Under The Influence
I know I can get long-winded in my live presentations and in my writing, so I’m going to try to just get right to the point in the first few lines, and then I’ll expound on things.
In parts 1 and 2, we’ve established that:
- Chronic stress is not compatible with health.
- Although stewardship of the 3 pillars is important, there are always non-responders to every diet, exercise plan, IV and supplement regimen or natural protocol for every symptom or disease. The non-responders are typically under the influence of chronic stress.
- “Stress management” only provides temporary relief.
- Trying to control or eliminate all the stress-provoking circumstances in your life is impossible.
So, we are left with only one option in my opinion: how are you seeing your circumstances? What filters are you looking through? Who are you under the influence of when you are examining your stressful circumstances? Are you influenced only by your 5 senses in the natural realm? Is there a supra-natural, outside the natural realm that can impact the natural? In the middle of stressful circumstance, are you under the influence of an interpreter who is full of truth and love and wants to bring abundant life to you or an interpreter who is a liar and deceiver who comes to steal, kill and destroy?
If you are someone who only believes in the natural realm and what your 5 senses can inform you of through what you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell, then the rest of this article is most likely going to fall on deaf ears. For those who have ears to hear though, let him hear.
We Are Wired For Faith
We are designed so that our thoughts directly impact the water in and outside of our cells, impact our mitochondria, and impact our DNA and thus all cells, tissues and organs that make up our physical body. Just imagine that your DNA are like little antenna receivers, taking in and responding to thoughts and words.
The fact that our beliefs or our filters directly impact our DNA and cellular functions is not in dispute. The books, “Biology of Belief” by Bruce Lipton, “Switch on Your Brain” by Caroline Leaf, and “You Are the Placebo” by Joe Dispenza have all the evidence clearly laid out to satisfy even the staunchest, western-minded intellectual…..or, as my wife once told me when I was very early in my journey into discovering the spirit of truth, “you can JUST BELIEVE what God says!”…in this case, as a man thinketh in his heart so is he, and the power of life and death is in the tongue!”
The interpretation of your circumstances and events is the key that unlocks it all. How do you see your circumstances? Through what lens or filter are you looking through when you get that ugly look or comment from someone, an email or text with bad news, a call from the school about your kid doing something you’ve trained him not to do, bills are piling up and the bank account is low, the doctor calls with “bad” news, and just about any of the news from corporate-sponsored media these days?
Yes, the answer that everyone has been waiting for boils down to: how do you “see”? What is influencing your “seer”? What you really “see” is under the influence of what you believe….what you believe about yourself, the world around you and God, His character and nature.
Do you believe that you are more valuable or accepted by your spouse or your boss or your parents if you perform at a high level, coming in first place or making all A’s or MVP? Or, do you believe that you can be accepted and loved regardless of what place you finish in the race? The filter of performance will influence your thinking, producing actions, attitudes and behaviors that can drive fight or flight, elevating cortisol levels, and damaging your health.
Do you believe that you have to take on every “volunteer” job anyone asks you to do at church, at your child’s school for sports or band booster club or civic organization? Do you believe that you need to keep everyone happy and just can’t say “no”? Unlawful responsibility and people pleasing are filters that produce a heavy burden, driving fight or flight, elevating cortisol levels, and damaging your health.
Do you believe there is such thing as comparison and competition, or do you believe each person is unique with a unique set of gifts and talents and purpose on the earth so that it is impossible to compare two completely different and unique things? Can there be such a thing as comparison and competition in the Kingdom of God? The filter of comparison and competition with friends, neighbors, co-workers, fellow church members or anyone else will influence your thinking, producing actions, attitudes and behaviors that can drive fight or flight, elevating cortisol levels, and damaging your health.
When Jesus came out of the wilderness after 40 days, the devil presented three questions to him that directly tested his “seer” regarding provision, protection and identity. Of course, Jesus, who was and is the truth, answered those questions with scripture, the truth. The adversary of the truth will often present thoughts and questions to us regarding provision, protection and identity, producing actions, attitudes and behaviors that can drive fight or flight, elevating cortisol levels, and damaging your health.
These are just a few examples of filters or thought patterns that can influence us. We can take on many of these filters early in life, and since we’ve been wearing them for so long and they are so familiar to us, we don’t even recognize them. Our upbringing, media, culture, religion, close relationships like parents, teachers and coaches all have the potential to influence our “seer” early on in life.
Cleaning Up The Filters
There are many self-help and positive thinking type books out there that speak to the very thing I’m explaining here. In my experience with patients, these type of books can provide some level of temporary relief. I would put them in the category of “stress management”. In my opinion, these books and various positive thinking technique miss the bullseye because they do not truly transform a person’s heart, where their “seer” resides.
