Spirit Control

Why have I been writing about mind power when we as Christians are spiritual beings? 

Because, we have a mandate from God to control our thoughts!

Romans 8:6 (Amplified Bible)

“Now the mind of the flesh [which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit] is death [death that comprises all the miseries arising from sin, both here and hereafter]. But the mind of the [Holy] Spirit is life and [soul] peace [both now and forever].”

Thought control

Thought control has become all the more important in these Biblical “end times” as we head to the closing of the age. Bombardment of the senses by the digital media is becoming all the more intense and God is telling us that the thoughts of the natural mind lead to death.

Let me pose this question. Just how many Christians spend most of the day thinking natural thoughts instead of Spiritual controlled thoughts? Very few, I venture to say. Let’s look at another translation of the same verse.

Romans 8:6 (New Living Translation)

“So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.”

Too many of us are just running on automatic. Thought float in and out without our intervention and as the scripture reveals, this is leading to our death. “But I am not dying,” you may be saying, “I do confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart that God raised him from the dead, and so I will be saved!” (Romans 10:9) 

Yes, you will make heaven but what about the death that comprises all the miseries arising right here along the way as the Amplified Bible version tells us.What I am saying is that unless you control your natural thought and replace them continually with Spirit filled thoughts, you will experience unnecessary miseries along the way.

Where do the miseries come from? They arise from core beliefs or thoughts that are continually thought and have become embedded in your unconscious mind, as explained in a previous blog. These thoughts lead to your expectations and they set the stage as to what you will experience in life.

Just what are thoughts controlled by the Spirit? The encouragements and promises from God that we read about in the Bible are Spirit filled thoughts.

The Bible itself claims to be God’s Word and the scriptures are therefore thoughts that come from the Holy Spirit.

2 Timothy 3:16 (Amplified Bible)

Every Scripture is God-breathed (given by His inspiration) and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience, [and] for training in righteousness (in holy living, in conformity to God's will in thought, purpose, and action).

Here we read that the scriptures are profitable for training us to think God’s thoughts and purposes.

If you don’t have a little book of Bible promises, I highly recommend buying one and memorize the ones that speak to you.

Be a Spirit-controlled person

Jesus was such a person

Luke 4:1
Then Jesus, full of and controlled by the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led in [by] the [Holy] Spirit.

Stephen was such a person.

Acts 6:5
And the suggestion pleased the whole assembly, and they selected Stephen, a man full of faith (a strong and welcome belief that Jesus is the Messiah) and full of and controlled by the Holy Spirit,

You can be such a person.

Romans 8:9
You are not living the life of the flesh, you are living the life of the Spirit, if the [Holy] Spirit of God [really] dwells within you [directs and controls you]. But if anyone does not possess the [Holy] Spirit of Christ, he is none of His [he does not belong to Christ, is not truly a child of God].

Titus 2:12
It has trained us to reject and renounce all ungodliness (irreligion) and worldly (passionate) desires, to live discreet (temperate, self-controlled), upright, devout (spiritually whole) lives in this present world.

As well know and we see here, not all desires are from God but from the flesh.

Ephesians 2:2
“You were following the course and fashion of this world [were under the sway of the tendency of this present age], following the prince of the power of the air. [You were obedient to and under the control of] the [demon] spirit that still constantly works in the sons of disobedience [the careless, the rebellious, and the unbelieving, who go against the purposes of God].”

The Bible tells us here that the natural world with all its hurricanes, disasters and all its natural thoughts and feelings are under the control of the devil!

Desires of your heart

Note that desires of the heart are not carnal in origin but from God. The desire to see God’s health, His abundance and His purposes manifested in your life are Spirit inspired.

Desires of the heart are God given and therefore inspired and placed there by the Holy Spirit.

Asking for and receiving their manifestation through thinking, speaking and visualizing them as already existing is therefore imperative!  Don’t be lead to believe that all the things that you may want are from your flesh. You may need that vacation. You may need that bigger house. You may need that extra cash.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that having or wanting abundance is from the devil. Abundance is His nature and so is yours too! God’s way to wealth is not by chasing it but allowing the blessings of God to overtake you. I have heard preachers speak against prosperity and yet are always grateful to receive your check! We all need cash and plenty of it! Why the hypocrisy?  

Galatians 5:16
But I say walk and live [habitually] in the [Holy] Spirit [responsive to and controlled and guided by the Spirit]; then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh (of human nature without God).

