Let’s Change Our Brains

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Matthew 4:16 reads:

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

And this journey of brilliant Light becomes brighter every day.  Proverbs 4:18:

But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

Have you seen this Light?  Have you been born again—born a second time, this time of the Spirit of God?  Are you ready to be forgiven, to have all your sin and shame expunged from your record?  Are you ready to experience the power that destroys every bondage?  Today is your day of salvation—your day to see the Light.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Romans 12:2:

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.

GOD SAID, Ephesians 4:22:24:

22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

GOD SAID, Colossians 1:12-13:

12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

GOD SAID, Colossians 3:9-10:

9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;

10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

MAN SAID:  Old, archaic, man-written words—the Bible is bunk!

Now, THE RECORD.  The magnificent glory of the Word of God can be misrepresented, but never overstated.   The Word and God are one and the same.  This interesting piece of information is found in the 1904 book, Dictionary of Quotations.  Quoted is John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and gave this comment:

This verse was long regarded as the most sacred single verse in the Bible.  The begging friars used the first four words of the Latin version (In principio erat verbum) as a pious salutation. [End of quote]

People sincerely searching for proof of God and His supernaturally-authored Bible should consider this: thousands of years before this world’s brightest academics begin to understand an issue, they discover that God has already staked out the position.  It’s so impressive to consider that a childlike believer living in the world’s most backwater, academically-challenged place, whose only knowledge is the Word of God, will never be ashamed to say that he or she trusts in Him. 

Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature article 660 which will once again prove the amazing inerrancy of Holy Writ.  Each of these features is preserved on this site in text and streaming audio for the edification of the saints and as ammunition in the battle for the souls of men.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one. 

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Statistics have been cited on GodSaidManSaid that tell of the staggering number of global citizens who suffer from mental illnesses.  Thirty-eight percent of Europe has been diagnosed as mentally ill, and the U.S. can’t be far behind.  God has offered Word Therapy as the solution.

Multiple features posted on this site address the reality that, as the Bible declares, all things are literally made out of words—from the electronic device by which you are accessing this information to your eyes, ears, and brain that are comprehending this message, and yes, even down to your DNA, the building instructions of life that delivers its message in a four-letter alphabet structured as words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and volumes.  Words—everything is made out of words.  Psalm 33:6:

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

Hebrews 11:3:

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Harnessing the power of God’s creative Words heals the mind and the body, and empowers one to set a course for life—life more abundantly, even unto eternal life. 

In the November 2013 issue of Discover magazine, a six-page feature was published under the heading of “In Defense of Free Will,” with the sub-head, “A treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder suggests we can use the power of our thoughts to rewire our brains and direct our fate.”  Several paragraphs follow:

Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz got a phone call at 3 p.m., a script before 5 p.m., and the next afternoon, he was there, sitting with Leonardo DiCaprio, exploring the intricacies of one of the most debilitating mental illnesses in medicine.

DiCaprio was tackling the role of Howard Hughes in The Aviator, a part requiring him to arc—as Hughes did—from genius billionaire to shaggy recluse, caught in the grip of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Schwartz’s books, Brain Lock, and The Mind and the Brain, had established him as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the underlying mechanisms and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition that plagues sufferers with unreasonable thoughts and fears, which in turn compel repetitive behavior. 

DiCaprio left The Aviator with an Oscar-nominated performance and perhaps a mild case of the disease.  It reportedly took him about a year to get back to normal.  And today, his willful descent into the illness and subsequent recovery represents one of the most dramatic public examples in our popular culture of neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to change in shape, function, configuration, or size.  But Schwartz says mainstream science has yet to come to grips with an experience like DiCaprio’s, based on what Schwartz calls “self-directed neuroplasticity,” the ability to rewire your brain with your thoughts.  This kind of power doesn’t only rescue his patients, he says.  It rescues free will.

