Truth Therapy: Renewing Your Mind with the Word of God

Truth Therapy

Renewing Your Mind with the Word of God

Peter J. Bellini

Foreword by Howard A. Snyder

Truth Therapy

Renewing Your Mind with the Word of God

Copyright © 2014 Peter J. Bellini. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf and Stock

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199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

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ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-833-4

EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-743-9

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 01/15/2015

Foreword

God heals and wills our healing—and that’s the truth. This is what salvation is all about. Yet how easily we forget.

Many times the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is our healer; that Jesus died and rose again to heal us; and that in its broadest sense salvation is healing from the disease and damages of sin. Yet often this healing accent remains only that—an abstract idea; a vague ideal; a weak wish. Salvation is viewed as forgiveness of sins—but that’s all.

Truth Therapy is a helpful antidote to such limited thinking. In practical and theologically sound ways, the book shows how God’s truth really does bring broad-scale healing if soundly understood and applied. By centering everything in the Word of God applied in us by the Holy Spirit, the book opens doors for God’s healing grace to flow into our lives.

Dr. Bellini calls Truth Therapy a holistic approach to spiritual formation that acknowledges that reality is spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional. The goal is not just to make people feel better, or to be better-adjusted psychologically. Rather Truth Therapy is presented primarily as a tool for discipleship and spiritual growth involving a holistic theology of sanctification. The book is a helpful blend of pastoral insights, psychological perspectives, theology, Scripture, and biblically informed common sense.

Truth Therapy is holistic not only in the sense that it incorporates body, mind, and spirit, but also in the sense that it recognizes legitimate roles for psychology, medicine, counseling, exercise, and the essential spiritual disciplines, including Christian community. Scripture is central, but the book also makes good use of psychology and psychological insights and methods. For God is the God of truth in all dimensions.

Truth Therapy recognizes the essential role of the Holy Spirit in forming Jesus Christ in us. It shows the practical importance of the fact that God is Holy Trinity—one God, yet a divine communion of mutual giving and receiving—that provides the ground, and the power, for our own healthy relationships as we follow Jesus in fellowship with others.

Ultimately the healing God provides brings us into healthy, reconciled relationships with God, with ourselves, with one another, and with God’s good creation (what we often call the world of nature). Holistic healing means healthy relationships in all these dimensions. Truth Therapy can help free people from the bonds that limit God’s healing work in our lives and lead us into wider and expanding areas of healing so that we may enjoy the fullness of the Spirit and be part of God’s healing work in our hurting world.

Howard A. Snyder

Author, The Problem of Wineskins, Community of the King, Salvation Means Creation Healed, and other books.

1

An Introduction to Truth Therapy

Truth Therapy Key Texts

• Isaiah 26:3 (NLT)—You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

• Isaiah 55:9 (NLT)—For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

• John 8:32 (NIV)—Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

• Romans 8:6 (NIV)—The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

• Romans 12:2 (NIV)—Do not conform to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

• 1 Corinthians 2:16 (NIV)—For, ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.

• 2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV)—We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

• Ephesians 4:24–26 (ESV)—Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

• Philippians 4:8 (NLT)—Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

It seems that everywhere I turn I hear of persons suffering from depression and anxiety. The conditions range from mild to clinical. Mental illnesses do not discriminate. In my experience as a pastor and a seminary professor, I have found that depression and anxiety attack the young and the old and those in between. Depression and anxiety shroud the lives of the rich, the poor, and the middle class. I have seen factory workers, CEOs, lawyers, the unemployed, pastors, doctors, accountants, police officers, contractors, and persons from every vocation be touched by these crippling conditions. In fact, mental illness does not discriminate between gender, ethnicity, race, geographic location, sexual preference, class, status, or profession. Depression and anxiety are equal opportunity employers. From the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), it is estimated that 26.2 percent of Americans over eighteen years of age suffer from a diagnosable mental illness.¹ Depression is the leading cause of disability in the United States among those ages fifteen to forty-four.² Of the people over eighteen in the United States 18.1 percent or around forty million people in a given year have some form of anxiety disorder.³

