Contents

Title

Copyright

Foreword

Section 01 - The Principles, The Presence, The Power

Chapter 01 – You Have Power to Be Successful

Chapter 02 - Charging Up and Releasing the Power

Chapter 03 - How to Come into His Presence

Section 02 – Bringing His Presence into Your Past

Chapter 04 – Changing Your Past Hurts

Chapter 05 – Putting the Past to Sleep

Chapter 06 – Taking Jesus into the Hurts

Section 03 – Spiritual Re-parenting

Chapter 07 – The Mother’s Important Role

Chapter 08 - The Process of Re-parenting

Chapter 09 – Moving from Mother to Father

Chapter 10 – Healing Childhood Hurts

Section 04 – Breaking Bad Habits

Chapter 11 – How Habits Begin

Chapter 12 – How to Change Habits

Chapter 13 – Changing Your DNA

Chapter 14 – Receiving from Spiritual Parents

Section 05 - Practicing His Presence

Chapter 15 – Getting to Know Jesus

Chapter 16 – Hearing Him Through the Word

Chapter 17 – Hearing Him Through Journaling

Chapter 18 - Hearing Him Through Tongues

Chapter 19 – Making Jesus Part of Everything

More From GBM

Spiritual Transformation Made Easy

By Les D. Crause

Spiritual Transformation Made Easy

Kindle Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Global Business Resources International

All rights reserved

5663 Balboa Ave #416,

San Diego,

California 92111,

United States of America

Published by Global Business Resources International

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All rights reserved under International Copyright Law.

Contents may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written consent of the publisher.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Global Business Ministries (GBM) version of the Bible.

Original teaching by Les D. Crause

Transcripts and editing by Daphne J. Crause

Cover Design by Nadine Crause

Foreword

Most Christians who claim to know the Lord Jesus as their personal Savior have never truly experienced His presence in their lives.

Sure they have had spiritual experiences, and have tasted of the heavenly realm and the blessings of salvation. But when they face problems in their lives, they do not truly know how to bring these to the Lord and let Him deal with them.

We can all find freedom from the hurts of the past by coming into the very presence of God. He has promised that in His presence there is joy that fully satisfies. He said that at His right Hand there are pleasures that will last forever.

If we want to experience a greater measure of joy in our lives, learn to have fun and experience a life that is full of excitement and pleasure, then we do not need to turn to what the world has to offer.

All we need to do is: Come Into His Presence

This book is both a self-help guide and a training manual for those whom God has called to the ministry of deliverance and healing. If you wish to come to the Lord yourself and experience His healing presence, this book will give you what you need to do this.

But it is usually necessary to have someone else pray with you and receive confirming revelation concerning your hurts and bad experiences of the past.

So we have released this book as a counseling tool for those whom God has raised up into a ministry of counseling. It will give you all the tools that you need to add to the spiritual gifts of revelation and power that you will need to carry out the Ministry of Inner Healing.

Les D. Crause

Apostolic Father and Entrepreneur

Global Business Ministries International

Section 01 - The Principles, The Presence, The Power

Chapter 01 – You Have Power to Be Successful

Psalms 16:11 says:

You will make known to me the path of life: in your presence there is joy that fully satisfies; at your right hand [there are] pleasures that last forever.

How are you feeling today? Are you feeling good; happy and full of joy?

You say, “Well I’m not a bubbly person who expresses my emotions. You can leave that to those expressive types that are always talking and bubbly. I’m just a quiet, serene type of person. I don’t show my feelings.”

I don’t care; if you do not have joy you are a miserable person. You see the Bible says,

The joy of the Lord is your strength.

If you are not filled with joy you are a weakling. You might put up a front to make it look like you have it under control, and to say,

“Well you know I don’t live on my feelings. I’m not up and down all the time according to how I feel.”

Who are you kidding? The only difference is that nobody can tell the difference, because whether you are happy or not, you still have a dead look on your face. Everybody looks at you and says,

“Wow, he really has it under control. Have you noticed how he never changes? He’s always the same. He just never lets life get to him or to get him down.”

That is not true. He just never lets anybody see if he is down or not. Every one of us relies on the way we feel. It is the way God made us and there is nothing abnormal about it.

If you are not feeling happy, and if you are not feeling good in yourself, life is not a good place to be.

Our Feelings Need to Change

God wants us to walk in joy and happiness at all times. The trouble is how do we get that joy? How do we change those feelings of misery or feeling just plain dead?

How do you move to a place where you are bubbling inside; where you are excited with life and are feeling good? How do you get to the place where you could just sit and do nothing all day and still feel happy because you feel so good today? Or maybe you want to get out and conquer the world because you feel so good today.

Your response will be determined by your temperament and what you are like. But joy is that lovely feeling inside of you that says,

“Wow, isn’t life good? Isn’t God wonderful? Isn’t the world a beautiful place?”

When was the last time you felt that way? If you see an expressive with a miserable look on their face, you know what their problem is. They are feeling down.

How do we come to a place where our life is one of continual joy and happiness and feeling good inside; and where, because of feeling that joy, we have continual strength to face the problems of life?

We can handle everything that life throws at us. We can rise up and succeed, dominate and control and reign. We can be somebody who rises up in the world.

Then people will say,

“He has it all together. He knows just what to do and his life is a success. Everything he touches seems to go right. He is so lucky.

“Poor me, I got the raw end of the deal. When it came to the good things in life, he was first in line and I was the last. I got what was left.”

God Gets Blamed

We begin to think God has favorites. We say,

“You know it’s not fair. Just look at her. She is just radiant and filled with beauty. She has the right figure and the right looks.

“Me? Look what I was left with – an ugly face, ugly shape, ugly everything. Nobody ever looks twice at me.”

We begin to blame the Lord and we are unhappy about life.

How do you change what life hands you? How do you change from the feeling of failure and weakness; from feeling useless and feeling like you got a raw deal in life?

How do you move from there to the place of knowing who you are; of being successful in everything that you touch, and being the kind of person that other people want to be around?

It is a million dollar question isn’t it? Well I’m going to try and show you the answer. And by the time you are finished with this book, I don’t ever want to hear you making excuses again.

If I come to you and ask how you are doing, I don’t want to hear you say,

“I’m really feeling down and miserable today. The Lord feels like He is a thousand miles away and I’m just having a raw deal in life.”

You wallow on and on, but you won’t have any more excuses. I want to give you a big promise here. We are going to deal with the problems and give you the solutions.

How are we going to do this? You need to know:

1. The Principles

2. The Presence

3. The Power

The Principles

Let’s start with the principles. What are they? I gave most of the foundation principles in my two-part teaching called The New Way of Blessing. So in this first section I want to give you the quick version of the Way of Blessing.

The principles are sure and they work, but they are not enough. That is why nobody seems to be coming back and saying,

“You know the New Way of Blessing transformed my life.”

They come back and say,

“This is wonderful teaching. It COULD transform my life.”

Yes it could, but why hasn’t it? The principles are actually very simple.

The Power to Create

There are forces in the human spirit. These forces have the power to change your life; to create everything you will need in this world.

When God made man He made him in His own image. He placed His very nature to create into the spirit of man.

Man is the only creature in this world that is a creator. He can originate original ideas and concepts, and create brand new things that have never been made before.

God has placed three forces into the spirit of man. And when these forces are released correctly, they will create everything you will ever need in life.

Those three forces are faith, love and hope, and they each come from a different function in the human spirit. If you want the details, go and read The New Way of Blessing. It is broken down for you there in plenty of detail.

We have to release those forces. They come from within the human spirit, and spirit has the power to change the natural world.

Spirit dominates over the physical. When you allow your spirit to control and dominate the circumstances in your life, those forces in your recreated spirit will go forth to bring about the changes and the creation that you need.

Power of the Human Spirit

The world does not know about the forces. They only know about releasing from within you and they call it the power of the mind.

I have read all the self-help books. And in the end they all actually apply a similar principle. They say that you can, by choice, by the power of thinking and concentration, release a power which they don’t understand.

They don’t understand the spirit. They speak about tapping into the ‘Infinite’. They are afraid to talk about God, so they call Him the ‘Universe’.

They know there is a power there, and they have learned how to tap into it. They use that power to create for themselves the success that they need in their life.

You might say,

“How can they do that? They are not believers.”

It is because God has built that power into man. Every man, from the moment of birth, is born with spiritual power. And every man, whether saved or unsaved, still has a spirit.

You say, “I thought that unbelievers were spiritually dead.”

Yes they are dead so far as their relationship with God is concerned. Their spirit has lost its ability to make contact with God and to draw on His power.

But an unbeliever retains the power that God built into his or her human spirit. He can use that power, as God designed man to do in the first place. He can build for himself a life of success, prosperity and blessing, in this world that God gave to man.

Preparing the Soul

God gave man a whole lot more than that. Adam and Eve had a whole lot more than that but they lost it. What did they have that man does not have today outside of Christ?

The answer to that question is what they don’t have. It is the presence. I am not getting to that just yet though. Let’s first finish with the principles. They are:

1. There are forces in the human spirit

2. There needs to be a preparation in the soul

Why must the soul be prepared? It is because the forces that lie in the spirit of man, can only be released outwards via the soul.

You see although in his essence man is a spirit, he cannot make contact with this world without a body. His body is the space suit that he uses to be able to live and survive in this world.

The body of man is what gives him the ability to do anything in this world. If man was a disembodied spirit, he would be floating around not being able to touch anything.

People have the idea that the spirits of the dead are hanging out there. No they are not.

There are other disembodied spirits that are called demons. And they do not have any power or authority in the earth either because they need a body. That is why they try to possess human beings, so they can work through the body of that person.

How do you get the power to come from your spirit, through your body, and into this world to bring about the change? There is a path that lies between the spirit and the body called the soul.

Most people out there don’t know that the soul and the spirit are not the same thing. They think that man is body, mind and soul. You keep hearing people using these terms that they know nothing about.

Your Control Tower

The Bible says that man is a spirit, a soul and a body, and within the soul lies the control tower. The control tower is the part that decides what the body and the spirit does, and it actually brings those two together.

So the spirit may be filled with these powerful forces that can go out and change a person’s life and circumstances. But unless the soul is conditioned to release those forces correctly, that power cannot go forth into the earth and bring about the change.

All the self-help books and the philosophies of this world major on one thing: dealing with the soul. You will hear them saying that you can use the power of your mind to change your life and to become wealthy.

You know they are right. They just don’t realize that it takes a bit more than the mind. Because you see the soul doesn’t just have a mind; it has a mind, emotions and will.

Emotions Are Key

Here is the key. What is it that causes you to release the forces of your spirit outwards into the world to bring about change? What is the main part of the soul involved?

It is actually not the mind at all. It is the emotions. That is why I asked you at the beginning,

“How are you feeling?”

You see your feelings are going to make all the difference in the world. Because what you desire to do is what you will make the effort to do. Now you can say,

“Yes but if I can just fill my mind, concentrate and program my subconscious it will happen.”

You sound as though you have been reading those self-help books.

You say, “If I can just program those ideas into my sub-conscious, my sub-conscious will automatically rise up.”

Feeding in Positive Thoughts

Let’s just call it the spirit. Yes the sub-conscious is kind of the spot where the soul and the spirit join together. And yes it is true that what you feed in there is going to change you.

Do you know why it is going to change you? It is because it will change the way you feel.

You see the more positive thoughts you put in, the better you feel. The better you feel, the more chances there are that you are going to rise up and do the things that need to be done in order for you to succeed.

If you don’t rise up and do something, nothing is going to happen. There is no such thing as luck.

Chapter 02 - Charging Up and Releasing the Power

There is something greater than luck. There is the power of the spirit within. It will reach out supernaturally and begin to bring change to the circumstances in this world.

That is what the world keep trying to tap into. But they don’t quite know how to do it. And when they finally realize that we have to go beyond just the mind in the natural, they start seeing that there is something spiritual.

There is something supernatural and they call it metaphysical. All they are really trying to do is to teach you how to find the right demon to give you the power.

Why is this? It is because somehow we need a bit of help to release this power in the human spirit. And while the whole world has gone mad after Eastern religion, meditation and everything that leaves Jesus out, the church is falling asleep and throwing out the whole idea. They are saying,

“That is a whole lot of mumbo jumbo. I will just take whatever God throws at me.”

Well do you know what He threw at me? A body that was too small and looks that did not make women turn and say,

“Wow he’s great.”

If you look at it that way, what did I have to start out with in life?

What I had to start out with was what every one of us also has to start out with: A power in our spirits that God has given us to use, in order to succeed in this world.

You say, “So does that mean that God isn’t going to do anything for me?”

No I didn’t say that. That is the third main point: The power.

You see we do need more than that. We could live without it though. We could live a life of success in this world, simply using the power that God has already put into our human spirits.

Authority in Three Realms

These are the three forces of the human spirit: faith, love and hope. You have within you the forces that you need in order to succeed in this world. But this is only one of three worlds.

You are probably thinking,

“Oh, so we’re getting into space theory now. Do you believe in UFO’s and life in outer space?”

No that is not what I am talking about. The Bible speaks about three worlds. It says that at the name of Jesus, which is above every other name, we have authority in the earth, above the earth and under the earth.

We have authority in this earthly realm. We have authority in the realm of God, which is the heavenly realm. And we have authority in the kingdom of darkness, which is the realm in which Satan and his demons live.

An unbeliever does not have this. An unbeliever only has authority in this world. This is their God-given right that God has placed into all men.

Correct Thinking

You need to condition your soul correctly. You need to choose to fill your soul and your mind with the right thoughts. You do have that power of will. You have the power to choose what you think.

If you continually fill your mind with the right thoughts, and cause those thoughts to sink down until they become part of you, they will build habit patterns within you.

You can take the experiences of life that create templates of experience, and add repetition (thinking and different actions) to them.

As you do this you can program your soul, until it comes to the place where that power of your spirit is released.

People are doing this all the time. Even unbelievers have learned how to do this. And if you do it their way you could even succeed to the same degree that they do.

Charge Up the Power

The New Way of Blessing actually teaches the same thing as most of the self-help books. It goes a bit further though because we dealt with curses and other spiritual things. But in essence the New Way of Blessing teaches that we need to charge up the power in our spirits.

We need to prepare the soul to release that power. Then we need to release those forces into the earth via the soul and through the body. As that power goes out it causes change in our lives, change out there and success in this world.

The successful people in this world have learned how to program their souls to release the power that is in their spirits. Then they have used their bodies to go out and make it happen.

Perhaps you are thinking,

“Wow, why read the New Way of Blessing? You might as well go and read everybody else’s stuff out there.”

Well the New Way of Blessing doesn’t just teach you how to do it. It actually teaches you why it works. You have something better to work with, so you can now add an extra dimension.

Two Ways to Release Power

The next point I want to make is that you need to release the power. We have the forces in the spirit. We need to prepare our soul. And now we need to release that power into the earth.

How do you release the power into the earth? This is the most famous teaching from the New Way of Blessing series that the world does not know. You release it through words and actions.

The self-help guys have caught onto some of this, and they teach you how to speak affirmations. Speaking affirmations does not release power though. It programs the soul and prepares it. They are still only sitting in the mind.

None of them know that the way to bring change in your life is not to just keep saying over and over again,

“I’m a millionaire. I’m a millionaire.”

The Power of Command

You see that is affirmation, and all it does is to help you build pictures in your mind. It does that well and we have taught you how to do that in the New Way of Blessing under building spiritual templates.

But when you release that power from your spirit you do so in the same way as when you speak a word. You command that thing to come into being.

Some of the self-help teachers get close to that. But here is where the New Way of Blessing begins to move beyond the teaching of this world, because we can release that power.

Many of them have learned how to release that power in action, and they get out there and they begin to act. I have heard them teach, that if you begin to act as though you already have the thing you desire, this releases a power.

This is the closest the world has come. They do not realize that you actually have the power to command with your words. They do not realize that God has placed into every man the power of decree to say,

“I will do this. This will happen. It will be.”

It is one area that is still a little shady. But for us it’s simple – or rather it should be. The trouble is not many Christians even realize that they have the authority to speak and to decree into this earth.

We have left that to the realm of the Prophetic Ministry. But we have shown in the New Way of Blessing that every man has that authority. As those spiritual forces rise up within him, and as his soul is conditioned, he has the authority to release that power into the earth and to bring change.

The Need for Greater Power

The next point I want to make is that the human spirit is limited. God gave man a degree of power in his spirit, but only a limited amount.

Man only has a certain amount of power in this earth. And if he is to go beyond and release a greater power, he needs something more. He needs a greater spiritual force, than what is naturally already resident in his human spirit.

Here is where the problems start to take place. The self-help materials have been around for so long and everyone has been teaching them for a long time. But they are realizing that it only gets them so far; that they have to add another spiritual dimension.

What spiritual dimension are they adding? Are they all turning to God now? Yes they probably think they are - via Buddha or Mohammed.

And the latest fad that is so subtle, is what has come to be known as the New Age Movement. The New Age Movement is teaching that we can contact God; and not only God but we can also make contact with angels.

Who are they contacting? It is not the Almighty God that we know. They are contacting demon forces, which they are calling their ‘spirit guides’.

People who believe in New Age have come to realize that they need to tap into a greater power. They are tapping into that greater power, and it is causing them to succeed because it is supplementing what is in their human spirit.

Satan’s Power is Limited

It is time the church rises up and presents a far greater power. What power is that? It is the presence of God.

You see His power is unlimited. Satan has a limited power. In fact Satan’s power is limited to man. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says:

There is no test or temptation that has overtaken you except that which is common to man.

Satan cannot attack except through man. He cannot do anything in this world except through man.

That is why he had to tempt Adam and Eve and get them to submit to him and to obey what he said. It was so that he could begin to control them; that he could actually tap into the power of the human spirit and work though that power.

So even when a person opens himself to a demon force, they still have to work through the power of their spirit. The power of a demon is limited, but the power of God is unlimited because God was the Creator of the Universe.

God made everything, so we somehow need to tap into His power. We need to add that to the natural ability God has built into man to release the power of the spirit. When we do that we can rise up and move into a greater dimension.

What is the most important function of the soul that determines whether you will succeed or not? It is your emotions; the way you feel.

You see if you do not feel good about yourself; if you are feeling inferior and insecure, de-motivated, discouraged and depressed, you will not accomplish anything in this world.

You are just not going to do anything. And even if you had that power in your hands, you will not release it because you won’t feel like it. That is the bottom line.

Two Different Aspects

I want you to look now at two things that were in that verse we shared at the beginning. Here it is again, but you are going to see something slightly new here. Psalm 16:11 says:

You will make known to me the path of life: in your presence there is joy that fully satisfies; at your right hand [there are] pleasures that last forever.

If you were in my presence right now would you feel it? Would you be able to feel my right hand? No you would have to touch me to feel that. You see my right hand is not the same as being in my presence.

If you were in my presence you would probably feel good, because I am friendly and have lots of jokes to tell to make you laugh a lot. I am kind and considerate and I don’t just talk about myself all the time. I ask you questions and let you talk about yourself. I ask you,

“How are things going? How are you doing and how are you feeling?”

You say,

“Wow that Les Crause is such a nice guy. I just love being around him. And you know every time I’m with him my spirit just gets lifted up and I feel so good.”

Can you see the difference? You see coming into His presence produces joy. So the presence and the right hand are not the same thing. The one is our response to Him. The other is His response to us.

His Response and Ours

What is our response to Him? It is to come into His presence.

What is His response to us? It is to reach out His right hand and to bless.

Can you see the difference? You say,

“You know I come into the presence of the Lord every day and it hasn’t changed anything. I am still not rich and there is still no change in my life. Nothing is happening.”

“So what happened when you came into His presence?”

“Well it was really good. It felt so nice. I could have just stayed there for ages because it was awesome, but then I had to leave.”

“So what did God do while you were in His presence?”

“Well nothing really. It was just good to be there and to talk to Him. It was good to just pour out all my problems because nobody else ever listens.

“At least He listened – more than anybody else I know would do. And the best part was that He really cared. He didn’t just pretend, like most people who just nod their heads and say, ‘Yes I see. I understand. Tell me more.’ Then it goes in one ear and out the other.”

It is a wonderful feeling to be in the presence of a person who really understands; who cares and will honestly listen to what you tell them.

But we have to go beyond that and we have to get a response from Him. You see in His presence is fullness of joy and you can go away feeling wonderful.

But at His right hand are the pleasures. Those are the goodies; the stuff we spend all our money on. They are the nice things in this world that God created to be beautiful and pleasurable.

They are sitting there waiting at His right hand. And if you want to receive from His right hand, the first thing you have to do is come into His presence.

Chapter 03 - How to Come into His Presence

How do we come into his presence? We are actually always in His presence. David said,

“How can I escape from your presence? If I go up to heaven or down to hell; wherever I go you are there.”

That causes some confusion doesn’t it? Here we did a whole series on teaching you how to come into His presence when we are actually always in His presence.

We cannot escape His presence because God is everywhere. He is omnipresent. Wherever you go He is there. It is actually impossible to escape His presence.

God’s Move

Here is the problem though. We are not aware of His presence. God is here, but can you see Him? Can you feel Him? Where exactly is He? You say,

“Lord, where are you?”

He is inside of you; He’s outside of you. He is sitting on the chair beside you and in the room next door. How do we become aware of His presence?

God has already made the first move. He has made His presence available to us and is just waiting for us to come.

How has He made His presence available? He has done it firstly through Jesus when He walked this world. Secondly He has done it through the Holy Spirit who was sent down after Jesus left.

Your Move

It is available to you and He is waiting. But you see the next move is up to you. God says in His Word,

Draw close to me and I will draw close to you.

He has made His move and now He is waiting for you to make the next move. You say,

“It’s terrible. I just can’t feel the presence of God anymore. He seems to have deserted me.”

No he hasn’t deserted you. He is standing waiting patiently. A Scripture in Revelation that everybody knows so well says,

Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man will open, I will come in and we will fellowship together.

He has already knocked. He’s waiting for you to open the door.

How do you come into His Presence? Let’s look at all the different ways you can do that.

His Presence Through His Word

The first way of coming into His Presence is through His Word. Why is this? It is because His Word produces faith, and God requires faith from us before we obtain His blessings.

Here is a lovely well-known Scripture, but you have likely not heard it this way because it is the GBM translation of it. Hebrews 11:6 says:

But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that comes to God to receive something for himself, must know without a doubt that he does exist and that he is one who rewards those who are earnestly desiring to receive something from him.

So what does faith require? It requires firstly believing that God exists.

Do you know that there are people who have fallen in love - and almost got married - by email, by letter, or on the phone? They have often never met the person until right at the end.

We have seen people who have met on the Internet. Then they set a time to finally meet each other. My one daughter and her husband know about that. We also married a couple who met in that sort of way. We still hear examples of it taking place all the time.

How can you get to know a person you have never met? You can do it through their words. Do you want to get to know God? Listen to His Words or read them.

You can fall in love with Him by mail because He has already written it all down for you. And if you want to hear His Word being spoken, go and listen to a good preacher who preaches the word. You will hear the words being spoken. And you will get to know God because you will get to know Him through His Word.

His Presence Through Prayer

The second way is through prayer. This is going to require more than just speaking words and saying,

“Lord, I have these problems and here is my shopping list. I need this and this. And if you could throw this one in as well I would be very grateful.”

That is a one-way relationship. Can you imagine living with someone who always did all the talking and talked about themselves? They are always saying,

“This is what I want. And I want to get that.”

How would you like to marry somebody like that?

Prayer requires more than just doing all the talking and telling God what we want. Prayer involves doing some listening and finding out what He wants.

