where you are or where you're doing this course
I want you to close your eyes for just one moment
and I want you to try to feel terror
try and feel totally terrified
try really hard, just try to feel terror
how are you doing?
maybe some of you are succeeding, I'll tell you why you are in just a moment
how about this?
I'd like you to, if you're not already feeling this way
try and feel nervous, just try and feel it, all the inward shakiness of that emotion called nerves
in fact I've got a whole chart here of emotions
I mean what I could do for you is I could ask you to feel any of these emotions
feel ecstatic, how about feel frightened, feel hopeful, feel love struck
any emotion that I could invite you to share, you'd have problems accessing directly
but you might be successful if you went down this pathway
if I asked you to feel terror, you would need to conjure up into your thoughts
a situation which in your belief system would be one that would terrify you
for me that might be to find myself at the bottom of a well with a dozen huntsmen
that could probably produce it for me
what would do it for you? it might be that you might imagine yourself standing on the edge of a high building with nothing to restrain you
it might be the thought of standing in front of a thousand people having been asked to recite a poem
but what you'd have to do to feel the feeling would be to access a thought, an imagination
that imagination would intersect with your belief system and it would produce the necessary emotion
once you see the reality of that, once you see the simplicity of that
you're part of the way to understanding how healing can come
because immediately you begin to understand the importance of your mind
you see your mind, your thought life acts as a point of access
you could write that in your notes
your mind acts as a point of access to both beliefs and emotions
it's as if the thoughts are kind of a gateway both into the belief system
but the thoughts are a gateway into the feelings that come as the thoughts and the beliefs interact together
and this is what underlines the critical importance of the process that we call renewing the mind
since it is not easy or possible to directly access our belief system
the battle for our sense of significance and a healthy sense of self-esteem is going to be won or lost in the mind
it's going to be won or lost right here
it's important for you to understand that the only changes, the only changes that will be both healthy and sustainable for you
are those changes that come out of your heart, the ones that come out of your deeply held beliefs
and therefore they're going to result from your heart being changed in its beliefs and expressed in a new way of thinking
now your mind becomes one of the keys
it's your mind, your thoughts, the cognitive realm that will give you access over time to your belief system
and as you access and deal with things you deeply believe it will also produce a change in your emotions
now we can try to produce changes for people in different ways
sometimes when emotions are so negative like ongoing pathological depression
it becomes necessary to intersect those feelings with chemistry, we can use drugs
that's why people smoke marijuana, use cocaine, do alcohol, take mood altering drugs because chemicals can intersect the emotions
it's as if you can cut the link between the belief system and the emotions using chemistry
but I don't think anybody would see that as a particularly healthy way to do life, especially not for a lifetime
sometimes it's essential that people do get help from chemistry
but it needs to be used not as a solution to a problem of negative emotions
but as a way of gaining time, a kind of a way of calling time out
so that there can be enough time to address the beliefs and the thought processes that are producing these negative emotions
we could also seek to effect change by simply learning new behaviors
but that's going to create immense tension in a person's life
if you simply try to train them to do different behaviors while they struggle with an internal belief system that contradicts that
that is going to fail in the long term
we are going to have to learn how to get at these false beliefs that reside within ourselves
and we are going to have to challenge them with truth until they yield to the truth
and by understanding this chain effect we are going to be able to work our way back
and discover and address the faulty beliefs that actually do reside in each one of us
now it's important for every one of you to realize that even if you have begun a new life
recently or maybe even some time ago of trusting Jesus, of inviting Christ to become the spiritual source of strength
strengthening you on the inside, there is still going to be a battle going on in your mind
and the mind has a key role to play in the healing of your belief system
God is able to show us and make real to us the truth that we need to restore our belief system
and to sustain our thoughts and to make possible healthy emotions and lifestyles
however every day we need to recognize we are going to find ourselves under pressure from this spiritual dimension
we are going to find that the world around us applies pressure to us
the way other people do life applies pressure
and they may seek to confirm the misbeliefs that we have held and try to keep us in the dark