You must use the tools that God has given you to lead a fulfilled life. Too many good people are not seeing God’s purposes in them fulfilled because their minds are washed in carnality by thoughts from the natural world. It is time to stop and take a serious look at your thoughts Mr. Good Christian, and see where they are coming from!

Malachi 2:16
therefore, keep a watch upon your spirit [that it may be controlled by My Spirit].

This is a serious business!

One of You is Perfect!

There are three of you!

One of my all time favorite passages in the Bible is the story of Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus, a leader among the Jews of his day.

John 3:3-6 (Amplified Bible)

"Jesus answered him, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, that unless a person is born again (anew, from above), he cannot ever see (know, be acquainted with, and experience) the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to Him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb again and be born? Jesus answered, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, unless a man is born of water and [even] the Spirit, he cannot [ever] enter the kingdom of God. 

What is born of [from] the flesh is flesh [of the physical is physical]; and what is born of the Spirit is spirit."

Jesus makes the distinction between your spirit and your flesh. Another scripture further distinguishes between three entities.

1 Thessalonians 5:23
“and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved sound and complete [and found] blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah).”

As a believer, your spirit is born of the Holy Spirit. As such it is perfect! You have been born again of incorruptible seed, the Word of God.

1 Peter 1:23
“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

Actions prompted by your born again spirit are pure and without sin! You are perfect in spirit.

This is who you really are, you are perfect!

1 John 3:9
“No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.”

Be inspired!

Your spirit feeds on inspiration, i.e. information that comes from God and not from your logical mind!

This happens by reading the Bible.

2 Timothy 3:16 (Amplified Bible)

“Every Scripture is God-breathed (given by His inspiration) and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience, [and] for training in righteousness (in holy living, in conformity to God's will in thought, purpose, and action)”

This happens by revelation to your spirit directly from the Holy Spirit.

Isaiah 30:21
“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

Think of the word, “inspiration.” It means something that comes into your spirit. Perhaps it is wisdom from God as to how to deal with a certain situation. Perhaps it is a poem, a beautiful melody or a thought that could transform the lives of millions. Listen out for the inspirations in your life. They may be coming from God. Act on them. I believe it is your duty to do so. It could be God leading you out of a cursed situation into blessing! I love the saying, “Yesterdays blessing could be tomorrow’s curse.”

Perhaps it is your time to move on to a brand new life by inspiration!

What is God saying to you?

Obviously God will not lead you into doing something immoral or sinful.

The other two cannot be trusted!

Romans 8:6
“Now the mind of the flesh [which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit] is death [death that comprises all the miseries arising from sin, both here and hereafter]. But the mind of the [Holy] Spirit is life and [soul] peace [both now and forever].”

The Bible sees your mind as part of your flesh. That is why I spoke of Mind-Body disorders in a previous blog. The mind really has its own organ, and that is called the brain. It’s thought normally come from the environment, based on information received through the five senses. That is why ugly words said to you or bad actions done to you can have such a devastating and long term effect.

God thoughts are not logical like those of your fleshly mind. Your mind may tell you are a nobody, but God is telling you that you have been crowned with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:5) The negative message was birthed through words and experiences through the five senses from the natural world. The positive message came by revelation through the word of God.

As a Christian, you should never make important decisions based solely on logical deduction. You must wait on God and for His peace and joy to settle in your heart regarding what you should do.

The scripture says that actions based on the thoughts of the natural mind alone lead to death! We have all been warned.

Believing negative thoughts eventually become core beliefs that settle in your unconscious. As we have seen that in that way they can destroy your hopes and dreams.

Malachi 2:16
“Therefore, keep a watch upon your spirit [that it may be controlled by My Spirit],”

The thoughts of God are good thoughts. They may not seem right to your mind of flesh but they lead to life.

A home for your thoughts

Your soul is made up of your thoughts, feelings and will power. God created a special place for your thoughts there. He also tells you what to think.

Philippians 4:8 

 “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

God knows that good thoughts lead to good feelings and good feelings to good decisions and good decisions lead to good actions and more good thoughts.

Thoughts inspired by God are good but thoughts based on information from the five senses can be totally misleading if they conflict with spiritual truth!

Either you are sick according to your symptoms or you have been healed according to the Word. Either you are poor according to your pocket book or you are rich according to 2 Cor. 8:9.