You see you are doing more than just standing there in a person’s presence. You are actually beginning to interact with them and getting to know them.

As a result their presence becomes more real to you. And when you come into the presence of someone that you know intimately, you feel comfortable in their presence. You open your heart to each other and you receive from one another.

His Presence Through Persistence

The third way of coming into his presence is through persistence.

Now many a man knows that it takes more than approaching a woman and saying, “I like you. Will you marry me?” to woo her as his bride.

A lot of the time she will take one look at him and say,

“I don’t like you; go away.”

How many people do you know that you are good friends with right now, but you didn’t like them when you first met them?

There are many people, who when they first meet me, can honestly say they don’t like me. Most people say,

“He reminds me of my father.”

Then they immediately put up a wall. You know God reminds you even more of your father because He is a father. Have you persisted in coming into His presence; in breaking through the barriers of your own heart?

Have you pushed through in overcoming your own fears, insecurities and doubts? Have you persisted and broken through as Jacob of old did? He hung on when he was wrestling with God and said,

“I’m not going to let you go until you bless me.”

His Presence Through Praise

The fourth way is through praise and worship, and the use of music. This requires full submission and it is not easy.

Imagine that you want to get to know a person, so the first thing you do is come up to them and say,

“I’m all yours.”

That could work in a romantic relationship, but it is very questionable. But the time will come when you will have to make that commitment if you want to enter into a place of intimacy with man; much more with God. You must come to a place of total surrender.

When you praise and worship the Lord, the most common act is to raise your hands as you praise Him. Everyone knows that no matter where you are in the world, doing that is a universal sign of surrender in any warfare. When somebody does that, you know he is saying,

“Don’t shoot; I give up.”

That is what praise and worship is about. It is full surrender. The lovely thing about music is that it gets your soul in tune and allows that free flow. It creates the nice feelings that come when you sense the presence of God.

So we can use those four major ways of coming into His Presence. But it takes a bit more to actually experience His presence.

I’m not going to discuss that now. We’re going to look at that in more detail as we continue with this series.

What We Feel in His Presence

What are the results of experiencing His presence? What happens when we finally experience His presence?

Total Assurance

The first thing that happens is we have a feeling of knowing that everything is okay.

How many times have you been to a doctor but not to get cured? You just want him to check you over and say,

“It is okay; you’re not going to die. It’s nothing serious.”

It doesn’t matter what medicine he prescribes after that. You just go home. He doesn’t actually need to treat you. He just needs to give you the assurance that everything is okay.

Having that assurance is the most wonderful experience when you come into God’s presence. You are assured that everything is okay, and God says,

“You don’t have to worry. It’s all under control.”

You have so many doubts, and you wonder whether you are doing the right thing. You come into His presence and say,

“Lord what is going on?”

He says, “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. You can relax.”

Isn’t it a wonderful feeling when you can hand the cares over to somebody else, and know they have it in their hands? You don’t have to worry about it.

You have not felt His presence, and it’s not because you sinned or did something wrong. That is actually why you want to experience His presence isn’t it?

The worst possible thing that can happen to a believer is when it feels like God is not there anymore. If you can just feel His presence that is all it takes. You just need to feel that He’s still there. You think,

“It’s okay, He hasn’t left me. We can carry on now. For a moment there I thought I lost it.”

Have you been there? Every one of us faces this all the time.

In the rest of this book I am going to try and give you some ways to overcome this problem. I want to show you how to break through to His presence.

Someone Who Cares

The second result of experiencing His presence is being able to share your heart with someone who cares.

You say, “Lord you just don’t know what I’ve been going through. Did you hear what they said about me, Lord? Did you hear what they did to me? Man it’s terrible.”

Try doing that with somebody you know, and they will look at their watch and say,

“You know I’m very sorry to hear about your problems, but I really need to go. I’ll see you later, okay?”

There is nobody in this world who cares. Well some people are really caring. And if you came to me and poured out your sorrows I would probably be nice to you. I like to think that I am that sort of person. But you know there comes a limit, where I say to them,

“That’s enough! Pull yourself together now and grow up.”

The wonderful thing about the Lord is He never loses His patience. He sits there and He listens. You pour out your sorrows and He says,

“Yes I know. Isn’t it terrible? I really understand.”

Let it All Out

It feels so good to find somebody who understands; somebody who you don’t have to make an appointment with to go and pour out your sorrows. You don’t have to pay a big fee to go and lie on the shrink’s couch.

Do you know why people pay all that money to psychiatrists? It is not to get cured. They actually don’t want to get cured.

They want to go back every time and lie there, talk about themselves for hours, and have somebody listen and sound interested. People pay big money for that privilege. They say,

“Who needs to be cured? I love my weekly meeting with the shrink. It feels so good. I walk out there feeling great. I can pour out all my cares and sorrows that I had during the week.”

In churches like the Catholic Church, you have a priest that you can go to and pour out all of your sins and sorrows. He will listen to you and understand, and tell you that you’re forgiven.

Maybe we’ve missed it at times. We are allowing the Catholic Church, who don’t have the full truth, to minister to people’s needs.

We are too busy. But you know if you can learn to come into the presence of the Lord, you won’t need any man ever again. You can just come and pour everything out, and have somebody who cares and understands.

Full Acceptance

The third result of coming into His presence is that you will find full acceptance without condemnation. You can come into His presence just as you are - a useless, weak, miserable sinner, wallowing in your sin and your selfishness. He will take you and accept you just the way you are.

Paul says, “We have been accepted in the Beloved One. God has accepted us for Christ’s sake.”

It is such a wonderful feeling to come into the presence of a person who will accept you just the way you are; who will open His arms of love and say,

“I care; I understand.”

He is a person who will never ever condemn you. Perhaps right now you are saying,

“That really sounds good. I have just never experienced that.”

Then you have never come into His presence. You may have felt anointings, and you may have had spiritual experiences. But you have not come to know the God that I know.

You have not truly come into that loving relationship of experiencing His presence, because whenever I come into His presence, these things are always there.

Perhaps you know what I am talking about and you are thinking,

“You know I remember that. When last did that happen? When last did I come into His presence and have a good talk to him, pour out my sorrows and hear Him say, ‘I love you. I care. I understand.’ ”

When last did you do that? Actually if you know how to come into his Presence you are foolish, because He is waiting for you. You can come into His presence right now, if you want to, and experience all of those things.

This goes way beyond the principles of psyching myself up. It goes beyond confessing, speaking over and over again; getting my spirit charged up, experiencing the power and speaking it forth.

This goes beyond all that, because now I have a feeling of security. I have let go all of my cares and He is there. And now when I go out, He is right by my side.

In His Presence Continually

I’m going to show you how to bring Jesus into your life - past, present, and future. I’m going to show you how to be aware of His presence 24 hours a day, wherever you go. Jesus said,

“I will never leave you or forsake you.” He said, “My presence will go with you.”

He has promised that and you can experience His presence all the time. And now when He goes with you, you are not alone so you don’t have to feel lonely or afraid. But you have far more than that. You have somebody bigger than you.

You know when I grew up I was always the smallest in the class. All the bullies would always pick on me. But I had an older brother who did body-building. He was three years older than me. I would say to the bullies,

“I have a big brother.”

Guys would pick on me, and those who knew would say,

“I would be careful if I were you. Have you seen his brother?”

We have a big brother to take with us. That is the importance of having His presence to go with us.

The Power

I’m going to end very quickly on the third main point which is the power.

Firstly God’s power is greater than the human spirit. Human power is limited, but God’s power is unlimited. The believer has more power than the unbeliever.

Think of the guys with all their self-help concepts. It can take them so far and no further. We have far more because we have the power of God available to us.

His Right Hand of Authority

In order to experience the power of God we need His right hand. What is His right hand? It is the place of authority and power. The Scripture says:

At His right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Wherever the Scriptures speak of God’s right hand, it speaks of His authority and His power. That authority was given to Jesus alone. But here is some good news, because Jesus gave it to us.

So to know God’s power requires His right hand. His right hand is the place of authority and power, and that authority and power was given to Jesus alone. But Jesus has made it available to us.

In Christ

The next point is this: To know the power requires knowing who you are in Him. Well who are you in Him? You are in Christ.

That means if Jesus is standing here, you are standing here too. It doesn’t matter which part of Him you are. You can be the lowest cell on the sole of His foot, because you see Jesus represents the Head and the Body of Christ.

We see Jesus as being the Head of the church, but the Bible says that the church is His Body. This means that you are in Christ and you are part of His body. So if we look at Christ we see Jesus and you - part of the same thing.

Now if you are in Christ you are seated with Him. Where is He seated? At the right hand of the Majesty on High.

Well if Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God, where are you sitting? You are sitting at the right hand of God. What comes from His right hand? Pleasures forevermore and that never come to an end.

The fullness of His power is available to you. You have authority to use His name. Why? It is because you are in Him. You are joined together to Him in one spirit. And then not only are you in Him, but He is in you.

Somebody said it is like two snakes swallowing each other. The one is in Him, and He is in them. It is as though we are eating each other; you in me and I in you.

Isn’t that what Jesus said when He prayed? He prayed,

“Father, that they might be one.”

Me in you and you in me, and all of us together in one.

You Can Use His Power

Because He is in you, you have the ability to use His power.

You have learned to come into His presence using the principles that we’ve learned. Now when you add His presence in your life, you have available to you a far more powerful, dynamic power.

The very power that created this world has been placed in your hands. Now you add that power to the principles of taking His presence with you.

Jesus and me are walking down the street. There is a situation I must deal with. What do I do? Do I fall to my knees and cry out,

“Lord, please help me?”

No I just turn to Him and I say,

“Should I do this one, or are you going to do it? What do you want me to do, Lord?”

He says, “You do that and I’ll do the rest.”

We work as a team.

I have shared an illustration before which I got from Mel Tari. He wrote the book ‘The Gentle Breeze of Jesus’.

He said, “You are walking down the street with Jesus. You see a man who is sick and you know that he needs to be healed. So you turn to Jesus and you say, ‘Lord, here is a sick man. What are we going to do?’

“Jesus says, ‘Go and lay hands on him and say to him, In the name of Jesus be healed. If you do that, I’ll do my part and I will heal him.’ ”

You see faith is so simple. All you do is you walk - you and Jesus. You lay your hands on him and you say,

“In the name of Jesus be healed.”

Then you step back and let Jesus do the job. It’s quite simple really isn’t it? But you see you can’t do that unless you know His presence.

So let’s wrap this all up. You have learned the New Way of Blessing. You have learned about coming into His presence.

Now learn to put all of these together and make them work together for you. It will transform your life and you will never be the same again.

Section 02 – Bringing His Presence into Your Past

Chapter 04 – Changing Your Past Hurts

Philippians 3:13-14 says:

Brothers, I do not consider myself to have attained but [this] one thing [I do], forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

One of my favorite movies is a movie about time travel. Now there have been quite a few of those, and I can probably remember several of them.

I remember there was one called ‘Back to the Future’. In this movie they portrayed the idea of going back into the past and changing things, so that your future is different.

So they portrayed the idea of someone going back into the past, changing an event that took place, and then going into the future and seeing what effect that change had.

Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that?

You Cannot Change the Past

Think back on your life in the past and all the bad things that have happened to you. As you look at your life as it is right now, you think things would be so much different if you could go back and change what happened there.

You think, “If I could change the circumstances that happened in my childhood, my life as it looks right now would be so different.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could go back into the past and change your present and your future?

I’m afraid that lies only in the realm of science fiction. What has happened in the past has happened, and you cannot change the course of events in history.

You can perhaps change your future starting from now. I will be sharing as we go on about how you can change your future, by learning how to come into the presence of the Lord. But what I’d like to look at in this section, is how you can change your past.

You say, “I thought you just said we can’t change the past?”

No I didn’t say that. I said,

“You can’t change the events of the past.”

Now most of the time you only remember the things that you want to remember. And when you think back on life in general, you tend to think back on the good old days; when everything was wonderful, when there were no problems, when everything was great.

You remember when life was grand, and when you didn’t have the problems that are in the world today. You think about when there was no conflict, war or strife.

Life is Still the Same

Are you living in a dream world? You know life hasn’t changed very much.

I remember reading David Wilkerson’s book ‘The Cross and the Switchblade’. It’s a story about a young preacher who got involved in ministering to the gangs. They were involved in drugs, killing and fighting.

Most of that took place probably before the lifetime of most people reading this. But you know you read the story, and apart from the things that are obviously dated, it sounds like something that is taking place right now.

You could go back into those cities, similar to the circumstance that he portrays, and see that actually it is still happening right now. Human nature is just as corrupt now as it was before.

You have people saying,

“This younger generation of today are just so crude and corrupt. I would love to go back to the way it was in my day.”

Don’t kid yourself. Sin has been here since the Garden of Eden. You just hid your sin away then. It’s more open today and people are bolder about it.

Sin was sin, and sin has always been sin. Bad things have always happened to people, and bad things will continue to happen, until the Lord comes and transforms this world and creates a new Heaven and a new earth. Life will go on as it has.

Yes we have modern inventions and we have greater conveniences. We have more available to us. We have the Internet today, and we have the media in far greater measure than they ever did in the past.

You Have Greater Knowledge

The problem is not that times have changed. The problem is when you lived those past events, you did not know what you know right now. You had not had the experience that you have had now. So if you look back on the past you would say,

“If I could relive that event, I would never do it the same again. I would never allow that to happen again. I would not make that bad decision that I made there. I would do it differently.”

But there is something even more important than that.

Right now you have a knowledge of God’s Word and you have a knowledge of the Lord that is far greater than what you had back there.

And if you were only saved late in life, for a large portion of ‘back there’ you didn’t even know that the Lord existed, nor did you even care that He existed. He wasn’t a part of your life at all.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I knew the Lord, right back into childhood in the same way as I knew Him now?

I grew up in church. I grew up in a Christian home, having committed my life to the Lord so far back that I can’t even remember. I knew him as my Savior right back from the beginning.

But I didn’t know Him the way I know Him now. He has become so real to me now that He is as real as you are. I can speak to Him as easily as I can speak to you. I can see Him in the spirit as clearly as I can see you.

I didn’t know that back there. I didn’t have that understanding or knowledge of His Word that I have right now.

Wouldn’t it be great if I could go back and relive those events with what I know now; with the knowledge I have of the Word and with the relationship that I have with Jesus right now?

The good news is that there is a way. And that’s what I’d like to share about here. That is what is involved in the process that has come to be known in many circles as inner healing.

Templates of the Past

I would like to start by speaking about the templates of the past. You might say,

“What is a template?”

A template is many things to many people, depending on how you want to use the word. Actually you won’t find the word in the Bible. It is a word I chose to describe an experience which is common to all human beings.

A template normally means a pattern or a mold, like a stencil. It is a pattern or way of doing things.

We have a term in English. We speak about a cookie-cutter approach. It is where you have a cookie-cutter which has one shape. And all the cookies come out looking the same, because you used the same cutter or mold for all of them.

Another term we use sometimes is a sausage machine. It just churns out all the sausages one after the other, and they all look the same.

We often say that people are trained or turned out like a cookie-cutter or a sausage machine. They just get molded all the same way. That’s normally what a template is in a natural sense.

I chose that term to describe an experience which we all have. It is an experience of being forced to follow something that we actually don’t want to follow; of being squeezed into a pattern of behavior that is outside of our pattern of control.

Now I had never read about this anywhere. I hadn’t seen it in the Scriptures. I had done a lot of study on counseling.

The only slight indication you have of such a thing, is the old idea of the psychiatrist putting somebody on his couch; getting them to go back and speak about all their problems in the past.

And after years and years of doing this, of digging into the past and of trying to explain and understand why you behave the way you do, hopefully you might break free and overcome these problems. That’s probably about as much as Freudian Psychiatry can offer you.

How Templates Show Themselves

I first discovered about templates at a time when a certain set of circumstances were occurring in my life. I’ve described this elsewhere so I’m not going to go into detail on it now. But the one day I suddenly found myself experiencing very strong negative emotions that I couldn’t explain.

I just started to feel down and depressed. There was nothing in my life at the time which would justify me feeling discouraged or depressed. Everything was going very good.

We were involved in a building project. We were extending our home and were setting up our own business. Everything looked great. We had great plans for the future and we were excited about it.

But suddenly I just started to feel really negative and get depressed. I just couldn’t explain it.

Every one of us experiences this strange phenomenon at some time, where suddenly your feelings change and you cannot explain why. You know we sometimes joke about it and we say,

“You know you got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.”

Have you heard that expression?

You say, “He just got out of bed on the wrong side this morning. He’s been otherwise the whole day. It’s just been a bad day. I might as well go back to bed, cancel the day and start all over again.”

Have you ever had those days? Well why did you feel that way? What brought it on? What made you suddenly change – and it can happen that sudden?

You can be at the height of joy and happiness, and you can be having a wonderful time. You can be happy with life and things are really great. But suddenly something kicks in and you just feel negative and you start to get depressed.

You think “What happened? What brought that on? I was doing so good. I got up this morning feeling wonderful. I had a song in my heart and sang in the shower. It was great. I wanted to go out and I had such plans.”

“I thought we were going to do such wonderful things today. And now here I am in the middle of the day sitting and thinking that I want to die.”

What had happened? I discovered that the circumstances of my life at that point were an exact mirror of a set of circumstances from the past. It was as though I had gone back at that point in time, into a past event.

Now I hadn’t actually gone into a past event. But because everything around me was very similar to a specific event in my past, it was as though momentarily, without realizing it, I got caught back into the past.

That past event and those circumstances included a very bad experience. It was an experience of rejection which left me devastated, discouraged and depressed.

That is all that was missing from the current circumstances. Most of the things around me - the projects we were involved in, our life, the building, and everything we were doing - were almost an exact duplicate of a circumstance that existed in my life before. And during that circumstance my marriage had turned sour and my wife had left me.

I hadn’t even thought about it. It was the furthest thing from my mind. But my spirit, my heart and my memories went and dug it up. Now suddenly I started to feel all the bad feelings from that memory of the past.

Locked in Emotions and Feelings

That is what we call a trigger. In other words these current circumstances triggered off an old memory, and created the same feelings and emotions that were in that old memory.

What is a template? A template is a memory; a set of circumstances or an event in your life that gets locked into your memory with everything surrounding.

It locks in all the circumstances - all the events, the feelings and all the senses. It could include sight, sound, taste, smell or touch. All of those things are locked into your memory. You see this is the information that is fed in.

As you sit reading this book, this is an event. You are sitting there in a chair, or in bed, or wherever you enjoy reading. Perhaps there is the sound of a fan blowing. If you smell deeply perhaps there is something you can smell.

Perhaps right now you are feeling very hot, or you may be feeling very cold. You are feeling something. All of your senses are alert and alive. And right now this memory is being locked in.

Now if you are having a good experience today, in the future when you think back on this time you will have good feelings. If you are having a bad experience today, in the future when you think back on what’s happening right now, you will have that same bad feeling.

Perhaps you attend a certain church meeting. Now at some time in the future you are going to sit down in a meeting that is similar to what you went to. It will be approximately the same number of people, the same size hall, a similar preacher and similar circumstances.

There may be the same smell or maybe the same sound. Something will be the same, or enough of those things will occur in that new event. As you sit there you will get a feeling that says,

“This is like what happened before.”

Now if you have a bad experience while reading, the next time you sit down in the same place to read, you are going to have a bad feeling even though you were feeling good when you came to read. You won’t even know why you’re feeling bad. You will just say,

“I don’t feel like sitting and reading today. This author is annoying me.”

Whatever is bugging you today, it will bug you then. Of course if you have a good experience, the next time you have this you will sit down and think,

“Wow this is wonderful. I am enjoying reading this book so much.”

Both Negative and Positive Memories

You see it can be positive or negative feelings, because that is the way our memories are stored within us. They are stored not only with the five senses, but locked into that are the emotions and feelings and the things that are burning in your heart right now.

When you recreate those five senses, what happens is your memory pulls out the corresponding feeling and emotion and mixes it together. You then re-experience and actually relive the event without realizing you are doing it.

The problem with templates is you don’t notice the good ones. You see you may be sitting in a meeting and you think,

“I feel so good today. Isn’t it lovely to be in the presence of the Lord? Man this is a wonderful meeting. I’m having such a good time.”

You think, “You know I actually didn’t feel that good when I got out of bed this morning. But I’m glad I came to the meeting, because now that I am here I really feel good.”

It may be that the only reason you are feeling good is that you had a good experience in the past in a similar meeting. But you don’t think about that. You just think that you are glad you feel good.

But if the circumstances are different, you may go to that meeting feeling really bad, depressed or angry – whatever it may be. Perhaps the last time you were in a meeting like that the preacher upset you or said something directly against you.

Maybe he insulted you or told a bad joke. Now you are sitting there and thinking,

“Get finished now so I can get out of here.”

You see you noticed that one.

You say, “I can’t understand it. I felt good when we came in here, but man I feel so irritated now. I wish he would shut up and get finished so we can get out of here.”

Do you see what I am talking about?

What happens is these templates of the past have bad experiences such as hurts, fear and guilt mixed in with the memories.

Negative Emotions from Life Experiences

Well you may not have so many of those from a church meeting, but we are not just talking about meetings are we? We’re talking about life and experiences in life.

And life is unfair. Life hurts us without mercy. Life accuses us endlessly and making us feel continually guilty. It fills us with fear about what is going to happen in the future. Then these negative emotions come out and you say,

“I can’t understand what is wrong with me? I just feel like crying and weeping, but I don’t know why I want to cry. I am just a stupid woman.”

Well it is not only women who have this experience. Sometimes men do too. And it is even worse when a man wants to cry, because it’s normal for women to cry, but not for men.

You get this sudden grief that rises in you and you can’t explain it. You are suddenly feeling terribly guilty, and you’re trying to figure out what it is that you did that you should feel guilty about.

You’re afraid and you don’t even know what you are afraid of. You can’t explain it. Why? It is templates of the past.

Chapter 05 – Putting the Past to Sleep

Some of the templates of the past involve a problem in your identity; in not knowing who you are. We have an expression that people often use where they say they are ‘trying to find themselves’. They say,

“I’m going to go out and find myself.”

You should have done that a long time ago. You could get lost.

People don’t have a sense of who they are. This is because way back in their past, perhaps even from childhood, they were not given the affirmation and acceptance to know who they are, and to feel good about who they are.

And probably one of the most common and devastating templates of the past involves experiences in sexuality. This is especially the case when the child is subjected to sexuality before the age when it should be knowing about it.

Every one of us has learned about the sexual aspect of life in different ways, and very often these were bad experiences. Because there is sin in the world there is often sexual abuse, and there are all sorts of problems that are associated with it.

Inevitably when a person digs into their past, somewhere along the line there is something negative about sex that is involved.

These are the templates of the past. And now in our current circumstances we suddenly find ourselves reacting negatively, and we can’t understand why. It is based on the experiences of the past, and all of these confusions and emotional content that are mixed in with them.

So what can we do about it?

You say, “If only I could go back there and relive it.”

Shutting Off the Memories

Sometimes though you have actually shut it out from your mind, so that you can’t even remember it. You don’t want to go back there.

The furthest thing from your mind is the idea of going back into the past and reliving that experience. And if in real life you were able to do the time travel like they picture in the movies, you would want to avoid all those bad experiences in life. You would not want to go through all the experiences of grief and pain and suffering again.

And so we have this protective mechanism where we shut it off from ourselves. We don’t even want to admit to ourselves that we had bad experiences.