now the result is this, we are going to need to examine, search out and replace many of the wrong beliefs
that can cause us to behave in very unhealthy ways and this process is called renewing the mind
now the behavior that we do, the actions that we do will always be based on
almost always based on the way we think and the way we feel
in the light of a situation our emotions are going to be the launching pad for our actions
and when we are confronted by a situation and we feel an emotion
the parents in the supermarket, this pile of boxes has fallen down
suddenly their emotions are feeling shame, the sense of fear of being thought to be an inadequate parent
and immediately the emotions and the thought life cry out for corrective action
what will I do? I will abuse the child, I will yell at the child
I will try to make everyone around me realize I am taking this seriously
I am really trying to be a good parent
and the emotions that erupt could cause a person to act or desire to act in very inappropriate ways
now there are three choices at that moment, the first is you can obey the message of your emotions
and act out of your misbelief that good parents would never have a child that would do this
secondly you could try to ignore it, you feel terrible but you try not to notice
and you will see that in supermarkets, you will see it in all kinds of places in life
people who are feeling immense pressure but they are really trying not to notice
they are trying to ignore it
but there is a third thing that you can do and that is to contradict it
contradict the message, challenge the validity of the message and choose the truth
kids play with boxes in supermarkets
even the kids of good parents play with boxes in supermarkets
and even though all of the misbeliefs having been stirred up by that situation
creating all of these negative thoughts and all of these negative emotions and pressing you to do negative action
could be contradicted if you had thought it through, observed behavior like that in the past
understood what was at stake and you began to say to yourself
it's just a pile of boxes
whether people approve of me or whether they don't approve of me
I'm not going to hurt this child and I'm not going to act inappropriately
I believe myself of the pain of this moment
this pain springs from a broken place in my life
I am not going to hurt this child and I remember an incident in my own family
when a situation I guess that could have very easily wounded a child in my home took place
we were sitting around in our new home before it had carpet on it
we moved in concrete floors everywhere and our color television set was sitting on what had been an old sewing stand
and my youngest child, a five year old was sort of fooling around a little
and leaning on the television set he pushed it over and it fell down and crashed and exploded on the floor
as soon as he saw that he screamed
which was a scream of terror
I had broken something that's expensive and now I'm in serious trouble
my old ways of handling those crises may have been to yell out
you fool, what's wrong with you?
but there was enough of my growth in Christ to immediately recognize
that the child was more valuable than the television set
and all we had to do was reach out a hand and say it's okay
anybody can knock something over, it's not your fault
and you can contradict an old message acting angrily or violently or out of old ways of thinking
now we need to recognize this, some behavior is involuntary
you're embarrassed in public, the old ways of thinking stir within you
and your face flushes, that's an involuntary reaction
you can't just mechanically control blushing
it's one of those things that's beyond your ability to handle
some behavior however is voluntary
the words that come out of your mouth, the looks you give
the things you do with your hands, the hitting or the touching in love
the shouting or the speaking in gentleness, these are voluntary actions
and every one of us must accept responsibility for voluntary actions
and embark on a course of renewing the mind
now here's the thrill, we can learn to replace false beliefs with God's truth
the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 10 verse 5
let me read this to you
for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal
but they're mighty through God for pulling down strongholds
remember last week we talked about strongholds, misbeliefs that have become fortified
through negative experiences and spiritual pressure
well the Bible says you can pull them down, they can be dismantled
casting down arguments and every high thing, every thought, every belief
that exalts itself against the knowledge of God
God says I love you, I accept you, I value you
I belong with you and those truths sometimes are resisted
other thoughts, the thought that you're nothing, that you're nobody, that you don't belong
they exalt themselves against the knowledge of God
but the Bible says this, bringing every thought into captivity
bringing every thought into captivity to obedience to Christ
that's 2 Corinthians 10 and verse 5
to take your thoughts captive means that you need to find and examine those misbeliefs
we must be sure that what we believe is actually true
and then make our thoughts obedient to Christ
means that we've got to throw out wrong beliefs and replace them with the things that are true
now how is that possible?
