John Milton was an English poet who said, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.” What a great quote!
My husband and I are working on the front lines in Harrisburg, PA as community life coaches. We provide practical tools for women who are trying to rebuild their lives in the midst of great devastation. Part of that recovery process involves helping them see the lies that they have received and believed.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to expose the thoughts that many of us believed were truths; thoughts we built our lives upon that are really lies that the enemy has tricked us to believe; thoughts that cause us to be unhappy, unloving, and unsuccessful.
We have all experienced varying degrees of difficult issues and with each issue and situation, we established a personal belief or thought system. If that thought system or belief is not based on the Word of God, verbatim or in principal, we run the risk of inadvertently accepting a lie about what happened in the situation, or about ourselves or someone else.
In 2004, we went through a lay-counseling certificate program from the Center for Biblical Counseling, which is a division of the American Association for Christian Counselors. One of the professors, Dr. Chris Thurman, is a psychologist who wrote a book titled “The Lies We Believe”. Dr. Thurman states that, “Our brain is like a video recorder. It can both record and play back thousands of tapes at a moment’s notice. These tapes hold all the beliefs, attitudes, and expectations that we have 'recorded' during our lives."
One of the tapes of my life began with the separation of my parents. When my parents separated, I didn’t feel as though it was my fault, but I did feel I was supposed to help somehow. I thought if I could find out WHY it happened, then maybe I could help them get back together. So, I asked my Dad why they separated. He felt as though my Mom should have supported him more by getting a job instead of staying at home and raising the children.
It was one of those things they never talked about before they got married, so they both had very different expectations, and the enemy took advantage of them both.
I watched as my mother withdrew from life, my oldest brother responded in anger, and my youngest brother withdrew into a world of his own. God, in His faithfulness to my family, had given the opportunity of salvation just before my parent’s separation, which my mother and I accepted. I came away from the separation, and eventually the divorce of my parents, with a fear that I would do something that would somehow cause my husband and me to eventually divorce. The response to that painful situation created a fear-filled tape that played over and over again.
The reasoning and conclusions we adopt from painful situations must be subjected to God’s viewpoint. We must bring every perception (tape) into submission of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). We must recognize that this spiritual war began in our minds. We must identify every thought that is hostile to God and subject it to the truth, which only God can give.
The key to freedom, health and wholeness is to unearth the lies we have believed about the situations we have experienced. It may be hard work, but we can live in the truth of what happened in any situation that has occurred in life. The LIE TAPES will try to play, but we must choose not to listen to them, by recording over the lies with the truth that has been exposed by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God.
This is one of the powerful tools that we give to our life coaching clients and we offer it to you today.
Recapture Your Life,
Carol L. Green
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Carol Green is an international columnist/writer with the Global Journalism Award winning team of Dr. Clyde Rivers and iChange Nations Social Media News™. As Community Ambassadors, Global Leadership Ambassadors, and Urban Leadership awardees by iChange Nations™, she and her husband, Chris Green, were also appointed Goodwill Ambassadors of World Peace by Golden Rule International. They founded Fruitful Life Network, Inc. which provides a hope-based Life Coaching model that rebuilds, restores and renews hearts and homes in the urban community. Global Peace Ambassador, Dr. Clyde Rivers, calls them leading experts in connecting people to their path of discovery.
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