Let me share a story of a good pastor friend of mine that fell into severe depression and anxiety. He had spent the better part of twenty years in ministry planting new churches, turning around old dead churches, and starting new contextual ministries. He was in his middle thirties and at the peak of his pastoral ministry. He was a Spirit-filled, charismatic, dynamic preacher, teacher, and leader. He was also a prayer warrior and an insightful intercessor that operated fluently in the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12), especially prophecy and healing. He had a powerful deliverance ministry, liberating hundreds from demonic oppression. I mention his credentials and giftedness because we often stereotype, pigeonhole, or judge people that go through depression or another type of major setback. We would like to think that somehow they were less than and therefore more susceptible. However this pastor understood and experienced the power of God to save, heal, and deliver. It was not for a lack of faith that he entered into a dark night of the soul.

Vic, not the pastor’s real name, was in many aspects a well-balanced minister who exercised regularly, took time off when needed, and was in a couple of different accountability groups. He had it all—gifts, graces, charisma, character, fruit, skill and success—and yet one day he had a panic attack. Vic never saw the signs prior to the panic attack. He was accustomed to living sacrificially and at times ignoring his own needs in order to serve others, as most pastors do. Besides this blind spot, he was fairly balanced in his life and ministry, but like most ministers he was carrying a lot of stress, burdens, and hidden struggles and did not know how, where, and with whom to process it all, in spite of being in accountability groups. It is difficult for pastors to find a safe space to disclose their private life.

Vic had never experienced anything like a panic attack before. He told me that he felt like he was having a heart attack and was ready to call 911. As the panic mounted, he rested on his bed, trying to pray and relax, and eventually he fell asleep. Following the panic attack, he was not the same. He told me he began to feel fearful constantly and found himself worrying about everything, even the most trivial matters. It was like that panic attack opened up several other inner issues that he had pent up. Vic would get occasional panic attacks that seemed to come upon him at any time and in any place. He was afraid to go outside and leave the house out of a general overwhelming sense of fear and for fear of the panic attacks.

He found his mind often flooded with confusion, as he would forget things and struggle to accomplish tasks that used to be routine. When he would panic, his thoughts would race and pull him into a vortex of hopelessness. Vic found himself trapped in a prison of negativity from which he struggled to escape. He found it difficult to sleep at night. If he could get to sleep it would be for only a few hours and not too deeply.

He had other ailments as well that accompanied his anxiety and depression, such as irritable bowel syndrome, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, chronic pain, fatigue, dizziness, and forgetfulness. These conditions and symptoms persisted in different combinations irregularly for a couple of years. I list these symptoms and details about Vic’s condition because I have encountered too many who have had similar struggles, and I know that many readers also have or had similar struggles.

During those couple of dark years, Vic went to two general practitioners, a specialist, and a couple of psychiatrists and therapists seeking answers. It was a challenging time for him because although he believed in medical science and encouraged medical treatment for his parishioners, he struggled to acknowledge his own weaknesses and needs. He felt that he was a strong person and that he was strong in Christ. Most of his battles were won in prayer and trusting in God. He was reluctant to seek help from doctors, especially mental health professionals, but he ran out of options.

Prayer did not seem to work, nor prayer and fasting. Intercession did not seem to change things. Vic began to wonder if his condition was demonically induced. So he went through many deliverances sessions and also executed regular intense spiritual warfare on his own as well as with teams of prayer warriors. Many anointed ministers laid hands on him and prayed prayers of faith and healing. Vic searched his soul and repented of every sin from A to Z. Sometimes he would pray as much as six hours a day. Yet, nothing changed. Nothing seemed to work. He still felt depressed, anxious, and defeated.