We don’t want to admit to ourselves that we messed up badly, or that we did something stupid that we’re ashamed of for the rest of our lives. We try and hide it away, put it back there in the memory and hope that time will heal it.

Have you ever heard the expression, ‘time heals’? It doesn’t heal because the template is still there. And actually all it takes is one set of circumstances that are close enough to that original event, and out will come all the emotions.

You say, “I can’t even remember it happening.”

Yes but you can still feel it. You may have shut it out from your mind and tried to hide that memory away. But the emotion is still there and it can get tugged out in an instant.

And you know what? We have an enemy who knows how to tug it out. We have an enemy who knows how to arrange the circumstances of this world to try and bring pressure upon us to expose those very things.

You say, “Well I’ll just keep in a nice safe environment.”

But all it takes is one little thing to pull it out.

Sinful Templates

You know you may get to stand up and preach and be the spiritual example to the world - this perfect, holy man of God.

But the last thing you want is for people to see some of the sins you committed in the past and some of the sins you do still commit; some of the weaknesses and failures that you still have.

I remember I went through a time when I battled with bad language. It just became a habit because I used it so frequently all the time.

Then I would get amongst Christians, and I would have to be very careful what I said. And sometimes you just let it out and it doesn’t really matter; you don’t really notice.

I remember that at one time my greatest fear was that I would stand up and preach, and drop a word that should not be heard from the pulpit. But you know usually you get it pretty much in gear while you’re standing behind the pulpit.

You see I have never sworn in church before, so I have no template for that. But let somebody forget to check the sound unexpectedly, and I might forget where I am and say something that I shouldn’t.

Templates can be very dangerous things. They let us down at times, and we wish that we could just crawl into a hole and just let the earth swallow us up.

Templates Become Habit Patterns

Sometimes it is not that you have deliberately sinned. It is an event from the past. A particular event from the past gets locked up in some of these things and you go on beyond templates.

You find that as a result of these experiences, as you respond to them in sinful ways, these templates become habit patterns in your life.

As you continually trigger again and again to the same past event, eventually it becomes reinforced. And so new events take place in your life. When you have those events you trigger to previous events. You respond in the same way there, and you actually build a new event right here.

So if you go back through your life now, you may find a particular bad event that happened way back when you were very small. Then a little later in life another event happened that was very similar.

It triggered you off to the first one, and then you added some more emotion to it. Now you have another one and you can’t explain what is going on.

My Fear of Death

I remember one of the things that really troubled me when I was in ministry. One of the things I feared the most was that somebody would die and I would have to do the funeral. This is because I was terrified of death.

You say, “What a great preacher. He can’t help people prepare for the afterlife. This preacher is afraid of death. Don’t ask him about death.”

It was stupid. I know about death. I know about Heaven and Hell and what is in store. I know about what’s going to happen to me when I die. Why must I be afraid of death? My mind says,

“I understand; I have nothing to fear. Why then am I afraid? Every time I see a Hearse drive past, why does this feeling of fear grip my heart? Why is it that when I hear about somebody that was killed or died, a fear grips my heart? You hear about that all the time in the news.”

I couldn’t explain it. Then I remember the one day sitting down and going back on every single funeral I had been to. Oh man everybody seemed to die in the church I was at. One young guy even committed suicide. It was terrible.

But what was more terrible, was that my uncle was the undertaker who had to take care of the body. We went to visit him and he asked us if we wanted to see the body in the coffin.

Well I didn’t want to do that, but everybody else wanted to so I got dragged along. There was this guy lying in the coffin. Everything was quiet in the funeral parlor and there was the dead body lying oh so peaceful.

Then an ornament on the wall went ‘ding’, and I jumped in fright. I was terrified. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. It was a really horrible experience.

The Lord let me trace back over all of those experiences. And I discovered that it started when I was very small, way back to before I could even remember.

The grandmother that I really loved and idolized had died at a very young age. The death took place in the home, and they had photos of her in the coffin, and all the nonsense that people seemed to do in those days.

It left a bad imprint of fear on my young mind. And now as an adult, even though I could understand all about death, my heart feared it because of the templates and the memories of the past.

This is the danger and the problem of having experiences of life. We go through life, and some people have had bad experiences, but others have had even worse ones.

Jesus’ Presence With You

Now what if, when I had those experiences, I was aware of having Jesus by my side? What if I understood better what was going on from the Word and from the experiences of life, so that I could handle it? What if I could change my past?

You see I walk with Jesus now. And if you don’t walk with Him, I am hoping that by the time you are finished with this book, you will have a better knowledge of Him. I hope that He is going to be so real to you, that He will be walking by your side and be with you all the time.

If I am already in that position now, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could have been that way, from as far back as I could have remembered?

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew Jesus way back there, in the same way you know Him now? This is what is involved in the process of inner healing. It is bringing His presence into your past.

You say, “But isn’t that silly for me to sit and think about the past? I can’t change it. Why do I keep wallowing and thinking back on it? Doesn’t the Bible say we need to forget the past?”

Yes it does. That is the Scripture that I shared at the beginning:

...forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are ahead,

Isn’t that what God is telling us to do - to forget about the past? Why do you want to go back there again?

Remembering to Forget

I remember reading an article once in the Reader’s Digest. I’ve shared this before elsewhere. It spoke about developing a good ability to forget, not developing a good memory. The article said,

“Our problem is never with our memory. It is with our ‘forgettery’, because we remember things all too clearly. We wish we could forget them, but they keep coming up.”

They told a story of a guy who had to fire his valet; his personal servant who had worked for him for years. He had been so faithful, and had been so good to him and meant so much to him. But he discovered that the valet had actually been stealing from him. He was unreliable and so the guy had to fire him.

Afterwards he just so longed for and missed this guy. He thought,

“Wow I wish he was back here again. It was just so good to have him, but I had to fire him.”

Then he wrote an entry in his diary: Remember to forget Jeeves. Remember to forget him.

You need to remember to forget. But you can’t do that if it keeps coming up. And because the template was formed there, even though you have tried to put it out of your mind, every new event that takes place keeps making it come up.

You see inner healing does not make you go and dig up the past. What inner healing does is allow you to put the past to sleep for the first time.

You can never forget about all the things that you have regretted in your life and felt guilty about; the things you wished you had never done. And whenever you remember them you feel that same guilt and shame.

By bringing His presence into your past, you can actually put that memory to sleep so that it will never bother you again. And now if ever you need to go and visit it again, it is just a walk through the past. It doesn’t bother you anymore.

Take Jesus With You

So how do you bring His presence into your past?

What you do is you return to the past and you take Him with you. You return to that bad event that took place in your life, that left you with such fear, hurt, pain, anger or guilt.

Whatever it was, you go back in your mind to that memory. And you know in your mind you can relive that memory as though it happened yesterday, because it is all locked up there. It is locked up in full color and with sight, smell and all of the senses.

All of the feelings and emotions that you had are all there. But you take Jesus with you now, and you add a piece to your memory that wasn’t there before.

You see when that bad experience took place, if Jesus had been there it would have changed it all.

You may have felt so alone and rejected, or you may have sat down and cried. You may have fallen on your bed and wept yourself to sleep. Whatever happened, now you can go back to that memory and somehow bring Jesus into it.

Imagine that as you went through that bad experience He was sitting right there, stroking your head and saying,

“I love you. I understand and I am here for you. Let me help you. Let me strengthen you and encourage you. Let me protect you”.

Imagine that you can hear His words saying,

“I don’t condemn you. I understand why you failed. Let me help you overcome this so that it never happens again. Let me give you the strength.”

When you had failed outright and sinned, and you knew you had sinned, you can hear His words,

“I forgive you. Let’s pretend it never happened. I don’t care about it. My love for you has not changed. It is still the same.”

Transforming The Memory

What you do is you transform the memory by changing it. How do you do that?

As you change the picture in your memory, you also change the feelings that were associated with it. You see that is the dangerous part. You can’t change the event itself. It has happened, and if you think back on it you remember that it happened.

But if it happened with Jesus being there, there comes a different feeling with it. And that feeling part gets transformed and locked back into your memory. It happens supernaturally, by the power of God and by the presence of Jesus in your life, and that memory becomes transformed.

You can now go back to that memory any time you like. But there’s a new picture in there and a new feeling. The old is still there but it has been transformed.

Now this is as miraculous as physical healing. It is so simple that it can take place in seconds. You have struggled with an event from the past for your whole life. But within seconds of bringing Jesus into that memory, you can be set free and that memory will never trouble you again.

And when in the future a set of events triggers you to that template, what comes out now are the new feelings that were created by bringing Jesus into that memory.

Experiences for a Reason

Now sometimes it’s difficult to change a bad event. Sometimes you may see Jesus getting in there and protecting you or defending you. But sometimes all you need to know was that He wanted you to go through that, because you learned something through it.

Sometimes you had to walk that road. And as you look at yourself now, kind of like the time travel thing, if that event had not taken place, certain circumstances in your life would not exist right now.

I remember when I first completed my schooling. I had great ambitions to go to University. I wanted to study and qualify as an engineer, to become a professional and to make a career of my life.

The trouble was I had so many things against me from my insecurities of the past. My parents were also too poor to pay for my University.

When the time came for me to go, I had booked my University and my train or air tickets. Everything was ready to go and I was hoping that somebody would give me a grant.

We didn’t have government grants in those days. There were companies who would sponsor you. They would pay for your University, and then you would be required to work with them for a certain number of days afterwards to pay it back.

I went and applied for some of these bursaries, but my background counted against me and they all turned me down. So I finished school, and my hope of going to the University of my choice was shattered. I had to cancel the ticket and I sat at home thinking,

“What am I going to do with my life?”

That was the only goal and plan that I had, and now it had been taken away from me. It was not a very nice experience. It was a very bad memory.

But I look at the way the Lord led me and how He placed His call on my life shortly afterwards. He set a new goal and direction for me. I look back on it now, and I think if things had gone the way I wanted to back there I may have missed the boat.

I would not be where I stand right now. I would not have the knowledge, the experience and the calling that is on my life right now. I would not have attained in ministry what I have right now. I would instead have pursued my career goal.

So when I go back in that memory, there is only one thing that I need to do to transform it. I look at it and say,

“Thank you, Lord. Thank you that this thing happened to me. It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me when everything went wrong.”

You see I can do it now looking back. Sometimes it is not that easy because it still hasn’t worked out.

Chapter 06 – Taking Jesus into the Hurts

Sometimes the best healing of the past comes when you know the Lord well enough to know that your life was in His hands even then. You know that He had control, even though the enemy threw everything at you.

You stand on the promise that all things are made to work together for good. You know that promise even in those bad things.

You know most of my ministry at the beginning was ministering to people with problems. Everyone else was going out on the streets and winning the lost. I was bumping into backsliders; into people who had difficulties, bad marriages and all sorts of problems.

Well as I went through life, everything that could go wrong went wrong.

I remember a time in my life where I sat down. I began to make a list of everything in my life at that time – and nothing was right. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Everything was a mess and every plan was slaughtered.

I remember one of the greatest pains in my life, was when the woman I loved and had lived with for 16 years, ran off with somebody else. I thought I would die. I thought I couldn’t live without her.

At that time I was preaching and teaching at a church I was involved in. They had a Bible School going in the church, and I was asked to lecture on the subject of marriage.

There I was teaching people all these powerful counseling principles that I had learned from J. Adams and other teachers. I was giving them a thorough teaching on how to build a good marriage and keep it together, and half way through the course my wife left me.

That was pretty good. Here was this wonderful preacher standing up there teaching principles, and he couldn’t even prove them in his own marriage.

Well I thought I had done a good job. I taught my wife all these things and applied them myself – or so I thought.

Now how could that be a good memory? How could I go back in that memory and see that God had a hand in it? As I look back that is easy now and I can say,

“You know if that had not happened, I wouldn’t be married to Daphne. I would not have the wife I always dreamed of having. I wouldn’t have somebody who stands with me 100 percent in the work of the Lord and backs me all the way; the one who has helped me to rise up and succeed in the way that I have right now.”

My wife at that time was not interested in the work of the ministry. She didn’t stand in my way, but she also did not stand with me and support me.

Those were bad memories, but God had a purpose.

Jesus Understands

All the bad things that happen in life are not necessarily the enemy getting the upper hand. It doesn’t mean that Satan had his way and that Jesus lost.

There were many times when I went through such a pain, and I could hear His voice saying,

“I’m with you. I understand.”

I wrote a song a long time ago, and my immediate family are probably the only ones who know and remember that song. It was called Unrequited Love. I probably still have the words lying somewhere.

The words went something like this: Do you know what it’s like to be rejected? Do you know what it’s like to have people hurt you and to turn their backs on you?

And then Jesus spoke these words in the song. He said,

“I’ve been there many times my beloved. I gave my life for you a long time ago, and I stand ready to give you my love. But sometimes you just turn your back and pretend you don’t know. I understand, I’ve been there many times.”

Bad Experiences Cause Compassion

He understands. And just knowing that He understands can set you free in the most amazing way. So don’t think that every bad memory back there or every bad event that took place in your life was something to regret.

You know the time came when I began to minister to people with problems, and it was quite easy. I said to them,

“You have a problem? I have had it too. I understand. Let me show you how I overcame it.”

“Oh you had that problem? I’ve been there. Don’t worry about that. I have had that one.”

I found that there were very few problems that people came to me with that I hadn’t already experienced myself. It made me the most qualified counselor you could get, but that’s another story.

You do not need to have lived all the bad things in life to be able to counsel people. It’s not those bad experiences that make you a good counselor, but those bad experiences make you more compassionate and understanding.

Who are the people who show the most compassion? They are people who have been where you are. Who are the people who give the most money? Are they the wealthy? No, they are usually the ones that are still battling financially themselves, and they know what it is like to not have money.

So welcome the problems and the difficulties. They equip you to be a better minister of God. And when you look back at those things, bear them proudly and say,

“I thank God and I boast in all the problems I had in life. Because you know what? It has given me the heart of God and a heart of love for people.”

How to Do Inner Healing

Now how do we do the inner healing? How do we get to walk back through the past?

There are some problems associated with it. Firstly there are certain memories in your past that you do not want to relive. In fact it’s almost as if you can’t relive them. You are afraid to, or you just don’t remember them. You might say,

“I can remember my life from that year to that year, and that year to that year. Now something happened in between there, but I just can’t remember that part of my life.”

You try and cast your mind back to that period of your life, but you just cannot remember what happened there. The chances are what happened there were so bad that you actually shut it out of your memory.

You Need Some Help

The human will is weak. Sometimes we need somebody to prod us a little bit. Why do you think most people go to gyms and get a gym instructor before they will get fit? It is because they can’t persuade themselves to get in there.

You can have all the body building equipment, and you can have your own gym set up at home. I’ve tried this before. I bought it, and then we had to cart it all over the place whenever we moved. But we never used it. We always had to find some place in the house to put the stuff.

It sounded a great idea. I could have my own home gym and I could get fit.

You say, “So how often did you get on it?”

“Well quite often in the beginning and then it just petered out.”

You need somebody to put the pressure on you and say,

“Okay, 20 repetitions there. Get on that and go for 10 minutes.”

You need somebody to gently nudge you.

So you’re going to lose weight and cut down on the amount of food you eat? Give it a try.

The Weight Watchers have succeeded so well, because part of their whole philosophy is getting people to help one another; to motivate and kind of push each other. You need somebody to push you along and prod you a little bit.

You Need Help You Go Back

The exact same thing happens when it comes to the process of inner healing and going back into the past. You don’t want to go there. You know you should, but you don’t want to go there.

You know you need to deal with past failures, but you don’t want to admit that you failed. So you need somebody to sit down with you and say,

“Okay, tell me what happened when you were five.”

“I just can’t remember.”

“Okay what happened when you were four?”

“Oh, I can remember that.”

“What happened after that.”

“Well I can’t remember much. Ah yes, I remember it now.”

“And then what happened?”

“Oh no, I don’t want to go there. That was a bad one.”

“Don’t worry I’m here with you. Jesus is here with you. You don’t have to be afraid. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

“Okay, I will give it a try.”

You gently prod the person to move back into that bad memory, and to let the Lord Jesus go in and heal those painful experiences of the past.

Most of the time you will need somebody to work with you like that. You need somebody who can look at the event without your emotions. As you share what happens, when you think about it you have all these negative feelings. But the person listening doesn’t have those feelings.

All they do is they take the picture and they try and help you to understand it from an adult point of view; from what you know now, and from what you know of Jesus now.

You need a person to say to you,

“Tell me, can you see Jesus? What is He doing? Where is He in the picture?”

You need somebody who can pray with you; somebody to get revelation for you and uncover things. He can even give you a bit of counsel and say,

“Well in terms of the word of God, this is what happened.”

Relive it Until the Hurt is Gone

It is a very simply process. You do not need to go to some qualified psychiatrist, who is unqualified anyway because they know nothing. All you need is a fellow believer who loves the Lord, who knows you and who knows the Word.

This person can walk with you as Jesus takes you by the hand and walks you through all of those past memories.

As you do that you go through each memory. You relive that memory with what you know right now and with Jesus in the picture. You do it until the hurt is gone, and then you keep reliving it and keep walking through it.

Sometimes you need the other person to prod you and say,

“Okay go through it again. Relive it again. Can you see it in your mind? Okay, does it still hurt? If so maybe there is something else we didn’t uncover. Let’s deal with it until that memory is dealt with.”

It may be one of those events that occurred throughout your life, like what I shared with you about my fear of death. You start at the beginning and deal with that one. You come to the next bad memory and you do the same thing. Then you come to the next bad memory – until you have been through all the memories and you’ve dealt with all of them.

Once you have done that, that memory will no longer bother you. And the template that was formed at that time in that memory will no longer trigger all the bad feelings when you go through life and find a similar set of circumstances occurring.

Remembering it Alone

The last point I want to make on this is that you can do this alone. It is not always possible to have a person with you. And to be quite honest, there are not many people who have the compassion, the care or the time to give.

They couldn’t be bothered to sit and listen to you tell your story for two or three hours. Let’s face it, when someone starts pouring out all their woes and sorrows of the past, do you really want to listen?

You say, “Well you know I really need to go. It’s lunch time.”

That is the way we are, isn’t it? The ministry of inner healing is a very special ministry. And usually it is only a person who has been through those hurts, who will actually even bother to have the compassion to sit down with you.

So if you can find somebody who will do that, thank the Lord that you have a brother or sister who loves you enough in the Lord to do it with you.

Going Back Into the Past

But if you can’t find such a person, there is one more thing you can do. This is how I learned to do it, because I never had anybody who cared or knew how to do it anyway. So it was Jesus and me. That was it. I had to go through these things by myself.

I remember that way back at the beginning I sat down one day with a piece of paper, and I began to trace some of the bad memories. I started with now and went back as far as I could remember.

Well you know there are a lot of years between the time I was born and now. If I were to sit down and relive everything that has happened in my life, it would take me another 55 years. I don’t have that time, although in your memory you can skim through time pretty quick.

But as these things surface, and as templates of the past and memories that have not been healed come to the forefront, sit down and make a note of them. Take out a pen and paper if you do it the old fashioned way. The modern way is to open a blank document on your computer and start to type.

Just sit down, close your eyes and let you mind go back. Start wherever you like. Start from far back, or start from now and work backwards.

I have this habit, and I notice some of my children have the same habit. They read a book from the back. Do you ever do that? I always read a book from the back. I just skim through and read a bit of it.

So if you’re the kind of person that does the same with your memory, start now and work back. That’s great. Whatever you want to do you can jump around.

Just sit down, take that word document, and as you go through your memory, as you come to a memory and you feel that negative, write it down.

Write down everything. It could be something bad that has happened that left a hurt or a fear, or something you still feel guilty about.

It could be something you never ever told anybody, but it has been hidden away there in your mind. It could be some event that you’re ashamed of from the past that no other human being ever knows about.

Sometimes it’s good to have another person with you when those things happen, so that you can tell somebody. And just telling somebody about it can be a great victory.

The Power of Forgiveness

Many people who go to the Catholic confessional are experiencing inner healing, even from a man who may not even know the Lord. It is simply because they could share with another human being who was prepared to listen and understand; a person who could say,

“Your sins are forgiven”.

How can a man forgive sins? Do you remember when Jesus spoke to the man that they dropped down through the roof for healing? He came to him and said,

“Son, your sins be forgiven you.”

They all said,

“What? Only God can forgive sins. How dare you.”

What did Jesus say? He said,

“Let me show you that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on the earth. Rise up, take up your bed and walk.”

He said the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins. Not the Son of God, but the Son of Man.

You have the authority to forgive the sins of a fellow human being or believer. No, you are not forgiving their sins. They didn’t sin against you. But you can stand as an agent of God. You don’t say,

“I forgive you.”

You say, “Your sins are forgiven.”

That is exactly what Jesus said. Sometimes you need to hear a human being saying, “Your sins are forgiven,” because we can’t hear God.

Where is He? He’s out there. But who has ever heard His voice? Most people don’t know how to come into His presence and hear His voice; to hear His tender words of love.

Sometimes you need another human being. That is why most of the time you need that other person.

But when you come to the place where you can hear His voice directly, where Jesus is so real to you that He’s like any other person, then you can do this yourself.

You can sit down with that blank document, and you can put down all of your bad memories of the past. And as you go through them and relive them, you can hear Jesus’ voice speaking to you even in your memory. You can see Him there, you can hear Him there, and He can replace any other person.

You know the great thing is you can tell all the most rotten sins you ever committed to Him without fearing that He is going to go and tell somebody else. We are a bit nervous about doing that with a fellow human being.

Go through and make your list. Tick them off one at a time. Go through that memory again and again and ask yourself,

“Does it hurt? No it doesn’t. That means it is dealt with.”

Close the document. Come back again a few days later. Open it again, and reread through and see if it still doesn’t hurt. Then you know that you’ve dealt with it, and you have put it to sleep once and for all.

See Jesus in Everything

Now wherever you go back, Jesus is there in your memory. It is as though you knew Him from the beginning, even from a child.

You grew up, went into adolescence, and right to wherever you are right now, as you go back into your memory you keep seeing Jesus there.

Jesus has now become an active part of your life from as far back as you can remember. And now you can move on and bring Him into the present.

But there’s a lot more involved in dealing with the past. And I would like to deal with some more specific things, like relationships and experiences with parents. I’d like to deal with the habit patterns that are formed in our lives as a result of templates.

I want to show you how to deal with those and to overcome them, so that you can finally put the past to sleep. You can forget all those things, and get rid of all the things from the past that are now still affecting you in the present.

When you do that then you have more hope for the future. That is what we will look at in the next Section.

Section 03 – Spiritual Re-parenting

Chapter 07 – The Mother’s Important Role

In the last section we looked at the templates of the past. We looked at how we can go back into our past experiences, and bring Jesus’ healing presence into some of the events of our lives.

Now I want to go on and look at some further important elements that are involved in dealing with our past. I would like to firstly look at relationships and experiences with parents.

Parents Can Cause Hurts

Anybody who has ever been involved in a ministry of inner healing, knows that probably more than 90 percent of the problems that are encountered in peoples’ lives involve bad experiences from childhood upwards with mom and dad.

Parents can have the most devastating effects on the lives of their children. They can leave scars and affect them for the rest of their lives. Why is this?

In this section I would like to look at exactly what function a parent should be carrying out. I want to share what happens if a parent fails to carry out that function, or carries it out incorrectly.

I will show you how it can affect your life and your future. And how what happened to you in childhood is actually still affecting you right now. When we are done we are going to find out how to bring in the healing presence of the Lord to bring the right changes.

