One of the benefits of in-depth bible study, especially categorical studies, is that the mechanics begin to emerge as the pieces come together. It is one thing to tell a believer to change the way they live to be like Christ and quite another to give him/her the means of making the changes. The church today is not producing credible Christians for many reasons, one of which is that the clergy does not teach with any depth, providing the pews with enough insight into the process to succeed. These articles are intended to supplement the food that hopefully you are getting from your pastor-teacher. The following article is one of a series of discussions that will provide you with some of the “how to’s” of the Christian life. This article deals with the Old Man, how to recognize false beliefs in our souls and then what to do with them when we discover that we have believed a lie.

Eph 4:22-24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old man, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new man, created to be like God in  righteousness and holiness from the truth.

The next few articles will provide insights and exercises intended to help Christians discover their false Old Man beliefs that are hidden in their subconscious minds. These false beliefs are ideas we believed at some point in our lives as a reaction to a life event(s). After consistent use of these ideas over time, they became our natural, habitual viewpoint and way of reacting to similar life situations. A brief description of how/why these beliefs came to be programmed into our souls will help us understand the normal design of the soul and help us see other false ideas we hold.

Old Man Beliefs – An Example

The Old Man (OM) belief system contains false ideas that we adopted based on our human experience growing up through the stages of human development. The OM system contains positive ideas intended to give us pleasure and negative ideas intended to protect us from pain. The following example is an altered but true story of how and why a person known to me adopted a false belief(s) in reaction to a painful event(s) that occurred when he was 12 years old.

Joe’s Story

Joe was 12 when his parents divorced. This was the time of his life he describes as when “the world as I knew it came apart”. Joe was old enough to know what was happening when they began to fight all the time and when the arguments turned into bitter fights and he was not really surprised when the announcement came. He was a little surprised because he remembered that the fights stopped real sudden like and he had hoped for a moment that they had worked out their differences. When they sat him down though, he knew what was coming before they said a word. He saw his dad’s bags by the door and he knew. He had been dying a little inside every time he heard the hateful tone they used with each other but this was the moment when his heart just stopped and he stopped feeling anything for a long time. For half a second he considered begging them to reconsider but the look on his father’s face told him to “never mind”. As his mother sat beside him hugging him, telling him what was happening, he could feel himself growing cold inside, totally numb to anything. When she was through, he just nodded his head and went to his room, shutting the door quietly behind him. Joe’s heart was toast.

It was 18 years later that Joe recounted this event to me in a counseling session. He was there in a last ditch effort to save his own 4 year old marriage. He and his wife Sue had come together for the first session and now he had come by himself when they were both scheduled, not a good sign. Her complaint was that she no longer believed that Joe cared for her in any way, to any degree. She explained that her many tears shed in the first session and the many more before they came to me meant nothing to him. He does nothing when I am hurting she said, he says nothing, does nothing and he finally admitted the other day that he feels nothing when I try to tell him that I can’t live like this any more. He listens without offering a word, he just looks at me like he doesn’t care and then just walks off and turns on the TV.

He wasn’t like this when we dated, he was kind, caring and we used to pray together all the time. We met at church you know and I thought he was the most spiritual man I had ever met because he knew more about God than anyone I had ever met. He never was very expressive or emotional about his love or anything else for that matter she added, but I had no idea that he would be so distant and unfeeling. Joe sat, looking down at his hands folded in is lap, passive, unmoving, not a blink or show of any emotion on his face. Sue went on until her emotional complaint finally came to an end and she sat silent, looking at Joe, waiting for some sign that he had heard her, that he was alive. I had also sat silent looking at Joe, waiting on him to say something. He finally looked up at her, then at me and said, I tried to tell you that it wasn’t you, I don’t feel anything about anything, ever. I don’t know why, but I just don’t feel anything for anyone. He then lapsed back into his silent vigil, making sure his hands stayed attached. The first session ended soon after that and now Joe was here by himself because she had told him that she was at the end of trying and maybe they would both be better off not married to each other.

Joe sat across from me, trying to remain unemotional as he told me what she had said, but for the first time I could tell he was anything but numb. For just a split second when he was talking I could see the pain in is eyes and almost like a desperation showed through. I decided to use the time by trying to get Joe to open up a little. I asked him, Joe, do you know why you don’t feel anything for your wife’s pain or as you said, anything for anyone? No, he shook his head slowly, trying to keep his composure but I could tell he was close to breaking down. I wasn’t this way with her at first, he said, I was normal for awhile when we dated and then when we were first married. Normal for awhile I asked with sudden peaked interest? Hmm, I said to myself that is an odd way of expressing the situation. Yes, he said, normal for a time, not like I used to be. Ok Joe, you have my curiosity aroused, what do you mean, like you used to be? Well, Joe began, for as long as I can remember, I have felt numb inside, almost like God didn’t include feelings when He made me. It’s not that I don’t feel anything at all, but I don’t seem to have a wide range of feelings or very strong feelings about anything. I remember when we won the city championship in football and I was playing running back. I scored the winning touchdown and everyone else went nuts but not me. I was glad we won, but I just didn’t feel all that much about it or like I said, for anything else in my life either. How long have you been this way Joe? I asked. For as long as I can remember he said, way back into my childhood.

It was then that I began to explore Joe’s past and discovered the event that had resulted in Joe numbing out his emotions. We could go on with the story but hopefully you are beginning to see why I have told you about Joe. At 12, when his “world as he knew it came apart”, he decided that the pain of his parents failed relationship was too great for him to bear and he had shut down his emotions, repressed them, so that he wouldn’t feel the agony of losing his world. He had shut them down even further after the divorce when he went to his dad’s house and had to hear him running his mother down and then several other life events that were difficult had motivated him to turn the dial on his emotions even further. Let me explain what happened to Joe, why it had hurt his marriage and how his story applies to our exercise using daydreams.

Joe had discovered what most of us counselors call defense mechanisms, a term coined by Freud. The term describes a range of instinctive behaviors that all humans use to avoid the pain that results when our life comes apart. The mechanism Joe used is called emotional repression or suppression which is simply where we tell our self to stop feeling our emotions because something in our life has hurt us deeply. When we are hurt like Joe was by a failed relationship and the loss of a primary relationship like his parents, all we know how to do as unbelievers is to make it stop hurting any way we can. Joe’s instinct to avoid the pain worked for him and he was able to stop thinking about the divorce so much and stop hurting so bad in his soul. When Joe saw how well numbing his emotions worked, he decided to believe in this mechanism as a good way to deal with all the pain in his life and he adopted it as his strategy for handling pain. He told himself that he couldn’t control people disappointing him and causing him pain but he could control whether he felt any pain from their failures. He discovered this mechanism by instinct but then he attached his faith to it and used it as a strategy to deal with the pain of life in the devil’s world. Joe had built a primary old man belief and had used it until it became so habitual that he no longer even remembered that he was doing it. Going numb had become so habitual and so automatic that every time pressure came to his life, he did his turtle act. Joe continued to numb his pain but discovered that this mechanism had a bad side effect. When he numbed his emotions to avoid pain, he found that it numbed all of his other feelings as well. He didn’t feel pain but he didn’t feel joy either, nor love, nor sympathy nor as Joe said, he didn’t feel anything for anyone, even for himself. This side effect of all his feelings going numb had hurt his marriage. Sue still felt her feelings but Joe couldn’t feel his and he couldn’t relate intimately with his wife, he couldn’t feel sympathy when she was hurting and he couldn’t feel passion when she felt loving toward him. Joe had made himself emotionally unavailable to the world and even to his wife.

Sue was a normal young woman who loved her husband and wanted his love and approval in return. Soon after the honeymoon year of marriage, Joe settled into his life and his numbed emotions began to reassert themselves. The first time they had a fight, he ducked into his shell a little, then a little more and by the time they came to me, Joe had placed Sue in the same category as every other person who had hurt him and he simply felt nothing to guard against being hurt by her even more. Sue for her part, not knowing what was wrong, pursued Joe every time he backed off from her. The more he backed off the more she felt like he didn’t love and approve of her and so she became critical and complaining toward him. She pushed him to give her love and he pushed back to protect himself from being abandoned and feeling criticized. At this point Joe’s use of self-protective mechanisms was so habitual he didn’t even know he was doing it. The two together created a vicious cycle where she pursued him with criticism but wanting love, feeling hurt at his withdrawal and he withdrew even more to avoid being hurt and out of fear of her leaving him.

Both of them as Christians were still dominated by their old way of thinking, feeling and acting. They related to one another using the strategies they had built in their life as unbelievers. They desperately needed to take off their old man beliefs, replace them with the mind of Christ and yield their hearts to the Spirit moment by moment. They needed to surrender to transformation, God’s process by which He causes believers to grow spiritually from babies at the new birth to mature adults able to shoulder adult Christian responsibilities. They needed to take off their old man beliefs, strategies and actions and put on the new man beliefs, strategies and actions so that they could believe, think, feel, speak and act like Jesus Christ.

It was during the sessions we spent discussing his life that this exercise was introduced to me. Joe said to me that during the first year after his parents divorced that he used to daydream about them getting back together all the time. He said, I daydreamed about them getting back together so much it began to interfere with my schoolwork. My teachers began to get on to me for zoning out. I asked him, what did you get out of daydreaming about them getting back together?  Well he said, I would see them together in my mind and it would feel like it was real and I would feel like everything was all right for a moment. It was the only time I could feel anything, especially anything good. When I heard this, I realized the power of our daydreams as a window into the subconscious mind and as a tool to discover the hidden agendas in our old man belief system.

In the next article we will look at our daydreams and learn how to use them as a tool to discover what old man ideas you have programmed into your soul. Once you identify a false belief, then you can choose to reject it, to delete it from the program and replace it with the appropriate concept taught in the bible. This is how God designed the process of transformation to work.

Celebrating Human Strength
The world tells us that we should admire other human beings that use their human ability to be strong. Darwinism, the dominant idea of our day, tells us that “the strong survive” and emphasizes “the survival of the fittest”. Many of our popular movies lionize those who are callous, have no compassion and have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. It is no wonder that the world celebrates human strength since it is all the world has on which to depend. The world admires those who use their own abilities to meet their own needs or even better, those who successfully pretend that they have no needs. The bible tells us another story.