The doctors prescribed various medications and counseling sessions to combat the depression, anxiety, and other collateral symptoms. Relief though was not found readily. He was treatment resistant at first. Vic tried nearly a dozen different antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds with minimal symptomatic relief. Because both the spiritual and medical treatments produced little results, Vic fell into greater depression and hopelessness. Like so many in depression, he became depressed about being depressed. He would tell me that there were days he just wanted to give up and die. Nothing made sense. Nothing had meaning. Nothing seemed to work. Everything he had enjoyed no longer brought him joy, not even God, his family, or ministry.

Vic was burned out from ministry and burned out from life. He had severe anger and pain from the aftermath of years of being an agent of change and a casualty of conflict in the local church. He began to realize how all of the hurt, wounds, and pent-up anger that came from fighting battles in church wars within dysfunctional church family systems that created and perpetuated control, abuse, pettiness, and anger had taken its toll on him. The unhealthy dynamics within dying churches and the accompanying spiritual warfare were too much. Vic helped to birth new churches, many new ministries, and new ministers and was now experiencing a type of spiritual post-partum depression. He felt no satisfaction from all of his labor but instead was overwhelmed with alienation, rejection, and worthlessness as years of church conflict and spiritual exertion came crashing down on his esteem.

He shared with me his greatest burden at this time. He felt burned out from God. It was difficult to pray, to worship, to preach, to teach, to counsel, and even to be around people to minister. The very things that fueled him and gave him energy were a drain. Every pastoral duty including waking up on Sunday took a miracle from God. However, he felt so distant from God, as if God had given up on him. He similarly felt burned out from his family. The exhaustion affected every area of Vic’s life. It was no longer refreshing to spend time with his wife and children. When he was at home he would often just sit alone and not talk to anyone for hours. He felt all was lost, and that he could no longer make a contribution to his family. When he hit rock bottom he felt like quitting and giving up on God, his family, his ministry, and himself.

Vic’s dark night of the soul lasted off and on for around two years before he began to see a glimmer of hope. He said it was not any one thing alone that he could put his finger on except the grace of God. His regimen included prayer, study, worship, exercise, meds, counseling, and each of these contributed holistically over time to his restoration, though there were no immediate and tangible results until he was blessed with a breakthrough.

First, his doctor found the right med that was a newly released antidepressant. Vic said it alleviated around 20 percent of the symptoms. Although 20 percent was hardly a cure, it was considerably more relief than he had experienced over the last two years. I also invited him to begin to study and practice intentional deep breathing. He was somewhat skeptical at first, thinking it was not a Christian practice. I shared with him how intentional deep breathing can be done without Eastern religious implications and that many in the medical field highly recommend it for its physical and mental benefits apart from any religious belief or practice.

I also informed him that the Eastern Christian church had been practicing intentional deep breathing while praying (the Jesus Prayer) for over fifteen hundred years (the Hesychastic tradition). He reluctantly conceded and found that it helped immensely. It allowed him to become aware of his body and its stress, and it provided an effective means to de-stress and detoxify. I highly recommend it and teach it to my seminary students as I had taught it to my parishioners. The practice deflates the body and mind of anxiety and depression and recalibrates brain chemistry and cognitive processes to function at a healthy steady rhythm. Personally, I have found that fifteen minutes of quality intentional deep breathing provides deeper relaxation and rest than an eight-hour night of sleep.

Vic’s testimony was that the intentional deep breathing worked better than the meds. However, in his estimation, what seemed to work best was the reading and practicing of Truth Therapy that I had recommended. Truth Therapy was a smaller work than this current edition and was self-published and distributed to members of my church and friends, including Vic. Vic felt that Truth Therapy gave him the tools needed to break the stronghold of depression and to prevent anxiety and depression from taking control of his life again.

As Vic began to implement the principles and practices of Truth Therapy, he began to experience more victory in this thought-life and more victory, peace, and joy in his emotional life. Within a few months he no longer experienced most of the symptoms that had ailed him over the last two years. Depression and anxiety would remain a temptation that still occasionally came knocking on his door, but he now had the tools to overcome. The exercises and strategies within Truth Therapy provided Vic with the tools and framework to work out some deep-seated issues of pride, self-reliance, and anger though repentance, faith, and dependence on God.