Think what you will to think. Think that you are sick and poor according to what you see, hear, touch and feel, or that you are healthy and wealthy according to Divine revelation. 

I believe the latter. The choice is yours!

Caring for Your Inner Child

In recent years, remarkable information has come to light that your mind may be the source of back pain, tennis elbow, sciatica, irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux, arteriole-sclerosis and even cancer!

Hosea 4:6
“My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. "Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.”

To understand a little more about what is happening, it helps to look at your soul or mind in Freudian terms.

Your inner child

Somewhere in your adult mind, there remains a part that is all child. A baby’s mind is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and needs immediate satisfaction. Therein contained are the drives for food, water, sex, and other basic impulses. It is amoral and selfish, ruled by the pleasure–pain principle; it is without a sense of time, completely illogical, infantile in its emotional development, and is not able to take "no" for an answer. When satisfaction is denied, the child reacts with anger or rage. When a mother teaches a child to control the anger by splashing cold water in her baby’s face when he is in a rage, the child learns to repress his true feelings. The child quickly accepts that if he does not repress his rage, he invokes the anger of his mother, risks the loss of her love and his social acceptance. The point is that the anger does not go away but stays locked away in the child’s unconscious.

Your inner child, or what Freud called the “Id”, strives to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle which states that people seek pleasure and avoid pain. The counterpart is the reality principle. As you mature, you no longer let yourself be governed by the pleasure principle.  You start obeying the reality principle, which also at bottom seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished. 

Think of the person who saves his money through the week so he can spend it partying over the weekend. Remember the opening scenes of “Saturday Night Fever” with John Travolta?

Your inner parent

Your inner parent or what Freud called the “Super-Ego”, works in contradiction to the id or inner child. It strives to act in a socially appropriate manner, whereas the child just wants instant self-gratification. The Super-Ego controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt. It helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways. The stronger the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading in your life, the stricter will be the domination of your inner parent over the child in the form of conscience or a sense of guilt. The inner parent will punish misbehavior of the inner child such as an extra-marital affair, with strong feelings of guilt in order to align behavior with acceptable social norms. It also aims for perfection and includes the individual's ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency that criticizes and prohibits his drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions. The more of a perfectionist you are, the more you are being dominated by your inner parent, pushing you to “get it right”, or be a “do good”.

The Ego

Conscious awareness resides in your ego. It helps you to organize your thoughts and make sense of them and the world around you. The Ego’s task is to find a balance between the inner drives of the id and super-ego, and with external reality. Its main concern is with the individual's safety. It allows some of the inner child’s pleasure-seeking desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal and not immoral.

The source of inner conflict

Your Ego is like a slave to three harsh masters: the Id, the Super-Ego, and the external world. It has to do its best to suit all three, thus is constantly feeling hemmed by the danger of causing discontent on two other sides. The Ego decides what to allow into consciousness, deciding between the conflicting needs of your inner child and parent. Great inner tension can be generated this way as different inner needs compete for expression.

It is said, however, that the Ego seems to be more loyal to the pleasure-loving inner child, preferring to gloss over the finer details of reality to minimize conflicts while pretending to have a regard for reality. But the Super-Ego is constantly watching every one of the Ego's moves and punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority every time a moral standard is transgressed.

Defense mechanisms

The Ego employs defense mechanisms is to protect your conscious self from inner rage and anxiety, and to provide a refuge from a situation with which one cannot currently cope. They occur when the inner child impulses are in conflict with the values and beliefs of the inner parent, and also when an external threat is posed to the Ego. They act to lessen the tension by covering up the impulses that are threatening the balance. Defenses also arise due to traumatic experiences. They refer to several types of reactions and include denial, dissociation, displacement, intellectualization, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, regression, repression, idealization, identification, substitution, etc.

Mind-body disorders

These are also known as psychosomatic diseases. People with a highly dominant inner parent tend to be driven perfectionists and are especially prone to this kind of disorder.  They are the ambitious, the movers and the shakers of this world.

1 Peter 5:7 (Amplified Bible)

“Casting the whole of your care [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully.”

The ones who are prone to work hard, earnestly setting about achieving their dreams instead of letting the Lord bring them about by consciously and constantly casting their cares upon Him.