Weakness Made Strong
God did not make us to be strong. He made us to be weak and needy. The human soul is incredibly fragile and needy. In fact, in the real world, which is the spiritual world, we are totally helpless. Helpless to save ourselves, make ourselves spiritual or meet the God given needs He placed within us. We are needy by design. God made our souls in such a way that we need Him in order for us to be complete and fulfilled. His great mercy designed us to need Him so that perhaps we might seek Him, having exhausted every other means of achieving happiness. The bible teaches that if we will enter into an intimate relationship with God, then our hearts will find rest and fulfillment.

Dependence on People
We are confused though. Instead of needing God, we think we need people. Born without God and having only people with whom we can relate, we conclude that our needs are to be fulfilled through people. All of our relational strategies are built around the goal of inducing people to like, admire and accept us. We believe that if we can maximize our human assets to cause other people to praise us then our souls will be complete. This is why we are so fearful of rejection, conflict and loss of human support. If you have raised children, you have seen the power of peer pressure, which is the raw evidence of our false dependence on people.

Dependence on Human Ability
We are also confused about the role of human ability. Most churches teach us to use our human abilities to produce Christian works as the way to please God. We learn what God considers right and wrong and we try to comply with His standards through human will. We focus on producing the appearance of spirituality so that other humans will give us respect and approval. We believe that this approval will fulfill our souls and even believe that human approval is the same as God’s approval. Having developed our beliefs using people as the objects of our needs, we hunger for the love of man more than the love of God. We must come to understand that in our humanity we are bankrupt, helpless and totally dependent on God for our happiness.

God made the human soul with needs. Those needs are evident in all of us from the moment of birth. As we reach adult status we learn to hide our neediness with the appearance of strength. We learn how to play the game so that others will think we are strong but our neediness remains. It is this neediness that drives every pursuit of our lives.

Needs Experienced as Desires
We experience our needs as desire and deep longings. Our desires and longings are the expression of our divinely designed needs. In the bible, Jesus calls these needs/desires hunger and thirst. Each of us experiences deep cravings and longings for affection, acceptance, admiration and a sense of accomplishment. Every desire and longing we have shows us that we have needs that ultimately only God can complete. The complete list of human needs is beyond the scope of this article but the following represent our core divinely designed needs.

Man’s Needs – God’s Provision

1. Unconditional love – from God, man & self. We all want to be loved as we are in spite of our flaws and failures. God provides His love in total to all who trust in Christ as their Savior.
Rom 5:5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
· At the moment of salvation God directed all of His love to the baby believer who must then grow into a mature state where he can experience God’s love.

2. To fully know and be know by another – All of us long to be able to fully share our hearts with someone who will understand us.
1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known.
· In heaven, we will be able to freely & fully interact with God and others.

3. Acceptance, inclusion and belonging – family – We are herd bound. God made us to crave a position where we belong in a group.
Ephesians 2:19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household
· At the moment of salvation we are accepted as natural citizens of heaven and are adopted into God’s family where we become children of God.

4. Recognition, praise and appreciation for our contributions – All of us desire to be recognized and praised for our accomplishments
Matthew 25:21,23 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave; you were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, enter into the joy of your master.’ 23 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave; you were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’
· At the Judgment Seat of Christ, our legitimate Christian service will be evaluated and rewarded by Christ and our need for recognition will be fully met forever.

5. Ability to edify and impact others – make a difference – God designed us to contribute to the betterment of others.
1Cor 12:7 Now to each one (Christians) is given the manifestation of the Spirit (spiritual gifts) used for the common good
· We have been given the power of God through the Holy Spirit and also given a divinely enabled ability to supernaturally serve the members of the church, having an impact and spiritual influence on their lives.

God designed us to have needs that we could not meet on our own. He made us to need Him if our souls would experience the fulfillment of our needs. When we come to God through Christ, at that moment, God provides the supply to meet every need of the human soul. As we grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are able to abandon our attempts to meet our needs through people (take off old man) and accept God’s gracious provision in Christ (put on new man).

Driven by Desire
These core needs drive and motivate all human behavior. All human behavior can be traced to the desire to fulfill these core needs. Both God and the devil use man’s needs/desires to motivate us.

Peter tells us that the corruption in the world is caused by misdirected desire.

2 Peter 1:4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Paul tells us that the corruption of our old belief system is motivated by desire.

Eph 4:22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;

The Holy Spirit also uses our desire system to motivate us to spiritual life.

Gal 5:17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.

Phil 2:13 for it is God who works in you to will (desire) and to act according to his good purpose.

Jesus discussed God’s answer to our thirst for relationship in John 7:37-39

John 7:37 On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from his innermost being 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Thirsty Souls
Jesus called out to those who were “thirsty”, meaning those who were aware of their need for God. Jesus talked about our human needs experienced as hunger and thirst in in Mt 5:6 – hunger & thirst for righteousness – desire for rightness with God; Jn 6:35 –Jesus, who is the Bread of Life – come to Him and you will never hunger; believe on Him never thirst; Jn 4:6-26 – woman at the well – living water & you will never thirst again. Jesus called out to identify those who were aware of their need for God. He knew that we experience our God given needs as deep desires and longings.

Empty Souls
He said that we feel these desires in our innermost being. The Greek word koilos means an empty place, a cavity, a hole, it is most often translated as the womb and is used for the stomach. When used for our needs/desires being misdirected toward sinful objects it is translated as our appetites (Rom 16:18; Phil 3:19). What we learn from Jesus is that God designed an empty place in the heart of mankind and from that empty place we feel deep desires. It is also in this empty place in the heart of man that we experience fulfillment when we attach our desires to God. Without God, man chooses to fill the emptiness with false objects of happiness. When we bond and attach or hearts to these false objects of pleasure, it causes us to become addicted to them.

Filled by the Spirit
Finally, Jesus explains that the divine answer to the needs/desires generated by the emptiness in our hearts is found in the ministry of God-Holy Spirit. The living water that fills and overflows from within the heart of the spiritual believer is the ministry of the Spirit. The divine means of meeting our human needs is a relationship with God Himself. The Holy Spirit who indwells our bodies making us the temple of God guides us into the understanding and application of all truth. It is God’s truth that sets us free from our false beliefs that lead us into misery and transforms us and gives us the same joy experienced by Jesus Himself.

Questions to Ask Yourself
Let me prompt your thinking about your needs with some questions:

1. What would you say is your greatest need/desire?

2. What is your most noticeable need/desire in relationships?

3. How successful have you been in your close relationships?

4. Describe your relationship with your parents

5. Did you feel loved and secure as a child?

6. Describe your parent’s relationship. Was it close? Was there a lot of fighting? Did they divorce?

7. Do you find yourself seeking something in your relationship with your spouse that you can’t seem to ever get?

8. Would you be willing to redirect your need/desire toward God?

9. Would you be willing to admit that you are seeking something from a member of the opposite sex that you can only get from God?

10. Are you hungry for praise from people?

11. Are you terrified of rejection?

12. Do you avoid conflict at all costs?

13. Have you been married and divorced a number of times?

14. Are all of your relationships filled with conflict?

15. Are you so disillusioned with relationships that you have given up?

16. Are you truly happy?

17. Are you overly concerned with appearances?

We all begin our lives seeking what we need from people. It never works and eventually after enough conflict and failure, we give up. We may stay married for the children’s sake but our hearts are filled with despair. We lose hope in ever finding happiness in our close relationships. If this describes you, then great!!!

Now, maybe you will stop trying to squeeze from people what you can only get from God. Now perhaps you are ready to seek God in a different way. Stay tuned. I will try to help you learn the new way to meet your needs.

The Analogy

Knowing that I am a Christian Pastor-Teacher and counselor, you no doubt have surmised that Joe’s story is an analogy that I created. It is an earthly story with a spiritual meaning. I wonder how many of the parallels you have put together. Let me give the interpretation of the story.

Interpreting the Story

The Meaning of Joe’s Story:  Joe is any and every born member of the human race. The disease is sin that we inherited genetically from Adam and Eve passed down through our own parents. The cure is the death burial and resurrection of Jesus that paid for all of our sins. We are given the cure when we believe that Jesus died to pay for our sins and was resurrected to defeat death for us. Once we take the cure, we are saved from the judicial penalty of sin and we are secure in Christ forever. The surprising ongoing symptoms are the sins and the destructive patterns we continue to think, feel and practice after we are saved. These patterns are surprising because we are saved, indwelt by the Spirit and have the power to reject sin as a way of life, yet we don’t. The search for answers corresponds to the difficulty we all have trying to understand our own souls and why we continue to struggle with negative feelings and actions. The doctor’s answers are analogous to the teachings of the bible that explain this mystery.

The rest of this article will expand the explanation so that we can understand our struggle and have solutions to resolve it. We will discuss that all mankind is born separated from God with a sin nature, that we all develop habitual thoughts and behaviors that are brought into our new life and finally we will examine the concept of transformation where we take off our old ways and put on the new ways in Christ.

A Choice – A Disease

Joe’s disease is called sin. Originally sin was a decision to disobey God. When sin was chosen, it infested the human body and soul and became like a disease. Sin resulted in all mankind being born spiritually dead, separated from God and we also inherited a sin nature. Joe, like the rest of us was born separated from God because of Adam’s sin. When Adam sinned, he caused the whole human race to become spiritually dead. Spiritual death means that we are unworthy to be accepted by God and that we are unable to function in the spiritual realm. Let’s examine the impact of spiritual death.

Human Needs Unmet by God – Frustrated

God created the human soul with inner needs. Adam experienced these needs even in perfection. Man was designed to need God and to a lesser degree, to need one another. All of us are born with divinely designed needs that only God can meet. In the garden, God was there to meet their needs but after the fall we are born permanently separated from Him. Our spiritual death and separation from God causes us to be unable to have a relationship with Him to meet our needs. In addition, spiritual death renders us unable to understand anything spiritual that He might say to us. The result is that our deepest needs go unmet as we develop our own ideas about life. We grow up without God. As we go through the stages of human development and build our own views about life, we experience continuous frustration from our unfulfilled longings and don’t know why. Only God can fill the emptiness within the heart of man but the heart of man is cut off from Him. Driven by these needs, we are left to our own feeble devices to find a source to fulfill them. Human ability is unable to create a solution so that the human soul is left hopeless and helpless to change our situation. Therefore, spiritual death separates us from God, frustrates us as we try to meet our needs and leaves us confused about why we cannot find happiness through relating with other members of the human race.