Where is Vic now? He has been off of antidepressants for around six years. Over the last eight years, he has continued with the same regimen of intentional deep breathing, regular exercise, prayer, and Truth Therapy and has been depression- and anxiety-free for over six years. I think he is aware that the conditions of depression and anxiety can easily return, and so he needs to listen to his body, mind, and support systems and to God in order to stay balanced and to learn to say no, drawing healthy boundaries and implementing life-giving practices.

Above all of these restored blessings, Vic has rediscovered his first love in Christ. The Lord has restored his soul, his ministry, and his family. He has experienced healing and the joy of salvation once again. He loves his ministry and is on fire for God with new insight and vigor. Vic enjoys his family like never before with a greater appreciation and sense of thanksgiving for God’s gifts. He has gained a new sense of purpose and passion for life and has learned to find blessings in the small and simple things of life. His recovery is truly a miracle because many never come out of burnout and depression, let alone return to ministry. God still heals, and God heals through many means, including the power of the truth found in God’s word—Truth Therapy.

This is the story of Truth Therapy. It is a holistic approach to spiritual formation that acknowledges that reality is spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional. Any approach to wholeness, whether Christian discipleship or even treatment for an ailment needs to be comprehensive—spirit, soul, and body. Vic found restoration in Christ through a variety of resources that addressed the complexity of factors at work. However Vic is not the only one out there. So many are afflicted with overwhelming circumstances, addiction, depression, anxiety, and other challenges and need to experience healing and restoration. I have watched the lives of so many be touched and transformed by the reading and practicing of Truth Therapy. Yet one does not need to be depressed and anxious to profit from this book. In fact, most of the people who have benefited from Truth Therapy have been depression-free, well-adjusted believers in Christ who desire to grow in Christ-likeness. In fact, Truth Therapy is primarily intended as a tool for discipleship and spiritual growth.

The fact is that in a broken world we need healthy and whole believers who God can use to minister healing and wholeness. The problem is that many of us are a product of that same broken world, have been wounded by it, and are broken as well. God wants to heal and restore us so that we can be conduits for God’s work of resurrection and renewal in the world. Our world is inundated with war, poverty, disease, economic crises, terrorism, unemployment, fatherlessness, addictions, violence, divorce, abortion, immorality, sex trafficking, abuse of all sorts, racism, depression and anxiety, hyper technology producing information and stimulation overload, and the list goes on and on. We live in a world of overwhelming stress and atmospheric anxiety. Where do people find relief? Do they find it, or do they endlessly search? How do people find true peace and hope?

I came to develop the ideas and practices of Truth Therapy in the laboratory of urban ministry. Although not limited to the city, depression, anxiety, and addiction were highly prevalent in the urban contexts where I had ministered for over twenty years. The chains were strong and the cycles regular and frequent. Referral was at the heart of our churches’ response to these maladies. Today, we have more information and resources to treat depression, anxiety, and addiction than ever before. Effective psychiatric medication, various forms of therapy, disorder-specific support systems, and holistic approaches to mind and body work together to reduce symptoms and even address etiology. However, there often remain several problems. First, sometimes persons are treatment resistant. Second, treatment at times can neglect the spiritual dimensions of the problem and the solution. Third, Christian theology and practice often finds itself at odds with the world of psychiatry, therapy, and holistic health.

Throughout my ministry, I encountered all three types of persons—those who were treatment resistant, those who were receiving treatment that did not address spiritual issues, and those who refused psychiatric treatment even after strong encouragement. Truth Therapy developed out of a need to minister to such persons. It is not a therapy in the strict psychological sense of the word, but it is more a spiritual supplement to Christian discipleship and the best practices of psychology. I sought to find the place, if there was such a place, where Christian discipleship that is rooted in God’s word could co-work with therapeutic forms of treatment to foster healing and wholeness. Truth Therapy is therapy in the sense that it addresses spiritual cure or healing. The original meaning of the word therapy (Greek therapeia) is cure or healing.

