One morning I tried and tried to twist open the pump top of a new shampoo bottle, but couldn’t do it. I called Clay over to help. When he couldn’t open it either, he looked more closely and discovered transparent shrink-wrap covering the pump. Once he removed the shrink-wrap, opening the pump was a breeze.
Especially in my early years as a Christian, I’d try to understand and apply a scripture, but I’d fail because an invisible shrink-wrap of false beliefs got in my way. These false beliefs killed joy in God’s promises and care. I needed to peel off those false beliefs to get to the Bible’s truths. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit is great at revealing and unpeeling false beliefs.
Over the years, I’ve discovered five ways to peel away false beliefs.
1) Believe Scripture Over Feelings
Although I’d made Jesus Lord of my life and I’d confessed my sins, at first, I didn’t feel forgiven. But my feelings contradicted 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” The belief that my feelings were more reliable than Scripture was a false belief shrink-wrapped around the verse. I needed to place my faith in Scripture, not my feelings. As I did so, my feelings followed my faith.
Bill Bright, the founder of CRU, put it this way:
The belief that my feelings were more reliable than Scripture was a false belief shrink-wrapped around the verse. Click To TweetLet us call the train engine “fact”—the fact of God’s promises found in His Word. The fuel car we will call “faith”—your trust in God and His Word. The caboose we will call “feelings.”
As fuel flows into the engine, the train runs. It would be futile and, of course, ridiculous to attempt to pull the train by the caboose. In the same way you, as a Christian, should not depend upon feelings or emotion [to] live a Spirit-filled life. Rather, God wants you to simply place your faith in his trustworthiness and the promises of His Word.
Feelings are like the caboose—they are important but are designed to follow a life of faith and obedience.
Bill Bright, “Experiencing the Adventure“
2) Meditate on Scripture
Once Clay removed the shrink-wrap from my shampoo bottle and twisted it open, I had to pump it many times to draw the shampoo into the spout so it would flow. Likewise, when we’ve removed a false belief, we may need to repeat the truth we want to take its place many times until it flows freely in our lives.
In Joshua 1:8, God says to meditate on Scripture “day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.” Biblical meditation includes saying the words aloud and thinking about them so we understand and apply them. When I find a verse with a message I need, I underline it in my Bible with brightly colored pens. I read it daily or post a copy of it on my computer screen.
3) Illustrate Scripture
Studies show that people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.[i] That’s a great excuse to use colored pens to draw symbols and sketch stick figures in my Bible’s narrow margins. Sometimes I embroider and cross-stitch favorite verses. Artist Karla Dornacher illustrates verses in a wide-margin Bible and creates cards and wall-hangings.
4) Act Out Scripture
Here’s a fun way to absorb a new truth: Act it out. For instance, when I realized that God forgave all my sin, joy bubbled over in me. But later I doubted whether forgiveness meant acceptance. That doubt stole my joy. One day my then boyfriend Clay asked a group of us to try an exercise: List sins on a sheet of toilet paper, write 1 John 1:9 in red across the list, shred the paper into a toilet, and flush the paper to visualize our sins being washed away. That simple action eradicated my doubts. Thereafter when I confessed sins and doubt appeared, I visualized the flushed water washing them away. It made me smile and thanksgiving replaced doubt.
5) Create a Truth Journal
Most if not all of us grow up believing lies of some sort: “You’re only valuable if…”; “You’ll always be a failure”; “No one will ever believe you”; “You’re nothing but trash”; “You can’t be happy without a spouse.” Yuck. Additionally, crises such as health scares can bombard us with new fears.
Some lies and fears are like shrink-wrap we can’t get a fingernail under to remove. When that happens, I create a truth journal. In a notebook or journal, I list truths, numbering each one. I add comforting scriptures as I find them. I sketch rough pictures that encapsulate ideas.
I don’t write any lies, fears, or doubts because they’ve already had too much play in my mind. I avoid “positive thinking” statements that may not be true.
I read the truth journal first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and any time between that I want more peace. The truths break the shrink-wrap free.
Adapted from Discovering Joy in Philippians
Related Posts
- Fight Fear with Truth (How to Create and Use a Truth Journal to Combat False Beliefs)
[i] John Medina, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School, 2nd ed. (Seattle: Pear Press, 2014), 175.