Summary: The Theophostic Prayer Sunday, Tracy and his family were attending church services and the sermon was about theophostic prayer. Theophostic prayer is using prayer to allow God to expose things in your life that impact how you think. It allows people to recall memories that make up our core beliefs about ourselves and situations we encounter in life. Core Belief System These core beliefs are those “facts” we store in the file storage of our brains to pull out and use as truth when we encounter similar situations. Our brain is like a computer. We store everything that ever happens to us. When we have a “knee-jerk” reaction or fear overwhelms us and we don’t know where it comes from, we need to stop and examine what we believe to be true about the situation and what in our past led us to believe it. Our subconscious works 24/7 and stores whatever we feed it. What Do You Believe To Be True About You? Tracy talked about the time his Dad asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and Tracy responded he was going to be a mechanic, like him. His dad said he didn’t want to upset him, but that Tracy wasn’t very mechanical. Tracy’s brain recorded this event and each time he was faced with a mechanical situation, he believed he wasn’t very good at it. Finally, he thought about it, decided he actually was a mechanical type person, and needed to rewrite that belief in his brain from years before. Replace Your Negative Belief With A Positive Belief He visualized going to the file cabinet, removing the card that said he wasn’t mechanical, crumbling it up and replacing it with a card that said he was mechanical. Now when he is faced with a situation requiring mechanical abilities, he volunteers to help or to do that task because he now believes he is mechanical. It’s all a matter of retraining the brain to see something differently. Cliff had a similar situation regarding his view of spending money on himself. He had no trouble spending money on others, but when it was something just for him, he felt guilty. He remembered an event when he wanted something that was expensive at a time when his family had a financial pinch. His mother said he could have the scooter for his birthday, but his dad was upset pointing out that the money they would need to use was supposed to be for a family vacation. Cliff was present, but could hear the arguing that ended with a huge cookie jar of money being broken and change spilling everywhere. Whenever Cliff thought of using money for something just for him, his brain recalled this event and sent him messages that this was wrong and selfish. He now realizes that spending money on him is okay. The Three Keys to Success Therefore, through theophostic prayer, we ask God, “Why do I feel this way?”, so He can expose things to us so that we can adjust our core beliefs to reflect truth. To move from idea to reality, we need to follow Tracy’s three-step process: Believe it’s possible, you believe it because you are already doing the thing you believe Write it down, throw away the old belief and rewrite the new truth Talk about it to yourself and others that may offer insight and a new way to look at your situation. Are You The Problem Or The Solution Tracy was talking with a friend about something and he told his friend the problem was he was an entrepreneurial type person, the friend said, no; the solution is that you are an entrepreneurial type person. Once Tracy looked at the situation in that light, things fell into place and he no longer thought of being entrepreneurial as a problem. A Paradigm Shift of Perspective Changing our core beliefs is a type of paradigm shift. Cliff said when he was about sixteen the phrase paradigm shift was “in”. He wasn’t certain what that meant, but when reading the book by Steven R Covey, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and seeing the old woman/young woman image, he got it.
