Reprograming Our Tapes

No matter how perfect our parents were, we all have tapes running in our heads that were programmed into us before we knew how to verbalize or even understand the words.  Those tapes, because they are not "rational," sabotage us all the time -- telling us we didn't do it right, or we're not good enough, or that God will punish us.  If we try to talk ourselves into the opposite beliefs, the tapes keep running anyway, because they don't believe our rational explanations; they exist at a sub-conscious level. 

Sometimes our guilt programs us; we failed in some area, and so we are now convinced that we will fail again.  We constantly hear the voices in our heads, telling us what the tapes are saying about us.  And there's no arguing with them.  They almost seem to be a part of our very souls.

But there is a way to "re-program" our tapes.  The most important information for our souls is not what our parents said in their imperfect states, but what God says about us.  If we don't know what God thinks or says about us, we can find it in the Bible, the "library" of God's own revelation, so that we would not have to guess or make up what He thinks.  If a person never reveals to us his innermost thoughts, we are always in the dark about how they feel.  But when they tell us what they are thinking, we feel safe.

After Moses died, Joshua became the leader of Israel, and God said to him:  As I was with Moses, so I am with you; I will never leave you or forsake you.  Now Joshua had seen how God was with Moses; he had walked with Moses a long time.  When God said to him, "As I was with Moses....," Joshua had a living picture, a memory, a visual, an inner knowledge, or experience to go by.  And God gave him further instructions:

Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth;

meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful in everything written in it.

Then you will be prosperous and successful.

The first Psalm reiterates these words:

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the Law of the Lord,

and on his law, he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted near steams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever he does prospers.

The Hebrew word we translate into English as "meditates" actually means "mutters," but that word in English has the overtones of insanity, so we can't really translate it accurately.  But here's the key:  We have all heard the quotation "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God."  For years, Charles Capps has been preaching that we have to hear ourselves "muttering," repeating what God says, as seeds sown in our spirits that will eventually bear fruit.  That is, when we begin to "mutter" what God says about us instead of what we or our parents have said about us, we in a sense re-program and  re-create ourselves. 

We believe what we hear before we are rational, the seeds that are sown into us as infants and children.  And those seeds have bourne much fruit in our lives, even if we have been trying to reject them.  What I know about gardening is this:  the weeds keep growing back again, no matter how many times we pull them out ---- unless we plant something else in their place, something stronger than the weeds.

What our spirits desperately need is God's word, God's seed, that will bear much fruit, even to 100 fold, in our spirits.  God told Joshua to be strong and courageous.  Those characteristics come only from being convinced that God is with us as He was with Moses, and that we cannot fail, even though we are still our weak and not-strong selves. 

No one was weaker than Mother Teresa, and she knew it.  But she also knew that God was with her as He was with Moses.  When we become convinced of that truth at the deepest levels of our being, we are at last free to walk forward unafraid.  We don't know where we are going, but we know the One who is with us.  I would challenge anyone to take one Scripture that he/she would like to believe and to repeat it, mutter it, until it become a reality, a truth to him/her.  God told the Israelites to write His commands on their doorposts, to bind them to their foreheads and wrists, to repeat them to their children.  He knew what He was about.  It take more than hearing something one time for us to believe it; some say the key to good teaching is repetition, repetition, repetition. 

I have a bracelet with Ps. 46:1 inscribed on it; I wear it everytime I leave the house, and I read it often while I am out:  God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress.  The morning I found out there was a mass on my right lung, on the way to the doctor's office, I heard Charles Stanley teach for half an hour on how to deal with a crisis, from Ps. 57:1:  I will take refuge under the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.  As I left the doctor's office, I knew that God had sent His word to me even before I knew I would need it, so I repeated it to myself over and over until it "took" in my spirit. 

We need to not just read, but hear, the Word that God says to us.  And we need to hear it not with our ears, but with our spirits.  So we need to say it until we finally hear and believe it at the deepest levels of our being.