Section 01 - Dealing With the Hurts of the Past

Chapter 01 - When Hurts Can Occur

Philippians 3:13 and 14 says this.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have arrived by fully embracing this. But I have only one goal; forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 
I press towards the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Introduction

We enter a world that is full of pain and difficulty. The reason for this is that we live in a world that is fallen and full of sinners.

Time seems to heal some of the experiences we have, but it doesn’t really do it does it? It just covers it over.

All of us are a bit like a lake or a stagnant river that has settled. Have you ever gone to the side of a still lake? You can see right through the beautiful water to the bottom.

You take a stick and you stir the mud up from the bottom. What happens when you do that? There is a whole lot of muck lying there that begins to come up into the water. Then the water is not so clear and clean anymore.

All of us are kind of like that lake. So many things have happened in our lives. Eventually, it all settles and time covers it over, but it is still there. All it takes now is for somebody to throw a stone, stir with a stick, or scratch in the right place, and out it comes.

It has been there all along. It has never left but it is still there. So the purpose of this seminar is firstly to stir it up, then to help you to get rid of it once and for all.

So I am hoping that as I share with you here you are going to get stirred up. I’m hoping that a lot of the junk that has been lying there for a long time is going to manifest.

I am not going to be aggressive and I am not going to be full of condemnation because I am not legalistic. I am a grace preacher. But the Holy Spirit has ways and means of putting His finger right there.

I am going to be digging into your memories. That is where all the stuff is hidden; way down there in what psychologists call the subconscious mind. We are going to make it conscious again. We will stir it up and bring it back into your memory.

A Series of Threes

This teaching is a series of threes. There are three roots to the flesh. You can read a list of works of the flesh in Galatians 5. They can however all be traced down to three main roots, which are at the base of all spiritual problems and all sinful behavior in our lives.

The three roots are bitterness, sexual immorality, and temporal values. This includes things like fortune and fame.

In case you don’t believe me, go and watch any movie out there and you will see hatred, killing, and strife. There will be sex because nothing sells without sex these days, and money is going to be involved.

There will also be people who want to climb on top of other people, push them down and make a name for themselves. That is what the world consists of because the world is living in the flesh. So don’t just sit there so smugly and say,

“Well, I’m a Christian and don’t do those things.”

The flesh is still there. It may have been hidden away, but it is still there. So I am going to find those roots and am going to yank them hard. You are going to say, “Ouch!” and I will yank harder, so you can realize that the root is still there.

You might say to me,

“I’m not bitter. I just don’t like the guy.”

The Bible calls it bitterness and we are going to call it what it is. We are going to deal with that in some detail in this section and will look at all the sources of these things.

We are also going to use three tools to do this. We are going to use the Word, the Spirit, and the church.

Three Phases Where Hurts Can Occur

Let’s look now at the threes of our past. Not all of our past experiences were bad. Some good things happened there. Also, not all bad experiences we had actually left a scar or a mark, as bad as what they were.

However, some of them did leave a mark. And for those scars that are created as a result of past experiences in our lives, guess how many different phases they take place in. Once again there are three phases in our lives when these things occur. After that, they don’t occur.

It is very important that you understand this clearly. Because if you are going to minister to somebody or even deal with some of your own conflicts from the past, don’t go looking at last year or the last 10 years, at your first marriage or your last job.

There are only three stages where they can occur. The first one is pre-birth, while you are still in your mother’s womb. The second one is childhood, and the third one is puberty and adolescence when you go through the teen years.

Why is it that these particular phases of our lives cause us the most problems, and are the source of virtually every psychological and even spiritual problem that we experience in our lives?

The reason for this is that unlike animals we are born with a clean slate. You don’t pop out of your mother’s womb into this world with full knowledge. People sometimes say things like,

“He was born to be a genius.”

No, he was born the same way all of us were; ignorant and knowing nothing. He was born with a clean slate.

Animals are born with something they call instinct. You don’t have to teach an animal to do certain things. Your female dog has puppies and she just knows what to do with them.

But when you as a woman have a baby one day, someone is going to have to help you and say,

“This is what is going to happen. This is what you can expect, and this is how you must handle it.”

If you have a mom who was pretty clued up she may be able to help you. Or she may terrify you and say,

“It’s going to be hell!”

Then you don’t look forward to the experience out of the fear.

Learning New Experiences

While we are going through those phases of life, we are going through a transition or a change in our life circumstances. That transition brings us into a new era of living that we have never faced before.