In these earliest days, Schwartz didn’t really know where he was going, only his starting point.  And what he asked of his clients was truly dramatic:  He asked them to recognize an OCD-related thought as soon as possible and relabel it as unreal—merely a symptom of their OCD—without giving in to it.  The group responded enthusiastically, but things took off after an older woman in the group, Dottie, suddenly exclaimed:  “It’s not me!  It’s my OCD!”  [End of quote]

Spirit creates physical results.  God is a Spirit and He created all that is visible with His spoken Word.  Spirit precedes physical.  Thoughts (silent words) are not physical, but spiritual entities.  All mental illness has some form of direct or indirect negative spiritual input, and the solution to these issues is Jesus Christ alone.  Roman 7:21-25:

21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:

23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

The Apostle Paul speaks of a third person detachment even as referred to by the Dr. Schwartz patient who said “It’s not me!  It’s my OCD!” 

Again, from the Discover feature:

Over the following weeks, patients started to report victories regularly.  At first, these wins were small.  Paula could hold off on questioning her boyfriend about his day for longer periods—first minutes, then an hour or more.  She could get by while asking fewer questions.  But as time passed, the patients reported something more remarkable.  The intrusive thoughts of OCD were diminishing, occurring less frequently, and coming on with less power. 

Schwartz believed that this was because his patients were in fact using the power of their minds to rewire their adult brains. 

Finally, from the paragraph heading, “The Rewired Brain:”

Eventually, Schwartz began to feel he was seeing free will in action: the people under his care choosing, again and again, to engage in a new behavior.  But he needed to wait and see if that evidence would turn up in a brain scan.  And after 10 weeks of treatment in the four steps, it was time.  His patients, their brains imaged before any treatment began, entered the hulking scanners a second time.  Baxter crunched the data and told him the news:  The amount of activity in these patients’ OCD circuits had decreased to a degree commensurate with the best results achieved by pharmaceutical therapy.  [End of quote]

Several paragraphs concerning neuroplasticity published on GodSaidManSaid follow.   From The Plastic Brain:

Top neuroscientists were interviewed in the May 2005 issue of Discover magazine concerning what they considered to be the most critical development in neuroscience in the past 25 years.  A dominant theme, the concept of the plasticity of the brain, kept recurring.  The amazement in neuroscience is that the adult brain actually adds neurons and literally changes form.  Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, Chairman of the Department of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine, had this to say:

The discovery that new neurons can appear in the adult brain may be the most surprising of the last quarter century of neuroscience.  The scale of the phenomenon and its significance remain to be established, but it appears that one of the oldest dogmas in the business is not true.

Neural plasticity was addressed by M.D. Hauser, professor of psychology, Harvard University:

The most important development in the last 25 years?  No contest: the discovery of neurogenesis in adult animals.  Until this discovery, made in the 1980s, every neuroscientist believed that the birth of new neurons was confined to early fetal development and the juvenile years.  This dogma was flattened when biologists discovered that the brains of adult male canaries undergo considerable neural change as a function of seasonal variation in their song.  New neurons are born in the song control areas, find their way to the relevant neural pathways, and then hook up so that new songs can be produced to lure willing female canaries.  The finding set off a spate of parallel discoveries in rats, primates, and humans, with dramatic implications for how we think about neural plasticity and its potential role in rehabilitating individuals with acquired and inherited neural defects, including patients with phantom limb pain, spinal cord injuries, and Parkinson’s disease.  [End of quote]

Brain plasticity means that the shape, size, and the number of neurons and synaptic connections change with experience.  Elizabeth Gould, professor of psychology, Princeton University, weighed in with the following:

One of the most important advances in the field of neuroscience in the last 25 years was the recognition that the adult brain exhibits both functional and structural plasticity.  Indeed, and entire subfield of neuroscience has emerged that focuses on plasticity as a basis for understanding brain function under normal conditions as well as after brain damage.  Because of this large body of work, we now know that the shape, size, and number of neurons and synaptic connections change as a result of experience.

Rutgers University’s Paula Tallal, Co-director of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience said:

The discovery that the central nervous system is plastic—physically adaptable and as such directly modifiable through behavioral intervention—is already being used to develop a novel generation of educational and rehabilitative methods for enhancing human mental function, both in children with learning disabilities and aging adults.  Just as psychopharmacology and genetics have dominated new treatment approaches in the past 25 years, neuroplasticity treatment approaches will have the potential to revolutionize both educational and clinical intervention strategies in the next 25 years.  [End of quote]

The big news in the field of neuroscience is that the brain is plastic—it changes form over time, and words and experiences are central to this process.  Thousands of years before neuroscience was even conceived, God declares this principle over and over again in His Word.  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.