Now some people have had a very good childhood. Some people have had model parents who did the things right. But these people only exist in the movies.

There are no perfect parents. You are not a perfect parent either. But perhaps after learning some of these things, you may be able to correct some of the mistakes that you made.

And if you are going to have children in the future, you can be more aware of the kinds of mistakes you can make. You can prevent problems in your children from occurring later in life.

In the end we cannot stop everything because we are sinful creatures. Yes we know the Lord and we have been saved. Yes we are on the road to Heaven, and daily we are overcoming sin in our lives. But we are still sinners saved by his grace.

We will only be free of sin when we come to be permanently in His presence one day. In the meantime we have to daily learn how to bring His presence into our lives and overcome the sin that so easily besets us.

Celebrating Mother’s Day

Let’s have a look at mom and dad. Every year we celebrate a special day for mother, and another one for father. What comes to your mind when it is Mother’s Day?

I grew up in a church where they would have a special celebration for Mother’s Day. All the mothers would come into the church. They would get flowers to show they were mothers, and everybody would talk about mother.

The pastor would stand up and weep for his wonderful mother who was dead and gone. And everybody was wallowing about how wonderful their mother was.

They were a bunch of hypocrites. I know that because a lot of them really had bad experiences with their mothers. And every one of us at one time or another had bad experiences with our mother.

Your mother was not perfect. The chances are she was very imperfect. And if your mother was not even a Christian, the chances are even greater that she messed up badly.

Why is this? It is because she was taught by her mother, who was taught by her mother. It goes right back to the Garden of Eden. There has been sin all the way through.

Who teaches a mother to be a good mother? It would seem that these days the psychologists do it. And in their attempt to make mother into this perfect model, they have actually taken away some of the values that God has put into the home.

The Mother Gives Identity

Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes. But a mother does one absolutely vital function in the life of a child. The mother allows the child to know who he or she is.

When a child is first born, it cannot separate its identity from the mother. Well that is not surprising because the baby has been joined to mom for nine months in the womb. It felt her every movement and everything that she went through.

Even her emotions affected you. Her state of mind, her physical condition – you felt everything she said and did for the entire gestation period. You were right there in her body, being part of her and feeling with her.

Then the time of birth comes. The baby is separated from the mother and from the womb of the mother, and it still seeks to get back in there.

The child wants to get back into that feeling of oneness with the mother. And for quite a while it cannot tell yet that it is a separate entity from the mother.

The child finds its identity completely and fully in the mother. After all they used to be one. Why must it suddenly change?

Mother and Child Are One

There the trauma already begins, when a child is separated from the mother at birth. Where a mother gives up the child for adoption there can be a trauma right there. The child is suddenly in confusion, loses its identity and doesn’t know who it is, because all that it knows it learned from mom.

And in those early years as the child is very close to the mother, it continues to feel what the mother is feeling. The child continues to feel a oneness and identity with the mother.

If the mother rejects the child in any way, it immediately begins to feel that separation and goes into confusion. The first few years of a child’s life are connected to the mother in every way.

A mother will have a child, then dump it into some crèche or nursery, and go back to work to follow her career. The child doesn’t know who it is, because it is now being cared for by another woman during the day.

And at night time the mother comes and wants to embrace the child, to be mommy and to have the full privileges of being mommy. But for the larger part of the day somebody else is carrying that out.

In whom does the child find its identity? Is it in the true mother, or in the surrogate mother that has taken over during the day?

The two probably have totally opposite spirits and totally opposite personalities. So who does the child want to be like? It causes confusion.

So right back there already hurts and difficulties can be caused in the life of the child, simply from the fact that the mother is not spending time with the child.

Neglected as the Family Grows

As the child grows up it can get infinitely worse. The mother is just not there. She is too busy or she just doesn’t care. Then before you know it there is another baby on the way. Mother has to now pay attention to the new baby and the child is neglected.

People have this idea that says,

“You know I’m getting old now. I should have all my babies as quickly as I can - one each year. Let’s get them all out of the way. It is wonderful, because my children can now all grow up together, all about the same age, and they can all feel great.”

Did it ever occur to you that each child only has about a year with you at the most? By the time you fall pregnant you are already talking about the new baby. You are already loving the new baby in your womb, and that child is starting to be neglected and put aside.

Why do you think that most often the firstborn child in a home suffers the most severe trauma? It is because they have to go through this again and again.

You are the baby and the favorite. You have time with mommy for so long, then there comes the new baby so you are pushed aside.

You’re old enough to take care of yourself, so just let dad or someone else handle you. We will palm you off on somebody else, because we have a new baby to make a fuss over now.

The new baby comes along and you are just not tops anymore. And before you know it a third one is on the way. Then you drop right to the bottom of the pile.

Maybe by that time you’ve managed to get a bit of attention. You are perhaps able to take care of your second sister and get her out of mom’s hair while she looks after the baby.

Mom Needs to Be There

We’ve all been there in some way. I don’t have to paint all the pictures for you. The point is that hurts are created in childhood. They are created when a mother does not fully affirm the child and give the child an identity.

A mother must do her job right. She must make sure she pays full attention to each child. And even when the other children come along, it is important not to neglect the ones that came before.

All we need is a mother who is there for her children and available to them at all times; one who shows that she loves them and accepts them just the way they are.

Favoritism Causes Rejection

Some mothers say things like this:

“You know my eldest daughter is really just not the brightest. And the second one is not the best looking. But the baby- isn’t she wonderful? Isn’t she beautiful? She’s just so perfect.”

Don’t ever try and compare children, put one above the other or show any form of favoritism. But mothers do that, don’t they? They do show favoritism over one child.

Do you know what is the most wonderful child in the world? It’s the child that just eats and sleeps and never makes any demands on you. The mother says,

“Isn’t she wonderful? She’s so beautiful. But that naughty little brat of a son of mine - he just cries and he wants food every two hours. He’s always demanding his own way and is arrogant. He demands all my time. I just wish he was like his sister.”

You communicate that to the child and you say,

“The way you are is not acceptable to me. I don’t like you the way you are. I want you to change.”

The child does not feel accepted anymore. He feels rejected. And when a child feels rejected, he wonders who he is.

He thinks, “If the way I am is not acceptable to mom, then I have the wrong image. I shouldn’t be what I am and I need to somehow change. I need to be somebody else.

“Now my sister and my brother are acceptable. They’re good enough. But I’m not good enough, so what is wrong with me? Maybe I’m just too ugly. Maybe I’m too stupid. Maybe there’s just something bad about me. Maybe I should just never have been born.”

What Lack of Acceptance Causes

When you don’t have that acceptance from a parent, you lose your identity. You grow up firstly now knowing who you are. And when you get to meet other people, you don’t know who you are.

So if I’m coming to meet somebody new and make friends, my immediate approach is,

“Well you know the one person who should have accepted me (my mother) didn’t. Now I wonder if other people will accept me. They probably won’t.

“I must really be just horrible. I must be ugly or stupid or something. Obviously if mom doesn’t even like me, no-one out there will like me either.”

Can you see what it leads to? A person grows up not knowing who they are. They have no true identity, because the identity is locked up in the mother.

Now you have grown up. You’ve left home already, and you may even be a mother yourself. And maybe you vowed that you would never treat your children the way your mother did.

But very often history will repeat itself, because the image she gave you is the image you automatically portray to your children. You have no other image.

Who taught her how to do it? The mother that came before did. Unless you can change that image and get somebody who will give you the correct image, you remain a person without an identity, going through life ‘trying to find yourself’.

Have you heard that expression? People say,

“I’m trying to find myself”.

You see that’s where you got lost. It was way back there. That is why you are trying to find yourself, because you still don’t know who you are. And when you stand and look in the mirror you see somebody standing there and you say,

“Who are you? I don’t know you.”

How can you fix this? You can do it by a process called re-parenting. How do you get re-parented? You do it by the healing presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Chapter 08 - The Process of Re-parenting

There is only One person in this world, outside of a true mother, who will accept you just the way you are. He will love you without making any demands on you whatsoever. He will just open His arms and say,

“I love you; I accept you. You are mine and you are precious to me.”

Now you are not going to find anybody else in this world that will do you that way. If your mother couldn’t do it, trust me nobody else is going to do it. Because you see the love of a mother is the most tender and intimate love that a child can have.

The mother carried the child for nine months and it was a part of her body. She should continue to embrace that child and accept it unconditionally.

I don’t care how that child was born; if it was born deformed. The love of a mother should be so consistent that she continues to love that child as though it was her own body.

There is no greater love in this world than the tender love of a mother. So if you’re going to try and find that love and acceptance somewhere else, you might find somebody who comes close.

We will speak about that later with spiritual parenting. But there is only One who will unconditionally and completely love you the way you are - and His name is Jesus.

Going Back to the Bad Memories

So how are we going to change the bad experiences of the past? We have to go back into them and we have to replace mother with Jesus. It’s the only way we can do it.

We have to come into a loving relationship with One who loves you more than anybody else in this world.

And so a lot of the time, part of the inner healing process involves taking a child back through early experiences. It can even go as far back from before you were born.

A child in the womb could be an unwanted child. Perhaps your mother didn’t want to be pregnant. She didn’t want to have another baby. You were an accident. She probably thought,

“Oh Lord how are we going to take care of this child? We don’t have any money.”

It is a bad circumstance. Husband and wife are bickering and fighting, and the last thing they want is another baby right now.

And then we have the marvels of modern science. We are able to test what sex the baby is, and we find out,

“Oh no, it’s another boy. Oh Lord are we ever going to get a daughter? Another boy - oh man.”

Do you think the child in the womb does not sense the feelings of the mother? The child is one with the mother. The child can already sense in the womb the rejection that is beginning to come.

The mother doesn’t even know this person yet. But she is already rejecting it and saying,

“It’s the wrong sex. I don’t really want this child.”

Ministering Inner Healing

Sometimes healing has to go right back beyond your earliest memory. Sometimes you need a miraculous work of God to go back into your forgotten feelings when you were still in the womb.

Those who minister in this realm will often get prophetic revelation. They will actually help a person to go back, and even experience and feel what it was like in the womb.

You say, “Can a child even remember what it thought in the womb? Did it even have thoughts?”

There is something there. So very often when we come to minister inner healing, we go back to that very beginning. We see whether hurts were caused there, even before the birth took place.

The mother can have a dramatic effect on the future of a child. But as we can go back, even there to the womb, the child can become aware that Jesus was there and that He had a purpose for him. You can say,

“The Lord loved and cared for you, and right back there He had a purpose for your life. His arms were around you, and He was there, watching you and waiting, and looking upon you with love.”

Your parents may have been saying,

“I wonder if we should even have had this child.”

But Jesus was there and He was saying,

“I love you and you’re special. I have a purpose for you. You are very important to me.”

This ministry of inner healing is a very powerful ministry. It can reach back into those realms of your memory that you can’t even remember at this stage.

The Pain of Rejection

As we go through the experiences of life, we look at each experience in childhood with the mother.

It is the responsibility of the mother to teach and train the child; to show the child how to become a real person, and how to perform and to live in this world. And where the mother fails to do that, the child is left with a lack. It is left feeling all alone.

Very often when we pray with people concerning their childhood, we will see a picture of a child sitting all alone in a room crying. It is feeling neglected and rejected.

Well what was mom doing? She was off doing her own thing somewhere. Maybe she was busy with some of the other kids. Whatever the case may be, you felt rejected. The most painful thing you can inflict on a child is to reject them.

Correct Discipline is Important

Of course psychology has now taken it to the opposite extreme and they say,

“You have to be very careful about the way you treat your children. Don’t discipline them. Don’t shout at them. Don’t be horrible to them. Just let them have their way.”

Yes we’re all born perfect and sinless. You let a child grow up and do what he wants to do, and he will live perfectly won’t he? He will never ever sin in his life. No, the Scripture says:

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.

The mother must discipline and she must correct. She must take that piece of clay and mold it into something real. You can never harm a child by the strictest of discipline, provided you continue to love and accept it. When you discipline a child you are not saying,

“I reject you as a person.”

You are saying,

“I reject the way you are behaving. Change it, but I still love you.”

That is the beauty of disciplining the Bible way. Disciplining the Bible way means,

“You have violated. This is the crime and this is the punishment. You have violated and committed the crime. Now we punish you.”

And when the punishment has been done, it is over and it is finished. Then the mother can take the child in her arms and love it again. The same applies to dad. We’ll get to him shortly.

The important thing is that the mother accepts the child and does not reject it.

Getting Attention Through Discipline

So as you go back into the memories of the past, it’s not a matter of whether your mother disciplined you or not. It’s not a matter of whether your mother shouted at you and did bad things to you.

That is not the issue. All of us have had bad experiences in life. What hurts you the most is,

“I was not important enough to mother. She didn’t care. She didn’t consider me her child. She didn’t consider me important in her life. She neglected me and rejected me. She was too busy to care about what happened to me.”

That is what leaves the hurts. It is not the bad times. In fact, sometimes a child will change their behavior in such a way to force the mother to discipline them, just so they can get some attention.

You know sometimes a good smack from mom is one of the best things that can happen. You think,

“At least she noticed me, even if the only reason she noticed me was because I did something naughty. I was important enough for her to correct me. She didn’t just leave me to go and do my own thing.”

Parents who think they are helping the child by letting him go and do his own thing are actually showing the child total rejection. They are saying,

“You are not important enough to me for me to help you and correct you. You can go and live your life and do it the way you want to. That’s fine, we’ll just leave you to do your thing.”

That communicates to the child,

“You’re really not important to me. I don’t care if you win or lose. I don’t care whether you’re good or bad. Do whatever you want to do. It doesn’t really matter to me.”

It communicates the same thing. It communicates rejection, not acceptance. So let’s forget about all the nonsense of,

“You know I’m not such a good mother. I shouted at my kids”.

They probably needed it. Some kids could do with a bit more shouting and spanking because they have become naughty brats. And sometimes the reason they are naughty brats is because they are trying to get mommy’s attention, because she’s ignoring them.

I am teaching on family now instead of on inner healing. But it is such an important part of inner healing. When your mother fails to accept you, or when your mother fails to affirm you and give you your true identity, there is One who will step in.

There is a passage in Psalms 27:10 that says:

When my mother and father reject me, the Lord will take me up.

The Lord will step in and He will overcome and replace what your mother failed to do.

Chapter 09 – Moving from Mother to Father

We come now to look at dad. Dad actually comes into the picture near the beginning somewhere, by being there to assist mom. He starts out as assistant mother. The child is not even aware of him at the beginning. It only knows its identity in the mother.

It may have heard this rumbling voice while still in the womb. It came from some person that sounded a bit different to mother. It was some noisy interference from the outside that was often shouting or making some kind of sound.

The child becomes familiar with that. But the first impression the child has of the father is that he is assistant mother.

Eventually the father steps in and becomes more actively involved. This is because he determines what is acceptable to do in the home or what is not acceptable to do. The father sets the law for the home, and the mother communicates that law to the child.

So the child learns now that there is somebody a bit higher than mom, and even she has to listen to him. The child is learning that,

“I love you and I accept you. But there are certain things that are not acceptable in this home, because dad says NO.”

A Negative Picture of Dad

So how does Mom communicate it?

“Come my darling, come to mommy and tell me all your problems. Bad daddy - he doesn’t care about you or love you. He’s always shouting and being nasty. So if daddy’s nasty to you, you come to mommy okay?

The child grows up thinking,

“Daddy is an ogre. He is bad news and I have to avoid him. I have to ignore him because he is stupid. There is no ways he is as good as mom. So if I have a problem I just keep out of dad’s way and go to mom.”

Well you can get away with that for the first part of a child’s life. Because you see during that period it is a mother’s role to build certain templates into the child.

We spoke about that in the last section. It is the mother’s role to build good templates into the child. She shows the child that this is the right way to do things, and that is the wrong way to do things.

So if the mother arranges the circumstances in the home correctly, the child learns through experience what the comfort zone is. He learns what the right thing to do is, and what the wrong thing to do is. The child learns to grow with very good templates.

Responses to Circumstances in Life

We have looked at templates in the last few sections, and we saw a lot of the negatives about them. But I want to explain to you the very important positive about a template. You see a template teaches you how to respond to circumstances in life.

If you look at an animal, it grows up with a built-in program which we call instinct. And all animals in a species automatically follow that program. They will automatically do things that humans don’t know.

Isn’t it amazing when you see a dog that has puppies for the first time? She gives birth and you don’t have to take her to the vet. She knows exactly what to do.

She knows how to handle those pups. She knows how to eat off the placenta and everything that’s left. Immediately you see the maternal instinct coming out. She knows just how to bring up her puppies.

Now could you imagine that you are a woman who has lived on a desert island somewhere? You have grown up without any knowledge of anything. I guess you would have had to have a guy with you if you fell pregnant. Okay we won’t take the analogy too far.

But supposing you never had anybody to tell you how birth takes place. Nobody ever told you what actually happens. And when the birth takes place, the baby comes out with all this cord and stuff with it.

What do you do with it? Well you know you have to tie the cord immediately or the baby will die.

How do you know that? Who told you? You didn’t know that. Somebody had to tell you. Somebody had to explain it to you, and teach you that when this happens you need to do that.

The Innocence of Children

A child grows up with no knowledge. It grows up with a clean slate and has no knowledge whatsoever about how to handle the problems in life. He has no knowledge that says,

“Be careful; don’t talk to strangers.”

Children are innocent and naïve. They go out and think,

“It’s okay, I’ll just chat with everybody, walk down the street and have fun.”

No, there are dangers there. The mother must teach the child these things. She must teach the child about life and about all the dangers. What is happening here is the mother is building templates of experience.

Responding to Templates

Now you grow up as an adult and you face a circumstance in life. You have sometimes a matter of seconds to decide how you are going to respond to that circumstance.

Let’s suppose you are driving in your car, going along at a good speed. Suddenly the car in front of you slams on their brakes. You see the red lights and you are about to crash.

What do you do? Do you just sit there and watch it happen? No, instinctively you put your foot on the brakes. Or maybe you swerve to avoid the car.

Well it probably didn’t happen the first time like that. The first time it caught you by surprise and you went ‘CRASH, BANG’. It messed up her car and your car; broke a few bones maybe. It was a bad experience.

You see a template was created right there. And yes it was a negative template. But actually it was also a learning template.

You see the next time it happens to you and you see that same thing, you don’t even have time to think. You instinctively refer back to the previous experience and you say,

“This time I’m putting on brakes and I’m swerving.”

You do it instantly without thinking. Why? Because you have a template built in there that has very similar circumstances. That is what a template is. You have similar circumstances here, and way back there something similar happened.

So when it happens to you now, you start looking back and you say to yourself,

“Have I been in this kind of thing before? What did I do last time? How did I respond to it?”

You don’t even think about it. You do it automatically when you face a circumstance. And so you learn from the experiences of life. And the templates that are in you are very good things. Let’s not get the idea that templates are bad.

Transform the Templates

You know we get this idea that if we could just throw all the templates away, then that would solve our problem. No, you don’t want to throw the templates away. You just want to take out of them all the hurtful feelings that affect you right now.

The templates of life are absolutely vital. This is because by the time you reach maturity, you should have lived every kind of experience that a person can have in life.

Now you stand as an adult. And as you look back on your life you have piles and piles of these templates sitting down there. It is almost like a filing cabinet inside of you. And each day as you go through life, you face circumstances that in some way are similar to circumstances you had in the past.

That is why you can stand up now in confidence. You can go out into the world without fear. You can go out, knowing that if anything happens, you have some history back there that will help you to know what to do right now. So templates help you to make that decision.

So in childhood the mother is creating new templates in the child, because it has had no experience whatsoever. Mom says,

“Now Johnny, do not touch the oven while it’s on. It is going to burn you.”

We know the story. Johnny doesn’t believe mommy. He puts his hand on the oven and a template is created. Now he is not going to touch the oven again.

Yes it was a hurtful experience, but a good one. Not everything negative is bad. It is a good experience and it’s good that he has that negative. But yet it can be bad, because now he’s afraid to touch any oven, whether it is on or not.

Now what happens if he needs to use an oven? His bad template of the past says,

“Sorry, but I’m not going to touch that thing.”

You see he’s stepping back, so you have to get rid of that negative part; the fear. But in himself there’s a respect for this thing. He thinks,

“You don’t mess with this oven. It can cause much hurt to you.”

You see that is a good template. So we can transform that template, but let’s not get rid of that template. We have to have the template, otherwise you are going to mess up again in the future.

Templates are created at these three stages of life: Pre-birth, the childhood period, and then we come to the adolescent period into adulthood. That is actually where Dad steps in.

Templates of Early Childhood

You see from pre-birth and childhood the mother is involved. She is involved in creating a set of circumstances for the child that will allow it to face problems, difficulties and experiences of life.

So the mother provides a shielded environment, where she can watch over and care for the child. She allows the child more and more exposure, to life and to bad things that happen.

The child is having a great time. She is always loved and allowed to run around in the home. Then a neighbor comes to visit and she also has a child.

This is now a new template for little Mary Jane. There has never been another kid on the block before.

This child steps in and starts playing with her toys. She starts interfering with her life and doing things that Mary Jane is not used to. What does she do? She does not have any previous templates to go by.

She responds according to her true nature which is riddled with sin, because we are born in sin.

She says, “How dare you take my toy! Let it go.”

Then she grabs it back. That is the only thing that makes sense to her.

She thinks, “Mom and Dad have never taken my toy away from me. Who the heck does this kid think she is?”

You see a template is being formed, but it’s a bad template. It is a selfish and sinful template. It is up to the mother to move in there now and explain,

“Now Mary, that’s the wrong way to approach it. You need to learn to share. You need to learn to be unselfish.”

The mother begins to build a code of conduct into the child and begins to form a good template. The child grows up, knowing that if in the future somebody comes in and grabs your toys, you respond automatically by saying,

“That’s great. You want to play with my toys? Let’s share them. Let’s take turns and care for one another.”

It is up to you to build the right responses to the circumstances of life.

Changes in Adolescence

Then the child reaches the point where there’s nothing more you can learn as a kid. But there are some new things that begin to come into the child. They are called hormones. Certain feelings and sensations start to appear that weren’t there before.

Suddenly she thinks,

“That naughty little guy that used to bug me before isn’t so bad anymore. He’s starting to look pretty cute.”

“That naughty little girl whose hair I loved to pull – she’s starting to look pretty cute. She’s beginning to affect me in ways she didn’t affect me in before. There is something about her that just stirs certain emotions in me that weren’t there before.”

You see now all the templates that you learned as a child no longer apply. There are a few new things you need to know how to handle here.

There are further experiences in life. The child is moving into a realm that is foreign to him; into experiences he’s never had before.

He’s starting to move further out into the world and to interact with other adults now. Now suddenly he realizes,

“I’m kind of stuck in between because I’m not one of the kids anymore. And these adults just treat me like a child. Can’t they see I’m not a child anymore?”

It is the worst thing for an adolescent. You see a whole new set of templates are being formed.

Transition to the Father

Do you know what? Mother’s job has come to an end. The father begins to take over, and he forms the next set of templates. He now takes that child who has been taught the basics by mom and says,

“Okay, now let me show you how to go out and succeed in life. Let me show you how to grow up and become an individual. In fact, let me do you a favor and break you free of mom.”

Because the child has found its identity in the mother, it now needs to break away and find his or her own identity. He needs to know that he is not part of mom anymore; that he is an individual in his own right. He then goes through a process called individuation.