These self help and positive thinking type books don’t transform lives because they can’t, they do not have the power to. These books are speaking to the soul of a person, the intellectual mind and emotions. The Truth comes to us through our spirit, not our intellect or soul. The spirit of truth communes or relates to and speaks to our spirit. The spirit of the anti-truth, the liar and deceiver speaks to us through our soul. The self help books cannot lead you into all truth, only the Holy Spirit can lead you into all truth.
Scripture says transformation comes as a result of renewing of the mind. Renew us to what? I believe it is a renewal of our thinking, our filters, back to truth. Jesus came to restore THAT which was lost. The “that” was a relationship with God (the truth), which was lost when Adam listened to another voice, a voice that put a question mark on what God had spoken to Adam. A question! It always starts with our thinking.
How we are seeing ourselves, others, the world and God was been influenced by a lot of things, even starting in the womb. Our carnal mind (5 senses) is a very strong filter influencer. Growing up, our parents are very powerful filter influencers. Religion, social media, and the western culture in general are very powerful filter influencers.
The Book of Truth
Where am I getting all these ideas from? From an ancient text, the Bible, that I’ve studied for a number of years and still feel like I’m barley scratching the surface. Also, the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, which the Bible says will lead me into all truth. I’ve concluded that this ancient text is unlike any other ancient text. It has more rock solid proof of it’s authenticity than any other ancient text like Plato, Aristotle, any religious text or any self help, positive thinking book.
It is actually a collection of 66 books written by 40 different authors over 1500 years in 3 different languages that shares stories confirmed other ancient texts, by archaeology, by mathematics, statistics and probability, and an impossible set of hundreds of predictions that came true hundreds of years after they were written with the chance that a small set of these predictions randomly occurring being 1 x 10 to the 157th power! Impossible that a man just happened, by chance, to put all that together!
Ultimately though, it is the Bible’s ability to take you beyond just the intellectual “proof” that it is divinely inspired, speaking directly and personally to your heart. You are hard wired to receive it’s truth in your spirit. It’s hard to explain, but when you earnestly seek the truth, that book will come alive, the spirit man inside of you will resonate with it, your “seer” will start to get cleaned up, and your heart will be transformed.
I challenge you to just start having daily conversations with God, even if you doubt He is even real. In fact, you can just speak that out loud,
“God, I don’t know if you are real.”
“God, I don’t know if the Bible is actually from you or from just some man.”
“God, I have all sorts of doubts and questions.”
Years ago, I prayed, “God, I believe, but help me with my unbelief.” I also prayed, “Please forgive me for seeking a big family with lots of kids and a career as a small, town country doctor, first instead of seeking the kingdom first”.
When you start having open and honest conversations with God, earnestly pursing Him, I’m confident things will start to open up and be revealed to you.
The Bible tells a fascinating story of a loving creator who wanted to create children, offspring, heirs that would be like Him. He is love and He wanted us to re-present Him, loving others like He does. He wanted to love his kids and for his kids to love Him back. He wanted his kids to be in charge of the earth and make decisions like He would, ruling for the benefit of everyone and everything else, a self-sacrificial love. Loving God and loving others more than themselves is what it is all about.
In order to love, one must have the ability to choose (ie, free will). There is no such thing as love without free will. Without choice, the kids would just be programmed robots doing what they were programmed to do. In His infinite wisdom and divine plan, he gave us choice. He put us in control of our thinking (and living with the consequences of our thinking…the law of sowing and reaping, as a man thinketh in his heart, the power of life and death is in the tongue).
So, although God is sovereign and created everything, and contrary to what many religious people believe, HE IS NOT IN CONTROL OF EVERYTHING. He did not control Adam and Eve and their thinking. He did not control the thinking of the religious people that nailed Jesus to the cross. He is not going to control you and your thinking either.
However, He did give us this AMAZING ancient text that tells a fascinating story about how to keep your thinking under the influence of The Truth instead of the tricky, sneaky, lying, deceiving adversary to the truth that has been around for thousands of years and knows man’s tendencies, blind spots and weakness (like fear of death), and he wants to trick you into BELIEVING certain things that will drive fight or flight, elevating cortisol levels, and damaging your health!
The devil comes to steal, kill and destroy BUT has ZERO power to do this except through your thinking. It is the father of all lies, the ruler of this world who uses competition, comparison, people pleasing, manipulation, control, shame, guilt, condemnation, fear of lack, fear of sickness, fear of death, and all the other thoughts that have no place in God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of light, truth and love!
Relationship, Not Religion
For those of you who have attended church most of your lives, I want to caution you to not casually read this article or the Bible under the influence of a spirit called religion, a filter that influenced the Jewish people that nailed Jesus to the cross. If you’ve grown up listening to the verses in the Bible but not truly hearing and understanding under the influence of the third person of the trinity, the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, then you are apt to be vulnerable to lies from the adversary of the truth.
