Sid: My guest Dr. James Richards interviewing him on his book “How to Stop the Pain.” Jim we’ve been talking about just a few of the areas in your book but I cannot give a stronger endorsement that this is one of these books that will literally stop people from shooting themselves in the foot with their marriage, with their children, with their job. And you don’t want to be doing this but you’re doing it because you don’t even understand.
Jim: That’s right.
Sid: There is such correlation as you said between this judgment, let’s talk a little bit about this.
Jim: The incredible thing is you know the Bible says that “All of our life flows out of the issues of our heart.” Now the issues of the heart or the heart itself actually is that part of us that we really develop our self of identity or our sense of self. As a matter of fact an incredible thing that they discovered recently the physical heart has more neurons than the brain does, therefore it has a greater capacity for memory than the brain.
Sid: Boy that gives you that just really explodes some of the things in the Bible that Jesus was talking about.
Jim: Oh exactly. You know all of these things that the Bible says about the heart you know there’s some link between the physical and the nonphysical heart. So what they’re discovering in the latest cutting edge of medical science is that every organ in the body influences a different aspect of thought and a different aspect of emotion. So there’s a connection between the brain and the organs. Interestingly with the heart, the heart is a link to our long term memory. A person’s heart condition affects their ability for long term memory. This is why when some people get older they may dying and they can’t remember what happened yesterday, but their heart is still strong and they can remember what happened when they can remember what happened when they were 5 years old because they still have that long term memory. Well long term memory is what gives us our sense of self this tells me who I am. So what we understand is what I believe about me ultimately is going to determine all of the issues of my life. Everything that I do is going to come out of a heart that has determined who I am. So when we pass judgments, and most of the judgments that we pass that alter our life we pass them before we’re 5 years old. See…
Sid: That’s kind of scary because who can remember what happened before you were 5 years old.
Jim: You can’t remember that’s why you don’t realize that these things are affecting you. You know you’re born with a sin nature and my belief on the sin nature is not that it just makes you inherently evil per say as it makes you inherently fearful which leads to evil behavior. You know the first thing that happened to Adam whenever he became a sinner was he didn’t say “I’m going to go find me a marijuana plant and another woman.” Immediately he just became afraid he was afraid of God he became fearful, insecure and then that fear caused him to run away from God and try to meet his needs independent of God. Now one of the things that fear does is fear places “me” at the center of everything. You know the fearful person…
Sid: So fear and pride are synonymous.
Jim: Fear and pride yeah, fear and self-centeredness because the fearful person thinks that everything is about them. They see 2 people talking off in a distance they think that they’re talking about them. They just think that everything that happens is about them and of course that goes back to…
Sid: The world revolves around them.
Jim: That’s right I am now god of my own world everything is about me. So as a child with a sin nature, or a fear nature, things happen in your world that you can’t intellectually explain but at a very early age you begin to assume why they happen. For example, most children of divorces parents feel like they did something wrong or they could have done something to save the marriage. So they take on themselves a guilt, a shame, a burden that has nothing to do with them. Or if abusive parent for example and that child passes a judgment and says “This is why my parent does this to me because I’m a bad child.” But we pass all of these judgments and what these judgments do is they affect our heart and develop this sense of who we are and we live the rest of our lives out of that.
Sid: So what can we do about this that it happened before we’re 5 and we’re not even in touch with these things?
Jim: You know the great thing is if we renew our minds in who we are in Jesus, you don’t even have to remember when it happened or how it happened you just have to believe the truth about who you are in Jesus today. I think that one of the most fatal things that is left out of a new converts teaching right off the bat is now there’s over 200 scriptures in the New Testament alone that tells you who you are now that you’re in Jesus. Listen make sure that you see those and that you come to see yourself that way. See that’s how you renew your heart because you begin to believe these things at such a deep level that it changes your sense of self. Now we should see ourselves as priests and kings. We should see ourselves as loved and excepted and approved of God. But most of us never renew our mind and so all of these things from our past you know we believe on Jesus we believe we’re going to heaven but we still have low self-worth. We’re so afraid of rejection and afraid of other people’s judgments and we don’t even know why. And we think it’s because you know we pass a judgment about our self. “The reason I’m this way is because I’m not a good Christian, the reason I’m this way is because I must have some sin,” and we pass judgments about ourselves.
Sid: Now you talk much in your book about most Christians will forgive but they won’t release the judgments explain that.
Jim: You know we do that to other and we do that to ourselves because we do have these events that we can remember, we can remember from these pains that came into our life. We can remember these awful things that people did to us or awful things that we did. And what I find you find Christians all the time it’ll come to their mind about something someone had done to them and yeah they’re going to pray this out “I forgive this person in the name of Jesus and I forgive them in the name of Jesus.” And they get some momentary relief from that, but then suddenly it immerges again.
Sid: All they have to do is hear that person’s name. And the anger will bubble inside.
Jim: That’s right hear… in their heart hear an emotion remember something and then there they are again “Well I forgive them in Jesus name and I forgive… and pretty soon they’re saying “You know what this doesn’t work.”
Sid: So how do you release?
Jim: Well if you were sitting in jail because you had been convicted of a crime; in other words you were charged with something a judgment was made and based on that judgment you were given a sentence. And so you are sitting in jail and one day you’re lawyer comes in and says “Hey I’ve got great news for you the judge is going to forgive you of your offense.” He’s like “Oh, this is incredible I’m going to get to go home.” So your lawyer takes you back before the judge you stand there and the judge says “I just want you to know that in the case of Jim Richards the State verses Jim Richards I want you to know we forgive you.” And I’m thinking “Praise God I’m forgiven.” I turn around and I start to walk home and the guy grabs me and throws me in my cell and I’m like “Wait a minute I thought I was forgiven?” Well, you are forgiven but you still got a judgment against you you still got to pay the penalty.”
Sid: Well, it doesn’t even help that you were forgiven then.
Jim: Exactly it doesn’t help at all. The judge went home and said “You know something the State is not mad at Jim Richard’s anymore but I’m still paying the price.” So what we do is we release people from, or we forgive people we say “Okay I forgive you,” because we never release them from the judgment and the ultimate penalty.” And see the penalty that we sometimes pass upon people is “I will have to be angry with you all of your life.” Or the penalty will be “You need to be suffering; for the rest of my life I need to know that you’re suffering.” There has to come a time when I say “You know something since I don’t know why that person did what they did I don’t have the right to sentence them to anything.” Because it’s my assumptions about why they did that caused the pain anyhow. You know my step-father broke into my room, stabbed me in my sleep would have killed me. Let me say by the way before he died by the way I had the opportunity to led to him to Jesus him, my father, my mother, my brother, my sister and most of the people that some time in my life had tried to kill me I got to lead them to Jesus. You know one of the things I discovered about my step-father was 5 years old he was in an automobile accident he lived in rural Alabama. They didn’t have enough money to take him to the doctor he had a piece of glass shoved through his skull. He was screaming in pain they had no way of doing anything about it so they locked him in a shed to die.
Sid: So you had no way of knowing what that man went through that made him the way he was.
Jim: Exactly.
Sid: I tell you what we’re out of time.