You have to learn how to cope with life in those phases. You see when you throw something at a baby who is just lying there, it will just lie there and get hit. It doesn’t put its hand up to protect itself.

That is a learned experience. You have to experience somebody throwing something at you that hurts you. Then you say,

“Next time I’m not going to allow that to happen. I’m going to stop it.”

When you do that you add a learning experience to your knowledge.

Problems During Pre-Birth

Each era has its own learning experience. You might say,

“What can a baby learn in the womb?”

The baby feels every emotion of the mother that is going on in the womb. It can feel that it is not wanted. Perhaps it is the wrong sex, and it can feel that the mother is thinking,

“You are a nuisance. I wish you hadn’t come along.”

Many people go through life suffering trauma that began in the womb. It is so far back you can’t even remember it, but you have hangups that you can’t explain.

Psychologists can’t do much about that. But we have one who can do something, and you are going to learn how He does it in this teaching.

Experiences in Life Program You

As a child, you begin to learn to cope with life and to experience things. All a child knows to do is to cry until it gets fed, then it feels better. The child knows,

“If I cry hard enough, they are going to put something in my mouth that tastes good.”

We have learned a little pattern here. I want that good stuff, so I start screaming. Sooner or later someone is going to come and shove something in my mouth and I will get what I want.

Some adults still throw tantrums to get what they want. Because you see a habit pattern was formed. The reason for this is that we as human beings need to have a way of coping with circumstances in life.

I am a computer programmer. I have been into computers for many years, so I kind of think in computer terms. So if I try and explain it in computer terms, don’t worry about it.

Everyone knows, however, that if I pick up my phone and click that icon, something is going to happen. A program or an app is going to run on my device.

Well somebody had to program that app. They had to put it there so that you and I can put our finger on that icon and make it happen.

Do you realize that the experiences in your life have started to program you? Sooner or later an icon will appear there. Then some idiot is going to press the button at the wrong time.

Do you know what is going to happen? The program is going to run, and you are going to say,

“Oh no, I don’t want to run this program.”

But it is too late; the bad program has run.

There was a time in my life when I struggled with bad language. It was just a bad habit. But do you know what my biggest fear was? To stand up in front of a group of people and let a bad word come out.

Could you imagine it? But you know if somebody gave me a sudden smack without me thinking, the chances are a lot of those words would come out. Why? Because I created a little habit pattern.

How We Create Templates

I have given a computerized term to this and I call it a template. A template is a little program that has been built into you as the result of the experiences of life.

All of us have had different life experiences, and we have each handled those experiences in different ways. As we learned to handle those life experiences, we created a little app that we shoved into our memory, and it is waiting there for us to use.

Is that a bad thing? No, it’s actually a very good thing. Because it can help you the next time you are suddenly faced with a situation.

The first time something happened, you probably got hurt and you had to think it through. But now you learn through that experience, and the next time it happens you almost instantly know what to do.

Psychologists have actually proved what happens. If you face a sudden emergency situation, there is a split second in which your mind digs down deep within to find an answer. Then it comes back with the answer and you respond.

It seems almost instant to us, but it takes a split second. And in that split second you are actually looking for a template. You are saying,

“I’m sure this happened to me once before. How did I handle it then? Oh yes, that’s what I did.”

After you have used that template a few times, you actually get to it a lot quicker. The next time that button gets pressed the app runs very fast.

Again is that bad? No, actually we have some very good templates that protect us from harm in life.

Early Sinful Templates

The trouble is we didn’t grow up in the Lord. We grew up as unrighteous sinners, and our habit patterns were molded by a sinful nature. So the chances are good that your templates were very selfish and sinful.

You learned some of those templates through childhood, and eventually, you could cope with the stresses of childhood. You knew how to handle all circumstances. By the time you reached 10 or 11, you had pretty much experienced most of what life has to offer.

So you have built up your little cards, like the old card stock box. Or in computer terms, everything is stored away in your memory. You have all these templates waiting, and whatever happens to you in childhood you know how to deal with.

Every now and then something new may happen. But eventually, pretty much all that can happen in life has happened to you.

Transitioning to Puberty

Then suddenly something weird starts to happen. Hormones kick in. Boobs start to grow, and if you are a guy hair starts to grow on your face.

Suddenly you are changing. You are not a child anymore, but you are not an adult yet either. You are in that transition that we call puberty or adolescence.

A whole new scenario begins to show itself. And now circumstances in life face you that you never faced before. That ugly red-headed, freckled woman suddenly becomes beautiful. And for some strange reason, it starts to have an effect on you as a man.

