( I prepared this for clients. I hope it will be useful to you.)

"The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?" We know the Lord knows our thoughts from a long way off. The Lord is always trying to reveal our innermost intentions to our conscious minds. This is a process we naturally fight against. By nature, because of our sinfulness, we deceive ourselves and enjoy deceiving ourselves. We get much out of deceiving ourselves. We don't have to be brutally honest with who and what we really are; we don't have to accept responsibility for our particular way of sinfulness; and we don't have to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. The human spirit cannot tolerate being humbled.

Our New Man loves to be humbled and taught by the Spirit through the Word. But this New Man is always at war against the Old Man Who does not like to have his beliefs changed, sit in confusion, and wait upon the Lord for illumination. According to Romans 12:1-2, the whole process of our being sanctified is having our minds renewed. We come to have our minds changed until we come more and more to thinking and believing in a way that is in accordance with Scripture and the Mind of the Spirit.

Luther said that "belief is more powerful than faith and conscience." This is a powerful statement. This means we must zealously beg God to change our beliefs. We have no idea how many wrong beliefs and ideas about life, we have. We must beg God to give us teachable hearts and spirits.

In a sense, we must rejoice to be sinners. What I mean by this is, the more we see our true individual sinfulness the more we are inclined to cry out to God for grace, mercy and wisdom. What we don't want to do is see our sinfulness and run from God in despair. No! We run to Christ knowing He receives sinful men. Praise God He receives sinful men.

There are many ways of determining what we believe. Your whole life people have beaten you over the head with your sin and personality faults. While they were possibly sinning in the way they confronted you, it is now time for you to learn from the truth of what others have been trying to tell you all along. The Bible states, "Rebuke a wise man and he will love you." Essentially, we follow Christ to the extent that we love rebuke, love to learn of His ways, and rejoice in His training and purifying process. This is not a pleasant process to the flesh.

This process, of course, includes much suffering. While suffering is not pleasant, it works patience in our inner man. Without patience, there can be no growth, no victory, and no real peace. Our submission to suffering and our rejoicing in suffering lays the ground for patience; patience lays the groundwork for true spiritual experience and growth.

Having our beliefs changed is a trial in itself. It is an excruciating process. I trust you will allow your pastor and me to work with you and support you during this time of growth. The best way I can help you is to kindly help you come to know what your mistaken beliefs are. The best way I know to accomplish this is to come to understand you. The best way I can quickly come to understand you is by coming to understand the meaning of your early memories.

The human spirit is a creative genius. We each create our own inner world. This is an intuitive, instinctive process which begins at birth and is mostly complete at an early age, say by 6. Because this process is intuitive rather than rational, we can claim good intentions for ourselves and claim them honestly because our deepest, truest intentions and beliefs were created in such a way that we have no conscious awareness of them.

One belief we must change is the idea that we have good intentions. Apart from our new nature in Christ, the human spirit has no good intentions. Every intention of the spirit is entirely selfish, self-centered, and seeking only what is in its own best interest. But because the conscious mind is not aware of what really, truly motivates us, we continue to go forward, making the same mistakes, and falling prey to the same errors, and suffering the same consequences for our beliefs.

Another belief we must change is our high opinion of our power and wisdom. Even if you truly want to change, you can never change yourself. As you become aware of the "true you," your only response as a child of God is: "I confess I am a sinner—I beg you to change me. God, have mercy on your poor, sinful child. Thank you for hearing my prayer and forgiving my sin. I will wait for You to change me when You know I am ready for change. I will not tell You when, how, or in what way You must change me. Father, have mercy because of Your Son Christ."

Following are your early memories and what I believe they say about what you believe. These memories never lie. I can make a mistake, but the memories never make a mistake when it comes to revealing what you believe about life. I may be wrong on some of my interpretations. We can talk about them until we come to agreement. I may be wrong or you may be blind to the truth. We can talk until we agree. I very well may come to see that my insight was "off." That's fine. I don't mind making mistakes. By the same token, if I'm sure of what a memory is saying, I won't argue with you, but I will encourage you to take it to the Lord. I may ask you to "just believe" it for awhile. It is amazing how the Lord can deal with and change us when we are willing to believe something even if it doesn't make sense at the time. We spend far too much time fighting truth rather than submitting to it.

Please keep in mind that the objective here is not to focus on our sinfulness and mistakes as an end in itself. We must look past our sin and mistaken beliefs (and everything we see, feel, and experience, for that matter) to Christ by faith. Remember, faith takes hold of the promise. Christ has promised to purify His People and to work in them both to will and to do of His good pleasure. You are Christ's. There is NO reason to despair and be depressed because of sin. No! We run to Christ in faith and cling to His promises of grace, love, and forgiveness.

I have not tried to be exhaustive in what I believe your memories mean. I have concentrated on what appears to be obvious. Adler taught, and it is true to my experience, that our memories change. As you are given victory by Christ over the mistakes initial memories indicate others will take their place and the process of sanctification will continue. There is no hurry as long as you are not resisting the Spirit of Truth. You are Christ's and already have complete victory over sin. Only work this salvation out with fear and trembling. Look to Christ. Do not trust the flesh and the mind of the flesh. Do not become smug. Remain in the Word of God that is alive and able to reveal your sin graciously.

Here are your memories and my opinions: Let's talk.