Modifying the Templates

We saw that our emotions are triggered when a set of circumstances matches an existing template in our inward man. This template was created by the experiences of life. When you first faced this set of circumstances, you assessed the situation and came to a decision, based on what little knowledge you had. Since this probably took place in your early years, you probably came to a wrong conclusion because of our ignorance or lack of experience at that time.

So the event was stored away in the memory, along with all the emotions that it produced in you. Because of the influence of the Law of Sin and Death and the World System in which we live, this emotion is often negative. So you might have locked into the memory, feelings of fear, guilt, anger, frustration, grief and anything that might possibly be related to bad feelings.

Since these events generally take place during the formative years of childhood or adolescence, where the person has no previous knowledge or experience of their current circumstances, it is in those areas of the memory that most of these templates are found.

Now years later, as you face similar circumstances, these cause this template in your memory to surface, along with all the emotion that was locked into them. The only way you can prevent this memory from affecting you is to either modify it or replace it with another similar memory that has different emotional content. This can be done is various ways.

Inner Healing

The first way to accomplish this is by means of a ministry that has come to be known in recent years as "inner healing." This is a work of the Spirit of God, by which a memory is modified to remove the negative emotional content. Modern Psychology has identified that the way to remove the effects of a bad event in one’s life would be to somehow cause the person to relive the event, only this time with a happy ending.

Outside of the science fiction idea of time travel, this cannot be done in the natural. But it can be done by the Spirit of God. You need to allow God to enter the picture of the memory in the form of Jesus Christ. Since He was there all along, it is often possible to "see" the Lord Jesus in your memory. His presence, particularly to a child, is able to quell many of the feelings of fear, guilt and rejection that are locked into childhood memories.

This, combined with a supernatural move of the Holy Spirit through another believer who is operating under the anointing can bring about a change in the inner template. Once this has taken place, then the inner template no longer produces negative emotions, and the person may go through life facing similar circumstances again, but without these emotions being triggered.

Psychiatry has tried to produce this effect naturally by a process called "shock treatment." In this, they cause a high voltage to be applied to a person’s brain, making the memory functions of the brain less efficient. The idea behind this is that if the memories are prevented from surfacing, they cannot cause any damage or produce the triggers that are locked into them.

But this does not change the inward man. True

memory as we saw earlier is not contained in the brain cells, but in the inward man. The original memory is still there locked away in the inward man. By causing damage to the brain, the outward man is unable to communicate effectively with the inward man, and so the trigger does not take place as easily. But it is still there in the inward man.

Replacing Templates

The second way of bringing about a change in the inner template is by replacing it with another similar template. Here we are dealing not so much with the emotional content of a memory, but with behavior or decision making patterns that have become built into the inward man. We all know that ignorance often causes us to make incorrect decisions. A half-truth can lead you to believe a lie.

Since most of your templates were formed at times when you were still ignorant in many areas of life, the chances are that the decisions you make and the things you believe are mostly based on half-truths. You believe things according to your experience and education. So anything you learn in the future is based on what you learned in the past. This is a problem if what you learned in the past was wrong.

Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden to see how this works. Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, having no knowledge of evil, and having only the command of God to go by. God had said that if they ate of the forbidden fruit they would die. Then on a daily basis, God came and spoke with them, instructing them in His ways. Bear in mind that they had no previous experience to go by. They were very much like children, learning things for the first time. All they needed to do was to obey their father’s instructions.

When the serpent came to deceive Eve, he did so by placing into her mind, a half-truth. He told her that the knowledge of good and evil would make her like God, but he did not tell her about the evil it would produce. Once she had been enticed to eat of the fruit, she found that she did not immediately die, as God has said she would. This "new" knowledge made her re-examine what she believed, and brought her to the conclusion that the serpent was right. In fact she was so convinced of this, that she boldly approached Adam and persuaded him to also eat of the fruit.

In many people there exists what is often called the "RC Factor" or Resistance to Change. This is because they have established what they believe and the way they want to live, and refuse to change in any way. In other words, they refuse to change their templates. What happens then, is that the original template becomes like a chain in the inward man. The first event produces a template, which would be the first "link" in the chain.