The Sin Nature

The second result of Adam’s sin is the corruption of our human nature. God created us with a nature to love and worship Him. The corruption of sin causes us to redirect all of our loyalties away from God onto our self. This corrupted nature is called a sin nature and it causes us to view our self as the most important person in life. In contrast, the bible explains that God is the most important person and His plan is the primary goal of the universe. Our corrupted nature driven by needs, causes us to build an idea system that is contrary to God’s truth. The inner hunger we feel so dominates us that we view our self and our needs as the primary issue in life. We are loyal first to self and then to others only after we have what we need. Our sin nature corrupts the development of our ideas so that our belief system is built around self first. We believe that meeting our own needs is the most important task of our life. All of our thoughts, ideas, feelings and actions are built around meeting our needs. Our hunger for love, belonging and significance becomes our dominant goal and all of our thoughts are arranged with this priority in mind. The sin nature causes even the best of us to be selfish and build our ideas around the belief that selfishness is justified and right. From birth and beyond, we begin and live totally disoriented to God.

The Cure of God’s Grace

The disease is sin. Its results alienate us from God both judicially and experientially, both in our thoughts and our behaviors. We are born condemned to die physically and then to die a second time by being placed into the Lake of Fire forever. The disease is terminal and without a cure, all of us will die and then die again. But God, whose great love motivates Him to show mercy devised a plan to cure us from sin and save us forever. God’s plan to save man is called grace. Grace is God’s genius plan to personally resolve the judicial penalty for sin on our behalf and then offer this resolution as a free gift to the undeserving. He sent His Son Jesus to defeat spiritual death by paying for our judicial debt and then to defeat physical death by returning from the dead. Having accomplished this great mission of mercy, God offers what Christ earned as a free gift to be accepted by believing that He did it for us. When we hear the gospel (the cure), understand it and choose to believe it, God credits the work of Christ to our individual accounts. This is the cure, the only cure that God has provided. Once we accept Christ and His work as our means of salvation, God settles the issue of our sins in the courtroom of heaven and pronounces us pardoned forever. We are cured from the terminal disease of sin, never to be condemned again. Yet, our problems are not over. At first, we think we have it made and in the judicial realm we do. But in the experiential realm of beliefs and behaviors we still have a long way to go.

The Old Man

Habitual Beliefs and Behaviors:  God made both the human mind and body to operate on habits. We form ideas and behaviors that become habits that we use instinctively and unconsciously when the occasion arises. The beliefs we formed when we were separated from God and on our own have become deeply seated habits of thought that fire off almost without conscious choice. From these habitual thought patterns come emotional, verbal and overt behaviors that we use to interact with our world. Before we were saved, we all formed a habitual way of life that we unknowingly carry into the Christian life. Our beliefs chosen over the course of our lives with their corresponding behaviors are deeply ingrained and operate habitually under the level of awareness. These old beliefs are called the Old Man in the bible. After salvation, we still have the same needs to be met and we are just as driven to meet them. A great difference is that after salvation we now have God to meet our deepest needs. The problem is that initially we don’t really know what is going on inside of us and don’t realize that we are still using habitual ideas that promote selfishness and sinful behaviors. Even though the Spirit indwells us, we are still unconsciously thinking the old ways and therefore acting in old ways. Some of these old ways can even look like the spiritual life but are motivated to serve self rather than God. We are saved, secure in Christ, the Spirit indwells us giving us power but we still find ourselves sinning in the same old ways. We have to find an explanation to this disturbing hypocrisy.

The New Man in Christ

After we are saved the old habitual ways of living that we developed continue to function within us. These old ideas producing sinful behaviors become apparent as we learn about Christ and see His perfection. As we know Him better, He shows us our inconsistent behaviors. As we grow in Him we also begin to feel new thoughts, feelings and practice new behaviors that are like His. This new belief and behavior system is called the new man (NM) and is created by the Spirit in the heart of the believer who learns and believes the truth. Individual pieces of truth are built together into a viewpoint of life that produces Christ like behavior when we operate from His view. We grow and build divine viewpoint into our souls so that these ideas can become our habitual, unconscious thoughts, feelings and actions. It is the new man that thinks, feels and acts like God. It is the new man that we now want to be and who we want others to see in us. It is the new man we thought we would just automatically become when we were saved. Some churches even teach that from the beginning you have the ability to say no the old and yes to the new, totally and completely. But, nothing could be farther from the truth.

The Old Way Endures

The old way has been our way for a long time and it operates under the surface, without us even knowing. It is the fruit of the old way with its sinful, destructive behaviors that blows the whistle and reveals that something is very wrong inside of us. We try to resist the temptations of the old way and fail miserably. We try harder to no avail. We study more, pray more, seek counsel from the wise and still the old way resists our attempts to put it aside. We keep our mask in place to hide our inner confusion and our habitual sins. We learn Christian words and emulate those we believe are enjoying success in the Christian life. Inside we are still driven, frustrated, fearful and we still struggle with sins that threaten to destroy us.

The Old Man Exposed

The old man is revealed through his sinful behavior. The old man is exposed through good bible teaching. None of us are able to see the truth from God’s eyes on our own. God made us so that we would need His Spirit within us and need each other to teach and encourage us. God gave each of us a spiritual gift that works in unison with the other gifts to edify the church, both individually and collectively. One of these gifts is Pastor-Teacher, which is the ability to look into the scriptures, see the truth and communicate it in an understandable way. As we listen in bible class and learn how/why the old man was built, how/why he operates and how we can put his ideas aside, we grow in our capacity to say no to his desires. To see the old man requires much knowledge and a measure of maturity. Baby Christians are not ready to take on the challenge of our deepest inner motives. When a Christian reaches the adult stages though, he/she must look beyond the surface and begin to seek change in the depths of the heart. It is at this stage of growth that we take on the challenges of transforming the inner man.

The Old Man Rejected

The old man (OM) is the belief and behavior system built into the heart by humans during the time period from their birth until they are saved and in a relationship with God. The OM is a belief and behavior system that views life without God, without God’s truth to see His perspective, without God’s power to contemplate victory and without God’s love to deal with the shame of being weak and selfish. The OM is the system we all built seeking to meet our needs in the devil’s world, using our own abilities, using our own understandings while looking to people for what we need. Before we were saved it was our only option and the only way we knew to protect our self and find happiness. After salvation though, now we have God. God’s Spirit is inside of us, His truth is in the bible that we can learn and use inside of us. After salvation we are able to learn God’s perspective, adopt it as our own and use it as the basis of our emotional attitudes and actions. Now we have the option to reject the ideas of the OM and replace them with the ideas used by Jesus in His humanity, the NM. Now we can say no to the OM because we can see that his ideas are disoriented to God’s plan and disobedient to God’s will. What was the only truth we knew has now been exposed as a lie and we have been given the power to lay it aside and replace it with what God has said in His word.

Transformation – Renewing the Mind

In the 1600’s Spinoza said “nature abhors a vacuum” meaning that nature has a tendency to fill empty spaces. This principle seems to hold true for the soul as well. When we reject the ideas of the OM it leaves a hole in the heart that we are compelled to fill. The opposite is also true as demonstrated by many sheltered college freshmen who went off to school, abandoned their parent’s morality leaving a void they filled with another type of morality. When we reject the OM, we must replace its ideas with NM ideas and allow them to become our way of life. In the bible this process is called in Greek metamorphoo, translated transformation. Transformation is the process God uses to cause believers to grow spiritually. In transformation, the believer lays aside specific ideas previously adopted by the OM and replaces these ideas with specific principles from the word of God. The transformed Christian stops believing the ideas of the OM and therefore rejects them as a basis of action and then replaces them by believing ideas from God’s word and uses them as the basis of action. The Greek metamorphoo is the root of the English word metamorphosis, a process of change that occurs in stages resulting in the emergence of a different way of life. After salvation, God enters all of His children into this process where they grow in stages, taking off the OM, putting on the NM, finally resulting in the believer being like the Lord Jesus Christ.

Summary

After salvation we retain the belief and behavior system we built before we were saved. We carry these ideas into the Christian life and operate on them unconsciously, below the level of awareness. As long as these ideas remain in the heart as an object of faith, we will continue to view life from their vantage point and use them as the logic for our actions. At the point of salvation God enters His children into a process of change called transformation, the mechanics of spiritual growth. We have to enter it willingly and endure in it and when we do, the Spirit will change our hearts to be like Christ. He frees us from slavery to the hunger, fear and self-destruction of the OM and enables us to willingly enslave ourselves to the Lord and live our life by means of the influence of the Spirit. We learn/believe the concepts taught in the bible, assemble them into a belief and behavior system called the NM. When we habitually use the NM as the logical basis for our actions, it becomes our new nature and our natural way of life. We live as imitators of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Him be the glory and honor forever.

It is very important to develop an overall plan for training your children that includes understanding the benefits of ongoing learning as parents, knowledge of developmental stages, the limitations of age related abilities and the importance of consistent application. It is also very important to build agreement between husband and wife so that you can present a united front to the kids. Having an idea about how to proceed makes all the difference when you are in the heat of the moment, making decisions. Knowing your child’s capacities and limitations allows you to use wisdom as you correct their behavior. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of learning parenting skills, the different stages of human development, age specific capacities and limitations and the importance of consistency.

Parental Responsibility to Train & Discipline

Ephesians 6:4 And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

God’s Agents
Parents are God’s responsible agents for raising children. In modern USA, many have delegated this responsibility to the state through public schools and through the church. While a good church offers support for parents through Sunday school programs, responsibility for training children in the Lord remains with parents, especially fathers. Notice that parents are commanded to nourish children up in the discipline and knowledge of the Lord. Many types of knowledge are important for children to become mature adults, but knowledge of the Lord is primary.

Living Examples
Parents train their children in the Lord by teaching them concepts from the bible and then and most importantly by becoming living examples of these concepts in real life. The most effective training mechanism in the parent’s toolbox is the life they live in front of their children. Children pick up on what we believe, our attitudes, what/how we say and how we behave in relationships. What children see from their parents, they will imitate in their own life and often not know why they feel the way they do.

