Real Freedom Requires Heart Change

The Bible teaches a lot about the heart—the word is used about 735 times in Scripture. For example, Jesus tells us that “the heart” can be desperately wicked, and Paul says the Word of God can change the thoughts and intentions of our heart. He also gives us an important understanding about the heart’s role in the process of change. In Romans 10:9-10, Paul says: 

“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”

This important Scripture is key to understanding how we change our destructive behaviors. Paul says that with our hearts we believe, and what we believe results in how we act—righteousness. In other words, if you want to change your behavior, you have to change your beliefs, which reside in your heart.

One reason we have had so little success in changing self-destructive behavior is that we have tried to change it through our heads, using logic and information. But it’s this limbic system (our heart) that causes us, like Paul, to do the very thing we don’t want to do. It is our survival brain. It doesn’t respond very well to words—only experiences. Science is now helping us understand the logistics of New Testament transformation. Changing the unconscious beliefs in our hearts—the beliefs that drive our self-destructive behaviors—usually begins with a spiritual awakening (being born again). The problem is that the beliefs driving our self-destructive behaviors and emotions are mostly subconscious, and are almost impossible to see or change with our own self-effort. Jesus is all about heart change.  He came to, bind up broken hearts and set the captives free.

The Genesis Process helps uncover, challenge, and help change faulty beliefs that drive destructive behavior. Explore the roots of destructive patterns that keep others—and ourselves—trapped in cycles of bondage including: workaholism, food, anxiety, codependency, sex, shopping, alcohol, porn, substances, and other self-comforts.