Proverbs 13:12
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

In the remarkable book, “The Divided Mind,” by Dr John Sarno, the writer claims that when the inner child is continually dominated by the inner parent, the psyche experiences a build-up of repressed or unconscious inner rage. When the level of inner anger reaches a level of threatening to become conscious and thereby greatly disturbing the individual, the ego decides to create a diversion. Think of the child who represses his anger when his toy is taken away because he fears a reprisal from his mother. In the same way learn to not express our true feelings because we don’t want to cope with loss of affection or acceptance that may result. To cope with an intolerable build up of inner feelings, the mind produces pain somewhere in the muscle, tendon and nerve tissues of the body as a diversion. The pain is produced in the same way as when a cyclist experiences pain in his legs, through a restriction in the flow of blood to that part of the body. By restricting the flow of blood through a narrowing of the arterial passages, pain is produced. The person and his doctors are thus tricked into believing that his or her pain is the result of some structural abnormality that is physical or chemical in origin and not psychological!

Have you been fooled?

The onset of such real physical pain often coincides with a physical incident such as a fall or golf swing that causes a pinched nerve, herniated disc, etc. It is as though your mind was waiting for such an incident to get you to ascribe the pain to a structural defect. This reaction of the mind occurs to protect the individual from consciously experiencing overwhelming feelings of anger, anxiety, sadness or loss. The resultant pain can then be easily diagnosed as coming from a structural or physical abnormality, never suspecting that it may have a psychological origin. Pinched nerves, Dr Sarno argues, only transmits pain to the brain for a shot while before becoming numb. Continuing pain therefore, must come from a different source.

The road to recovery

To track the possible source of your suffering, I greatly recommend reading one of Dr. Sarno’s books. He makes the point that billions of dollars have been spent on operations and drugs prescribed by well-intentioned but misinformed medical doctors that may cure a symptom for a while, only to find it emerge in time in a different guise, or a pain somewhere else. He claims that thousands of people have been healed by reading his books simply by understanding the mind-body process. Knowing the power of the mind, I for one believe he is right! Oh, that more Christian therapists who understand the dynamics of the soul or mind can be trained to minister to and help alleviate the sufferings of countless millions who struggle with mind body disorders.

Job 8:21
“He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy!”

Use Your Imagination

Your greatest gift.

Perhaps the greatest gift that God gave you is your imagination. I don’t believe it is there just for entertainment value, but that He gave it to you for a definite purpose. Imagination can give wings to your desires and hope to your dreams! Your imagination can take you from the sufferings you may be experiencing to a place of freedom from struggle. It is the most powerful weapon in your arsenal, so don’t let it lie around unused or use it ineffectively without a focused goal in mind. Take flight on the wings of focused imagination!

Imagination is the key to a changing your life from one of defeat and mediocrity to one of success and achievement. How sad to find people everywhere who have been so put down that they refuse to dream. Some have been hurt so often that they dare not ask for anything for fear of another disappointment. To all of you who find yourself in a place of hopelessness I say, dare to dream, and even better, dare to dream big. It takes the same amount of energy to imagine having something great as it does something small!

                                     Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh.

Imagination can kill!

The wonderful thing about using imagination is that it is not hard to do. Everyone can do it no matter your circumstance. Imagination has the power to kill you or bring you the freedom you desire. I remember the story of a worker who found himself locked in a refrigerated truck when everyone else in the yard had left for the weekend.  Believing that the refrigeration unit was on, he scribbled a farewell note to his wife. It read, “It is getting colder and colder and soon I will freeze to death!” When the truck door was opened the following Monday, the man lay dead, huddled in a corner, showing all the signs of having frozen to death! The temperature inside was quite normal. His imagination had killed him.

My course correction

I recently caught myself thinking along certain lines. I had somehow developed the idea and expectation that a client was against me and trying to replace my input in a large project with that of another party. The idea had already formed in my imagination that I was becoming an outsider when I was tipped off by an inner prompting that I should correct my thinking. I immediately started seeing myself in a group photo, standing in the middle of the small group of key players with our arms around each other like a football team lining up for a photo. I felt a strain imagining it at first as the limiting thought cracked broke and made way for the feeling of mutual appreciation respect between us. I could leave the focused image with a sense of inner peace. A few hours later, I received a phone call from a key person in the group, affirming that I would remain in the architectural driving seat as before. Had I not corrected the image, my imagination would have placed me in disfavor with the rest of the team and that could have killed the project!