Parenting like God
Finally, parents are responsible to train their children using the same motives and methods that God uses to train His children. He trains and disciplines in love, always for the benefit of the child. Every word and act toward your child should be intentional and intended to edify him/her in the Lord. The previous article “Grace Parenting” deals with this concept in full.

In order to train our children effectively, we must learn how and why and when to use different levels of discipline.

Benefits of Learning to Parent
Knowledge is power and knowledge about parenting gives us the power to feel confident about decisions that we make as parents. Most of us as parents don’t need radical change, just the chance to see the situation differently, from God’s perspective based on accurate knowledge of the word. Parents need the Holy Spirit to be their coach who can provide knowledge and encouragement. As we learn about children and parenting principles we are able to
a. Gain skills and knowledge that enable us to formulate an overall plan.
b. Able to face normal changes with confidence and flexibility based on knowledge.
c. Able to discern our child’s needs based on their present stage of life.
d. Know our child’s abilities and limits of understanding in different developmental stages so that we can have realistic expectations and use age appropriate interventions.
e. Recognize the importance of being consistent in the way we apply rules and boundaries to help our children develop good habits of behavior.

Parenting Manual
Children don’t come with a manual so we have to find help from the accumulated wisdom of those who have come before. I encourage you to continue reading your bible and learning from Christian classes on parenting so that you can offer your children the best opportunity to grow into strong and healthy adults.

Marriage In Parenting
Another critical issue in parenting is the status of the marriage. As a rule, happy marriages produce healthy children. A happy marriage is not one without conflict but one where normal conflicts are managed, resolved and used for growth. When dealing with children, a united front where both parents say the same thing and work in unison is critical. A united front lends credibility to the ideas being presented and hinders the children from being able to divide and conquer parental authority. Children feel more secure when parents work well together and agree with one another about discipline issues. When both parents understand the development of their children, they can use accurate information to craft effective training methods.

Egocentrism
Another important piece of information about your child is the concept of egocentrism. All children are egocentric, which means that they are only able to think about themselves and only able to see the world through their own eyes and feelings. To a small child, he is the center of all things and all things truly exist for his pleasure. He/she at these early stages in incapable of experiencing empathy or look at a situation from someone else’s point of view. Egocentrism is more than a choice to be selfish though that is how it appears, it is the incapacity to think beyond their own self. This condition moderates at times and is mostly left behind by growth around the mid-20’s.

Stages of Human Development
Human beings grow and develop in stages from birth all the way to death. Psychologists have studied these stages and have written about the different developmental tasks that challenge us at each stage. The early stages focus on the challenges of physical development and the latter stages emphasize mental development. It is the challenge of these developmental hurdles that motivates us to grow and increase our abilities. The following table describes the different age categories and the abilities children normally possess at these ages.

Age Developmental Tasks & Abilities

0-2 yrs Develop senses & motor skills – sucking, grasping, looking, listening, crawling, walking, comprehension, talking, self-awareness, attachment, trust. Infant uses their senses and motor skills to relate to their world. They begin to develop basic categories of concrete objects in memory (hard, soft, color). Totally egocentric; None or little discipline, only positive reinforcement is effective to motivate.

2-6 yrs Develop symbols & language to understand & relate to the world. All thinking is concrete and the child is not yet capable to conceive in the abstract. Imagination flourishes and language becomes the primary means of influencing their world. Total to mildly egocentric which moderates about age 6; Light and immediate discipline is effective. Spanking with a rolled newspaper or very small switch. The goal is to communicate about behavior not cause great pain.

7-11 yrs Development of logic and examples (parables). Learning about classification of categories & numbers. Mildly egocentric so sharing & sympathy can be taught; Age where planned training & discipline based on rules is effective. Choices & consequences can be used to discipline ie loss of privilege; spanking for rebellion and rejection of authority.

12-Adult Development of abstract thought and hypotheticals. Understanding of ethics, law, morality, social issues, theoretical concepts. Focus on adaptations to society and how the person fits into the world. Able to understand concepts without concrete examples. Egocentrism fades up to mid 20’s; Focus on choices & consequences as the person interacts in relationships. Puberty, sexuality & preparation for marriage. Discipline through consequences; no spanking girls after puberty and boys for rebellion and standing up to authority.

Stages & Hurdles Cause Growth
Humans develop in stages from birth until death. The descriptions and age limits of these stages are generalities and approximations, not absolutes. Each stage brings new challenges to overcome and new opportunities for growth. Expanding thinking abilities and building a framework for life is the mission of each stage. As egocentrism (self centeredness) diminishes and the capacity for theoretical thinking increases, children are able to prepare for adulthood with its complex responsibilities.

Age Specific Capacities
Discipline needs to be crafted and aligned with age specific abilities to comprehend and capacity to learn the lesson being taught. Discipline should never be considered as nor called punishment, but as teaching and training to extinguish unhealthy attitudes and behaviors while replacing them with good ideas and behaviors. For example, you can spank a one-year-old over and over for a boundary violation but he is not yet able to understand what you are teaching him. You might even be able to convey the idea of “don’t” but he has not gained a positive perception of his world that helps him make informed choices. Spanking one-year-olds is not an effective means of correction. When he is two or three, spanking has more impact because he is more able to understand the lesson being taught.

Clear Boundaries
Boundaries should be as clear as possible for children, especially in the younger years. Small children are concrete thinkers, meaning that they can only understand something that has a physical example or application. It is not until age 12 + that children gain the capacity for intangible thought. As teenagers, your children are ready to discuss morality and more subtle boundaries related to motives, but not before. Boundaries for small children are made clear by making them physical. For example, “do not leave our yard” makes a clear boundary of where a child’s body is to be at any given moment. His heart might be with the kids across the street but his body better be at home. This is clear and not easily misunderstood by a child. If he does leave the yard, then consequences will be next. At later stages, issues of motivation and attitude can be used as boundaries. For example, your fourteen-year-old son can be expected to take out the trash with a good attitude without complaining. His mind-set and demeanor can become part of a boundary system intended to teach him about life issues.

Consistent Application
Boundaries also need to have clear consequences connected to them when violations are chosen. When he/she does cross the line, what discipline will take place to teach him to obey? Will this consequence of their action take place every time, some of the time or only after the parent has built up anger and comes at him like an wild person? The lines need to be clear, the discipline also and the consequences need to be consistent.
Consistency is one of the most important issues in parenting. Children don’t do well with mixed signals. When a parent says one thing but does another, it takes away credibility and believability in the child’s mind. He doesn’t believe you when you say, I am going to discipline you for crossing the line because you have proven that you mostly won’t. The child learns to ignore the lines and what you say until the signal of building anger is seen and then they get busy complying with commands. When you are consistent, meaning that the same discipline happens every time the boundaries are crossed, with an even temperament, the child becomes habituated to listen the first time. He/she learns that boundaries are real, important and that you mean what you say as a parent, not because you are angry but because these lines are good for the child.

Love that only builds and never tears down for our children is a given. Along with love, if we provide a united front, knowledge of the stages of human development and age specific limitations of children, clear boundaries and consistent application will provide our children with a healthy environment in which they can grow to be healthy adult.

Methods of Discipline
Proverbs 13:24 He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.
The bible makes it clear that spanking is part of God’s plan for raising children, but it never precludes using other forms of discipline. As an educated counselor I am aware of the literature that suggests that spanking is an ineffective for of discipline, but I don’t believe what the studies suggest. I depend upon the bible for all of my instructions about training my children which includes spanking, but that is not my only form of discipline. Let’s discuss when and why to spank and suggest an alternative form of discipline that I have found effective.

Spanking
Spanking in my home is usually reserved for rebellion and stubborn refusal to comply with parental wishes. When a child rebels by deciding that he/she is not going to obey, that view that tells them not obeying is even an option, must be eliminated from their minds. Spanking works very well for breaking rebellion but never so hard or long that it breaks their spirit. Spanking helps the child return to sanity and tell himself that obedience is in his self interest. Yet spanking is over-kill for lighter offences and I consider it inappropriate for some situations.

Deprivation
When children are slow to obey, when they complain about obeying or have a general whining disposition, I find that depriving them of some privilege they enjoy to be an effective means of getting their attention. We take away TV time, computer time or ground them from friends. For some children, this form of discipline motivates them to change more than spanking and is preferable to spanking.

There are many ways to teach a child that his thinking and behaviors need to change. Be creative and find something that works for each individual child. May the Lord bless you and keep you as you train your children in the love of the Lord.

Grace Parenting

The Importance of Parenting
Raising healthy children is one of the most important assignments anyone receives from the Lord. In present day USA, with the number of single parent homes on the rise, good parenting skills are even more important. Children, by God’s design grow healthier with both a father and mother in the home. When one parent is absent, a heavier burden falls on the remaining parent to provide the love, patience, training and correction that children need, but one parent can produce a healthy child. If you are a single parent, God will help you and enable you to parent your child in a way that will bless them and prepare them for adult life.

God – The Perfect Parent
When any person believes the gospel, the death burial and resurrection of Christ for their personal salvation, God adopts them into His Royal family forever (Rom 8:15). When we become His children, He enters us into a training program that inspires us to grow into strong, responsible spiritual adults who willingly take on spiritual responsibilities.

Hebrews 12:5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him; 6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives.”

We begin as spiritual babies (1Pet 2:2), grow into different levels of spiritual childhood and if we endure in His program, we grow to become mature, spiritual adults (Heb 5:14). God perfectly parents His children and enables them to grow up to spiritual adulthood. As we seek guidance to parent our children, we find the perfect example in the way that God parents us.

Four Areas of Parenting
Raising healthy children that are able to grow into adults and handle adult responsibilities requires that parents think and act using the principles of God’s word. A good parent acts toward his/her children in the same way that God acts toward His children in Christ. Children need a fair authority to draw clear boundaries, they need attentive parents that will protect them from the world, they need informed parents that will train them to take responsibility and they need healthy parents who can set a good example of how good people live. In this article we will examine how God parents us in grace, four areas of parenting and finally we will develop God’s grace provisions that enable Christian parents to parent like God.

God’s Grace Parenting
When Christ hung on the cross, He paid for all of the sins of the world. Before we were saved, in fact before we were even born, all of the judicial penalties for sins were paid in full and resolved (1Jn 2:2). When we trust in Christ for salvation, we enter a parental relationship where all of the penalties for boundary violations are already paid. When God uses corrective measures as our parent, it is never as retribution, revenge or as a means of making us pay for disobedience. God corrects us for one reason and one reason only, He loves us and intends to teach and train us, for our own benefit. His grace has already paid for our sins and now His grace corrects our bad habits of thinking and behaving to help align us with His boundaries so that we can be blessed. God’s grace parenting is motivated by love and is designed to benefit us by training us to habitually behave in ways that will bring blessings to our life.