The Godly renewing of the mind—making new the mind—actually transforms your entire being: mind, heart, body, soul, and spirit.  This process, through a very dramatic life-changing experience, is what Jesus Christ calls “born again.”

The Words of God renew the mind and we are transformed.  Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defines transform: “To change the form of; to metamorphose.”  Metamorphose is defined: “To change into a different form.”  Again, Webster defines it in theology as follows: “Change the natural disposition and temper of a man from a state of enmity (war) to God and His law, into the image of God, or into a disposition and temper conformed to the will of God.” [End of quote]  The call to put on the mind of Christ is the call to be transformed into the likeness of God.  God changes our entire being with words—His! 

So, neuroscience now understands that the brain can be transformed.  The Word of God, the foundation of all that is true, proclaimed this revelation thousands of years ago. [End of quotes]

From the GodSaidManSaid feature, Changing Your Brain:

In past features we have addressed the issue of neuroplasticity, and how God changes the human brain, a concept known to the blood-bought as putting on the mind of Christ. What neuroscience is just beginning to comprehend has been common knowledge among the redeemed since the principle was defined numerous times in God's Word thousands of years ago. This feature will be just one more proof of the supernatural origin of the Bible and of the God who authored it.

New research published in 2009 in Newberg and Waldman's book, How God Changes Your Brain, sheds additional light on the subject of neuroplasticity. Dr. Newberg is the director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the founders of a new field of interdisciplinary study called neurotheology. Co-author Mark Waldman is a therapist and author and co-author of ten books. He lectures throughout the country. Keep in mind that in the Word of God, today's neuroplasticity is called "renewing the mind." The following excerpts are from Newberg and Waldman''s book:

Contemplating God will change your brain, but I want to point out that meditating on other grand themes will also change your brain. If you contemplate the Big Bang, or immerse yourself in the study of evolution—or choose to play a musical instrument, for that matter—you'll change the neural circuitry in ways that enhance your cognitive health. But religious and spiritual contemplation changes your brain in a profoundly different way because it strengthens a unique neural circuit that specifically enhances social awareness and empathy while subduing destructive feelings and emotions. This is precisely the kind of neural change we need to make if we want to solve the conflicts that currently afflict our world. And the underlying mechanism that allows these changes to occur relates to a unique quality known as neuroplasticity: the ability of the human brain to structurally rearrange itself in response to a wide variety of positive and negative events.

If we combine all of the research on neuroplasticity, we must conclude that neurons do not have fixed properties or positions. Instead, they are changing all the time, triggered by competition, environmental changes, and education.

So what does neuroplasticity have to do with God? Everything, for if you contemplate something as complex or mysterious as God, you're going to have incredible bursts of neural activity firing in different parts of your brain. New dendrites will rapidly grow and old associations will disconnect as new imaginative perspectives emerge. [End of quote]

Again from How God Changes Your Brain:

In nearly all of our subjects who had meditated for over ten years, we found asymmetric activity between the left and right half of the thalamus when they were not engaged in any contemplative activity. In other words, one side was more active than the other side. In the general population, both sides are typically equal in activity, especially when you are at rest.

We would argue that the more you meditate on a specific object—be it God, or peace, or financial success—the more active your thalamus becomes, until it reaches a point of stimulation where it perceives thoughts in the same way that other sensations are perceived. And if you exercise an idea over and over, your brain will begin to respond as though the idea was a real object in the world. This, we believe, is what may cause thalamic asymmetry in advanced meditators. Thus, the more you focus on God, the more God will be sensed as real. But it will not be a "symmetrical" reality. Instead, it will be perceived "asymmetrically," meaning that the reality will appear different from one's normal perception of the world. For advanced meditators, the asymmetrical reality becomes their normal state of awareness. God, tranquility, and unity become an integral part of their lives, no longer a thought but a palpable experience, as real as the book you are holding in your hand. [End of quote]

Putting on the mind of Christ literally changes the formation of the brain. Let''s read Romans 12:2 again:

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.