And now Dad steps in. Well he should step in, but does he? Dad says,

“I’m busy with my work. Go and ask your mother.”

“So dad, what do you think I should do here?”

“Oh I really don’t care. Just go and ask your mother.”

Fathers fail right there. The child is waiting to say,

“Dad, what do I do with my life now? I’m becoming an individual and am standing out on my own. I’m a real person now. I’m not a child anymore. Dad, show me what to do. Where do I go? What should I not do? Please teach me, dad.”

Dad failed right there, because he’s too busy with his own life. He is too busy with work and with so many other things, he doesn’t have time to pay attention to you.

Or even worse still, dad is a weakling and he doesn’t want to upset mom. He doesn’t want to dare say,

“Go and do this.”

He knows that mom will counter it by saying,

“What? Who told you to do that?”

“Well dad told me.”

“Stupid idiot; what does he think he’s doing? Don’t you dare do that.”

Chapter 10 – Healing Childhood Hurts

There are so many circumstances. And we’re not dealing with marriage here or I would go into all of them.

The point is, a new set of templates is formed in adolescence, because the child is now facing a new era in life. He doesn’t have past experience to draw on with the new experiences that he has in life.

And so a new set of templates have to get formed. He knows that as he grows up and moves into maturity, he can now look back on his life. He has a set of templates for adolescence, and he has a set of templates for childhood.

He has a set of templates that cover every kind of circumstance that should ever happen in life. And now he’s ready to go out there and face life.

Well he should be ready, because mom should have taught him all he needs to know from childhood. And dad should have taught him all he needs to know in adolescence up to adulthood.

All those good templates should be in place. But they’re not are they?

There are bad templates from fathers who fail. There are bad templates from fathers who are aggressive and unloving.

There are bad templates from fathers, who as their daughters grow up into maturity, get affected sexually by them.

There are fathers who abuse their daughters, and there are fathers who give their daughters wrong impressions.

They create bad templates. It happens all the time in the world.

Dealing With Hurts

Now as you look back on our life, you just need to go back into the memories. I could sit down with you right now and say, “Okay, let’s go back as far back as you can remember. Let’s go through all the experiences you had in life.”

I’ll guarantee that many of the major hurts will date back to bad experiences you had with your mother and with your father.

How are you going to change that? Are you going to go and confront your parents if they are still alive and say,

“You messed up badly. Look what a mess you made of my life. It’s your fault.”

They may just admit it and say,

“You’re right. I messed up bad.”

But you know they always try and make up for it in the grandchildren don’t they? They try and treat the grandchildren with so much love, because they messed up so badly with their kids.

Isn’t it amazing how grandparents always make such a fuss of the grandchildren and treat them so wonderfully? But they treated their own kids like dirt.

Well it’s too late now. It has happened and life has passed. The best that you can do right now is to confront parents with some of the hurts of the past and say,

“Listen, you hurt me back there. But I want to forgive you now and put it to sleep.”

But you see that isn’t inner healing. That is just dealing with hurts of the past that involve sinful responses on your part. Inner healing is going to require more than that. It’s going to require a re-parenting process.

Healing Lack of Identity

And so as we go in through those bad memories, we bring the healing presence of the Lord Jesus into all those bad experiences in childhood; where your mother missed it and messed up, or she rejected you and failed to accept you.

We bring it in where she failed to affirm you or give you an identity, and left you so insecure that you’re afraid to even mix with other people.

That is the main effect. When a mother does not give a child an identity, the child cannot stand in a crowd and say,

“Here I am. I know who I am. I know who you are, and we can fellowship together.”

A child who was not affirmed by the mother and accepted correctly, cannot relate to other people. He or she will tend to shrink into themselves and be totally insecure.

So the first thing we need to do in inner healing is to give that inner child an identity. We have to do that by bringing the healing presence of the Lord Jesus.

In Christ we have an identity. In Christ I take His image because I am made in His image. In Christ I’m accepted in the beloved.

And so as we bring Jesus into your life and into the memories of the past, for the first time you feel important. For the first time you feel that somebody understands, cares for you and accepts you.

For the first time you have an image, and you can say,

“I know who I am. I’m standing up. I am a child of the living God, and Jesus is the picture of who I want to be. I want to be just like Him.”

Healing Father’s Failures

As we come to all the failures of the father, we can come now to One who will not take advantage of us or ignore us; One who will not only accept us, but also give us a direction in life. He will say,

“I have chosen you and I have called you, and I have a purpose for you. You are very important to me. I have a wonderful plan for your life. Let me show you what it is.

“Let me give you a direction. Let me show you what I want to accomplish through you, and what you can accomplish through me.

“Let me show you what you can do that will make me proud, so that I can stand back and say, ‘Yeah, that’s my son. Did you see my daughter? Isn’t she wonderful?’ ”

That’s all we need. Have your parents done that? You may say,

“No, they said my sister was great. And my brother - he always just excelled. I’m the stupid idiot.”

Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to rely on those past bad experiences and failures of your parents. You have One who is greater than them, who can step in and can re-parent you.

He can be the mother to you that your mother never was. He can be the father to you that your father never was.

He can transform all of those memories and images of the past. He can re-parent you into a position where you can stand now as though you had good experiences with your parents, to replace all of them.

Now you can stand as an adult and you can say,

“I had a pretty good upbringing. My mom and dad did a great job.”

Because you see all of their failures have been replaced by something better.

The Cannibal Instinct

You stand in confidence, knowing who you are. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter that you are different to somebody else.

In fact it is better that you are different to somebody else because we all are individuals. We all have special qualities. The reason we often try to copy other people is that we don’t know who we are.

You think, “Well I don’t know who I am. So let’s find somebody who seems to be making it out there. Yeah, I want to be like that.”

We have this cannibal instinct. You know the cannibals only eat people when they want to get the qualities that the person had. That’s why they kill them and eat them. So if you are a highly intelligent person and they want to get more intelligence, they will kill you and eat you so they can get your intelligence.

We all have this cannibal instinct. We start looking around for the right person. You see a beauty queen - this wonderful specimen of femininity who has been chosen by the world to be Miss World. And you say,

“Oh if only I could be like that.”

No, you were not called to be like that. You weren’t created to be like that (well you might have been). There is nothing wrong with that if that’s an image you want to aim for. But why are you trying to find an image that is based on somebody else?

Finding Your Image

Find your own image. Be who you are, because you are something that nobody else in this world can be. Instead of trying to join with the crowd and trying to be like everybody else, why don’t you stand out boldly and say,

“You can go with the crowd, but I’m different.”

Someone says,

“Why aren’t you doing that?”

“Because I’m me and I don’t do that.”

“Well you should be doing it like everybody else.”

Why? The problem with you is that you don’t know who you are. You have no identity. You’re trying to copy everybody else, and run with the ‘in’ crowd.

I don’t need to run with the in-crowd. I will create my own in-crowd. And you know what? Everybody is going to start looking at me and saying,

“You know he’s different. I kind of like it. He’s not the run-of-the-mill like everybody else. He seems to know where he’s going. He has his head screwed on right. He’s a real leader; a real person full of confidence.”

People follow people like that. They are attracted to people like that.

You say, “I can’t understand why nobody ever pays any attention to me. I have no friends - no boyfriends and no girlfriends. I’m just the loner at the party. I’m always left out.”

Do you know why? It is because you tried to make a carbon copy of the beautiful people out there and you weren’t beautiful.

You can’t shape up to what they have. You weren’t born with it, and you’re not capable of creating it either. So why not take the qualities you have that are just the total opposite of what they have, and start to brag about them. Start to boast in them.

You say, “Well this is who I am. Who needs 6 foot 6 guys? 5 foot 6 is good enough. It’s the in thing.”

“But you know if you want to be famous you have be tall.”

“Who says that? The world and everybody else’s standards? I’ll change that.”

Suddenly you have all the tall guys walking on their knees, because they are feeling left out.

You Are Unique and Special

Take a good hard look at yourself, then get into His presence and say,

“Lord, what do you think about me?”

He is not going to say,

“Your ears are too big. You’re not so good looking. And you know what? You’re just not the brightest of people.”

He’s not going to say that. He is going to say,

“I made you just the way you are, and I’ve given you qualities that make you totally unique. Be bold and proud of those qualities. Stand tall and say, ‘Here I am. There’s nobody else like me out there.’ ”

The world thrives on originality. What is the most important thing in this world and the most valuable thing in this world? Is it that which is available in abundance?

No, it is the gem where there are only one or two of them available in the world. That’s what people pay millions for. People are paying a million for some stupid violin, because there are only five of them available. And it probably doesn’t even play that well.

That’s what we put value on. We put it on rarity.

You say, “Well I’m just the odd one out. I’m just weird and abnormal.”

That’s wonderful. That makes you rare. Don’t hide away and say,

“I’m just a useless flop and a dud.”

Instead stand up boldly and say,

“You know what? There are not many people like me that could accomplish what I’ve accomplished in life. And you know why I accomplished it? Because of who I am.”

People start thinking,

“Wow, I have all these good qualities that everybody else thinks are so great, and I haven’t accomplished what he has. Maybe it’s good to have some of those abnormal qualities of his.

“He has a funny way of walking and everybody mocks him. But you know what? He’s a millionaire. Maybe if I started that funny way of walking I might become a millionaire too? Maybe that’s the key.”

Don’t be afraid to be who you are. Don’t be afraid to be bold. But you know you are never going to be able to stand up and know who you are, and act like you are, until you come into the presence of the One who made you the way you are.

And when you come into His presence, He’s not going to say,

“You know I made a mistake on that. Sorry about that, but we have improved on the model we are making. We threw away the mold after we made you.”

Of course He did that, because He didn’t want anybody to ever be able to copy you. He made you unique and very special. Don’t ever forget that.

I have emphasized this point, because it is the key and the most vital element of inner healing and success.

The Fallacy of Worldly Love

Now the world have discovered this and they have said,

“You must learn to love yourself.”

Most people already love themselves too much. They are so preoccupied with themselves that they can’t relate to other people.

They are selfish and wrapped up in themselves, and everything they do is to try and draw attention to themselves. To tell a person like that to love themselves is like trying to say,

“Well, just carry on being totally selfish.”

You can’t love yourself until you come into the presence of the One who loves you the way you are. You can’t accept yourself, until you come into the presence of the One who accepts you the way you are.

And you can never be confident in yourself until you come into the presence of the One who made you the way you are; the One who went to a lot of trouble to make you the way you are.

Don’t get bitter and twisted and say,

“Lord it’s not fair. Why did you make me this way?”

Instead you can hear His words saying,

“I made you this way because I wanted you to be different. I wanted you to be special and to stand out from the rest.

“I didn’t want you to be like all of them, because you are special to me. I made you in a very special way, so that you could be unique, and so that I could manifest my glory in you. And I made you weak, so that when you take my power everybody will see my power and my glory resting upon you.

“Then people will come to you. They will be drawn to you, because they will see in you not the weak person that you are naturally, but they will see in you the glory that I have put into you.”

Jesus is Proud of You

I want to boast in that. I’m not ashamed to show that to the world because I know who I am. I am a child of the living God. I am one that Jesus died for on the cross.

Because I was so important, He gave His life and suffered just for me. And He loves me and He’s proud of me.

We all love somebody to be proud of us, don’t we? It’s great when you have done a job for somebody and they come and say,

“That was awesome. I am so proud of you. I think you did it so great. I just stood there and I felt part of it. And I just want you to know, you are special and I’m so proud of you.”

Well we wanted our dads to do that, but he never ever came to the sports events we ran. He didn’t even bother to come and find out how we were doing in school, because he was too busy.

But Jesus was there. He attended every event and sat with us in the classroom.

You need to become aware of Him in your memories and become aware of Him in the present. Until you find your identity in Him and have been re-parented by him, you cannot know who you are. You cannot stand up confidently before the world and be what He’s called you to be.

This teaching has taken longer than I expected, so I am going to stop for now. In the next section we will look at habits that are formed in our lives.

We have looked at some of the templates of life, but people often confuse templates and habits. Templates and habits are not the same thing.

Habits are created as a result of continually using the same templates. In fact, you could say a habit is the tendency to always pull out the same template. Now you may have many templates of the past to pull out, but you have your favorites. And sometimes they have became your favorites because you just used them the most.

So in the next section I would like to discuss habits. We’re going to see how you can learn to firstly change those templates. Then we’re going to pick the right templates, create new and better habits and get rid of the bad habits.

You will learn to pick the good templates instead of the bad ones, and try and change the way you behave and act in life.

Then we’ll be ready to start looking at how you can overcome sin, weakness and insecurity, and how you can learn to stop being a failure and start to be a success in life.

Section 04 – Breaking Bad Habits

Chapter 11 – How Habits Begin

What is a habit? A habit is something you develop over a long period of time. The first time you did something that perhaps is now a habit with you, you probably didn’t feel comfortable with it.

The first time you did that particular activity, you may have felt awkward or uncomfortable. But as you continued to do it and you started to feel more confident in it, you started to feel a bit better about it.

Do you remember the first time you climbed behind the wheel of a car to drive? What kind of driving templates did you have when you first started to drive?

For me the only kind of driving templates I had were bad experiences of being in the car when other people were driving. I remembered my mother always telling my dad,

“Be careful; don’t do this. Watch out. You’re doing it wrong.”

He would shout back and say,

“I know what I’m doing, man.”

Habits Start Out Uncomfortable

Perhaps you had some other good or bad templates that started when you were driving. Whatever the case may be, when you first got behind that wheel there were certain matters of care and concern. You weren’t absolutely comfortable.

And if you learned to drive with a car that has a clutch and a manual gear change as I did, oh dear that is another story. You try for the first time to put the clutch in and put it into gear. Then when you let the clutch out the car splutters and chokes off.

You try it again and it chokes off. Then you finally get it right. The engine runs for a bit and then chokes off.

Today we have it easy with the number of cars that have automatic transmissions. But you know even with an automatic transmission, when you first get behind the wheel of the car it is something you are not use to. It is uncomfortable.

You have the key and it has to go in a hole somewhere. Where is it? Is it down at the bottom or at the top? It’s different in all cars.

The first thing you have to learn to be comfortable with is finding out where the key goes. Once you’ve pushed the key in you have to turn it. And then it doesn’t want to turn because maybe there’s a lock. You have to turn the steering so that the lock is released before the key will release.

There are so many different experiences you can have with driving a car. The first time you did it you were probably stupid. You didn’t know what you were doing, and you didn’t feel very comfortable about it.

And if you had somebody like me in the passenger seat who was about to teach you how to drive, then your first driving experience was probably a nightmare.

Ask anybody who has learned under me. Patience is not one of my natural virtues. I have received it by the Fruit of the Spirit, and I use it occasionally. But for those people who know me, I tend to demand perfection. I want it done right, and I want it done now.

So getting behind the wheel of the car with somebody like that is not a very good experience. It is not something that you are actually overly keen to do. You probably avoided it until you were forced to do it, because you just had to have a driver’s license.

But you know today you can get in the car in the dark. You slip right in, stick in the key and you don’t push it through the dashboard. You put it in the right place without even looking.

You turn it and you start the car. And you pull away driving while speaking to the person next to you, without even giving it a second thought.

Do you remember what it was like the first time you tied your shoelaces? Could you tie a shoelace now by telling somebody else how to do it? I mean I can tie a shoelace without even thinking. But could you teach somebody else how to tie the shoelace?

You would probably say,

“Hang on, let me just do it. Ah yes, this one over that one, and that one over this one. And then you do that…”

You see it has become a habit. But the first time you did it, you had two pieces of string and you thought,

“The left one over the right one; this one under, and then you do this. It’s confusing…”

You see it is a difficult thing.

Habits Makes You Feel Comfortable

Now when does something become a habit? It becomes a habit when you start to feel good and comfortable about it.

You see as soon as you learn to drive the car and you have mastered it, there’s this wonderful feeling of control and power that you have when you get behind the wheel of the car.

You think, “I’m bigger than you. Get out of my way. Watch out pedestrians.”

It’s a wonderful feeling of power to be able to stick your hand on the horn and make everyone get out of your way. Everybody has to jump. Some people are still like children and love to do that.

A habit is created when you become comfortable doing something. Why is this? Is it because we all live by the things we think? No, because we all live by the things we feel, and we do the things that feel the best. We don’t do the things that are best for us.

Your mother says,

“Johnny, eat up all your veggies. They are good for you.”

“But they taste horrible.”

“It doesn’t matter. You need to learn to eat your vegetables, because they are good for you.”

You have heard that one over and over again. Johnny is just waiting for mom to turn her back, to see whether he can throw the vegetables under the table or something. Or maybe he can put them on somebody else’s plate, like one of his brothers or sisters.

Why does he do it? Because eating the vegetables doesn’t give him a good feeling. But you know today as an adult, you are eating all the cauliflower, broccoli and green beans.

Some people eat carrots while others don’t. Why do you eat these vegetables now, but when you were a child you were maybe forced to eat them?

Because over a period of time you became comfortable doing it. And eventually after tasting it again and again, one day it didn’t taste that bad anymore.

In fact you found out that you could put certain spices on, like butter or mayonnaise. It made them taste better, and it actually became quite an enjoyable thing. And at times you will be sitting thinking,

“Ooh, I could just taste it in my mouth now.”

It has become a good experience. And because it has become a good experience, you keep doing it over and over again.

Creating Bad Templates

For some people it was a case of,

“Eat your oats now.”

“But it has lumps in it.”

“I don’t care. Eat your breakfast.”

Then tomorrow there is oats, and the day after breakfast is the same. For the next 20 years there is oats, until just the word oats makes you quiver.

It was a bad experience. A bad template was created. And now when you come to eating oats, you think back on those days where your mother forced you to eat it and you don’t feel comfortable doing it.

Recreating the Good Feelings

So how are habits formed? Habits are formed initially by us pulling out all of our good templates.

Why? Because the good templates had good feelings with them. And so we try to recreate the feeling and the circumstances that made us feel good in the past.

That is why we look back on the good old days and think,

“It’s so wonderful to be able to go on holiday and go down to the sea. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to spend your whole life living by the sea? We could just go down to the beach every day, and go and play in the sand and in the waves.”

In your mind that circumstance is a good feeling. Why? Because you did that when you were on holiday and weren’t working. There was no stress, there was money to go and buy things, and it was a very good experience.

So we equate that circumstance with good feelings.

Good Feelings Can Be Deceptive

Now is there anything bad about that? Not necessarily, except that feelings can be deceptive. You see the first time I found a needle and stuck it into my sister she squealed. It was quite funny. It gave me a feeling of dominance and superiority.

In fact I would get a great kick out of doing that. Whenever mom and dad were not looking I would give her a pinch. So now it’s become a habit and I go around pinching women because it makes me feel good.

It’s a template and it does have good feelings doesn’t it? But is this the kind of thing you should be doing? You see it doesn’t mean that if it feels good it’s the right thing for you to do.

Here’s the problem. Habits are formed by repeating templates that had a good feeling in them. But now we have some bad habits. And you know what? We keep performing those bad habits because they feel good.

It doesn’t mean that they are good habits. It just means they feel good, and we keep doing them over and over again.

Now there are a lot of common habits that we consider bad. For example let’s look as smoking as a habit. It’s been cut down on and opposed a lot these days, but there are still many people who are bound by the habit of smoking.

Think about something here. The first time the person picked up that cigarette and took a puff, it tasted like Heaven didn’t it? I don’t know. I only tried it once and it didn’t taste like Heaven. It tasted vile.

But who would admit that when your friends are standing there smoking. And you know what gives you the good feeling? It is being able to say,

“I’m one of the guys.”

That cigarette is bad for you. It’s bad for your health and it is destroying your lungs, but there’s a good feeling that comes with it. And a lot of the time people have that good feeling, not just because of the effect of the drug in it.

Yes the drug does create a certain good feeling, and people smoke when they are under stress. But sometimes just the act of smoking pulls on an old template where they were in with the in-crowd and feeling good.

So what happens? Every time you get with a group of people you want to smoke because it makes you feel good.

Do you see how habits are formed? They are formed by the experiences of life and by the templates. So we can’t create new habits easily, and we can’t get rid of old habits easily.

There has been a whole lot of teaching out there on habits. And people speak about muscle memory; about doing something over and over again until your muscles remember how to do it.

I don’t know the medical terms and I don’t know if muscles have memory. I thought memory was in the brain so I don’t know. Maybe the brain contains a certain amount of memory that is allocated specifically to the operation of muscles.

But I like to think beyond the actual physical memory of the brain. We need to go back to the full memory that we’ve discussed concerning templates.

The memory is not just the repetition of an act, but it’s the feeling that comes every time we repeat that act. So now you understand where I am going with habits.

How Templates are Formed

Now the very first time you experience a particular circumstance, that is when a template is formed for the first time. As I shared previously, those things occur largely during childhood, and from adolescence into adulthood.

A child goes through experiences, and by the end of childhood every kind of thing that happens to kids probably happened to you. And so you had a template formed for every new set of circumstances.

As you went through adolescence, you faced new changes and new circumstances. You had a new feeling of yourself and new interaction with members of the opposite sex.

There were so many new and different templates that were formed.

Reaching Full Maturity

You then left school and you went to work. There again were a whole new load of templates. It was kind of like school, but a bit different. Eventually you reached a stage of maturity.

When does maturity take place - at 21? Some countries say when you are 18 you can now be treated as an adult. You’ve reached maturity. Other countries say when you’re 21.

Essentially, full maturity is believed to occur round about the age 30, which is why Jesus began His ministry at the age of 30. He had reached the full maturity of a man.

So you’re kind of learning all the way up to 30. If after 30 years of life upon this earth there is anything that you have not experienced, then you have been living at home and never going out anywhere. You’ve been living a sheltered life.

Maybe you have been living in a monastery. But just about everything that life can throw at you has taken place by the time you reach that age. So everything that you begin to experience after this, is simply a repeat of something you have experienced before.

Whatever you are doing right now you have probably done many times before. When you did something for the first time you formed a new template. Whatever your circumstance in life, the chances are you have been through that before.

You are going to sit down to a meal. You’ve done that plenty of times before. You are going to travel to another country. Perhaps you have never done that before, so a first template is formed right there. Thereafter, every time you travel you say,

“This place is just like Italy.”

“It’s just like Switzerland.”

Or maybe it is like Spain or America.

The Start of Habits

You have an initial template, and each new experience tends to relate back to the previous experience. What it does is it takes the original template and begins to build on it.

Each new experience that you have has an original template. Now you begin to build on that template and continue to build on it. Eventually what you have right now is not only the original template, but many additional templates along the way.

It forms almost like a chain, where the first template was the first link. And each new experience that relates to that becomes another link in the chain - and another link.

So now as you look at the template you don’t only look at the original template. You look at all the other templates that occurred that were added on top of it, that were of the same kind.

In other words that original template has become reinforced, and it now has many links and facets to it. When that happens you have a habit. It’s that simple really. A habit is created when an original template is continually repeated and added to.

Now what happens if each time you face an experience in life, you respond in exactly the same way as you did to the original event? In other words, as you experience this new thing, you trigger an old template and the same feelings come out.

If you now respond to that circumstance and those feelings in the same way that you did back there, you will reinforce that template. It’s really that simple. And each new experience reinforces the template further and further, until a habit pattern is created.

Chapter 12 – How to Change Habits

What creates a habit pattern? Good templates, not bad templates do.

You see when you trigger to a bad template, you immediately try and avoid that situation completely. Well that is a kind of a habit in reverse. You say,

“I’m in the habit of doing this. But you know I’m in the habit of not doing that.”