Parenting Like God
God gives us firm boundaries and never compromises His position of authority. He corrects us because He loves us and wants to change the way we think and act. When we understand God’s love and training program for us, we can train our children the way He trains us. We correct our children because we love them and want them to make decisions that will bring positive, not negative results. When they violate the boundaries we establish, we can be firm and implement corrective strategies while remaining calm, kind and loving. We can parent them with grace. Grace never takes revenge when lines are crossed, grace corrects to benefit the one who needs to change. With grace in mind, Christian parents can build their corrective methods around the idea of helping children change their thinking and habits, not pay for what they did wrong.

Fair Authority – Clear Boundaries – Appropriate Consequences
God is the Boss of the universe and He has given clear guidelines to His children about what is right and what is wrong. God is the perfect parent. Like all Christians, all children need a fair authority figure to give them clear boundaries of right and wrong, along with appropriate consequences for violating the boundaries. When children are young, they have yet to develop the ability to look at their circumstances and draw reasonable
conclusions on which to act. The ability to improvise and make good decisions comes with age and experience. Because of this, children need clear cut lines that tell them where they stand in relation to right and wrong. They need to know that obeying the adults in their life is right and that lying, cheating and stealing is wrong. They also need to understand the consequences both good and bad that will occur from the choices they make. Good parents teach their children that good decisions reap positive results and that the opposite is also true.

Gal 6:7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

Protective Parents
In an evil world where the devil’s philosophy is dominant (Jn 8:44), it pays for parents to pay close attention to the outside forces that come into contact with your children. Clear boundaries not only teach behavior but they provide protection. There are many in our world who will take advantage of the innocent and even hurt them in permanent ways. Children naturally trust others and without parental oversight can get themselves into trouble. While God loves children, He has temporarily allowed evil to exist in our world and expects parents to protect them. Protect them from evil from the outside and also protect them from the evil ideas they bring home by training them in the Lord.

Children are also very curious about adult experiences and will seek ways to enter into adult situations way before they are ready. These experiences can push them forward into adult life before their hearts are ready, resulting in extreme feelings of guilt and shame. For example, people who experience sex as children will have a permanent sexual fixation even in adult life and their sexual life will be distorted in their marriage. Children who are damaged early in life have a difficult time healing as adults. They spend a great deal of their adult life trying to recover from damage, rather than use their adulthood to enjoy and contribute to their world. Over zealous protection of your children will frustrate your children but will also protect them from making terrible mistakes. Protect your children by knowing where they are, who they are with and what they are doing every moment of their childhood so that they can enter into adult life as healthy people.

Parental Training
Parents, especially fathers are charged with the responsibility of training their children in the knowledge of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4 And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

The word discipline means to train them by educating them and by using corrective methods to steer them into good habits of behavior. All of us form habits of thinking and acting when we choose specific paths over time. When children are taught about the Lord and persuaded to act within the guidelines of the Lord, children will form habitual behaviors that will pay them dividends in adulthood. The word instruction means to admonish, teach and give warning about behavior. Parents are commanded to teach their children the principles of the word, correct them to form good habits of behavior and admonish them about violating God’s boundaries of wise ways of living.

A Good Church
A good local church can be helpful in training your children in the Lord. Often parents allow their children to choose the church they attend because of the entertaining youth program. If the youth program provides sound instruction in the word and is talented enough to make it entertaining then you have been blessed. If the program is full of fun but light on the word, you will be well served to find a church who takes the word more seriously (just my opinion after 30 years and raising 4 children). It is the promises and principles of God’s word that will empower your children to find Christ for themselves and live a blessed and successful life. If you cannot find a good bible church to teach your children the word, then you must educate yourself and teach them at home. Their spiritual education is the most important advantage you can give your kids, so don’t leave it to others to see that it is done.

Parental Examples
Children learn information by listening but they learn how to live by imitation. Children are natural mimics and they will look for people they respect to imitate. Your children will most certainly imitate you, either for the good or the bad. The best thing you can do for your children is to submit your life to the Lord, grow to maturity in the word and live the Christian life for real. Parents who know the Lord and live their lives in His service set the highest example for children to follow. Living for the Lord gives no guarantees that your children will follow, but your genuine Christian life will give them the best chance to do the same.

God parents us in grace, consistently correcting us to help us form good habits of behavior. He gives us clear boundaries and provides us with authority that is firm but kind and loving. He commands us to protect our children by closely monitoring their friends and activities. He commands us to train and nurture them in the Lord and provide a spiritual environment where they can learn the word while providing good examples of people who live their lives for Him.

Finally, I encourage you to pray for your children every day. What you can’t do with your human limitations, God can do because he has none. Ask Him to protect them and provide good influences in their life. Ask Him to lead you to a good bible church where you can learn the word so that you can be one of the good influences.

Resolving Conflict God’s Way
God relates with love and grace. His love motivates Him to forgive all offences and offer reconciliation. He offers His forgiveness as a free gift to all who will accept it by faith. His forgiveness has been made possible by the sacrifice of Christ, who took all the sins of the world onto Himself. Having taken our sins and paid them in full, He now offers the benefits of forgiveness and reconciliation to those who will accept Him by faith. Christ taking our sins and giving us His forgiveness is grace.

Relating Like God
God’s love and grace sets the standard for how relationships are to be lived out. He is our example and He calls on us to imitate His love and forgiveness. God resolves our sins through forgiveness, not retribution. He refuses to react to offenses and continues to offer His love consistently. God keeps on giving unconditionally, regardless of how we fail to appreciate His grace or obey His word.

The way God relates to us, is the way He has designed marital partners to relate to one another. When our partner fails, we can give forgiveness not revenge. We can refuse to react with anger and continue giving love. When we relate like God in our marriage, we are able to resolve our conflicts without damaging one another. We are able to use conflict to grow in our love and strengthen our marriage instead of tearing it down. Loving like God enables all of our relationships to grow and become more intimate as God designed it to be.

Godly Strategies for Minimizing Conflict
Marital conflict is inevitable, necessary and even beneficial if handled according to God’s word. In spite of its necessity, conflict in marriage is no fun and there are ways to minimize its occurrence and ways to minimize the damage when it does. Education, preparation and a commitment to love without conditions will go a long way to minimize conflict. When we become devoted to one another’s well being we are willing to compromise and make sacrifices that enable us to grow closer together in love.

Patterns – Timing and Issues
First, learn to expect conflict and look for a regular pattern relating to timing and issues that spark it. All long term relationships follow patterns, especially marriages. These patterns mark when times are good and when they are bad. Watch your own patterns and learn to predict when a conflict is due. Certain issues also spark conflict between marriage partners. While they are different for all of us, some issues are commonly involved in conflict.

Money
Money is the most common source of marital conflict; the amount made and spent, what it is spent on and who is in charge of making these decisions. It is easy to feel that your partner is selfish and spends money unfairly, emphasizing their wants more than yours. It is important to have an organized budget and decide where extra money is going to go. A priority list made by both partners can be used to make sure the money is used fairly.  In today’s American culture we have placed major emphasis on materialistic possessions and this is  part of the reason we conflict over money. As Christians grow out of materialism and into a committed relationship with the Lord, more of their  ”extra” money is given to His work. Placing emphasis on giving to the Lord will free your marriage from some of the conflicts about money.

Sex
Sex is another area where most if not all couples conflict. For men, as a rule, sex is primarily physical and men usually desire sex more than women. For women, as a rule, sex is primarily an emotional experience related to romance. Women are sexually stimulated by romantic feelings while men are stimulated by sexual images. Neither of these is right or wrong, it is just the way God made us and we must learn to accept one another as we are. A husband would be wise to accept that his wife is sexually stimulated by romantic evenings and sweet words. A wife would be wise to accept that her husband’s body experiences a build up of sexual desire and he desires sex about every 3 days. By understanding each other’s needs, an agreement, plan and even a schedule can be worked out that works for both. When the two are committed to love one another, they find ways to accommodate each other’s needs.

Children
Finally, one of the most common areas of disagreement and conflict is in raising children. All of us were raised under different rules with different parents. Each of us has an idea about how to train and discipline our children. When our different ideas meet in real life, conflict can occur. It is imperative to examine our individual differences and reach some kind of agreement so that you can present a united front for the children. Children know when parents are in conflict and will use the differences to divide and conquer. A united front gives children a consistent word and policy to follow, eliminating inconsistency and confusion. When parents will pre-think parenting situations and develop a consensus plan to deal with specific disobedience or rebellion, they can be prepared to work together.

Summary
Marital conflict is part of God’s plan to grow us into a unified team. Conflict is inevitable because we are fusing together different backgrounds, different aspirations, different genders and every other factor of life. Conflict is good if used for growth and damaging if used to express your commitment to selfishness. It reveals our differences and old pain pushing us to find ways to compromise and express love through a commitment to do what is best for the other. It also brings us to see that only by taking the mind of Christ into our hearts and relating like God, can our marriage grow into blissful intimacy. Learn to expect conflict, use it to grow more in love for life.

Introduction
Marriage, the union of one man and one woman is the creation of God. In fact it is His greatest creation that He uses to exemplify the intimacy he desires with the human race. God uses marriage to demonstrate the blessings he offers to those who trust in Christ. God’s use of marriage for ministry makes it a target for the devil who seeks to destroy or pervert it. The devil’s attack on marriage is one of the reasons that marital conflict is so common and inevitable.

God designed the human soul and also designed marriage as the ultimate human fulfillment of our souls in this life. He made marriage to work with human souls made to be male and human souls made to be female. Contrary to modern thought, men and women are not the same in their souls and they do not experience marriage the same way. The design difference of male and female is another reason marital conflict is so common and inevitable.

This article will discuss the purpose of Christian marriage, the inevitability of conflict in marriage, God’s good purpose for allowing marital conflict, the Godly way to resolve it and finally marital strategies for minimizing conflict.