I used earlier forms of Truth Therapy, which were merely different ways to process Scripture, in one-on-one and small group settings. The response was immediate. People were attracted to its methods. Over time I received numerous testimonies of subsiding symptoms, resilient coping, and spiritual growth. In fact, these results became the norm. Eventually due to its success with facilitating spiritual growth, Truth Therapy was used more broadly in my congregations as a discipleship strategy rather than just spiritual direction for those facing depression, anxiety, and addiction. Today, it seems to be used as both a discipleship tool and a spiritual supplement to treatment for mental disorders with the greater weight toward discipleship. Parishioners were in need of deep and lasting change and a specific strategy that could be implemented for effective, fruit-bearing discipleship and found it in Truth Therapy.

Today’s Christian is faced with temptations, trials, and traps from all sides. It is not easy to live the overcoming and abundant life. Through my observations as a pastor and a professor, I found that the pursuit of hope and peace can often be misguided and takes on the form of an escape. People escape from their problems and commitments by self-medicating with alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, an affair, their job or career, or other diversions. Poor coping skills and patterns of irresponsible decision-making propel them to run from their commitments and hide in denial and even addiction.

Such persons blindly grope from Monday to Friday grinding their teeth, suppressing their worry, fear, and anger and pushing through to the next thing with sleepless nights, poor digestion, head, neck and backaches, meaningless lives, shallow relations, and a whole lot of inner pain until the weekend comes. Then they can release all of their pent up frustrations and pursue a good time by partaking of their recreational drug of choice that helps them cope with their unresolved pain. Drug of choice in this case may be anything that temporarily numbs the hurt and alters the mind so one can forget one’s troubles and escape into a world free of problems, at least until Monday.

This is the reality for many unbelievers who do not follow Christ, but it is also the case for so many Christians, who have not learned how to live victoriously in Christ. Christians live in the same world as unbelievers and are plagued by the same conditions and temptations. Being a Christian does not magically exempt us from the temptations and traps of life, including divorce, adultery, fornication, alcoholism, gambling, legal and illegal drug abuse, porn use, occultism, and other destructive behaviors. In fact, those in Christ flirt with and fall into the same escapes and traps as those outside of Christ.

Some Christians may even use the church, their faith, or ministry as an escape. Religion becomes a thin veneer of happiness that they wear over their hurt and pain. It masks the real problems that are deeply seated beneath and untouched by their Christian culture. For those who minister, they might find themselves ministering out of their brokenness and unmet needs. The people become a means to the minister’s own end. Others have gone through years of attending church, Bible study, Sunday School, conferences, revivals, healing lines, prophetic impartations, counseling, and deliverance session, some have gotten saved a dozen times, and yet they are no different or better than when they first received Christ, some even worse.

I remember one of my favorite parishioners. We will call him John. John had many deep issues that stemmed from childhood, but he refused to address them. He had practiced witchcraft and was a drug user for many years before coming to Christ. He first came to Christ in a church that was hyper-charismatic and focused on the anointing and gifts of the Spirit over discipleship and the fruit of the Spirit. He was taught that he would become a great man of God and of course a great man of God who would become rich, healthy, successful, and would have it all—American Dream Christianity.

In fact, he said that in one church, they prophesied to him that he would be greater than Paul. According to John, the prophecy went something like this: Paul’s ministry was great, but Paul’s ministry will pale in comparison to yours. You will be greater than Paul. God will take your ministry to the nations of the world and to kings and queens, and you shall declare the gospel and perform miracles, as thousands will come to Christ through you.

I wondered how and when that was going to happen? First, because there were not that many kings and queens left in the world, and second, because he was surely slow getting out of the gate, backsliding ten times in five years. When I asked him about issues like repentance, discipleship, self-denial, and serving the poor, he would look at me like I was speaking Akkadian. This poor fellow was so inflated with the excesses of American Dream Christian culture that it weighed him down like an ego on steroids and thus impeded him from humbly walking the Christian walk with any degree of fruit and consistency.