Then subsequent events in life that are close, but not the same, become allied with the original template, adding a further link to the chain. This process continues, so that any future events or facts which are added to the memory are viewed in the light of existing knowledge and are interpreted in that light. We call these "pre-suppositions" in our thinking patterns.

What we don’t generally realize is that our pre-suppositions are based on our existing templates, and might be based on facts that we came to believe early in our lives, but which were in fact incorrect. Now this incorrect knowledge leads us to incorrect conclusions and the result is incorrect behavior.

Behaviorism

Psychologists have struggled with this idea and the modern day branch of Psychiatry put forward by B.F. Skinner, which has come to be called "behaviorism" has sought to remedy the situation by modifying a person’s behavior patterns. The old story of the rat in the maze originates from this area of study. The rat learns that if he goes certain directions down the maze he will be confronted with an electric shock which cause him pain, but if he goes the "correct" way he will obtain a reward in the form of a piece of cheese.

This is all good and well, but how does one decide which is the "right" way to go. Here is where the ungodly counselor falls short. He has no standard upon which to base his judgment other than his own moral code. And his own moral code was formed by the templates in his own life, which are motivated by the flesh. So he succeeds only in creating another incorrect template. He makes the person simply sin in a different way.

Fortunately as believers we do not have this problem. We have the ultimate standard for living in the "Operators Handbook" for mankind - the Holy Bible. Thus if we are to build new templates, they can only be built upon the Word of God. The Scriptures call this the "renewing of the mind."

Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Ephesians 4:23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

You can safely take the Word of God and use it to create new templates in place of the ones that are causing you to act and react sinfully and come to wrong decisions in your life. But how do we go about this? How can you use the Scriptures to modify the things that have been built into you during your life? The answer in a broad sense, is the same way we can change the things we believe - by unlearning or relearning what we thought we knew.

This takes first of all a conscious decision to change. The will does not have in itself the power to bring about change, but by an act of the will, you can go about doing what is required to bring about change. This is a catch 22 situation. I don’t "feel" like making the effort to change, but unless I change, my feelings will remain the same. So there has to be a positive reason to change or a negative reason to not change.

Behaviorism approaches this by a series of reward/punishment dynamics. Remember the rat? He learns that going the wrong way produces pain, whereas going the right way brings a reward. This gives him all the motivation he needs to change. For man God has offered His own set of rewards and punishments - we considered them earlier under blessings and curses.

But the history of the Israelite nation shows us that this system did not have the desired effect. Men still followed their sinful ways. It takes a much stronger motivation to cause us to walk in God’s ways. Blessings create a motivation of desire. If the desire is strong enough then we make the effort to bring about change. Curses use the motivation of fear. If we fear the consequences enough, then we make the effort to change.

But both of these fail miserably. When our desire to be blessed comes into competition with the desire to enjoy the pleasures of sin, it becomes a matter of which desire is the greatest. When our fear of curses comes into competition with our fear of being rejected by our friends the same thing applies. Rewards and punishments are always relative, and do not present an absolute standard for motivation.

There is only one absolute standard, and this is what Jesus taught as being the key to victorious living. He took the laws of God and summarized them by two simple commandments. "You shall love the Lord with all your being, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." When the Scripture speaks of this love it is referring to a form of love that lies far deeper than the emotions of the soul. It is the love that originates from the spirit and is sacrificial in nature.

Because man could not begin to understand this kind of love, God came down in the form of His Son, Jesus to show it to us. In Romans chapter 5 Paul says,

7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
8 But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

This is a love that will produce in you an emotion far stronger than any desire you can know. It will cast out all fear from you. 1 John 4:18 says,

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love."

But how can I obtain this love, so that it can become my motivation for living according to God’s Word? Romans 5:5 says,

"And hope makes not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us."

We have in the New Testament, what the Old Testament saints did not have. We have the abiding indwelling Holy Spirit. We will be covering in detail in the next study, the role of the Holy Spirit in bringing us to the place of living the way God wants us to live. But let us complete this study by considering how we can go about building new templates.

Building New Templates

This can be approached in two different ways, which we are going to call the Shotgun Approach and the Single Shot Approach.