That guy used to pull your hair in class. But now he is starting to get broad shoulders and muscles and he is a pretty handsome looking guy. The templates that you had for childhood don’t work on him now, so you have to change them.

Adolescence brings a whole new set of life experiences. And as you proceed through it towards adulthood, you will eventually experience most things that you are going to later have to face as an adult. So that is the third phase in the formation of templates.

You now have a full set of these things that can help you to cope with any situation in life. A lot of it is very good because you are not ignorant anymore. You are now experienced.

Do you know that expression that says once bitten, twice shy? You learned that through experience, and a lot of that is very good.

Experiencing Triggers

But here is the problem. You cannot hide that button or icon away. Sometimes it takes a person to press it. But actually, there is a more subtle way for that little program to begin to run.

We call this a trigger. You have a template, and your template gets triggered and off it runs.

It happens like this. When you experience something in life, all of your memories of that experience don’t only include what happened. They also include what you were feeling at the time.

You might have been feeling depressed, discouraged, or angry. Or maybe you even had a positive emotion. Whatever your emotion was, it gets locked in your memory with what actually happened.

You try now and go back to that memory if it was a bad one, and I challenge you to try and think of it without thinking of something negative. Somebody hurt you or someone did something that was painful for you.

Sometimes we like to shut those memories out. But when we go back to them, all of that emotion comes out again. You might say,

“That’s fine, I just won’t go and visit that memory again.”

Yes, but life is very subtle. Because you see a template gets triggered a whole lot more easily than that. All you need is a similar set of circumstances right now to what existed back there.

Many different things can cause a trigger. It can be the time of day or the weather. It can be the month of the year. Maybe it is Christmas time so a season can cause a trigger.

Maybe there are certain people in the picture. And this picture you are standing in now is pretty close to almost a duplicate of something that happened back there.

You were five years old when you had that event back there. Now you are 50 years old, and you are not really thinking about what happened when you were five, are you? But a set of circumstances gets created in your life that exactly mirrors what happened back there.

Do you know what is going to happen? You are going to respond like that five-year-old without even knowing it.

You are going along merrily on your way. You are serving the Lord and having a great time, but suddenly you just start to feel depressed. You might think,

“What is the matter with me? I just feel so depressed I feel like weeping. What has come over me?”

Is there a demon? There could be, but it is not likely. What has happened is you have triggered to an event of the past that made you feel depressed.

Go and examine your life after you have learned this. Next time a sudden emotion hits you that you cannot explain, you might think,

“There is no reason in the world why I should feel this emotion.”

And especially if it is a negative emotion you will wonder,

“Why am I feeling this?”

When this happens, ask the Lord to bring back to your memory an event from the past; one where the circumstances looked almost exactly like what you are experiencing right now.

Psychologists Do Not Know Triggers

I learned this from experience when the Lord first showed it to me. You will not learn it by studying psychology, because psychologists don’t know it.

The closest they have come is when some unknown psychologist who never became famous gave it a term. He called it an engram. He said it was basically like a little programmed response. But it is far more than that.

Scientology is totally demonic. But the guy who formed Scientology, Ron Hubbard, decided to pull on the engrams. He teaches in psychology that they will help you get rid of your engrams. So he says he will help you get rid of your templates.

But you see you can’t get rid of your templates because they are locked into your memory. You can’t change the memory. You can’t go back and pretend it didn’t happen because it did.

However, we as believers have a solution. We have a supernatural God who can go in and transform our templates. That is why this teaching is about transformation.

We are going to show you how to transform your templates. And God is going to change them so that when that template is triggered, the same emotional feelings will no longer be there and they won’t bother you anymore.

Positive Templates

There are also positive triggers and positive templates. Perhaps you once went on a holiday to the sea and it was such a wonderful holiday.

You might say, “Everything was great. There was enough finance and everybody was in love with each other. Oh, what a happy memory.”

I’ll guarantee the next holiday you go on, you want to try and repeat it. So you are going to go and find a beach, perhaps just like that beach that you visited so long ago so that you can get back the same feelings that you had while you were there.

We do this all the time. That’s why we have our favorite little habits, our favorite foods, and all sorts of things because they make us feel good. They pull good templates in us.

Unfortunately, the good template box is small and the bad template box is huge in comparison, so we have to deal with the bad templates. If we could just live with the good ones, life would be heaven on earth, wouldn’t it?

I want you to understand this, because if you don’t, you are not going to be able to grasp what we are going to show you about inner healing, starting with this section.

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