To begin to remedy the situation, I thought it best to have him attend an entry level type of discipleship group for fairly new converts since he had just returned to Christ after many cycles of falling away, and his sin had seemed to cause many hardships. However, John did not take well to being placed in an entry-level group. Remember, he was called to be greater than Paul. Our church did not have any greater than Paul discipleship groups. We had groups for new believers, groups for those in recovery, groups for leaders in training, men’s groups and women’s group, and regular study groups, but no greater than Paul groups.

Not only was he taken back to be placed in this entry level group, he was also irritated at me because I did not give him any microphone time, which is what he called it. He wanted platform and spotlight time to preach, teach, sing, prophesy, and do whatever else greater than Paul-in-training believers do. If he did not get microphone time, he would prophesy anyways whenever and wherever in the church that his elbows could make room. He frequently interrupted services and prayer meetings with a word, a song, or some manifestation of the Spirit.

It was not long before John would fall back into his former life of drug use and drug dealing. After a few months of this life, he would have enough and come back to church, or I or another member would actually venture out and pull him from some seedy situation and encourage and love him back to the fold. Over a three-year period of these cycles, he informed me he got saved at least ten times. Eventually, his relapses would be less frequent, and he showed signs of growth and maturity. Yet even today he has not totally leveled out to walk a healthy balanced Christian walk full of spiritual gifts and fruit. I joke about the way in which these types of American Dream churches needlessly puff up their people, but the problem is quite sad and serious.

The problem in this case is not ultimately with John but with the churches that created this superstar type of Christian. They confused the cultural root narrative of the American Dream and the attainment of self-actualization and success for the gospel. Also they were hyper-experiential and sought for only immediate solutions and cures. Thus, they were not equipped to deal with deeply entrenched issues of sin and abuse that would not simply go away with a quick-fix spiritual experience. Nor could they be airbrushed and photoshopped over with a veneer of glossy charismata.

Charisma without character is a recipe for destruction. Gift-based ministry is needed, but gift-based sanctification is disastrous. We are not given the gifts of the Spirit because we are holy, nor do those gifts make us holy. The gifts of the Spirit are not merit badges, and some of the gifts we experience may not even be from the Holy Spirit, especially the ones that inflate our egos, like three clicks and you can be an Apostle. We need a firm foundation of discipleship and holiness to support the power and authority of gift-based ministry, or else, top-heavy of gifts, offices, and titles, we will implode under the weight of our own ministry.

The church is truly in desperate need of real deliverance, healing, and transformation. Yes, we need a powerful and penetrating encounter and experience with the living God, but even more so, we need a framework, a rhythm of practices, and a nurturing community to grow, sustain, and multiply such fruit beyond just another disposable quick fix. Our Christian life needs to be more than a revolving door of experiences, trips to the altar, going to the latest conference, or receiving more impartations from the latest and greatest most anointed man or woman of God. Our Christian life needs to be more than a trip to the Sunday drive-thru. It also needs to be more than our sanctified culture that we have constructed that barricades us from the world’s evil without overcoming those evils.

The solution begins with God’s work in our hearts, the temple of God. God is interested in the heart. What or who do we worship in that temple? What do we gaze upon, think about, desire, and pursue? Is it the one true God or something else—an idol like power, pleasure, or position? The Christian message is simple: repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Truth Therapy is a strategy that facilitates this simple practice. Repentance means to change our thoughts. Change the meditations and thought-life of the heart and mind from being self-centered to being God- or Christ-centered. Repentance is a call to turn away from thoughts and practices that put anything before God and to turn to God.