well first of all, the more you understand the things that come from God
the way God is, the way he thinks
the love, the grace and the mercy that God has given to us through Jesus
the more you understand the Kingdom of Heaven
the more you understand the Word of God
the more capable you are of assessing faulty beliefs from true beliefs
and it may take you time to begin to fully appreciate just how wonderful God and his Kingdom really is
the more you understand those things, the easier it becomes to identify those moments
when our life is being influenced by beliefs, thoughts and emotions
that are contradictory and deserve to be replaced
and here we come to the book of Philippians
which gives us another insight
the Bible says this, whatsoever things are true
whatsoever things are noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous or praiseworthy
think on these things
now, there are many ways in which you and I can begin the process of renewing our mind
the first is, we have to know what's true
we have to know what is noble
and this brings us back to the Bible
the Word of God
you need to own a Bible, you need to read it
and particularly, particularly, every day read something that came out of the mouth of Jesus
read the words of Jesus
discover what he thought was true, and noble, and pure, and lovely, and praiseworthy
the more you're aware of those things, the clearer the misbeliefs will become
secondly, you need to learn to do things like write cards
I used to take cards, little 5 by 3 cards that you can put in your top pocket
and as I found something from God's Word
that I knew was yet to be embraced at the deepest level of my belief system
I'd write it on that card and I'd carry it with me everywhere I'd go
I'd pull up at a stop light, I'd take out my card and there for 20 or 30 seconds I'd read the Bible
if God be for me, who can be against me? What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, loses his own soul?
I'd take truthful thoughts and I'd put them on those cards, I'd carry them everywhere
and every chance I got, I'd take them out and I'd bring my thoughts and make them captive to the truth about Jesus
then I'd keep on talking to helpful people
there are some people in your life that are very negative and there may be times where you need to maybe minimise the amount of time you spend with them
there are people who can help you, supportive people, people who themselves have made progress in this whole business of becoming healthier
spend time with them, talk with them, let them talk to you
then there's the opportunity to journal, daily take time to sit down with a piece of paper and write out your thoughts
try to get the struggles down on paper, as you do that, you know, writing slows you down
often we don't understand our thoughts or capture our thoughts because they're speeding too fast
they're moving at hundreds of miles an hour, they come and go so quickly we don't understand what it is we are actually thinking
when you sit down and you write, it has the ability to slow everything down
and as you begin to write your feelings and write your thoughts, you begin to get in touch with what it is that you really do believe
it's called journaling, writing something each day about how life is going for you each day
and then you'll begin to write solutions, you'll begin to see misbeliefs, you'll begin to nail them down
you'll begin to find in the Bible, you'll be reading a proverb and it'll connect with something that you were saying just a week ago
something that popped out of your mouth, I'll never be any good
oh, suddenly you discover, no, that's not so, the righteous are as bold as a lion
I don't have to be afraid, I don't have to live in fear
and as you do you begin to write solutions and those solutions will be part of bringing every thought captive
you need to use those cards also to just learn truth by heart
as you find Bible verses that really speak to misbeliefs, learn those verses off by heart
that you can carry them with you wherever you go
sometimes you need retreat time, it's really helpful to take an hour or a day
and just get aside with God and aside with yourself, slow down and just be in the presence of God
those moments can be very revealing and help you to bring your thoughts into captivity
it might be important for you to eliminate certain things from your life
the Bible says whatever is true and noble and just and pure
and you've been feeding yourself on a diet of horror movies or horror novels
it could be a good thing to stop
it could be that the amount of unhelpful input you get from entertainment
from different people in your life or different situations in your life
would require that for at least a period of time you remove them from your diet
and give yourself a chance to get healthy
why don't you be radical?