So when you have a bad experience, you try not to repeat that experience. You try to not respond to the circumstance with the same feeling. In fact what you try to do as much as possible is to actually avoid the circumstance.

Here is an example. Perhaps driving to work has a bad template from the past for you because you had a bad experience. Maybe you had an accident or something and you’re afraid to drive to work.

So you stop driving to work to avoid that bad template. You maybe get somebody else to drive you, or you catch a taxi. You put yourself in a situation where you can avoid that circumstance happening again, because you don’t want to face it again.

But you want to encourage the templates that are triggered that have a good feeling. You want to do it again and again.

You say, “Let’s do it this weekend again – in fact every weekend. Let’s have a good time because it makes me feel good.”

You do it until it becomes a habit in your life and you can’t live without it. And every time you are feeling down or depressed, what do you want to do?

Think about it. What do you do when you are feeling down? You want to go and do something that makes you feel good. That has become your habit now, because that is the thing that always makes you feel good.

Changing the Bad Habits

How can you change your habits? It’s a very difficult thing to do isn’t it? When you have been doing something for years, it is hard to say,

“I’m not going to do it that way anymore.”

This is because you have taken the original template and reinforced it many, many times, until that template is pretty strong.

And every time you face that circumstance, you find yourself wanting to immediately respond in the exact same way according to that template.

So the first thing that you have to do is to modify the old templates. Now we’re speaking about bad habits here. You don’t want to modify a good habit. Let’s not get rid of the good habits. Let’s keep reinforcing those habits. We just want to get rid of a bad habits?

Now we have spoken about inner healing; about going back and taking the bad feelings out of the templates of the past. So now when you trigger to those circumstances, you no longer have those negative emotions. You’re not affected negatively anymore, and you don’t feel bad about the things that happened to you in life.

What we’re looking at here now is in fact the complete opposite. What we are trying to do is take the good feelings out of the template and put some bad feelings into it.

You say, “That is a total contradiction. That’s absurd. What do you mean you want to put bad feelings into it?”

Changing Habits Through Pressure

You see this is what a mother should have begun to do way back with her children.

Sit down and think about all the good habits you have right now. If you go back in your mind, I’ll guarantee that you will find out that your mother, your father or somebody in authority, probably forced you to do that against your will.

You didn’t want to do it, but over a period of time, as you were forced to do those things, the feelings became better and better until you felt comfortable doing it. You didn’t feel awkward about it anymore. And now it is great and you do it automatically.

You walk into a room and you see a piece of paper lying on the floor. You go and pick it up because mom always said,

“Don’t you dare leave things lying on the floor!”

The last thing you wanted to do as a child was to go around picking stuff up from the floor. But now as an adult it has become reinforced within you. It was a very negative feeling and that action was very negative for you in the past. But yet it can motivate you positively.

And then there are the things you were allowed to get away with. Those are the most dangerous because it felt good to do all the naughty things. You enjoyed it. That’s why you did it.

It was up to the mother now to actually make sure, that that good event has a bad ending. This is because if that good event doesn’t have a bad ending, you’re going to keep doing it for the rest of your life.

So how do we give it a bad ending? By applying something bad to that ending. Smack; whack; pain; suffering.

Now every time you are tempted to do that again in the future, there will be some bad feelings with it. That’s how you learned not to do many bad things.

That is how people have learned to grow up having moral, good lives. They don’t even know the Lord and are not concerned about sin. But they have been taught good habit patterns, all by reinforcing templates.

Find the Starting Point

How then are you going to go back and change your templates? This is the key to changing your bad habits. You are going to have to find out where that bad habit started. Go back through the chain, through all the templates of your life and find out where it started.

This is one time you will not want to take Jesus with you. But it’s one time you are going to have to take Him with you; to have Him right there in that memory when you did that naughty thing that felt so good. You will have to see Him being unhappy with you, and realize that this was not a good thing.

Incorrect Self-Help Teaching

You are going to have to change your feelings. But you don’t want to do that do you? How are you going to overcome your bad habit? Are you going to take drugs, exercise, meditate or speak affirmations?

The self-help courses in the world are all trying to do the same thing. They are saying you can program your subconscious mind to overcome this habit, and you have to do it by creating a new habit.

Yes that is true, but they can’t tell you how to get rid of the old habit. They can only tell you how to create new ones.

I will look shortly at how to create new templates. In the meantime though I want to address something that I have never seen any self-help teaching out there addresses yet, and that is how to get rid of a bad habit.

You see I can’t see myself not doing something. I just can’t do it.

Can you see yourself not eating spaghetti? I want you to see yourself not eating spaghetti.

You see you can’t do that. I tell you what you’re seeing right now. You are seeing yourself eat spaghetti because that is the picture. I just chose spaghetti as an example.

So if you were going to rid of this habit, because spaghetti is bad for you, you need to go back to the first time you ate spaghetti. You need to realize that (choke),

“That was horrible. It tasted so good, but you know there was poison in there. You shouldn’t do that. It’s going to destroy you.”

That is a very negative picture. But until you can get to the place where you hate spaghetti, you will always eat it. Now you want to try and build new habit patterns to overcome the others.

We’ve taught very clearly that templates cannot be removed. They can only be changed.

Making Negative Templates Positive

Now you can create new templates and you can try and create new habit patterns. But while the old template is still there you are actually spitting against the wind. You can’t do it. You have to go back and deal with the template first.

So when it comes to creating new templates, every new template created will have to always relate back to the old template. So what it does is to actually modify the old template.

If you have had a bad experience in the past, you need to go through the same experience again with a happy ending.

Perhaps you had a bad experience that left you fearful. They have even proved psychologically, that the best way to overcome that fear is to go through the same experience all over again with a happy ending.

This is kind of like the time travel thing that we spoke about at the beginning. So what you have to do now is to take that original template and reinforce it by adding better templates - not the same ones.

You see if each link in the chain is the same as the previous one, this template gets bigger and stronger in your life. So what you must do instead is to find that original experience. Find the bad feelings with it and the way you responded at that time. Then you should put yourself deliberately into the same circumstances again.

Well you can try and do that in your mind. You can take the Lord back with you into the memory and you can relive that experience. This is what we taught on the process of inner healing. You can relive that experience with a happy ending and change it.

But you have a habit that made you feel good. Now you have to change the habit and say,

“No I won’t do that.”

A Personal Experiment

I tried an experiment once when I was trying to lose weight. I realized that the one habit I had that was probably contributing to my weight more than anything else, was a snack at night when I was sitting at the computer. All it took was a certain time or a certain circumstance.

I would look at the box of chocolate bars lying there and think,

“I’ll just have one before I go to bed.”

Or I would nibble on a packet of chips sitting there while I was playing a game on the computer. Why? Because it felt good to chill out there.

You say, “Let’s chill out and just play a computer game, and munch on peanuts and chips, chocolates and cheese - whatever we can get our hands on.”

It feels good but it also makes you fat. So how do you change the habit?

One of the things I did, was I imagined in my mind that every time I ate something like that at the wrong time I would feel nauseous. I would want to get sick.

I would actually visualize it and imagine it happening. And every time I wanted to pick that up, I started to get this sick feeling and thought maybe I should leave it.

It’s very psychological and it doesn’t have the Lord in it. You can do it psychologically, and you can train your mind by repeating these things over and over again. But you see we are speaking in this book about bringing the presence of the Lord into it.

Chapter 13 – Changing Your DNA

How can you change the habit? The only way you can change it is to become aware of His presence 24 hours a day. You have to bring His presence into it. This means that when you are tempted to do something, whether it is by habit or not, Jesus is standing there.

So how do you come to the place of having the discipline to stop? Supposing you don’t really have that kind of relationship with the Lord yet? I’m hoping you will by the time we are finished. But for now, what else can you have to help you?

The Help of a Mentor

You see here is the problem. God is out there and you know the Lord is with you. But until He becomes that real it takes another human being for you to relate to. You need a human being who can put the right kind of pressure on you; who can instruct you and can say,

“I don’t think you should do that.”

He can say, “I think you should do that.”

“You’re not going to do that.”

Or, “You need to do that”.

What does it require? It requires a mentor.

What is a mentor? A mentor is a person who gives you a model of how to behave. If you really admire a person and you look to them as a model, you have an incentive to actually change the way you do things.

So one of the best ways of overcoming the wrong habits is to find someone that you can model yourself after. You can say,

“You know every time we come here, her home is beautiful and spotless. She’s such an awesome woman. You just look at her and her clothes are immaculate. She just oozes such a confidence. She knows who she is. And you feel like you want to be around her all the time and maybe suck some of it from her.”

Have you ever felt that way about somebody? Those are actually the kinds of people that you like to hang around. And you feel that maybe if you hang around with them long enough, it will rub off on you a bit. Maybe you will start being like them, and you get an incentive to change.

What does a mentor do? A mentor does 3 things. He or she:

1. Sets the model and example

2. Gives specific direction

3. Disciplines

So you can say that a mentor is in some ways like an adult mom or.

It’s going to cost you to have a mentor. But unless you have a mentor, the chances are you will never change. You will continue on the path you have always gone on, and you will always be the same.

The Influence of Peer Pressure

Now let’s look at how a person affect you? It’s a known fact that if your children grow up in a community with a bad crowd of kids, they start to go off. They start to be corrupted.

Paul actually mentions in one of his letters that bad companions corrupt good behavior. Why is this?

We know this whole peer pressure thing. You know that as you went to school you had all the other guys, your friends and peers around you. As you hung around with them you wanted to be part of them. And you started to do the same things as them, even though before you never felt comfortable with it.

Because we like to relate to somebody else, and especially if there is somebody that we really admire, we look to them.

This happens naturally all the time. How does it take place?

What happens firstly is there comes a kind of joining or communication between two people. It may start from a physical point of view. You may be attracted to a person because of the way they look; because of their physical abilities or because of their strength – whatever it may be.

It then starts to go deeper and you begin to develop a friendship. When that happens you begin to open your heart, and you begin to receive from them at a deeper level; at a psychological level.

Over time you begin to hear everything they think and you start to pick up their thoughts. Eventually you even begin to think like them. You start to pick up all of their emotions. You start to feel like them and feel with them, until eventually when you come together you begin to flow together as one.

You know it happens so subtly that you don’t even realize that it has happened. Before you know it you find yourself using little expressions in your language and you think,

“Where did I get that from? Oh, that’s what my best friend says. He’s always saying that. That is why I find myself saying it.”

You picked it up without even thinking. You didn’t deliberately sit down one day and say,

“Hey that sounds like a cool expression. I think I’ll try it.”

You probably didn’t even think about it, but the next moment you found yourself doing it.

Now that may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing. You see you couldn’t call such a person a mentor. But yet they have communicated something to you.

They have molded you and changed you in some way and you have received of what they have. And over time, all of their templates and habits are now communicated to you as you opened your heart to them.

Modeling Yourself After People

There can be a deeper involvement, and this is the more subtle one. This is where there comes a spiritual communication. And this again is something you’re not conscious of, because the spirit is deeper than the consciousness.

But the moment you begin to open your heart to somebody and become more intimate with that person, there is a communication which takes place from spirit to spirit.

What is in that person’s spirit becomes communicated to your spirit, until eventually you become almost a duplicate of that person, spiritually and psychologically.

And you know what? You even find your face pulling their same facial expressions. You change your hairstyle to be the same as theirs and wear the same kind of clothes. It affects your spirit, soul and body.

This happens automatically in life. And you find that so many of your habit patterns and who and what you are right now, are not only based on the experiences of life, the templates of the past, or the habits that you created by reinforcing those templates. They were created by the model that you received from someone else.

Where did this start? It started in childhood. And the first person you learned to become like is your mother, provided you had a good relationship with her.

If you had a bad relationship with her you will probably find a mother substitute. You will find somebody else who can take that role because you need it.

I spoke about how we find our identities initially in our mother. Have you ever heard this expression? People say,

“She’s just like her mother. She really irritates me. I can’t stand it. She nags just like her mother. She’s also arrogant and sulks just like her.”

The Role of DNA

It is even worse when he is just like his mother. But you see there was a communication that took place. You look at the child and you can see it. There’s mother; there’s child. You can see it. We use that English expression,

“He’s a chip off the old block. He’s just like his dad. You can see it. He’s exactly like his dad in every way.”

Well he does look like his dad, because he got some of the same genes. Maybe he has the same nose or the same mouth – whatever it may be. We know that this happens genetically.

I remember sitting down with my kids one day, and we decided to try and find out where they got their parts from. Did they get it from mom or dad?

People say, “You’ve got your mother’s nose and your father’s ribs.”

This is what they teach us medically. Genetically there is a communication of DNA at the lowest level. This is where a child receives the DNA of the parents, so that you can identify a child by going in and seeing the similarities in the DNA.

You can even prove it medically, and you can prove paternity. I don’t know how they do it but it can be proved. This is because there is an actual communication that takes place physically when a child is born to parents.

But DNA is not confined to the body. There is a kind of spiritual DNA that is communicated in the soul and also in the spirit.

And so in addition to carrying their physical DNA, you actually received some of their habit patterns; some of who they are psychologically, and some spiritually.

Eventually by the time you reach maturity, you have received from your parents a whole lot more than just the physical characteristics that they gave you through blood.

Your very first mentor was your mother. And following on immediately afterwards was your father.

They mentored you, and in mentoring you they actually created in you the templates that now rule your life. They made you who you are and how you behave in this world.

Bad DNA is Often There

Now a lot of that was good. If you had a good parent who carried a good spiritual DNA, then you have probably received some very good stuff. But there is probably also some very bad stuff. In fact I will guarantee that there is a lot of bad stuff in there. Where did it come from?

I remember when my son John was still very small, he would go around slamming doors that were left open. He couldn’t stand it. He was just like me. Well you know by that age he wasn’t old enough to learn that from me yet.

How did he know that you don’t leave doors hanging open? I didn’t have time to teach him. In fact I wasn’t even involved with him yet. His mother was still busy there, and she definitely left doors hanging open. So where did he get it from?

You say, “Well it’s in the genes.”

No it’s not in the genes. It’s not physical. It is far deeper than that. It’s spiritual.

When you hang around with a person long enough you pick up more and more of this, without it actually being said.

Just by being in the presence of the person, by being intimately involved with them and open to them, you automatically pick up some of their characteristics. You find yourself doing something that you were not even aware of. And you find out afterwards, that in fact it was a habit that that the person has in their lives.

It is very subtle. The point is you must be careful who you hang around with. Well it’s probably a bit late for that. You hung around with your parents for most of your life. It was the important part of your life; the developing part of your life. You cannot really say,

“Tell that child to be careful who they hang around with.”

“But they’re mom and dad.”

Replacing Spiritual DNA

Now change must come, and it must come at the roots, not just on the outside. If you want to deal with all those bad habits; all the things that make you who you are that are bad, you are going to have to get to the root.

The root lies in that spiritual DNA. You cannot change your physical DNA. Your body is made that way. You can go and have plastic surgery, but that won’t change your genes.

But here is the good news. You can change your spiritual DNA. You can become a different person to who you have been up until now.

How are you going to do that? There are two stages. You have to get rid of the old DNA, and you have to replace it with a new DNA.

How is that going to take place? It will take place in the same way that we are going to deal with habits.

You see you have to replace a bad habit with a good habit. You can’t fix up the bad habit. It is rotten. You have to throw it out and you have to replace it.

But what we are trying to do is to get rid of the bad habit first, before we put in the good habit. So in order to bring light into this room, what we are going to do is take out the darkness first. Then we’re going to put in some light.

You see the two have to take place at the same time. As the new habit comes in, the old one is displaced. As the light comes on, the darkness leaves automatically.

So if you’re going to replace the DNA that you received from your natural parents, you are going to have to replace it with a new DNA that you will receive from new parents.

From Natural to Spiritual Parents

That’s great, so you go to mom and dad and you say,

“I don’t want you as my parents anymore. I have found another couple that I really like, and they are going to be my mom and dad from now on. I’m changing my name to theirs, and I’m refusing to admit that I was ever born to you.”

No you can’t do that. You have to be a bit more subtle than that. You have to be very careful. You see in the natural they are your parents. You share their genes. Physically it’s quite clear that you came from them.

The Scripture says that you must honor your father and mother. They will always hold a place of honor and respect in your life, no matter what they did wrong or how they failed. You must say,

“Mom and Dad, I love you and respect you, but I got some stuff from you that I don’t want anymore.”

So there must come a time of letting go of mom and dad. It is going to be very difficult to go to your parents and do this. And if your parents are no longer alive, it’s going to be even more difficult.

It is not a matter of relationship. It’s not a matter of going to your parents and saying,

“I renounce you as my mother. I renounce you as my father.”

No, you are not going to do that. What you are going to do is to take Jesus with you. Then in the Spirit, with Jesus standing by your side, you are going to face your mother. You’re going to say,

“Mom, I respect you and I love you. You are my mother. But there is a lot of stuff I got from you that I don’t want. There’s a lot of bad stuff.

“And so I want to send you away with blessing. I want to send you away in love. I love you and appreciate you, but Mom I’m saying goodbye now to who I am in you.”

You see it’s not what I do. It’s who I am, because who I am is made up of what I received from my natural parents - or surrogate or substitute parents if your parents weren’t there. There is always somebody.

Now you have to find somebody else to whom you can relate as a person. That is where spiritual parenthood comes in.

Chapter 14 – Receiving from Spiritual Parents

I spoke originally about re-parenting, about how Jesus can go with us and help us to be re-parented. I showed how He can replace the father and the mother in our memories and in our life.

But in the current day-to-day relationship, we sometimes need a person. And so in the same way you need a mentor; a person to actually be there to say to you,

“This is what you must do. And this is what you mustn’t do.”

You need a person to be there, to give you a model and an image to follow, in the same way you may need a physical person to actually stand in the place of the original parent.

So God provides spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers, and they take a different role in your life. They do not displace your respect for your parents, and they do not displace your natural family heritage.

However they displace your family’s spiritual heritage. They become your spiritual mom and dad.

What happens is you begin to receive a new spiritual DNA from them, to replace the bad spiritual DNA that you received from your parents.

You Choose Your Spiritual Parents

How does this take place? Well it doesn’t take place by the laying on of hands and impartation. That is the biggest mistake people ever make. It does not take place that way.

When we lay hands on people and impart to them, we impart of the anointing of God that was given to us. And yes there is a degree of impartation that takes place.

But if you want to change your spiritual DNA, you must begin to reach out to somebody who you choose to be your spiritual parent.

Now mentorship is usually very different. In mentorship a person chooses who they will mentor. And although somebody may look to another person as a mentor and receive from them, it is not true mentorship. I have heard people saying,

“Well so and so was my mentor, and so and so also was.”

I mean Watchman Nee was one of my mentors, but he never met me. We are going to be doing a whole lot more detailed teaching on mentorship later, so I’m not going to say too much about it now. But I am looking at an aspect where you must choose to reach out and embrace.

And so a spiritual parent is there and is available, and you look to that person and say,

“I would like to have what they have. I don’t just want their anointing or their spiritual gift, but I would like to have the very spiritual essence that they are filled with.

“I want to be like them. I want to be like her. I want to be like him. I want to get from them what I never got from my own mom and dad.”

Reach Out to Receive

Again you don’t take the darkness out and then put the light in. The two must take place together. So you cannot say,

“Well I’m going to firstly renounce and get rid of my old DNA. Then I’ll go and find somebody with a good new DNA and I’ll take it.”

You see you can’t be without spiritual DNA. You cannot go empty of DNA and then refill. The two must take place together.

So displacement of DNA takes place like this. As you become more and more associated and more intimate with the people you have chosen to be spiritual parents, you automatically begin to receive of their DNA. Then as their DNA comes into you, your previous DNA begins to fade away.

How long does it take? As long as it takes you to receive of the new and let go of the old. It is that simple really. It will happen much quicker if you will open your heart wide and come as close as you can to that person, to receive in intimacy from them. You will literally pull it out of them.

You have to be like Jacob who wrestled with the angel and said,

“I’m not letting you go until I get the blessing.”

You will have to embrace that person and say,

“You can kick me out. You can do what you like, but I am sticking around until I’ve got what you have.”

It is really a simple process. But you know what? You can hang around with a person for years and never pick up a thing that they have. This is because we have our own way of doing things. We call it archetypes.

You say, “You know in South Africa this is the way we used to do it.”

“I don’t care. You are not in South Africa now.”

You see you may want to hold onto your old DNA. If you just want to stay who you were, who your parents were, and you want to carry on being that way – then stay that way. Nobody is going to make you change.

You say, “Do I have to have spiritual parents?”

No, Jesus can re-parent you by Himself, if you have entered that level of intimacy with Him; if you know Him that well and spend that much time with Him every day.

It takes a while to get there and to develop that awareness, because He’s not speaking, He’s not shouting, and He’s not in your face. He is not there until you specifically bring Him in, as I will show you later.

So it is actually much easier to find another human being who has already embraced and entered into that; who has already developed those qualities which you want to develop, and to be able to go and to literally suck it out of them.

Spiritual Parenting Happens Naturally

You know it happens all the time. Do you know why a lot of people believe the doctrine they believe? It is because their pastor believes it. Someone may say to you,

“Why do you believe in this doctrine? Show it to me from the Word.”

You say, “Well I don’t really know the Bible too well. But my pastor is such a wonderful man of God. And you know if he teaches that, I believe it must be right.”

Do you know what? That pastor just became a spiritual father. Is that bad? No it’s not bad at all. It is very good. And I will never discourage people from being super loyal to their pastors. Sometimes it’s a bit sickly like a teacher’s pet.

Do you know why we hate teachers’ pets? It is because they got what we didn’t. I was stupid. I should have tried to be a teacher’s pet. I would have had it easier in life.

Spiritual Parents Can Change

Now what happens if you’ve been in that situation? You have been in a church and you have loved and admired the man of God? Hopefully you loved his wife too, although it doesn’t happen often.

What happens if you maybe have to move to another church now?

You come into the new church and there’s a wonderful man of God there too. He is just not the same though is he?

You say, “He’s just not the same as my good old pastor. He just doesn’t preach the same, and he doesn’t have the same tender love.”

Well you stick there for a while. You sit under his ministry for a bit. You get to visit with him, get to receive counsel from him, and get to know him better.

After a while the old pastor begins to disappear into a happy memory. Now the new person you know is a wonderful man. You know that you are receiving from him, and you’re looking to him now instead of the person before.

You see you can’t get rid of your natural parents. They are there for keeps, and you’ll continue to honor them.

But you can not only choose your spiritual parents. You can also change them. You can move from one set of spiritual parents to another. And when you do that, you again have to make a choice. You have to say,

“All those spiritual qualities that I received from my previous spiritual parents, I want to let them go now. I’m going to receive instead the spiritual qualities of my new spiritual parents.”

Make a Full Commitment

There’s really no choice in the matter. If you want to receive the new, you must let go of the old. You cannot hold onto both. There is nothing worse than a person who has ‘half and half’.

Most of us have ‘half and half’ - half of our parents and half of our spiritual parents - and it’s a mess. Do you know why this happens?

It is because those two DNA’s are like the spirit and the flesh. They are in conflict with one another like Paul describes in Romans.

Do you want to have confusion in your life? Then come with a half commitment and receive half of it. You know I’ve heard people saying,

“Well you know what? I go around and I listen to all preachers and teachings. I take a bit from that, and a bit from that. And I take a bit from that one, and a bit from that.”

You are the United Nations in one person. You’re a person of confusion. You don’t know yourself what you believe.