Our problem is ultimately always a heart problem. Are our hearts healthy? What is in our hearts? What inhabits our hearts? What is the passion of our hearts? What are the thoughts and meditations of the heart? Truth Therapy begins with our thought-life and provides resources to align and renew our hearts and minds with the word of God. This book is a resource for personal, small group, and corporate use that facilitates transformation by addressing the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. It is a resource that offers effective strategies and methods for long-term spiritual healing and maturity.

The philosophy is simple: the word of God works, especially for those who work with the word of God. It is not to reduce Scripture to an easy-to-apply formula, but Scripture does contain principles for the Christian life that God honors if we simply trust and obey. Surely God works in our lives even when we cry out, I believe. Help my unbelief. However, the evangel imperative believe peppers the entire New Testament and should be taken seriously. For those who believe, the penetrating power of the word of God is able to break, build, shape, and reshape the heart and mind of the believer to grow and live in Christ-likeness. Truth Therapy works different angles to process Scripture into one’s faith-system through various classical spiritual disciplines and practices, like meditation, repentance, faith, confession, and obedience. Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come (1 Tim 4:8).

In my spare time, I enjoy boxing and powerlifting. I received my first boxing gloves at the age of six, an old pair of Hutch 500-series gloves. Also, I have been lifting weights since I was thirteen and powerlifting since I was eighteen. Most of my training is goal oriented. If I want to attain a particular goal, I map out a specific regimen and strategy of training that will enable me to attain my goal. If I am faithful, disciplined, and stick with the program, I usually attain my goals. For example, if my goal is to bench-press 405 pounds or squat-press 585 pounds, I will determine which routines, sets, and reps would be most effective in assisting me to reach my goal. Also, I will plot out a timeline consisting of a cycle of twenty-four weeks with certain markers spaced out over that period. These markers will indicate my progress toward my goal. They will determine how much I will lift and how many repetitions at a certain point on the timeline. In between each marker, the change in routines and repetitions will assist me in attaining the next marker until finally I reach my goal.

I train similarly when I box. If my goal is to work on my speed when I throw my 1–3-2 combination (a jab, hook off the jab, and a cross), then I establish a specific training regimen over a certain period of time. If I am faithful, disciplined, and committed to execute the program with excellence, then I usually attain my goal. Also, proper diet and rest combined with this rigorous training are essential to success. I found spiritual training is similar to physical training. Spiritual growth and attaining goals in the Christian life do not come by osmosis nor do they come easy. Even though our Christian walk is by grace from beginning to end, it is grace that works within us the will to work out our own salvation with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Spiritual growth involves the rigorous and intentional execution of spiritual disciplines and practices over a period of time.

The Apostle Paul likens the Christian walk to the training and performance required of the ancent Games. We run with patience, striving for the prize, not punching the air but hitting the mark. Spiritual training takes rigor, heart, commitment, and endurance as we exercise our faith through spiritual disciplines and acts of piety and mercy. Overcomers and more-than-conquerors exercise their faith muscles by working out with God’s word through spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines can assist in making us spiritually fit for the fight of faith. Our Helper and Trainer the Holy Spirit trains us in godliness, developing Spirit-filled believers fit for kingdom living. We are called to be spiritually fit and to grow in Christ. Are you ready to train for godliness?

Truth Therapy Foundations

Truth Therapy is informed by several sources, namely Scripture, discipleship and spiritual disciplines, a holistic theology of sanctification, and a cognitive-behavioral model of transformation.

Scripture: The Word of God

Theologically, Truth Therapy draws from truths found in Scripture and applies them to life for the purpose of discipleship, which is transformation in the image of Christ. In saying that, it is necessary to say what Truth Therapy is not. It is not an attempt to reduce Scripture to a database from which to draw propositional truths to reprogram and program our minds to live a happier, successful life, as prescribed by popular success-oriented gospels or as in different incarnations of moral therapeutic deism. Success is measured more by faithfulness to God’s will than faithfulness to worldly achievement. It is also not a sanctified strategy for worldly success, though one may attain some version of success as a side effect of Truth Therapy. Truth Therapy applies the word of God as a means of grace to facilitate repentance, faith, and a stronger relationship with Christ. Thus, it is not self-help, pop psychology, or even a pyramid scheme to attaining self-success, which we find in so many prosperity messages. The goal is Christ-likeness in thought, word, and deed, and the daily experience of the Spirit’s work of faith, hope, and love saturated in perfect peace.