Your life script

Your imagination will either kill you or bring you the successful life that you want. Years ago I read a something somewhere by psychiatrist Eric Berne who also wrote that wonderful classic, “The Games People Play.”  He suggested that self-limiting decisions are made in childhood in the interest of survival. Such decisions culminate in what Berne called the "life script," Your life plan unconsciously governs the way your life is lived out. You have unconsciously determined how old you will become, what kind of a person you will marry, if you will marry at all, how successful you will become, how much money you will be comfortable earning or accumulating.

Imagine that! You have unconsciously determined how your life will work out in all different departments. Maybe this is you? You may consciously want to live a healthy life but keep killing yourself slowly with booze and cigarettes. You may consciously want to be happily married but you keep marrying the wrong sort of person. How often have we not seen that happen? You desperately want to be married but keep rejecting everyone who is interested or no one is ever good enough! You may have a great conscious desire to be well off but you keep squandering all your money. You are lonely and desperately want friend but keep chasing them off by upsetting them in some way, the list goes on.

Take a hard look

It will help to take a hard look at yourself and consider what your unconscious scripts may be. Ask yourself, how old do you think you will become? How will your marriage turn out? How successful will you become in your line of work? How wealthy will you become?  Ask yourself and wait for an answer from inside. If you don’t know, that is ok too. At least you are learning that whatever the answers are, you can set new sights, have new goals and develop fresh expectations. Life like God can be new every morning. You can change by consciously setting the level of success that you want to have in each area of your life. If you don’t consciously determine what you want in life and set about achieving it in the right way, your unconscious life scripts will determine it for you!

Talent is not enough!

Your natural ability and talent alone will not cut it for you; it will not get you where you want to be. The most successful people are often people of limited ability. Think of how many brilliant people die without ever seeing their dreams realized. One of my childhood heroes Vincent Van Gogh died in the pain of rejection, poverty and defeat by taking his own life. Was there ever a painter more deserving of experiencing the social and financial success and personal happiness that he desperately wanted while he was alive?

Hard work alone will not cut it!

Hard work alone will not do it for you. The hardest working people I always thought, are the ones digging ditches in the sweltering heat. They also tarn the minimum of wages! Further, you can try and try and try to meet the right person or make a relationship work, or success in a new business only to see it slipping away every time. The end of all this is to settle for mediocrity and believe as one young lady told me, “I don’t believe in dreams, they never come true.”

The great Teacher

Changing the life script is the aim of transactional analysis psychotherapy, the brain child of Eric Berne. While I cannot speak on the success of his methods, I do believe that wonderful results can be achieved by applying the Word of God to every situation of your life. This method is the brain child of the Lord Almighty who inspired men of old to write down what they were prompted to by the Holy Spirit. God is the great Encourager, the great Inspirer, and the great Teacher, leading us and showing us the way out of being stuck in pain, defeat, mediocrity and simple boredom.

He instructs us in his manual, the Bible, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Focused Imagination will do it!

There is a difference between focused and wild imagination. To describe the difference, I like the illustration of getting into a New York taxi cab and when the driver asks you where you would like to go, you respond, “I don’t know, anywhere!” In the same way, your imagination should take off with a definite end destination in mind. Having a clear picture of where you want to go is, I believe, God’s purpose in giving this faculty. Your imagination is tied to your free will. You can fly anywhere with it. It the flying carpet in the fables. If you don’t set a direction consciously by imagining with clarity the destination you want to go to, your unconscious life script will determine your final destination. Use your free will wisely and confidently.

Set your course

Determine where you want to go with your relationships, career, health and finances. Imagine having arrived at the destination in each case, just as you would tell a cab driver where you want to go to. You don’t have to tell him which route to follow to get there, he knows the way. That’s his job. All you have to do is to define the end result by imagination. Your spirit working with God will get you there. The Holy Spirit is the cab driver. He will show you the way step by step. He will say, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” If you don’t listen to the promptings you will miss it, so be on the alert. Your job is simple obedience,

Are You Killing Your Dreams?

Setting new standards.

Why is life so hard for most people on the planet and fairly easy and successful for a select few?

 What makes them different and sets them apart? Does God love them more than He does the rest? No, as the Word says, God is no respecter of persons i.e. He has no favorites.  Two scriptures that I have been writing about again provide the answer.