God’s Purpose for Christian Marriage

Eph 5:32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking about Christ and the church

In his discussion about Christian marriage, Paul brings it to an end by stating that it is a picture of Christ and the church. While he is talking about the mystery of marriage, he is really discussing Christ and His relationship with the church. Marriage is God’s provision for the whole human race, both believer and unbeliever. Man and woman in a love relationship, joined together for life in a legal marriage is a wonderful gift of God for all men. For those who never trust in Christ, their marriage will be their greatest blessing in their whole eternal existence. God’s purpose for Christian marriage, the joining of a Christian man and Christian woman is for them to illustrate the love of Christ for His church. It is an analogy where the husband illustrates Christ and the wife illustrates the church. As the husband loves his wife with unconditional love, he forms a picture of how Christ loves the church. As the wife respects and submits to the husband she forms a picture of the church following Christ into the work of the Father.

Christian marriage, forming a picture of Christ and His church is a ministry to all mankind and even the angels. It illustrates God’s love and desire for intimacy with all of His creatures. There is no greater image of God’s love than the loving and following in Christian marriage. This explains His extreme commitment to seeing Christian marriage endure and His strict guidelines for how it is to operate.

Marital Conflict is Inevitable
When 2 people join forces so totally that they merge every aspect of their lives as we do in marriage, conflict is inevitable. When man and woman join in marriage, they not only join their two persons but their families, their training, their backgrounds, their values and priorities. With every human being so different in all of these areas, it is inevitable that these different aspects of life will create conflict. When the different backgrounds and traditions meet one another in real life, conflict occurs. I remember our first Christmas with kids. My family had always played down the sanctity of specific days and times for gift giving and had very loose guidelines for when gifts were exchanged. In contrast, my wife’s family had always respected the different days and times, exchanging specific gifts at specific times. Her insistence that the children receive their gifts “assembled” on Christmas morning and not before, seemed a bit rigid to me with my relaxed attitudes about gift giving. Our differences about this issue led us into conflict during the holiday.
This occasion for conflict was only one of many to come as we continued our marriage relationship. We have conflicted over everything in life as we have faced every issue life holds, as is inevitable that we would because we are different in many ways.

God Allows Conflict for Good

Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Surprised and Upset
At first, conflict is surprising and upsetting. It is surprising because we thought that our feelings of love would enable us to overlook every difference just to be with our beloved. It is upsetting because it makes us aware and even afraid that we could possibly lose the love we value so much. Without an understanding of conflict, its causes, solutions and even benefits, conflict can cause us to withdraw and take a defensive approach with our partner. On the other hand, with accurate knowledge of God’s design, we learn that conflict is meant to awaken us to our differences. God uses conflict to teach us that we can use it to learn about each other and use it to motivate us to work at our marriage.

Exposes our Differences
God uses conflict to expose our differences. When one tradition or value system meets the other in real life, conflict reveals that differences exist. Initially, we naturally defend our habitual way of doing things against any new idea even from our spouse. As we discuss and articulate both views, God’s first good goal is to force us to adopt healthy methods of communicating. If we fail to practice good communication, misunderstanding and then chaos will rule the home. Out of chaos we will be motivated to find mutual understanding and ways of discussing differences that build us up and not tear us down. God uses conflict in marriage to expose faulty methods of communication and to motivate us toward healthier ways of interacting.

Repressed Pain
This process can take time and we will discover that pain from the past can complicate it because we will project our past on to the present. The second good that comes from conflict is an awareness of repressed pain we often call baggage. When we are hurt in a relationship, our tendency is to stuff it down into our gut instead of acing it and resolving it with God. Repressing our pain causes us to carry the pain where it becomes our baggage. When we become aware that our spouse or our self is carrying baggage from the past, each of us can take steps to resolve our own pain from the past. As we successfully use God’s grace assets to deal with differences and pain from the past, we grow more confidant that God loves us and will act on or behalf. We could go on but I think you get the idea that marital conflict offers us the opportunity to grow within our self and in our relationship.

Conflict makes us aware of differences so that we can communicate well and find a compromise that satisfies both parties. When conflict occurs it often reveals hidden baggage from past painful relationships that works like a time bomb if not diffused. Conflict opens our eyes to issues that will hinder intimacy so that we can purge it and heal our hearts. Finally, conflict offers God the opportunity to demonstrate His love and care for us by showing us how to grow from adversity.

James 1:2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Conflict Offers Growth
Conflict exposes our differences and forces us to find new ways to think about life. It motivates us to let go of our false ideas and replace them with God’s view of life. The result is that our hearts are free from hurt and bitterness, enabling us to love more. God uses conflict to bring us to truth and truth brings us closer to God.

James explains that God uses adversity for our growth. As we trust Him and His word to solve our problems, we grow in or ability to trust Him even more. Every time God delivers us from or through our adversities, including marital conflicts, He proves that His word is more powerful than anything in life. Every time we come through conflict using God’s promises and principles, we grow in our love for God and for our partner. He proves that He loves us, loves our marriage and is personally involved in our daily life. Conflict, instead of being a problem is an opportunity for us to learn more about one another, for God to act in our lives and for us to grow in or love for Him and each other.

Check soon for Part 2

What is an Addiction?
Addiction is defined as a state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma. (Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009). Addiction is enslavement or a habit that causes extreme suffering if we try to do without the object of the addiction. The slavery can be mental and/or physical. We can be addicted to a substance like alcohol, to a person like a mate or a situation like the feeling that comes from gambling. Addiction can be mental without a physical dependency, thinking that we must have the object of desire or we can’t be at ease. The addiction can be to substances that cause a physical dependence like drugs or alcohol.

Addiction vs. Dependence
In the medical field, a distinction is made between physical dependence and addiction. A person can become dependent upon a medicine for their body to function in a healthy manner, like diabetics are dependent upon insulin. Addicts on the other hand use their drug of choice for the pleasure and to hide from pain. They have a psychological use for their addiction that is related to escaping from the reality of life. When a person has a medical problem that requires that they become dependent on a medical solution, they are not considered addicts.

Pleasure and Pain
Addiction usually has 2 sides to it. The obvious side is the pleasure involved in the relationship to the object of addiction. Few people become addicted to something that causes them pain but many become addicted to things that bring them pleasure. Alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, a person and other substances and situations can be a source of pleasure that can become an addiction. When we conclude that the pleasure gained from the object is necessary for our daily life or for us to be at ease, we have become attached to the object in an unhealthy way. The bible explains that our craving for pleasure comes from the corruption of our desires through a selfish nature inherited from Adam and a false belief system that tells us that gratification of our desires is a sufficient substitute for the joy that God wants to give us.

1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

Lust is normal desire gone wrong. When desire, which is normal in itself is corrupted by the false idea that gratification is happiness, we can become fixated on gratification to the point where it becomes our primary goal in life. God offers the Christian a better way to find happiness that is genuine and lasting.

Gal 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

When we allow the Holy Spirit who is God, to influence the ideas we use to live our life and make our decisions, He leads us into life of meaning, purpose and fulfillment. The joy and contentment that comes from living a life filled with God’s purpose, is the better life He offers in place of our addictions and gratification as happiness.

Avoiding Pain
The other side of addiction is the use of pleasure as an escape from pain. Life in the devil’s world causes deep soul pain for all of us. This life is full of loss and the loss of important people and things causes grief in our hearts. This life is also filled with injustice and unfair treatment that causes us to feel unfairly treated and cheated by those who hurt us. When we are hurting inside, we naturally look for ways to make the pain go away. The bible talks about the natural reactions of children who have been mishandled by their parents.

Colossians 3:21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, that they may not lose heart.

To exasperate means to make angry through overbearing treatment. Fathers can allow themselves to become angry with their children and discipline with anger. When they use anger to bully their children, it feels like unfair and unloving treatment to the children. The children naturally react to parental anger by losing heart. The Greek word athumos means to be without passion or to numb your feelings. Children have very few options when parents treat them unkindly. They are too young to leave and go on their own so they have to stay and find a way to cope. One way children cope is to numb their hurt by repressing their feelings. Repressing emotion creates a split in the soul because they lose touch with their pain by forcing it into the subconscious. The pain is still there, hidden but the child no longer remembers it and thinks he has effectively dealt with it, but has not. It will remain unresolved deep in the heart and can lead to depression later in life.

Unresolved Pain
Unresolved, repressed pain eventually comes out in adult life. It shows up in our primary relationships of marriage and raising our own children (see the Angry Dad article). When the pain surfaces, we will have forgotten where it came from, why it is there or what to do about it. We just know that we are sad and we hurt inside. Not knowing how to resolve the pain, we look for any way we can find to not feel it. A convenient pain reduction method is the pleasure of alcohol, drugs, gambling or a love relationship. When we use a substance and get pain relief, we begin to hope that we have found a good way to reduce our pain. The pleasure and relief cycle begins to perpetuate itself but offers no real resolution to the pain. In addition, the more we use pleasure to distract us from pain, the less effective pleasure from substance use works. We build a tolerance to the substance so that we have to use more and more to get the same relief. Tolerance is why addicts lose control of their using behaviors. Eventually, they have to use so much that they spend all of their money to obtain enough to find relief. Their behavior spirals out of control and they become enslaved by their substance of choice. The bible explains that when we abandon our self to pursue pleasure, we become more and more desensitized to pleasure and pain.

Ephesians 4:17 This I say therefore, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

The Fatal End
When we reject God’s plan for happiness and pursue happiness through addictive behaviors, we end up callous and abandon our self to a frantic search for happiness through pleasure. We end up enslaved to a progressive addiction producing less and less satisfaction, still in pain and caught in a trap. Additionally, some will also eventually lose their health because overuse of alcohol or drugs kills the body. If our addiction is to gambling, we lose all of our money, then our family, our jobs and maybe everything we love. The end of an addiction is a bad place where losing everything is inevitable.

The Better Way
Many people fall prey to addictive behaviors but God has a better way to live. He offers the pleasure of His presence through the Holy Spirit, which provides more pleasure and satisfaction than anything in this life. When we trust in Christ for salvation, God gives us eternal life as a present possession the moment we believe. Following our salvation, He offers us a life of victory over all of the difficulties of life. Using His grace to faithfully endure hardship in every stage of life brings great fulfillment in this life and reward in the next. God’s plan offers the human race a far better life than a life dominated by addictions. His way builds us into strong, loving, giving people who can gracefully endure everything life brings all the way to the end. His way involves an addiction, but an addiction to God who is the only one worthy of our total dependence and worship.