You hear these self-help guys stand up, and they quote this person, and they quote that person, and they quote the other person. They say,

“I would like to introduce you to my mentor”.

You think, “Well that’s great. So he learned from that.”

And in the next email they say,

“I would like to introduce you to my other mentor”.

Of course they don’t know what spiritual parentage is, so they just call them mentors. The guy has a load of hodge-podge that he had picked up from everywhere, and he doesn’t know himself what he believes. He has a whole mixture of spiritual DNA’s and it brings confusion.

You can only walk in one spiritual DNA at a time. And you must make up your mind and choose who you are going to have as your spiritual parents.

Stick to that DNA, until the time comes when you want to move away; where you see that that is inferior and God has something greater for you. Then go and find another DNA.

Eventually you will come to the place where you don’t look to any human being anymore, because your relationship with the Lord Jesus is so intimate that you are receiving His very DNA. People will eventually look at you and say,

“You look just like Christ.”

Looking Like Jesus – the Ultimate Goal

There was a story once of a missionary who went into a foreign land. He came to preach to them about Jesus and describe what Jesus was like. They said,

“Oh no, we know Him. He used to live here.”

They were referring to a previous man of God that walked so close with the Lord, he literally emanated the very character of Christ. And when they had to describe what Jesus was like, they had seen it in the man and they said,

“Yeah, we know Him.”

I wonder, when we walk in this world, who do people see?

“Well she looks just like her mother. He looks just like his father. He’s just like his spiritual parent.”

That’s wonderful. It’s good, and there is nothing wrong with it. But what is the ultimate goal we are aiming for? It should be,

“She looks just like Jesus. She radiates the love of the Lord.”

Start moving from the templates of the past. Start moving into changing your habits. Come to a place of finding somebody who will mentor you, instruct you and help you to change.

Then move off and find spiritual parents that you can receive a good spiritual DNA from. Continue to progress more and more in your relationship with the Lord Jesus, until you can come to the place where Christ is formed in you.

And then it’s quite simple. Life becomes one of actually living the life of Jesus on a day by day basis.

Section 05 - Practicing His Presence

Chapter 15 – Getting to Know Jesus

Exodus 33:14 says:

And he said, My presence shall go [with you] personally, and I will cause you to settle down and take it easy.

As you can see, this is definitely the GBM Translation. Those were God’s words to Moses when Moses said,

“Lord, are you going to go with us?”

God said to Moses,

“I’ll go with you. I’ll help you to go and settle down; to start taking it easy and having a good life. As for this mob of useless Israelites, if I go with them I will get so mad I’ll destroy them along the way.”

That is what He said. Well you will see that in the GBM Translation anyway. I don’t know if you’ll see it in other translations.

In this section I want to share about taking the presence of the Lord with you at all times, so that Scripture is very relevant. When you take the presence of the Lord with you, you are going to settle down and start taking it easy in life. Life is going to become a wonderful experience.

A Wrong Image of God

Most of us grow up with a knowledge of God being an austere man up there. It is kind of like your dad when you get on his wrong side. He is ready to jump on you at any moment if you step out of line. So walk very carefully when you want to come into the presence of God.

Isn’t that the way we have all been taught? People say,

“You need to come with clean hands, crawl down on your hands and knees, and hope that you will be acceptable in his sight. And if you are a sinner don’t even think about it. He’s not going to listen to you.”

Most of us have been taught that and believe it.

You ask, “Does God listen to the prayers of a sinner?”

“No, He only listens to those that have accepted Him, that have been born again and come into His presence.”

Is that right?

You say, “God doesn’t listen to unbelievers. How can God listen to them? They are spiritually dead. They are sinful, and they are children of wrath. Why should God listen to them?”

So that makes me kind of superior, because I have been to church and have accepted the Lord. And now that I’m a Christian, that makes me better than everybody else. I think most of us have grown up with that concept, and it is the way it has been presented to us in church.

Changing the Picture

I remember years ago as I began to move into a new experience with the Lord. I had grown up in church and known Him all my life. Now I was beginning to study to prepare for the ministry.

I was studying to get to know the Lord better, because I’d had an experience with Him. I had been filled with His Spirit and I had a call on my life. I wanted to know more and get to know Him better. My whole life I knew about the Lord, but I hadn’t met Him yet.

At that time I began to read books like it was going out of fashion. My highest monthly expense, apart from my regular bills, was my bookshop account. I would walk in there every week, scan the shelves, and see if there was something I hadn’t read yet.

Well there was plenty I hadn’t read yet. And if there was something interesting that I could take home this week, usually I would walk out with four or five books.

I would take them and read the first chapter or two. Then I would skim through it to see if there was anything else that was good there. And I built up a wonderful bookshelf of books I never read.

But I found one author that grabbed my attention. It was a woman writer and she wrote books on prayer. She was actually a missionary to China of all places. I don’t think she’d even been married.

She was one of those regular woman missionaries. You know the kind. They are too useless to get married and settle down to a normal life, so they become missionaries and go to China. That’s the kind of impression I always had of these people.

But this woman had a knowledge of the Lord that I had never seen before. She’d written these books on prayer, and I have recommended these books so many times.

She was a woman by the name of Rosalind Rinker, and her most famous book was called ‘Prayer – Conversing with God’.

She began to teach that prayer was not sitting beaming your little rockets up there. It was not sitting in a meeting competing with everybody else to see if you could pray a better sounding prayer than them. She said that prayer was quite simply talking to the Lord.

She wrote an awesome book called, ‘Communicating Love Through Prayer’. I don’t even know if it still available anymore. I don’t think she is alive anymore.

In that book she said something I had never ever heard before. She said,

“Teach people to reach out and touch God, whether they are Christians or not, because He loves them just like He loves you. And don’t think that God loves you more than He loves anybody else, because He loves us all. You know if we could get people to touch God and experience His love, they would come to know Him.”

She said “Don’t ever discourage unbelievers from praying. Teach them and encourage them, because in praying they are making contact with God.”

She changed the whole approach of this judgmental God, to a God that was caring and loving, and waiting to pour out the abundant blessing that He has.

She said, “Encourage people to reach in and embrace the love of the Lord.”

That was different. When I thought about it, I realized,

“Wow, I don’t think I have ever prayed that way before.”

Changing the Way I Prayed

Then she said,

“Begin to hold a conversation with the Lord Jesus. Imagine that He is sitting in the seat next to you and talk to Him.”

Well I had never done that before. I mean we pray our prayers and close our eyes tight and say,

“Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come…”

That is the most primitive prayer, but you won’t believe how many people still pray that way today.

The rest of us close our eyes and say,

“Lord, please bless mommy and daddy, and brother and sister. Bless uncle and aunt and cousin - and everybody else I can think about. And please bless me too. Amen.”

That’s the way most kids grow up praying. We kind of hope that I said it loudly enough so that He would hear it up there.

Finding God

But where is the Lord? If you are going to hold a conversation with Him, where is He? Well He’s everywhere because His Holy Spirit is omnipresent. But you know He’s even closer than that. He’s in your heart. He’s in your spirit, if you are a child of God.

So if you want to find God’s address, where are you looking? Do you have to go to Switzerland? He definitely must be in America. That is God’s own country.

Where is God’s address? Most people think it has to be Israel, because Israel is God’s nation and we must pray for the nation of Israel. And if we bless Israel God will bless us.

The Catholics seem to think He is hiding away. And we have to go and bug His mom so that she can go and nag Him. So we come to Mother Mary. Where is He?

He’s closer than breathing.

He’s in your heart.

He’s in your spirit.

Developing My Relationship With Jesus

After reading Rosalind Rinker’s book I decided to give it a try. I got in my car on the way to work and I was riding by myself. She had said,

“Imagine that Jesus is in the seat next to you.”

So I imagined Jesus was in the seat next to me and I began to talk to Him out loud. It’s a strange feeling when you talk to yourself for the first time. It feels funny. It feels awkward because there is nobody there.

I began to talk to Him. And as I spoke to Him, in my mind’s eye I could visualize and see Him sitting right there, and I began to tell Him what was on my heart.

Suddenly I felt a chill go right through me. I felt something happen that I had never felt before. It was like I could feel His presence. It wasn’t my imagination. It was something real.

The more I did it, the more comfortable I felt with it, until eventually I could talk with Him and really feel that He was there.

It was my very first experience of ever coming into His presence in a real and tangible way, knowing that He was there. It was my first experience of actually talking to the Lord as though He was a real person.

Learning About Conversations

After that I had to learn that there are two sides to a conversation. It’s really very boring to hold a conversation with somebody who talks and talks and talks. And most of the time what they are talking about is themselves.

You say, “Oh he’s such a conversationalist.”

No he’s not. He talks about himself all the time. The best conversationalist is a person who listens.

Here is an amazing thing. If you can learn to shut up and ask a few basic questions, just speak only when necessary and then be quiet and encourage the other person to talk, people will say,

“You know that Les Crause? He’s really such a wonderful conversationalist. Man I could talk with him for hours.”

Yes, I talk about myself, because we love to talk about ourselves don’t we? Whoever wants to listen?

Have you ever had a problem getting people to stick around you? You wondering why they’re looking at their watch after five minutes and saying,

“You know I really need to go.”

You say, “I was trying to be expressive. I was trying to be friendly.”

“Yes, but you were talking about yourself.”

Well I have good news for you. There is Somebody who will listen to you and encourage you to talk about yourself. He really will. He loves you and He cares. In fact He is going to say,

“Tell me more. That’s awesome! Tell me more.”

You know what? You could talk to Him all day if you wanted to and He would listen.

So if you are an expressive that talks too much, you have somebody that you can talk to, express yourself to, and pour out all your emotions on. It starts sometimes from bubbly excitable expression, to weeping and crying and both ends of the spectrum. I know, I’ve been there

It doesn’t matter. You can just talk to Him and tell Him everything that is inside. You can pour it out until you have told Him even more than you know. It’s a wonderful experience.

Who needs a shrink? Let’s go to somebody who really cares and just talk to Him.

Well that was my first experience of learning to become aware of the presence of the Lord. And that is perhaps the first and the easiest way to come into His presence. It is simply to visualize Him as being there.

Look at a spot near you. He’s sitting right there. Can you see Him? He’s right there. You can say,

“Hey Lord, how’s it going? It’s a nice day and I’m having fun. Good stuff.”

He’s sitting there smiling and saying,

“Go for it. You’re doing great.”

That is all I need to keep me going. Other people may be putting me down and trying to get rid of me. I just look and see His smiling face and He’s saying,

“I’m proud of you. Great stuff.”

It’s all you need in life. And you know that one little thing alone; that one little act and daily practice of being in His Presence could transform your life.

I woke up this morning and I didn’t feel like getting up. I wanted to climb back into bed and sleep some more. I didn’t feel like going out.

I didn’t feel like working. And I realized that I felt completely unprepared for what I needed to do today. What could I do? What is the first thing I could do to change it?

I said, “Good morning Lord.”

He was sitting there on the bed right next to me.

Just Him being there was wonderful; knowing He was there and being aware that He cares, that He understands, and that He knows what I am feeling.

Just being aware of His presence, even if it was in my imagination, immediately changed my feelings and got me going.

And then I followed through and applied some other ways of coming into His presence that I’m going to share with you now as we go on.

Chapter 16 – Hearing Him Through the Word

The second way of coming into His Presence is being aware of Him; of being able to dialogue with Him so that you can speak with Him, and then hear Him speaking with you.

You see we all know how to speak to Him. We call it prayer. But it is hearing Him speak back that we have a problem with.

If you could only hear His voice speaking back in every situation in life, you could handle anything that comes your way. This is because you will know what He thinks about it, and that alone is enough. That assurance is all you need to take you through.

So what do you have available to you that you can use, to be able to hear His voice and be able to get to know Him better?

Hear Him Through the Word

The first and most obvious thing we have is the Bible - His Word. The Bible was given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is God’s word. So when you read the Bible you are literally reading the words that God spoke.

So here is the starting point. As you read the Bible, imagine the words that He is speaking were spoken to you.

Yes I know the prophets prophesied to Israel and somebody prophesied to Judah. I know that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth and James wrote to the 12 tribes. It is God’s Word.

Begin by reading the Word as though it was written to you personally. Try and change the words to make them apply to you directly and alone.

I have some favorite Scriptures. Jesus said to his disciples - He was speaking to the 12 - and He said,

If you abide in me, and my words are abiding in you, you can ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

You think, “Wow, weren’t those 12 disciples lucky? I wish I could have been one of them. Imagine if I could take that promise and apply it to myself.”

You see I read that now and I hear Him saying,

“Hey Les, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you know what? You can ask me for anything and I’ll do it for you.”

Can you see Him standing there? Can you hear Him saying to you,

“Hey (your name here), abide in me and let my words abide in you, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

I could take that and use it. I could stand on that promise. You see until the Word becomes yours personally it is a word spoken to somebody else.

But you can begin to know the Lord through His Word. You can begin to understand some of His personality, the way He thinks and what is important to Him. You can learn it just be reading His Word.

Don’t Analyze the Word

When you read the Word, don’t just try and study it and analyze it. Don’t say something like,

“Well you know, ‘If you abide in me’… So ‘you’ is the subject, ‘abide’ is the verb, and ‘in me’ is the predicate.”

You break it down and you say,

“If you - is it singular or plural? I don’t know. Let’s look this up in the Greek. You singular; you plural?”

“Now ‘abide’ - is that a past tense, is it a future tense or is it a present continuous tense?”

You know what? I could do a whole study or a whole sermon on that one verse, and that’s great. I could teach you some awesome principles. But if I can’t take that Word as God speaking to me personally, it is worth nothing. It means absolutely nothing to me.

God’s Love Letter to You

So you will have your time of reading the Scripture. And there’s nothing wrong with reading the Greek. I teach people how to do this when we look at Hermeneutics.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But there comes a time where you must read the Bible as though you have just received a love letter.

You say, “Ooh, I just received a letter from the love of my life in my email box. She’s telling me how wonderful I am and how much she misses me!”

Now that is a letter you are going to read first! There it is. Forget about all the other stuff that came into your email box. That’s the letter you want to read first.

It’s a pity we don’t do the Bible that way isn’t it?

You say, “You know I really should read the Word. I should get in and read a couple of chapters every day. I really feel guilty when I don’t.

“But when I read it I feel like God is 1 000 miles away. It’s just a load of intellect; a load of study and doctrine. I need to pick up some books to try and explain it to me. I need to find a Bible commentary that will tell me exactly what the person was meaning here.”

No, you just need to feed on it. Read it as though it was a letter written personally to you, and God is speaking to you right now. You will begin to hear His voice. It’s quite simple really isn’t it? Change the way you approach the Word, and reading the Bible will become an exciting thing.

Getting the Word to Stay

Now let’s take it further than that. Try and get some of that Word to sink inside of you.

You say, “Well I read 10 chapters of the Bible today.”

“That’s awesome. What did they say?”

“Umm, I don’t remember much.”

“Which chapters did you read?”

“Well there was a couple in the Old Testament. Oh yeah, there was one… I remember it was in the Gospel of Matthew and it was about Jesus performing a miracle or something. You see I did read the Word.”

That’s wonderful. Don’t let me ever discourage you from reading the Word. As much as you can, read the Word and fill yourself with it.

But tell me, what would happen if tomorrow they took away your Bible? What if they wiped it off your hard-drive, if you have an electronic one?

You go to the cupboard to pull out your physical Bible that is covered with dust and that you never use; or the one that is falling apart because you use it so much - and it’s gone. It’s vanished.

You quickly get on the Internet to go and find a Bible online and they’re all gone. There are no more Bibles. They’re finished.

What is this going to do to your life? Are you going to be devastated? Will you be able to survive? How will you go on?

It is going to depend on how much Bible you have put into you already. You will be amazed how much of the Word is already in you, and how much Scripture you can remember.

Try this little exercise sometime. Just open a blank document, or get a book, pen and paper and just start to write down all the verses you can remember. It doesn’t matter if you get them wrong. Just try and write them down and quote them.

Think of the book of Genesis. What do you remember? Do you remember the story of creation? You say,

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

You see you know it.

And the earth was without form and void.

Hey I can almost quote the whole chapter.

Then we have good old John 1:1.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God…

There are a few other ones I can remember there.

How about Matthew? How about Mark or Luke or the Acts?

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, there appeared unto them cloven tongues of fire that separated and came upon each one. And they began to speak in other tongues as the Holy Ghost gave them utterance.

“And there were a whole lot of people there in Jerusalem from all the other places that came in, and they heard about this noise and came to see what was going on…”

Well that’s not exactly Scripture but it’s kind of right. How much can you remember? You say,

The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures.

You probably said it at school or sung it some time. There are so many songs that have been written on the Scriptures, you would be amazed how much Scripture you already have in you. And you would be amazed how well you would survive if your Bible was taken away right now.

You see it’s not really such a big deal as to how much of the Bible you have read. How much of it have you retained? How much of it is inside of you? Because what is inside of you will come out.

The Scriptures Will Speak to You

Now here is the great thing. When you read the Scriptures, sometimes it is difficult to feel that it is personal. But what happens, is at the most unexpected moment, a passage of Scripture pops out from deep inside of you. It pops out into your mind.

What if you are about to do something that you shouldn’t do? Suddenly a Scripture will pop up that says,

“Thou shalt not.”

“Oh yeah, okay cancel that one.”

What if you’re in a difficult situation and you don’t know what to do? Suddenly what pops out is a Scripture that relates to it and gives you the wisdom to do what you want to do.

You see that is His voice. He’s speaking to you. It is coming from deep inside of you.

Chapter 17 – Hearing Him Through Journaling

If you want to get to know the Lord, get to know His Word. Fill yourself with His Word. And you know what? You take the Word with you, and His word contains His presence. And His presence will become manifest to you when you need it the most, as the Word comes out.

You say, “I just wish I could really see Him and could really hear His voice.”

We will get to that. I’m giving you here the simplest ways of doing it. I’m giving you ways that every single person can do, and the best starting point is the Scripture. But there is a way to get His Words to come up out of you, and it’s a process we call journaling.

What is journaling? Well in the world the term journaling is very common. The whole idea of writing a journal is that every day you would sit down and write something.

We are not talking about a diary here; we’re talking about a journal. A diary is writing down the events that happen during the day, but a journal goes beyond that. A journal involves expressing the thoughts of your heart.

You sit down at the end of the day and you say,

“It was a bad day at work.”

You come home feeling exhausted and pressured. Sometimes there is nobody else to tell it to. If you have a spouse sitting at home who is patient and kind enough, you could tell them what a horrible day you had. But if there isn’t someone, you could pull out a book and express your thoughts.

You could write,

“Had a fight with the boss again today. Man he’s an impossible person. I wish he would get fired.”

That’s a journal. It is an expression of your heart, not just a diary. As you begin to write in that journal, you start to not only express your experiences, but you start to deliberate and think on paper.

You say, “Now, what could I do to improve this situation?

1. Ignore Him

2. Try and be nice to him

3. Try something different

Make a whole list. You would be amazed at what ideas can come up out of your spirit. You can do this in business in sales. Anybody can do it, not only Christians.

Tapping Deep Down Inside

What you do when you journal is you start tapping into the inner man. What is the inner man? It is something deeper than what animals have, because I haven’t seen animals journaling yet. So it comes from your spirit.

Every one of us has a human spirit, and your spirit speaks up from inside at all times. A lot of what it speaks up comes directly from the templates. And sometimes you can actually start digging into the templates deliberately.

Now normally templates come out instantly and automatically when you face a specific circumstance. But you can start digging into your memories of the past. You can deliberately sit down and think of your previous experiences.

You say, “Now let me think back on the last job that I had. What was my boss like there?”

You start to dig in and find wisdom that comes from within, because it is a function of the human spirit. You feel that inner gut feeling or a hunch as some people call it.

We all have this. It comes from deep within your spirit. It is that inner wisdom that allows you to sit and plan and say,

“If this happens what am I going to do? I’ll do that, or I’ll do that, or I’ll do the next thing.”

Hearing Via Your Spirit

It’s natural wisdom and it comes from your spirit.

Well where is the Lord living? He’s living inside your spirit. When you were born again, the Holy Spirit came to take up His abode, and the Holy Spirit and your spirit have become joined together as one.

So if you want to hear the voice of the Lord, yes you can hear it through the written Word. But how did that written Word come about? Other people heard from their own spirits as the Holy Spirit moved upon them. They spoke those words and wrote them down.

You can do exactly the same thing. Well you won’t produce Scripture like that. However, you can write down words that relate to your own specific situation right now, because the Lord knows it.

All you need to learn to do is tap into what is in your own spirit where the Holy Spirit dwells, and you can start to get wisdom from within.

It is not your problem about how your spirit hears from the Lord, or about how your spirit gets knowledge and information from God. All you need to do is to tap into what your spirit knows, because your spirit knows things that your mind doesn’t know.

And so through journaling you sit down, and you begin to look inwards and tap into that. You begin to write down every impression that comes into your mind. It will begin to come out either as pictures or as any of the five senses. Pictures is the most normal way that it will come out though.

Everything that has been put in there begins to come out. But the wisdom of God within you starts to put it all together.

Hearing Jesus Speak to You

That is ordinary journaling which even an unbeliever can do. But for a Christian, that presence of God adds an extra dimension where the Lord can begin to speak directly to you. To do that you use your imagination once more. You don’t have to, but it’s the best way to do it.

Imagine Jesus was sitting next to you and He was speaking to you? What would he say?

Write it down. Close your eyes and imagine that Jesus is there and He’s speaking to you. What is the expression on His face? Is He angry, is He smiling, or is He scowling? Is He correcting, is He encouraging, or is He motivating? Is He giving you direction on what to do?

What is it that you need? Write down the first thing that comes into your mind. Then keep writing so that your mind doesn’t have time to think.

What happens is you begin to tap down directly into your spirit. Your mind is so preoccupied with writing that it doesn’t have time to analyze what is coming up out of your spirit. This is especially important if you are an analytical.

You just write it down and it comes out. You will be amazed. It comes so fast you can’t write fast enough. And when you’ve finished you look at it and you think,

“Wow, I would never have thought of that.”

You see that is journaling. Anybody can do it. An unbeliever can even do it and tap into his own spirit.

But as a believer you can go beyond that. You not only tap into your own spirit, but you begin to tap into the Spirit of God. And the Lord can literally speak directly to you through a journal.

Start Writing it Down

Now the best way to start it is to start speaking to Him through your journal. In other words don’t say,

“Lord what should I do in this situation? Thank you Lord.”

Write it down in your journal. Say,

“Lord Jesus I really need your help and direction here right now. I’m not sure where to go. I’m feeling down and discouraged. I’m confused. Please, I need you to give me some wisdom.”

Then just stop and write the first thing that comes into your mind - the first words, the first impression or the first picture. Whatever it is, begin to commit to paper what comes out. You’re actually beginning to dialogue with the Lord.

So you write what you’re saying to Him, and you hear what He has to say. And you write what you’re saying to Him, and you hear what He has to say. You might say,

“But I could be making this up.”

Yes you could. In fact a lot of the time you are making it up. A lot of the time you are hearing what you want to hear. But you know what? It still makes you feel better.

Imagine what Jesus would say to you. Imagine what you would like Him to say to you and write it down. It’s a good starting point. You know that Jesus never ever condemns you. So you know that it is not Jesus speaking to you if you hear,

“You miserable, rotten useless good-for-nothing Christian.”

You’ll sense it because there will be other voices that come through your mind.

You see Satan comes through your mind but he can’t come through your spirit. That is why you have to get your mind out of the way and start listening to your spirit. You have to write it down as it comes out of your spirit. It’s really a simple process.