Matthew 9:29  "According to your faith will it be done to you"

Proverbs 23:7 “As he (a man) thinks in his heart, so is he.”

The select few think differently and consequently have different expectations than the rest of humanity.

My purpose in writing this follow-up to the one called, “How to Make Your Dreams Come True” is to help you uncover the negative expectations that may be blocking you from achieving your dreams.

What you experience and observe about your everyday life pretty much sets the standard for your expectations about your future. It happens automatically. You have an experience and you end up thinking about it. Alternatively, you observe what others are experiencing and think about it, not realizing that they are setting the standard for your expectations and therefore for your future. Everyday thoughts produce a harvest of “more of the same”.

If you really want to impact the future of your life positively, you need to set new standards for yourself as to what you are going to be thinking about.

Thoughts of the heart.

Some thoughts that you thought as a child became habitual thought patterns. If your parents did not like white people or black people say, and often said so, you most likely started thinking that too. Once the same thought is repeatedly thought, it sinks down to a deeper level of the mind and becomes an attitude or a belief. These thoughts are what the Bible calls thoughts of the heart. Lately they have come to be known in popular psychology as core beliefs.

You may not necessarily be aware of your heart thoughts, in other words you may be unconscious of them. They do however reveal themselves when you react spontaneously to a situation or incident. Continuing the example above, say you are later faced with the task of choosing between a white or a black job applicant of equal experience and ability, you could automatically be prejudiced against one without even thinking about it. These responses are automatic, unless you become aware of them and use your will power to intervene.

You react spontaneously when a core belief is triggered. When a situation occurs that triggers a core belief, the unconscious thoughts that make up the belief sets off the emotion that floods the conscious mind as a strong feeling. Some person or some thing or some event automatically floods one with unpleasant feelings when the person, thing or event triggers a negative core belief.

Core beliefs that relate to your self-worth, your level of success in your career, finances, relationships and health, set up the nature of your faith or expectations that in turn determine the outcome of your life.

It is a fact that deep-seated negative and hidden expectations block your prayers from being answered.

The source of shifting emotions.

Everyday thoughts mostly just float into your mind being sent there from that stronghold of repeating thought patterns or core beliefs. Sometimes negative core thoughts are not even consciously thought but the feelings that they produce may just sweep into consciousness, such as anxiety, fear etc.

Core beliefs lead to thoughts that trigger emotions that lead to decisions or reactions that lead to results and consequences.

I repeat that the results that you have been getting in life are therefore the consequence of the hidden beliefs you hold.

To change the results you have been getting in life you therefore have to change your core beliefs.

A belief is something you accept as true, something that will seem just as true as it did the day before. Beliefs are deeply embedded and you live your life around them without thinking about them questioning them, or even being aware of them. You may have developed negative beliefs about yourself as a child, for example if you had been constantly ignored, one of your hidden beliefs might be ‘I am not worthwhile’

This belief may have you fit into a negative family situation even if it was not true but only seemed that way. Once you took on the belief you could adapt and so appear to ‘fit in’ better. The more your reactions to situations in life are based on such core beliefs the more true it will seem.

A child’s story.

A child lying alone in bed one dark night hears noises and becomes very frightened. He gets up and runs down a long dark hallway to his parents but finds their bedroom door locked. The door is always locked at night because the mother woke up once to find the shadow of an intruder bending over her. Pounding on the door, the child manages to wake the parents and find some comfort there until he is taken back to bed. When this event repeats itself a few times, the child develops the belief that “I am not cared for.”  The truth is that his parents loved him deeply but that he interpreted the reoccurring event to mean that he was unloved and uncared for. Based on such a core belief he grows up and starts dating and marries what seems to him to be insensitive and uncaring women, and gets divorced a few times.

Core beliefs are usually based on false perceptions of reality based on information received through the five senses.

The transforming power of God's Word .

Only after coming to Christ and slowly but surely embracing the Biblical truth that God loves him and cares for him, by dwelling on the scriptures below, does the deep seated belief make way for a new found freedom!

1 Peter 5:7 
"Casting all your cares (once and for all) upon Him, for He cares for you."

Ephesians 1:6  
"..to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved."

Different strokes for different folks.