The vast majority of the patients I interact with tell me they are believers in Jesus Christ and in what the Bible teaches. However, they are often not seeing the fruit of peace and joy in their lives. If the Kingdom of God is not about food or drink but righteousness, peace and joy, then renewing the mind, your “seer”, your thinker, to right alignment with the truth in every situation is where the focus and priority needs to be….not food and drink.
With these patients, when I inquire more and ask some probing questions, it has been my observation that usually these patients have been under the influence of the gospel of salvation and not the gospel of the kingdom.
The gospel of salvation that religion preaches leaves people very, very vulnerable to the schemes of the enemy of the truth to influence their “seer”, tricking people into putting on filters or goggles to gaze upon their spouse, their boss, their kids and in fact, every relationship and interaction they’ll have all day everyday….producing actions, attitudes and behaviors that drive fight or flight, elevating cortisol levels, and damaging their health!
The gospel of the kingdom, which is the gospel that Jesus and Paul said they came to preach, equips mankind to walk in truth right now, seeing and thinking clearly under the influence of The Spirit of Truth in ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, so that they can accurately reflect God’s nature and character in the earth, bringing the culture of the Kingdom of Heaven into the earth now!
Yes, the prince of the air, the ruler of this world is still in operation in the earth for now. HOWEVER, he is already defeated, operating illegally, occupying ground that Jesus already bought and paid for! It is time for us to take back the ground that the devil is illegally occupying!
Just like in the story of David and Goliath, David attacked this giant right between the eyes, hit his frontal lobe, then chopped off his head! We must go for the frontal lobe, attack our “giants” by going straight to our frontal lobe, our thinking! The sword of truth (the word of God) will chop off the head of the lie (the filter, the beliefs that are not true) in your life!
Do you see how a defeated, powerless, tiny little nothing of a nymph has the ability to influence you with fear, anxiety, worry, jealousy, lust, pride, shame, and every other filter? He can only do it through your thinking. The devil is powerless to do anything in the earth except through our thinking. He kills, steals and destroys through the frontal lobe of man!
Jesus, the second Adam, came to restore THAT which the first Adam lost for all of us (relationship with our father), in order for us to walk in the light, the truth, putting on filters that result in righteousness, peace and joy in our lives right now! And, yes, continuing that relationship eternally, not separated from God when our physical body dies, is included in this plan. But, so many patients who tell me they are believers have been under the mindset of Jesus came to “get me to heaven”, and this does not do justice to all that Jesus bought and paid for. He came to get heaven back into you!
In All Your Getting, Get Understanding
For the patients that are believers in Jesus Christ as their savior, when I inquire about a few deeper things, they are not as confident, or they lack understanding. Things such as:
-Have you also made Jesus Christ your Lord too, not just your savior?
-Do you know what making him Lord means?
-Have you considered there could be other things “lording” over you, you have given authority too, you have submitted to or agreed with in your thinking?
-Can you tell me about the gospel of the kingdom versus gospel of salvation?
-Do you understand the difference in the 3 parts that make up who we are on the earth: body, soul, and spirit?
-Do you understand what the Greek word for “church” (ekklesia) is and what it means in the Greek and therefore, what Jesus and the apostles would have been meaning whenever they used it?
-Do you understand what the “great mystery” and “new creature” is all about that Paul talks about?
-Can you tell me about the spiritual laws that God put in operation in the earth, just like God put natural laws into the earth (law of aerodynamics, law of internal combustion, law of buoyancy and density….notice I didn’t say law of “gravity”, but that’s a story for another day)?
-Can you tell me your understanding of the “elementary doctrines of Christ” that Paul talks about in Hebrews when he came to give them “meat” but had to go back to “milk” because of their lack of spiritual maturity and understanding of “the basics”….like the doctrine of baptisms (plural….I only knew about one, water baptism)
If this list of questions above caused you pause or just a downright “I have no idea what your talking about Doc!” kind of reaction, then welcome to the club! Close to 100% of the patients I ask these questions to are not able to give much of an answer….and neither could I 15 years ago.
I definitely don’t know it all (just ask my wife!). I’m still in pursuit of The Kingdom of God and it’s righteousness. I’m still cleaning up filters influencing my thinking. What I’m sharing today is from a heart of compassion and true desire to see individual members of the body of Christ walking in deeper spiritual truth and maturity because I know that truth will set them free….which will influence their thinking, producing actions, attitudes, and behaviors that will produce peace and joy, normalizing cortisol levels, and bringing health.
In future articles, we’ll dive more into some of these deeper things. Until next time….
Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. 3 John 1:2