Neuroscientists know this as neuroplasticity. Transformed simply means to change form. God's renewing of the mind process will change all aspects of a person''s life and it begins as a result of direct intervention of God's Spirit in the believer's mind. This process of Godly mind transformation begins with a miracle and proceeds through a continual series of miracles:

• • Miracle #1: Born-again.
  • Miracle #2: The chain-breaking power of the open confession of Jesus Christ with the mouth.
  • Miracle #3: A public water baptism by immersion.
  • Miracle #4: The supernatural baptism of the Holy Ghost as received on the day of Pentecost.
  • Miracle #5: The daily study of the Word of God which continues the process of mind renewal.

The born-again experience is not turning over a new leaf. It's a new—all new—life. II Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Neuroscience begins to understand neuroplasticity, but God is already there.  [End of quotes]

One particular GodSaidManSaid believer sent the following email:

Baptism with the Holy Ghost even cures autism!

We asked him for clarification and he responded:

I suffer from high-functioning autism, AKA Asperger’s Syndrome.  When I received the Holy Ghost, my mind seemed clearer than I ever remember it being.

For those of you who have not been filled with the Holy Ghost as they were on the day of Pentecost, click onto The Holy Ghost Series. 

Let’s change our brains.  Below, you will find the GodSaidManSaid brain-changing Power Speaking Page that you can print out and carry with you.  There is a process for obtaining dominant victory.  Following this verbal procedure yields results that are consistent, steadfast, and sure.  If you are listening to this feature, I will speak the promise and you should repeat out loud after me.  If you are reading this feature, speak the promises out loud with emphasis.  Are you ready?  Here we go!

POWER SPEAKING PAGE

SPEAK OUT LOUD:

• I have repented of my sins and surrendered my life to my Lord Jesus Christ (I John 1:9).
• I am born-again (John 3:3, I Peter 1:22-23, I John 1:7).
• I am a new creature (II Corinthians 5:17).
• I am a child of God (I John 5:1).
• I am baptized with the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:38-39).
• My steps are ordered by the Lord (Psalms 37:23).
• I can speak with new tongues (Mark 16:17).
• The angel of the Lord encamps about me to protect me (Psalms 34:7).
• I can cast out devils (Mark 16:17).
• I am a king and a priest in Christ Jesus (Revelation 1:6).
• I can lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover (Mark 16:18).
• I am a saint (I Corinthians 1:2, Romans 8:27, etc.).
• All things work together for my good (Romans 8:28).
• No weapon formed against me shall prosper (Isaiah 54:17).
• In everything give thanks (I Thessalonians 5:18).
• I am able to go up and take the country (Numbers 13:30).
• I can bind and loose on earth and it shall be bound and loosed in Heaven (Matthew 16:19).
• I am more than a conqueror through Christ who loves me (Romans 8:37).
• God always causes me to triumph in Christ (II Corinthians 2:14).
• Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivers him out of them all (Psalms 34:19).
• By the stripes of Jesus I am healed (I Peter 2:24).
• I have power with God (John 14:13-14).
• I love everybody (Matthew 5:44).
• Today is the best day of my life (Romans 8:28, Proverbs 4:18).
• Tomorrow will be better (Romans 8:28, Proverbs 4:18).
• Nothing shall by any means hurt me (Luke 10:19).
• Everything I put my hand to shall prosper (Psalms 1:3).
• This is the day the Lord hath made; I will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalms 118:24).
• Hallelujah!

GOD SAID, Romans 12:2:

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.

GOD SAID, Ephesians 4:22:24:

22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

GOD SAID, Colossians 1:12-13:

12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

GOD SAID, Colossians 3:9-10:

9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;

10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

MAN SAID:  Old, archaic, man-written words—the Bible is bunk!

Now you have THE RECORD.

       

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Evans, B., Dictionary of Quotations, Crown Publishers, 1904

GodSaidManSaid, Changing Your Brain

GodSaidManSaid, The Plastic Brain

Volk, S., “In Defense of Free Will,” Discover, November 2013 

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