Ephesians 1:3-7 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace,

Before God created the world, He saw each of us and created our blessings for time and eternity. He decided to send His son Jesus to pay for our sins and chose us to be saved in Christ. Before time he decided to adopt us into His family and lavish His grace on us so that when all is said and done, His love and grace will be glorified and He will be praised forever. We have a chance to be a part of this great plan and that is a far better opportunity than being dominated by an addiction to hide from our pain.

Old Man – New Man: Lesson 2

The Old Man belief/behavior system opens our understanding of the difficulties of the Christian life after salvation and why we still consistently operate independently from God. The beliefs that each of us programmed into our OM were built when we were separated from God and simply seeking to find our way in life. All of us were simply looking for a way to have others love and care for us and to feel good about ourselves. We were seeking to meet the needs God designed us to have, yet without Him to meet them or even guide us about how to go about meeting them. The OM is the system that each of us constructed to make sense of our human experience and to find happiness in the harsh environment of the devil’s world, w/out God to help us. You might recall, before God was a daily presence in your life, you had another system you used to make life work for you, the OM. As we take off the OM within us, we are able to choose the NM in Christ so that the mind of Christ becomes the motivation and operating system we use to relate to life in the devil’s world.

Introduction

Important Questions & Considerations
1. If the Old man has been crucified with Christ (Rom 6:6) why do we still struggle with OM beliefs, selfish motives & have difficulty with relationships?
2. If the old has passed away and we are a new creation in Christ (2Cor 5:17) – why does the old way still have so much power in the lives of so many believers?
3. If the love of God has been totally poured out (perfect tense) into the heart of a believer (Rom 5:5), then why do so few truly experience His love and why do so many still feel unloved and even unlovable?
4. If the power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us (Eph 1:19-20), why are we so weak, dominated by worldliness, materialism, anger and fear?

Christian Delimma
After salvation, spiritually growing believers become aware of a major inconsistency in their lives. Believers who do not grow remain oblivious to almost every spiritual issue except overt sinning. We read the promises about the abundant life and the admonitions to live the obedient life but we soon realize that we don’t have the capacity to produce it. We want to live the life the bible describes and we try our best to do so, but we consistently come up short. This “hypocrisy” might be the primary impression the unbeliever has about the church. Our inability to produce Christ like character in spite of our best efforts also creates an inner conflict in the soul. Most of us think we should be more spiritually inspired, be loving deeper, be feeling less anger or fear and we believe that everyone else is a more successful Christian. This is the inner experience of every growing Christian and this situation deserves an explanation.

Different denominations seek to explain the discrepancy between how we “ought” to live and how we actually do live with different biblical interpretations:

Charismatics – 2nd blessing that empowers the believer to be like Christ
Legalists – try harder: obedience, bible reading, prayer, church attendance & involvement
Lordship – decide to make Christ Lord of your life
Doctrinal – more knowledge of the truth, more information – Gnosticism

The questions and considerations above must be addressed and answered for us to understand what God really expects of us after we are saved. The Doctrine of OM-NM explains why we know how to live, have been given the power to live and yet fail to live the Christ centered life. This doctrine explains why we are still enslaved to our sin patterns after salvation and offers us a means of destroying the body of sin that we no longer live as slaves to sin (Rom 6:6).

Rom 6:6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin;
Positional – API – OM crucified with Christ – simple past event
Practical – purpose clause – hina – purpose of crucifying OM with Christ
APSubj – future potential – potential point in the future – OM can be done away with
PAInf – Infinitive shows results – that we are no longer slaves of sin
· OM being crucified occurred at salvation as part of our union with Christ
· Doing away with beliefs/behaviors of OM has not fully occurred yet – potential
· Most believers & perhaps all to a degree still struggle with slavery to a sin patterns
The means of developing the capacity for the abundant life is connected with doing away with the body of sin so that we are no longer enslaved to sin. As OM is taken off (Eph 4:22), the NM can come online so we can use it to operate

This rest of this study will discuss the following concepts:
a) The distinction between the sin nature and the OM belief/behavior system
b) What is the OM BB system & what are some of its characteristics?
c) Why did the whole human race build this system & how did we build it?

A. Distinction between the sin nature & the Old Man belief/behavior system
What is the sin nature and what is the Old Man?

Sin Nature – phusis – natural bent, tendencies – that which one naturally does;
Rom 11:24 – wild by nature; Eph 2:3 – by nature, children of wrath; 2Pet 1:4 partake of the divine nature through the promises of God – NM has divine nature

We are not told the exact characteristics of A/E’s created nature. The following is my view of their original nature and what happened to it when they sinned.
a. Man was created with a human nature that naturally wanted to grow in knowledge, intimate love and devoted service to God.
b. Eve did not tempt herself to sin; her temptation came from outside of her
c. Sin corrupted their nature to naturally love and serve self, independent of God.
d. Sin nature causes us to put self first: self interest, self love, serving self
e. Sin nature corrupts the development of our belief system so that we believe that our needs are primary over God’s or anyone else.
f. Sin nature is not the immediate source of temptation or sin; it is a nature to serve the needs/desires of self that corrupts our ideas making sin a reasonable course.
g. The significant impact of the sin nature is its corrupting influence on our beliefs and relational strategies.

Old Man – the belief and behavior system that every human develops under the influence of the sin nature causing us to view the meeting of our own needs as primary.
a. The SN is inherited – the OM is built and developed
b. The SN is a genetic corruption – OM is a thought and idea system
c. The SN is biological – the OM is both biological and psychological
d. The SN is involuntary – The OM is involuntary but chosen by volition
e. The SN came from Adam – the OM comes from each of us
f. Adam is responsible for SN – OM is not our fault but our responsibility

B. What is the Old Man?

Man’s status and situation at birth based on Adam’s sin.
1. Man is born empty within, needing to be filled – needs Jn 7:37-39
2. Man is born separated from God, who alone is essential for +H – Jn 7:39
3. Man is born with a sin nature that enslaves him to sin – Rom 6:6
4. Man is born into the devil’s world which is designed to deceive – Eph 2:1-3
5. Man is born into a family of sinners who will can’t meet his needs
6. Man is born with no knowledge and has to figure it out for himself.
7. Man is born spiritually blind and unable to understand spiritual things 2Cor 4:3-4
8. Man develops a corrupted belief system aligned with worldly values Rom 12:2
9. Man seeks to meet his needs using his corrupted system- failure & pain Phil 3:1-4
10. Man’s failure and pain causes him to implement defense systems – Col 3:21
11. When man comes to Christ, his psychological state is corrupted and hopeless.

Old Man – Rom 6:6; Eph 4:22; Col 3:9 – the ideas, concepts, principles built as a system into the heart of the unbeliever that determine his views, attitudes, feelings, relational strategies and behaviors.
a. The OM is a belief system, a way of thinking about self, God, others & life.
b. OM is mankind’s self devised system for meeting his needs without God, w/out truth, in the devil’s world.
c. OM is the sum of the conclusions we reach about life on our own, w/out God.
d. The OM is built from the conclusions we reach from personal life experience.
e. Personal conclusions that are believed become part of our belief system.
f. W/out God, we are on our own to figure out how to find a little happiness and protect ourselves from the harsh realities of the devil’s world.
g. Sp death & blindness render us incapable of understanding truth from a spiritual perspective – only divine establishment principles
h. OM is a human system built on human viewpoint, based on human ability from personality & intelligence and operates independently of God.
i. OM continues to be built until we stop being influenced by anyone but God.
j. OM is not removed at salvation, but brought into the Christian life and remains our core operating system until its ideas are rejected, one at a time and replaced with NM ideas.

d. Characteristics of OM

a) OM operates on 2 primary directives – pursue pleasure and prevent pain
Pursue Pleasure – false belief that gratification of desires through pleasure = +H
Eph 4:22 – OM is corrupted by deceitful desires – false belief that gratification = +H
2Pet 1:4 – divine nature (NM) enables us to escape the corruption in the world by desire
· Pleasure, gratification, sense of fulfillment, success, victory, completion
· Gratification of sinful pleasure ß à Human good through success
Prevent Pain – false belief that pain is to be avoided at all costs through whatever means are practical or available
· Soul pain from primary love relationships – parents, peers, mates, children – use of psychological defense mechanisms – denial, repression, projection, addiction
· Physical pain from injury, disease, abuse – medicines

b) Core motivation in both OM & NM is desire – driven by desire
Eph 4:22; 2Pet 1:4 – OM is driven by desire, deceived & corrupted by desire
Gal 5:16-17 – conflict of desires between flesh and Holy Spirit
· Desire is the expression of normal need – love, sex, approval, acceptance, success
OM – Desire flesh deceives – gratification = +H à strategies for fulfillment
NM – Desire of Spirit – pleasure of God’s presence; desire for word, spiritual experience

OM – false strategies à failure à disappointment/pain à anger, fighting Jam 4:1-3
· Anger – frustrated desire à fight, manipulate others to change them
· Fear – not getting desire or losing what we have – fear of loss
NM – Godly strategies à supernatural peace, content, love à healthy relationships
· Peace – sufficiency in Christ; confidence in the future; never leave or forsake

c) OM is focused on earthly, worldly, temporal goals and possessions
OM ideas built w/out God and so are focused on gratification in this life
NM ideas built on Phase 3 eternity with God – frees us from details of life

d) OM measures success or failure by comparing self to others.
2Cor 10:12 – commending one another based on self-comparisons
· I am better than others – I know more, do more, etc
· Paul – Phil 3:4 – more reason for confidence in the flesh – better than others
NM – compares self to Christ & views self in Christ apart from human accomplishments

C. Why & How We Built OM Belief & Behavior System

a. All mankind is born separated from God because of Adam’s sin Rom 5:12.
b. All mankind is designed with needs we are compelled to have met.
c. Our deepest needs can only be met by God Jn 7:37-39.
d. Separation/God leaves us with the only option available – look to people
e. OM BB system is built around the core idea that man can meet man’s needs.
f. Man fulfilling man creates the illusion of independence from God
g. We are also born knowing nothing, needing to build a system of ideas that will enable us to meet our needs and make our way in the devil’s world.
h. We build our ideas one at a time, based on our own conclusions out of our human experiences, relationships and environment.
i. We build our ideas from the personal conclusions we reach based on experience.
j. Any conclusion that we believe and use to operate becomes part of the system.
k. The OM belief and behavior system is built by faith – by believing concepts
l. Any idea that is believed and integrated into the system works unconsciously, under the level of awareness, influencing every other idea in the system.
m. We build our ideas about relationships using concepts of conditional love/regard
Love to be loved; give to get back; evaluate self worth from what others think of us; base worth on human characteristics – looks, personality, ability
n. We build our ideas w/out God’s presence to fulfill our souls or His guidance from truth to steer us into right thinking.
o. The OM system is man’s attempt to solve his own problem of being born alone in the devil’s world, without God.