The beliefs that helped you survive and fit into your childhood world were unique for you and different from even a sibling that may have gone through the same experiences. Such beliefs are usually formed through negative words or events that caused strong emotions such as rejection, embarrassment, ridicule, fear, etc. They say that rape victims react in different ways to such a traumatic event. They may be either be scarred with a troubled sexuality, a deep sense of guilt, extreme anger against men and authority figures, or retreat and view life as one big threatening event.

If you were told by an angry parent that you were a big loser and would always fail, a core belief might be “I can’t”. A sibling may have reacted by deciding, “Yes I can” to the same parent and circumstance.

Core beliefs that took root in your early years became a summary of your basic convictions that make up your self-worth, the kind of person you are, sets the path of what will become of you, your place in the family, in your career, your finances, your relationships and even your health! In time and with repeated operation of the buried thought pattern they grow stronger rather than weaker. Even though an assumed belief was based on false information or false understandings set up in early childhood, it becomes more firmly established as you grow up. Today it may still shape and guide much of your life and the way we react to those around us. These beliefs about yourself, which you hold on to so strongly also reflect your deepest vulnerability and pain and help to keep these locked within you.

Normally, learning to live with, and constantly find better ways to cope with these false beliefs gives you no opportunity to discover ways to question them or to change them.

As one person puts it, "Money, time, relationships, professional skills, family, everything has been so organized that it can be better used to distance me from my pain, my vulnerability and my fear of my negative beliefs getting any worse than they already are. In so doing I also distance myself from the love that I am so desperately seeking". 

Almost every negative belief seems to be connected in some way with your deepest thoughts or feelings about being incompetent, unlovable, unwanted, different, defective, imperfect, bad, powerless, one-below, in danger, not safe, don’t know or wrong.

Calamity at core.

Because there are countless different core beliefs, you should expect that yours would be quite different from those held even by a close sibling. Let’s look at four people who at first appear to have very similar issues and see how differently they react.

A person might believe, “It’s always my fault”, and then whenever she has made a mistake reacts by doing too many favors for other people to ‘make up’ for it.

Another might believe, “I can’t get it right”. For him this may mean failing to make decisions out of fear of making a wrong one or doing nothing.

Yet another has a not good enough belief, “I am wrong”. He or she might become a ‘one-above’ school teacher or police officer so that they can spend their days correcting others who are wrong while avoiding looking at his or her own issues.

Finally there is one whose not good enough belief is ‘I am a mistake’, with a deep seated sense of shame. This person may become very analytical or become a know it all who is never ‘mistaken’ about anything.

A second possibility is that he or she turns to drugs or alcohol to hide the shame of being a mistake, which of course that only helps feel more of a mistake.

The good news is that of course these beliefs are not true. We just act as if they were. They were based on perceptions, i.e. information that came through the five senses. What to do about it?

Decide to intervene!

I have always been intrigued by the following scripture.

Proverbs 16:32 
“He who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city,”

Reflecting on this, you will realize that there is really only a few ways in which you can rule your spirit. You can only control what you think about and what decisions you make.

The scriptures instruct us to intervene. It commands us to be transformed by God’s Word and words that reflect the intent of His Word.  A loving God is saying that if we want to experience a better life, we need to think differently on a consistent basis.

Romans 12:2 “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

So again, you need to think differently on a consistent basis by continually holding written down scriptures and other positive statements before your eyes, thinking them imaging them and speaking them out aloud.  It is therefore important to track and list the kinds of negative feelings you experience.

Set up a series of such affirmations that contradict the negative feelings that you often endure.

For example, if the feeling is that nobody loves you, make a card such as the one above, keep it before your eyes as much as you can, read it and say it out loud. Do it too, for every other area of your life, countering every negative feeling that you can identify with a positive statement.  Keep track of the negative feelings that flood your mind.

Feelings of fear may be transformed in time to a deeps sense of safety by absorbing the following scripture into your spirit.

2 Timothy 1:7
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

Feelings of rejection by people can be transformed with scripture, and lead to experiencing love and respect from family, friends, loved ones, clients and superiors.

Psalm 5:12
For You, Lord, will bless the righteous [him who is upright and in right standing with You]; and surround him with favor (pleasure and favor) as a shield.

There are little books that list the promises of God as found in the Bible. Such lists are also freely available on the internet. One of them is sure to cover and counter the negative feeling that floods your mind from time to time. Repeating them out aloud to yourself will eventually dissolve the deeply held thought pattern that is responsible for the flooding emotion. Praise God that this is so.

Go ahead, rule your spirit!