Without going too much in depth into a controversial issue, which is outside of the intent of this work, I would like to make some basic statements about the assumptions that this book makes concerning Scripture. Truth Therapy holds to a so-called high view of Scripture in terms of both its divine origin and inspiration as well as its human agency and context. Scripture is the word of God that comes from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and is instrumented through human agency. Scripture is very divine and very human. As our authority for Christian truth, Scripture reveals all matters of faith and practice necessary for salvation and is to be read and interpreted under the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit in concert, consonance, and in community with the best interpretations of the church and its rules of faith (i.e., the Nicene Creed).

In other words Scripture is best read, interpreted, and practiced in community and in consonance with community (the Great Tradition of the church in terms of the Vincentian Canon of what the church has always believed everywhere and at all times). Scripture, in terms of the nature of its truth and its truth content, reveals the nature and acts of God and can lead us into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Scripture is then instrumental in its nature and purpose. Specifically, its instrumental nature and purpose is salvific. Along with the work of the Spirit, the truth of Scripture assists in bringing us to faith in Christ and growing us in the life of Christ. Its purposes are missional (salvation) and liturgical (worship). In the preface to his Sermons on Several Occasions, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, noted the instrumental purpose of Scripture that directed him in the way of salvation: I want to know one thing—the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O Give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me.⁴

While biblical scholarship has invested much needed sweat equity in the research and application of historical criticism over the last century, it has often done so at the expense of the authority and power of the text in its final canonical form as we have it today. The Bible has been so qualified that it has been disqualified. It has been so qualified as cultural, myth, redacted, patriarchal, pre-critical, pre-scientific, Gnostic, and more that it is rarely believed as the word of God and thus has little value or power in the lives of its readers. Hyper-criticism has so paralyzed the text that not only can the Scriptures not save us, but also they cannot even save themselves. What we have left is a deflationary view of Scripture that has been flattened of its divine authorship, supernatural working, salvific content, and transformational power.

Truth Therapy holds that in its final canonical form the church has the written word of God that when mixed with faith is able to save our souls because it reveals the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. The word of God reveals God and God’s power to save, and it is effective in those who believe. It is a gift given to us for our theological, liturgical, formational, and missional practice. However, instead of believing God’s word, we have spent too much time crucifying it. I believe we have judged the word of God long enough; it is time to let it judge us.

Because of the Spirit’s work in and through Scripture, it is key to note that when we read the Bible, the Bible is reading us. Scripture often serves as a mirror into which we can see ourselves, even the depths of our hearts, as God sees us. This can be revolutionary. For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires (Heb 4:12 NLT). For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it (Jas 1:23–25 NLT).

Discipleship and Spiritual Disciplines

Truth Therapy is a spiritual discipline that can be incorporated into the process of discipleship. One definition of discipleship is the process of making disciplined learners and followers of Jesus Christ. The word disciple (Greek mathetes) means a learner or a student. In this case, we are learning to be Christ-like. However, Christ is both the teacher and the subject matter. Christ through the Spirit teaches us, shapes us, and molds us to be like him. The goal of discipleship is sanctification or holiness, to be and do like Christ. Jesus Christ is the true measure of who God is and what God desires for us.

One of the main tools in the discipleship process is spiritual discipline. Spiritual disciplines are like training regimens in physical exercise. They are disciplines that help us attain our goals. The spiritual disciplines have traditionally been one of the many means of grace that God has given to the church throughout the ages to use for its growth in Christ-likeness. Some of the spiritual disciplines are prayer, repentance, confession, fasting, study, fellowship, tithing, meditation-reflection, solitude, and service among