An Example of Journaling

As I was preparing this teaching, the one morning I got out of bed and I didn’t feel like doing anything. I saw Jesus there and I felt better.

I felt motivated that I was doing it for Him, because He loves me and I love Him. So I sat down at the computer and went into the journal program in my Bible Software. I said,

“Lord, you need to tell me what I must teach. Lord how do I teach people how to come into your presence?”

Then He gave me 11 points on the subject at hand. He gave me the main points for this teaching. It came straight out. They weren’t even in the right order and I had to rearrange them afterwards. But they came straight out, one at a time, into my mind.

He gave me the answer to the question that I had. And because of that I can speak and write with confidence. I know that what I am going to say is what He wants me to share, because I have learned to hear His voice. I used the process of journaling to do that.

You should journal every day.

You say, “But I don’t need direction for ministry every day.”

Who says you only need to journal when you need direction for ministry? When you’re feeling down you need to journal. You need to journal when you’re feeling high or if you’re feeling nothing. It will change your feelings.

Why are feelings so important? It is because everything we do in life is controlled by our feelings. What does having His presence there create? The Scripture says,

In your presence there is fullness of joy.

His presence brings joy that fully satisfies. So get into his presence.

How do you do it? Imagine that He is here. Read His word. Begin to journal and write down the impressions from within. Sit down and try and tap into all the Scripture that you know, and see how much you can remember.

Speaking to Jesus Verbally

Now you can go further than that. Suppose you are walking along down the beach having a great time all by yourself. You don’t have an iPod with you, nor do you have a notebook. And even if you did, how on earth could you write while you are walking?

But you just feel His presence near and you want to have a conversation with Him. So you shout,

“Lord, hear my voice. Oh Father God have mercy.”

People will come and lock you up. Just have a conversation with Him. Say to Him,

“Oh Lord, it’s just so beautiful out here today. Thank you for making all of this for me. It’s so lovely.”

And then don’t I need a book to write down his response? No, you can hear His response. Learn to hear His voice from within your own spirit. And now instead of writing it down as a journal you just speak it out.

You say, “Lord, I just thank you for this wonderful day.”

And He speaks and He says,

“I love you my child. It’s so wonderful to have you here in my presence.”

“Lord, you know that person I’m having problems with?”

“Yes I know all about it.”

“Lord this guy is impossible. I just don’t know what to do with him anymore.”

“Have you tried love? Have you tried to treat him the way I would treat him? Because you know I love him just the way he is.”

(Gulp) “Okay Lord, I get it. Now Lord, we don’t have enough finance and I’m not sure how to make money.”

“Why don’t you try selling that book?”

“Well Lord we did try it, but it didn’t really work.”

“Just go ahead, step out in faith and I will bless everything that you touch. Did I not say in my Word that I will bless everything that you touch; that I will bless the work of your hands?

“Did I not promise you that everything that you do would prosper? Did I not promise it to you if you would step out in faith?”

I’m prophesying here. Mix the whole lot together and out comes the Word. And out comes His Word and everything that you need. By the time you’ve finished walking on the beach you say,

“I know exactly what I am going to do.”

Talk to Him Alone

It’s great when you have the beach right close by. If you don’t have the beach, go and find some other place. In today’s world it is not easy to find a place to be alone, where if you were walking along talking to yourself, people would not be affected. If you’re riding in the car learn to do that.

I would always talk to the Lord while I was in the car. Then I would pull up to a traffic light and I would be talking to the Lord, and I would see the person next to me looking at me strangely. He was probably thinking,

“This guy is talking to himself.”

Then I would pretend I was singing or something.

You need to be alone to do this. You need to shut out everything that is on the outside, so find a quiet place. I love the beach, because on the beach you can shout and nobody will hear you. So who is going to even hear you speaking?

You have all the noises of the waves crashing. It kind of creates a relaxed, beautiful feeling, and distracts you away from all the things that are going on round about you. You can concentrate totally on just sharing and speaking with Him.

It is a wonderful experience.

Chapter 18 - Hearing Him Through Tongues

How do I develop a greater sensitivity to hearing the voice of my spirit?

You see I can put myself in that place where I’m kind of talking to Him, and it feels awkward at first. The first time I speak to the chair I feel strange. But after a while I realize Jesus is in that chair. I am speaking to Him and it doesn’t feel strange anymore.

But how can I come to that place, where right in the middle of life, in the midst of a whole lot of people, I can hear His voice? How can I learn to recognize His voice?

Imagine you were sitting in a group, perhaps in a public place. Supposing you had gone out somewhere and I was going to meet you there later.

You are sitting there having a good time and you hear a familiar sound – you hear me clearing my throat. You know that this is something I do all the time. When you hear that you think,

“Okay he’s here. We know that sound. We know that voice.”

What if the phone rings? You pick it up and somebody says,

“Hi, I just thought I’d let you know what’s happening.”

You think, “Umm, okay. What’s happening about what? Who are you?”

You see if you have never heard me on the phone before, that might be your experience. But if we’ve spoken on the phone plenty of times and you have come to know my voice really well, the moment I speak I don’t have to introduce myself.

Imagine me phoning my son-in-law Craig and I say,

“Craig, this is Dad here.”

He thinks, “Of course it’s you. It’s obvious because I know your voice. Nobody else has those strange sounds or those loud harmonics.”

Recognize the Voice of Your Spirit

Jesus has His own voice. He has His own sound, and you need to learn to recognize that voice. How do you come to the place where you hear that voice? Bear in mind that most of the time He is going to speak to you via your spirit, unless He appears to you tangibly in a physical form.

But actually even if He does that, the physical form that you see doesn’t really exist. What you are actually seeing is a mental image that appears to you as an open vision.

So if I literally saw the Lord sitting on a chair as real as I see anybody else, I would be having an open vision. There would be a picture imprinted upon the nervous system of my mind that actually looks like there is somebody really sitting there. But He’s not really there.

You might be afraid to try and see if He is really there or if He is a ghost. It doesn’t matter. It’s as real to you as though the person is real. So when you close your eyes you see the Lord in your mind. I can see Him as real as I can see someone sitting with me.

But He speaks through your spirit. And it is your spirit that communicates into your mind what God is trying to say to you. So the most important voice that you need to recognize is the voice of your own spirit.

You have heard that voice throughout your life. It’s actually where your templates spring out from. Every time you face a situation something pops up inside of you.

But you are used to hearing it as a feeling. You are used to feeling something positive or negative. You are used to that spiritual Urim or Thummim; the gut feeling.

You have to move beyond that now. You are actually hearing and sensing where that voice or those thoughts are coming from.

You need to know the difference between the thoughts that come from outside that you are being bombarded with. They can come from demon powers, but they can also come from other people.

You see a spirit has the ability to communicate with spirit. And people sometimes can radiate from their spirits a kind of an aura that you can sense.

You walk into a room where everybody has been feeling down and depressed, and you start to feel depressed. There is something that is being radiated there.

So learn to tell the difference between the voice of the enemy, between the voices in the world around about you, and the voice that comes from within your own spirit.

Develop Hearing by Speaking in Tongues

God has given us one beautiful way of developing this. This is apart from getting into the Word and hearing the Word pop out. That is the one way. The other one obviously is speaking in tongues. Paul says,

When I pray in tongues, I am praying with my spirit.

In other words I am using my spirit to pray. The longer you speak in tongues, the more you become accustomed to the sound of your own sprit.

This is because while you are speaking in tongues, although you are listening to your voice utter these weird words that you don’t understand, you are actually tapping something far deeper.

I’ve taught a lot of these principles in my teaching on How a Prophet Hears from God. But it’s not only the prophet. The prophet hears specific words from God that are given for others.

I’m talking about hearing a word that is for you and for your ears only.

Learn to listen to your spirit. And if you can’t do that, when last did you pray in tongues? The answer should be today.

You didn’t pray in tongues yet? Then you need to do it right now. It doesn’t take long does it? But maybe you need to do it for a longer period before it will do you any good.

Tongues is wonderful. If you come to prayer and you are not quite sure what to pray, just speak in tongues for half an hour. You’ll find that the flow begins to come, and you start to hear the inner voice.

You begin to find that the things around about you fall away, and you can hear the voice of your spirit. Then as you start to hear the voice of your spirit, you start hearing the voice of the Lord that comes through your spirit.

Receiving Unexpected Direction

You’ll hear the difference. You will get to know the sound of your own voice and of your own spirit. And every now and then, something will pop out that you know didn’t come from you.

You see it’s exactly the same with journaling. You may start out speaking your own words, but something comes out that you didn’t plan to say.

It is the same with you speaking it out, as if it were journaling out loud. You start saying perhaps the things that you were thinking, or the things that you desire. Or you might say the things that you would like to hear the Lord say. But suddenly something more pops out and you think,

“Where did that come from?”

You say, “You know I was planning on going in this direction, and Lord I just want you to confirm. Thank you that I’m going to go in this direction.”

The Lord says,

“It’s wonderful that you want to go in that direction. But do you know that I have something new for you?”

“Huh?”

“You should really be doing this, because I am going to bless it amazingly.”

“You don’t say. Okay I never thought about that, but if you say so.”

It follows a new direction. You need to start practicing both.

Interpreting Your Tongues

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could understand what you said in tongues though?

When you speak in tongues your spirit is praying isn’t it? And your spirit knows what God is saying. In a public meeting we will often give an utterance in tongues, and somebody else will interpret what was said in tongues.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could interpret your own tongues?

You say, “But that’s heresy, because the gift of tongues is only for ministering to other people. It’s for ministering to the Body of Christ.”

Well you are in the Body of Christ. Tongues can minister to you too.

You say, “How can I possibly interpret my own tongues?

Speak in tongues, and then speak the first thing that comes to you in your own language. It might sound something like:

“The Lord would have you know that he is very pleased with you.”

Did you just interpret your own tongues? Who knows? But you will find it sounds pretty good. You need to try it. Maybe you could start with prayer and say,

“Lord I just want to pray in tongues, and I want you to give me the right things to pray. Lord I want to pray for the Christians in communist China.”

So you pray in tongues and then interpret.

“Lord my heart reaches out to those who don’t have the freedom to serve you.”

Pray in tongues.

“Lord I know you love them and you understand.”

Pray in tongues some more.

“Oh Father just reach out and set them free.”

Did you interpret your tongues? Only the Lord knows? But there’s a pretty good chance that you did.

We have had meetings where we’ve been able to speak in tongues and in English, and at times there have been people who have interpreted. At times there are those who can literally understand someone else’s tongue and they can understand what the person is saying.

My late Dad use to have that. I would get into the spirit, and I’d come against the Devil and rebuke him. It would just rise up in me. He would sit there laughing and say,

“Do you want to know what you just told the Devil?”

I would say, “Lord, if you can give it to him, why don’t you give it to me? I wish I knew what I was saying in tongues.”

Well if you understood what you were saying in tongues, it wouldn’t be other tongues would it? But the gift of interpretation is there. The Scripture says:

If any man speaks in an unknown tongue, let him pray that he may interpret.

Besides, if you are having a good time of prayer in tongues and there are a whole lot of other people in the room, it is rude not to interpret. It is bad manners.

Often you will see foreigners coming together in a group and they sit and talk to each other in their own language. It’s rude because the rest of the group do not know what they are saying. Of course it isn’t rude when you go there and speak their own language in front of them, because they understand.

So if you are going to pray in tongues specifically in a prayer meeting, learn to pray in English what you just prayed in tongues. You can do that.

Learning to Intercede and Decree

But you know it goes beyond prayer then. When you come to prayer and to ask the Lord for wisdom, one of the most wonderful things is when a spirit of intercession comes upon you. Or sometimes a decree comes upon you, and you know that you are decreeing in the spirit.

There was a time in my life when God was first teaching me these things, and I would keep a tape recorder on hand. As I would get into prayer, a very strong burst of tongues would come upon me. I developed the habit of immediately going into English, interpreting that tongue and recording it.

Afterwards I would go and do a transcript of what I said in English. God told me some amazing things in those days. It was before I learned to really hear His voice in journaling, and to know His inner voice the way I do now.

You know it is actually more powerful. This is because when you are speaking in tongues, speaking interpretation or prophesying, it comes with a very strong flow that also allows your mind not to interfere with it.

The wonderful thing is while you are doing it you can feel whether it is of God or not. You say a few words, and you may not know whether you really interpreted it correctly, but your heart says,

“Yes, I did.”

Your heart says, “Amen, yes. Can you feel those goose pimples going all the way down? It’s the anointing. God is confirming. So go and do a transcript of it.”

Now it’s not going to be the same as the prophesies you give in church. Prophesies given in public meetings are usually exhortation and encouragement. They can be applied to a whole pile of people in the meeting.

But when God gives you a word personally, it isn’t for everybody else. It’s your personal word.

It is just like journaling, except it is coming in an even more powerful way. It’s coming directly by a gift of the Spirit, by tongues and interpretation.

Every believer can do that. You don’t have to be a prophet to do it.

Chapter 19 – Making Jesus Part of Everything

You have now developed listening to your spirit. You begin to understand at times when your spirit is being directly influenced by the Spirit of God. And you can develop a sensitivity to where you can hear His voice at all times.

Now when you face a difficult situation, immediately coming up out of your spirit is,

“Fear not, I’m with you. Don’t be afraid. I have this under control.”

You say, “But I was just given notice at work. I have 30 days and my job is over. What am I going to do? They fired me. Oh Lord, I’m going to storm into the boss’s office and argue with him and fight him.”

The Lord says, “Don’t worry. It’s of me. I have a better job for you.”

“Okay. Thank you boss for firing me.”

“I have a better job for you.”

You see you hear His voice all the time. You hear His voice of assurance. And at other times you hear His gentle voice of correction that says,

“Don’t go there. Don’t do that. It is bad news. Don’t listen to what he says. He’s lying.”

You can develop that kind of sensitivity because Jesus is with you all the time. But you must practice His presence. He will never impose Himself on you in any way or force Himself on you in any way. You must be aware of His presence.

Overcoming Your Bad Feelings

Now how do you put all of these things into practice? How does practicing His presence actually affect you? Imagine how you would feel if Jesus was literally here right now. Remember that the Scripture says,

In your presence is joy that fully satisfies.

If Jesus were to be here right now, how would you feel? This is one of the best ways to overcome bad feelings. So practicing His presence will firstly help you to do this.

When you are feeling down or you are feeling bad; when you are feeling condemned or when you feel you’ve failed; when you feel anything negative or you’re feeling fear, bring His presence.

Come into His presence and ask yourself,

“If Jesus were literally here right now, would I be afraid? What is there to be afraid of? He is the Master of the Universe. He can blow them away with one word of his mouth. What do I need to be afraid of them for?”

You walk in there with Jesus and you think,

“I’m not afraid of you. I have my big brother with me.”

It changes your whole demeanor. It changes the way you feel and the way you approach life.

You say, “You know I really wish He was with me all the time.”

He is, simply because he is Omnipresent and because He said so.

He said, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you. I’ll be with you wherever you go.”

So any time you’re feeling bad, practice His presence. Practice his presence and say,

“Would I really be groveling and throwing a tantrum; getting all frustrated, sniveling and crying myself to sleep? Would I be doing these things if Jesus were here right now?”

Well it’s no longer a matter of IF Jesus was here, because Jesus IS here.

Changing Your Behavior for Him

Now here’s the more difficult one. Imagine how you would behave if He was here. Firstly, could you take Him with you everywhere you go?

Well you can take Him to work. You can even take Him to the bathroom. It’s no problem. I have great revelation while sitting on the toilet at times, because it’s one time when your mind can just roam free.

Jesus is just sitting there and you can have a chat with Him. He doesn’t worry about those circumstances and is not embarrassed to be there.

But maybe there are certain places that you go to, where quite honestly you think,

“Um, Lord I have a few things to do in here. Perhaps you’d like to just take a ride around the block or go and visit somebody else. Maybe go and have a coffee somewhere. Um, see you later.”

Can Jesus sit down and enjoy the fun that you are having with you? If He can’t, then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing it.

You say, “You know I just keep falling into sin. I keep doing things I shouldn’t.”

Would you do that if Jesus were there? I doubt it. You would be amazed how you could control yourself if Jesus were there. If you’re practicing His presence all the time, wherever you go and whatever you do, simply having His presence there will change the way you behave.

You will be very careful about what you do and what you say. Perhaps you get mad and say,

“That useless (bad language.) Oh dear, sorry Lord. That just slipped out.”

Jesus stands there, and He smiles and says,

“It just slipped out, huh? Okay it’s fine.”

He’ll never condemn you, but you will condemn yourself. You should include Jesus in everything that you do.

Could you honestly say that Jesus would be happy with the way you are living? Would Jesus be happy when you continue to carry out that bad habit?

Could you persist with that bad habit, knowing that He is standing watching, and knowing that it hurts Him and disappoints Him?

His Presence Brings Conviction

Could you comfortably do it? I doubt it. And so your habit which has become something you’ve become comfortable with, begins to become uncomfortable.

Do you see how easy it is? Bring him into your situation. Just have Him there and see Him there. And hold a conversation with Him and talk to Him, even while you’re busy doing it. You can say,

“Lord I’m really having a problem. I really want to do that, but I know I shouldn’t.”

He’s not going to stand there and condemn you. He is going to say,

“Let me show you how to overcome it.”

Wisdom and Direction for Your Life

You see just His presence alone makes you feel you don’t want to do it. But when you can communicate with Him, His presence actually gives you the wisdom that you need to overcome the things in life. It helps you to do the right thing and to make the right decisions; to go left instead of right.

You know I had developed this so clearly at one time. At the job I had at that time there were six elevators - three on one side and three on the other.

You would press the button and wait to see which was the first one that would come. You’d eventually hear a noise and the light would come on. The doors would open, and you would know that that was the elevator that was available for you to use.

I had it so well developed that I would go and stand in front of the elevator, press the button, and know that this elevator was coming first.

How did I know it? I don’t know; I just knew. Nine times out of ten I was right. You develop a sensitivity in the Spirit to the Lord and to hearing from your own spirit. It will guide you in everything you do in life.

I would be riding to work the normal way, and suddenly I would feel to take a different route. Sure enough, there was a traffic jam up ahead.

How did I know that? You see I developed a relationship with Him through the Spirit. I became sensitive enough, so that right in the middle of conversation I would hear His voice.

Listening Through Prayer

It would happen in prayer too. I remember one particular occasion that stood out so strongly to me. We were visiting a church, and I knew the preacher so he asked me to close in prayer.

They had had a wonderful meeting, where they’d prayed for people, and people had fallen under the power. Everybody had done their thing, and they’d had a great time, so he figured he would be nice and ask me to close in prayer. So I started closing in prayer and said,

“And Lord, we just thank you for your presence here today.”

I was going to say,

“And Lord, if there is anybody that didn’t get their need met, I just ask you to meet it now.”

The Lord said, “Stop.”

I stopped in the middle of my prayer and the Lord said,

“There is someone here like that and I want you to pray for them.”

I said, “Lord I’m the visiting guy you know. I’m not the preacher. It’s not my place.”

The Lord said,

“Do it.”

I stopped in the middle of my prayer and I said,

“There is someone here today. God hasn’t met your need; you still have a need. I want you to reach out to the Lord right now and I’m going to pray for you.”

Then my prayer took a whole new direction. I just spoke prophetically, prayed, said what needed to be done, and then ended the meeting.

Somebody came up to me afterwards and said,

“It was me. You were praying for me.”

How can I do that? I have learned to hear His voice that tells me when to go, when to stop and when to turn; when to change, what to do or what not to do.

Jesus has become so real. And every time I’m feeling down, and I feel I have failed I say,

“Oh Lord, I really messed up on that preach last night. I should just never have stood up there. Lord I just feel such a fool for what I said. I opened my big mouth and put my foot in it again.”

I get into His presence and He says,

“My child I understand. But you know what? I don’t condemn you. Let me see if I can help you now and teach you to learn from this experience. Know that I haven’t rejected you.”

What is the biggest mistake that we always make? It is that when we can’t feel His presence we think we have sinned.

You think, “What did I do wrong? He was there all along and now He’s gone.”

I want you to know that the Lord Jesus will never condemn you. Even if you have committed the most heinous of sins, He will never reject you.

So when you are not feeling His presence it doesn’t mean that He has turned his back on you. He will always be there.

If you put into practice these principles I have shared with you, He will always be there. There are no exceptions. There are no cases of sometimes He will be there, and sometimes He won’t.

What Would Jesus Do?

Now if Jesus is always here, you will always have direction, and you will always know what to do.

There was a kind of a fad that went around some time back that went, “What would Jesus do?” (WWJD). People had all these little things printed, and they wore them on their arms and hung them around their necks. What would Jesus do? So when I faced a situation I would think,

“What would Jesus do?”

Well why don’t you ask Him?

You say, “You know if Jesus was here today He wouldn’t eat pork.”

People are so dumb. Why don’t you just ask Him? Or better still, why don’t you just watch Him? What did Jesus say? He said,

“I do what I see the Father do.”

So you sit down to a meal and they have pork. Okay let’s see what He is going to do. Jesus sits there and takes a nice healthy bite, puts it in His mouth and chews it.

He says, “It’s good stuff.”

Okay we can have the pork.

What would Jesus do? Find out. If you get to know Him well enough, and if you can see Him, then just do what you see Him doing. He is living inside of you. Let the Holy Spirit reveal Him to you. In the end, all you need to do is just let Him live His life in you.

It’s that simple really. It’s all that is involved in practicing His presence. You get to the place where He is with you at all times and in all circumstances.

And so in conclusion, you need to let Jesus become a part of your whole life.

You’ve learned how to bring Him into your past.

You’ve looked at how you can see Him with you in the present.

Now you have to learn to see Him in your future.

I started this book by sharing about the Principles, the Presence and the Power. I spoke about how you need to see Jesus in your past, your present and your future.

You have gone back to as far back as you can remember, and you’ve started to see Him there. You have worked your way up and He’s here right now.

And from now, as you go forward He continues to walk with you. And in the same way that you went back in your mind into the past, you can now take your mind into the future.

That’s a whole new exciting idea, because it has to do with success. It has to do with everything that you plan to do, being planned and organized by Him.

Then you can have the assurance that whatever you touch will succeed. Because you will have been through Spiritual Transformation Made Easy.

You Have Reached The End of This Book

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Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Foreword

Section 01 - The Principles, The Presence, The Power

Chapter 01 – You Have Power to Be Successful

Chapter 02 - Charging Up and Releasing the Power

Chapter 03 - How to Come into His Presence

Section 02 – Bringing His Presence into Your Past

Chapter 04 – Changing Your Past Hurts

Chapter 05 – Putting the Past to Sleep

Chapter 06 – Taking Jesus into the Hurts

Section 03 – Spiritual Re-parenting

Chapter 07 – The Mother’s Important Role

Chapter 08 - The Process of Re-parenting

Chapter 09 – Moving from Mother to Father

Chapter 10 – Healing Childhood Hurts

Section 04 – Breaking Bad Habits

Chapter 11 – How Habits Begin

Chapter 12 – How to Change Habits

Chapter 13 – Changing Your DNA

Chapter 14 – Receiving from Spiritual Parents

Section 05 - Practicing His Presence

Chapter 15 – Getting to Know Jesus

Chapter 16 – Hearing Him Through the Word

Chapter 17 – Hearing Him Through Journaling

Chapter 18 - Hearing Him Through Tongues

Chapter 19 – Making Jesus Part of Everything

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