if you want to renew your mind you're going to have to have a zero tolerance
for the negative, for the unclean, for the destructive
a zero tolerance, be radical
one of the reasons that people don't get well is that they kind of fool with it
it's kind of like trying to be a partial vegetarian
if you've made a decision to be a vegetarian you just have to stop eating meat
now you can't be a partial vegetarian, just eat meat every second day
you'll never get there that way
and this isn't necessarily a promotion for you to become one
but you need to recognize that if you want to be healthy
if you want to renew your mind, be radical about it
eliminate the stuff that's destructive
just minimize it, eliminate it
God wants us to concentrate or fix our thoughts on His truth
most of our wrong beliefs have been in our minds for some time
and therefore it can be difficult to identify it and remove it from our thinking
but recognizing and evaluating our emotions and our behavior
can help us to discover our false beliefs
negative emotions and wrong behavior are especially good indications
that we're basing our significance on Satan's lies rather than on God's truth
so when situations arise and they touch a wrong belief
it'll produce wrong thoughts, wrong feelings and wrong behavior
and the more you know about what's right it'll be easier to see
however, when this inward belief system begins to change
a situation will arise, it will tend to produce healthy thoughts
healthy emotions and a healthier way of living
and once we're able to replace those false beliefs with God's truth
we're in a position to evaluate what a supposed correct response might be
and we need to challenge catastrophic thinking
you walk into a room and in the old belief system
you walked into a room and someone on the other side of the room laughed
and you made an assumption, they laughed at me
and your old belief system thought, well, if someone laughs at me
I'll never be any good, I couldn't be anybody
if people were laughing at me
and immediately inside you felt the cringing fear of rejection
you felt the humiliation of rejection
and your behavior, well, you begin to freeze them out and treat them as if
they've wounded you and maybe even leave the room because you can't stand to be there
and your behavior reflects that you inwardly had a false belief
and the false belief was this
that if anybody didn't like me, I couldn't bear to be in that situation
well, that's catastrophic thinking
it puts all the eggs in a single basket and says if anyone didn't like me
then I couldn't handle it, I couldn't manage to live
but listen, what if there are some people in life that really don't like you
is that really so catastrophic?
now it would be nice if everybody did
but what if someone didn't?
would it be so catastrophic?
because there's people who do like you
and God loves you
and you could walk into a room and you could let that misbelief dominate your life
and catastrophic thinking could just continue to rule your behavior
but you could come with a summary statement
it would be nice if everybody liked me
but listen, even if they don't
I can walk into a room
someone may laugh
now, just by the way
almost certainly it had nothing to do with you
it was your misbelief that connected their laughter with your entrance into the room
if you went over and said, how are we going guys?
did I do or say something funny?
you may well discover that it had nothing to do with you at all
and your misbelief was creating another afternoon of misery
for no cause whatsoever
but by having a
by challenging catastrophic thinking, by having an attitude
well it would be nice if everybody in the room loved me
it could allow you to begin to live out of a totally different mindset
bring your thoughts into captivity
you walk into a room, somebody laughs
well, even if they don't like me, it would be nice if they did
but now, instead of having to walk around cold-shouldering people
maybe even leave the room with feelings of humiliation and embarrassment
I could even move over to that group and say, how are we doing guys?
it would be nice if everybody here liked me
but even if they don't, God loves me
and because he loves me
it will be okay
before you know it, your life is based on different things
different emotions and different behaviour patterns
my friends, almost all of us have believed some of Satan's lies about our self-worth
these false beliefs have caused us to react to many of life's situations in the wrong way
therefore, most of us are plagued with a loss of significance, low self-esteem
and yet God wants us to understand that it is possible to reject our wrong beliefs
and replace them with God's healing and freeing truth
for the rest of your life, you could be involved in the wonderful process of renewing your mind
and as you do, you're going to become a healthier person
your beliefs are going to become healthier
your emotions are going to become healthier
and the behaviours, the things you do, are going to be more consistent with that healthy behaviour
now I commend this series to you
and I do hope that you've found in it some strength, some help and some insight
and I sure do hope that you take away from this a bag of tools
that are going to bless you and help you for the rest of your life
God bless you
for a love that's bigger than