The Shotgun Approach

This is where you apply the Word to your entire life, and thus cause new templates to be built slowly, and changes to be applied gradually to existing templates. It is carried out by the process of meditation. Meditation is a process by which you cause God’s Word to be fed down into your inward man, until it begins to form new templates within you. I will be giving you specific projects to carry out that will teach you how to use this process. For now let’s see what the Scriptures teach concerning meditation. Psalm 1 gives us a look at the process of replacing old templates with new ones, and it also tells us what results we can expect.

1 Blessed [is] the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight [is] in the law of the LORD; and in his law does he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.

The Psalmist speaks of a person who moves away from the sinful templates built into him through his exposure to the world system, by meditating on God’s Word day and night. Thus we can take the Scriptures and by the process of meditation cause them to "re-program" us in God’s ways. Note that meditation is not study. Studying the Scriptures only causes them to be fed into the memory of the outward man.

For the Word to penetrate the inward man it must be fed in via the mind and the will by the only means available for doing this. What is in the outward man or conscious mind can only be understood by the five senses. So if you want the Word to sink down into the inward man, you must convert it into a form that uses the senses. To most effectively feed the Word inwards, you should be able to see, hear, feel, smell and taste it. This is what the process of meditation involves.

To feed the Word downwards using the will, you must use the means that God has given us - the vehicle of speech. God gave the method to Joshua before he entered the Promised Land as Israel’s new leader. Joshua 1:8 says,

"This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it: for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success."

Joshua was given two means for causing the Word to regulate his life. He was to keep the Word "in his mouth" or speak it continually, and he was to meditate it. The result according to God was that he would be able to do everything that the Word commanded.

The principles that we have mentioned have been discovered a long time ago by man and used often to the advantage of those who have applied them. You have heard the term "brain-washing" by which a person is caused through repetition of instructions and procedures to adopt a specific way of thinking. Some of the world’s success philosophies teach the principle of self-suggestion, using speech as a means for creating a success mentality and modifying one’s behavior. What none of these do however, is use God’s Word as a handbook and standard, and their motivation is self rather than the love of God.

The Single Shot Approach

Finally, let’s take a look at the single shot approach to templates. This involves taking a single template at a time and specifically replacing it with a new one. To do this you have to first of all become aware of your template. If you cannot see its operation in your life ask those around you - they will be able to very easily tell you what is wrong with you from their viewpoint.

Of course this in itself could be a template - your inability to take correction from others. Anything that causes an uncontrollable emotion in you should signal the existence of a template. It is often shown in displays of anger, frustration or impatience. Anything that "gets under your skin" shows the existence of an underlying root. Of course a template might also result in a lack of emotion, rather than an uncontrollable emotion. For example, an inability to show normal feelings might be the result of an inner pattern.

Whatever the manifestation of your template, you must identify it, and recognize that your behavior pattern is motivated by self and the flesh and is therefore sinful in God’s sight. Until you come to recognize it as sin, there is no solution for the problem. You must replace a sinful template with a Scriptural, righteous template. If you don’t you will only be modifying the way you sin. For every sinful behavior pattern, you can be sure that God’s Word has the correct alternative. We saw in Ephesians 5 that Paul lists several sinful habits along with their Scriptural alternatives. We are told to "put off" the old one and "put on" the new one. How is this accomplished? The same way your original template was created.

You start by identifying your template, and then finding from the Word what the correct alternative should be. Then you begin to feed the new template into the inward man by the process of meditation and confession of the Word as we discussed above. In addition to this, you must now start to practice the new template. You do this whenever the old one surfaces.

As soon as your emotions are churned up by circumstances that trigger the old template, you immediately identify it and fill your mind with the new template, until the emotion subsides. As you practice this, the time will come that the new template will gradually start to replace the old, and you will find yourself no longer reacting instinctively to the old.

This is very much like bodily exercise. It takes an effort at first to make your body do things it has not been used to doing. But as you continue it becomes easier and you start to enjoy the new state of fitness that comes. The important thing to remember is that like physical fitness, it is not a goal to be reached and then neglected. You soon lose it if you stop exercising. The old template is still there, and if you allow it to resurface it certainly will.

" GMR International: A Christian Resource Ministry dedicated to The Fivefold Ministry and Church Structure, based on the foundation of Jesus Christ."