The system we build is need driven, man centered, self advised and uses conditional relating to determine self worth. It is built independent of God and pleases Him in now way and not at all. It must be done away with and replaced with the ideas of the NM in Christ as taught in the NT scriptures.

So far in the TW, we have discussed God’s design of the human soul. What we are doing is preparing ourselves by understand how we built wrong ideas that cause us to be disoriented to God and His plan. Sections 2 and 3 explain the divine design of the human system so that we can see our minds at work and see how we build ideas out of experience. In the next section we will dig into the soul problems that came from the fall of man. For now, hang with me as we develop the mechanics of how we think. When we get to the solution phase of the discussion, the design and processing information will be critical as we explain how God changes our hearts to be like Christ.

This third section of the TW is concerned with the way God designed our souls to be influenced by our experience and process information. We bond with our loved ones and allow them to influence our hearts as we grow through the natural stages of human development. These stages from birth to death bring new challenges and call upon us to develop new ideas and skills. These stages are God’s design that inspires us to grow. It is out of our trust relationships as we experience different stages of life that we build our belief system. It is our belief system that determines everything about our inner and overt behavior. Before we enter the discussion of belief systems, we have to develop 2 important ideas. First we must understand memory which is the way we store our ideas and in the next article we will study egocentricity which is the total self centeredness that causes us to see ourselves as the center of the universe. First, we need to talk  about memory so that we can watch ourselves recall ideas as we react to new life events.

MEMORY – INFORMATION STORAGE

In this article we will discuss how memories are stored categorically, then that they are stored as images and words and finally we will look at an example of conflict ressolution using old man beliefs.

CATEGORICAL STORAGE

The mind and heart are designed to store information using categories like an office filing system. Like any organized filing system, the mind breaks different objects and experiences into categories. In fact, our minds categorize every aspect of our life experiences. We determine whether an object is soft/hard, new/old, mine/yours, good/bad, etc. We categorize events as similar/different, meaningful/meaningless, pleasant/miserable, etc. Everyone and everything in our lives is evaluated according to some category and the information we generate about each of them is stored that way in memory. When any of these persons or objects are brought to our attention, memory recalls them along with their characteristics and descriptions. An old friend is brought up under the category of a fun person, helpful person, meaningful person, etc. An old experience is brought up under the headings of difficult time, good time, learning experience, etc. Everything that goes into memory is placed into a file with a heading or a category. Some people, things go into several categories such as difficult time but also a learning experience. This is important to know because the transformation process requires that we look into our memory to find wrong ideas. One of the first places we look is in the file called painful experiences. Another application is for those in leadership roles such as teachers, husbands and parents. The conclusion is that information is best learned and remembered if it is communicated in some organized and categorical manner.

VISUAL & VERBAL PROCESSING

Faculties to See & Say
The human mind was created with faculties. As the body has organs that process food and metabolizes it into nutrition for body functions, so also the soul has organs that metabolize information for mental functioning. For example, Paul in Eph 1:18 talks about the “eyes of your heart” referring to our perceptive faculties. These metaphorical eyes are able to “see” memories and visualize ideas. God designed the soul with both visual faculties and verbal faculties. We see with our minds and we also process words with our minds. A common phrase used in the OT is “he said in his heart”, describing thoughts being processed by inner dialogue. In short, we talk to ourselves and say our thoughts to ourselves. All of our thoughts are processed both visually and verbally using images and words.

Mental Images

The mind creates and stores images from our life that are both real and representative. We can easily call up images of people, places and events from our past. We can retrieve an image of a person we once knew or a home in which we lived. In memory we also create images that are not totally accurate but represent real events and experiences. The mind creates representative images that envision the invisible and to mentally see principles and intangibles. Like Moses in Heb 11:27, we all create an image that represent the Lord who we have never seen.

Inner Dialogue

The mind also uses words and phrases to think and access memory. This process is called inner dialogue or self talk. When we plan, think or remember we talk to ourselves using words and phrases stored in our vocabulary. Inner dialogue is often used in conjunction with images where we talk within about what we see. From memory we call up phrases from our childhood and find ourselves using them like our parents from whom we first heard them.  An understanding of these methods of mental processing is essential for those who would learn to manage their own souls. We categorically store ideas in our belief system using images and phrases. As we grow through the stages of human development, we store our conclusions as images and phrases.

Old Man Visual & Verbal

Before we are saved, the conclusions and ideas we formed and stored were self serving and false. It is these false, self-centered ideas that build the old man belief and behavior system. All old man beliefs are built around the premises that my needs must be met, that I must find a way to meet them myself and that I can meet my needs through people. This corrupted system is responsible for our ongoing difficulty in fully doing God’s will. Its emphasis on serving self causes frustration and conflict in all of our relationships. Its false ideas cause us to adopt inept methods of relating that harm our loved ones rather than edify them.

Recognizing Old Man Images & Dialogue

To be transformed to be like Christ requires that we stop believing in and using these false ideas so that we can replace them with the mind of Christ. To take off the old man (Eph 4:22), we first must be able to recognize its ideas as they are called up from memory and used. Catching false ideas in the moment, as we start to use them is the only way to break the habit of using them.

Old Man & Self Deception

Recognizing the old man is not easy. Our false ideas don’t feel false, they feel right because we believe them. The ideas would never have become part of our “belief system” had we not believed them. Many old man ideas have been “our” ideas for many years and they feel natural and justified. Even our most corrupt, self-serving and destructive beliefs feel necessary for us to meet our needs and defend ourselves against the ferocity of the devil’s world. Jeremiah saw this and said it this way:

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

The old man is so self-deceptive that it operates within us without our knowledge. How can we come to know it so that we can lay it aside? We must look for its fruit in our lives and especially in our relationships. When was the last time you were frustrated and angry at someone you love? Can you recall what you were thinking the moment before you became angry? Can you recall the situation and then the image you saw in your mind and the words you said to yourself? Let’ describe how the process works.

Relationship Conflict – Anger & Manipulation

Each of us has stored images in our belief system that are our picture of how we think relationships are supposed to work. We all have an image for marriage, for children, for friendship, for success and for every aspect of life. When the situation in question occurred, you called up from memory the image that governs your idea of that relationship. In the situation, the person said something and/or did something that violated your image. Your mate said something that you interpreted as unloving or disrespectful because it didn’t match your image of how a mate is supposed to treat you. When your image was violated, you told yourself that the proper response was to feel hurt and angry. Christ would have interpreted the behavior as a person needing love, but we interpreted it as a threat to our needs. We tell ourselves that if we confront the person about their behavior and allow them to see how much it had hurt us, they would realize that they were wrong, care about our pain and change their behavior. Sound familiar?

Threat to our Needs

We programmed an idea as an image and the object of our need violated the image, threatening our chances of meeting our need. We believe that if the person cares, they will want to meet our need. We communicate their failure to feed our desire by confronting them with anger, thinking that seeing our hurt will motivate them to change their future behavior toward us. Question, how is this working for you? How is your old man relationship strategy working for you. No need to answer, trust me, I know.

Both have an OM Image

Both you and the other person have a stored OM image of how the relationship is supposed to work. Both of you consistently violate each other’s OM idea of what behaviors will lead to meeting your own selfish needs. When the violation occurs, OM inner dialogue tells you that manipulating the other with anger and pressure is the best or only way to move the other toward you. You create another image of anger and manipulation causing the other to suddenly realize their selfishness and deciding to make a change. Or you “imagine” withdrawing from the person to protect yourself from anger and to punish them for hurting you. Regardless of your preference of OM approach, you tell yourself it will work but it never does because it is all a lie.

Telling ourself Lies

In the scenario above, we saw and said a series of lies. We told the lie that your needs must be met, a lie that your mate can meet them, a lie that your image really is how relationships should work, a lie that anger, manipulation or withdrawal can induce them to love you and change. To be like Christ and love like Christ, we must stop believing the lies and believe the truth instead.  These lies are common to all OM belief systems. These lies are processed out of memory and into conscious use by visual images and verbal dialogue. When the situation occurs, the image immediately comes into the mind and we see it with the eyes of the heart. When we see the image, we begin to tell the lies within. We talk ourselves into taking the action the image requires.

Taking off Old Man – Putting on New Man

Recognizing the OM is accomplished, first by observing the results of using OM ideas. We hurt the ones we love instead of helping them. Any behavior that isn’t aligned with edification in Christ is coming out of OM beliefs. Second, we have to be alert for conflict situations and pay attention to the images and dialogue that comes into our minds when we feel angry. We work to see the images and hear the dialogue as they occur. Achieving this kind of awareness of self requires practice that will quickly bear fruit. Third, when you catch yourself making OM images and dialogue, you can interrupt the process by choosing to stop believing them. The only reason you followed OM logic was that you believed it was true, right or effective. When you catch yourself seeing/saying OM, you can then call it what it is, a lie that you refuse to believe any longer. Fourth, repeat the process again and again until the habit is broken. Finally, look to the Spirit to renew your beliefs by learning, believing and using the biblical principles that apply to the situation again and again until you build a new habit.

Summary

The OM builds and stores it ideas with images and dialogue. We see and say these ideas to sinfully relate to others. Watching for them, catching yourself in the act of using them and rejecting them by faith frees you from these particular OM ideas. Only then can we replace these false strategies with the truth from God’s word.

Father, I pray that you will motivate us to evaluate the true condition of our relationships. I ask you to show us who we are hurting and give us the courage to see ourselves in truth. Give us the love to want to change and the wisdom to know how to change. I thank you for giving the wisdom to see these concepts and for enabling me to communicate them. Please help those who hear or read these ideas with the ability to relate them to their lives so that we might truly change and become the light to the world.

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