Tape Talk: Faith Creates A Reality
REVIEW:
Faith Creates a Reality
By Page Prewitt
The audio series I am about to tell you about was recorded in 1988 at a conference in England that I attended with my parents when I was ten years old. While I was taking part in the youth program, the adults (including my parents) were listening to Page Prewitt in a nearby room. Thankfully, what she shared with them was recorded and I was thrilled to discover it for myself several years later.
I was about 18 when I first listened to this tape (I’m 34 now). I think my mother had the recording and I just picked it up one day. I listened to it on my Walkman on my way to college and was instantly hooked! The spiritual truths and wonderfully practical applications Page Prewitt shares on this tape are truly life changing–they have been for me.
Starting with an explanation of our human make-up, Page describes how we are all made up of a body, a soul, and a spirit. Page helps us to understand the verse "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him" (1 Cor. 6:17) with a wonderful analogy: once we are born again our human spirit is joined to God’s Spirit in a union that can be likened to an egg! I love this illustration! It’s just one egg but inside is the yolk and the white. No matter how hard you shake the egg you cannot scramble the inside. The two remain separate–but it’s still one egg! So it is with us in our union with God. This union is permanent and Satan is out for good. But, you might be asking: "If Christ lives in us and is joined to our spirit one, then how do we still sin?" Good question. Page shares her own experience of facing this question–presented to her by her daughter (age 10!). It wasn’t until several years later that clarity came on this point, but it did come and she shares it with us in this series.
Satan’s ultimate deceit is to get us to believe that we are "just us": separate from God, self-operating beings that make our own choices and do our own thing. This is his lie that he has deceived all of humanity with since Adam and Eve. This was the lie he chose to believe about himself–that he could be like the most high and be his own god and do his own thing (Isa. 14:14). But how exactly does he deceive us? Page spends the remainder of the recording explaining how Satan uses our soul, body responses (the flesh) from the outside (he never regains entry into our spirits after we are born again) to get us to sin. This is radical truth! Truth that Satan does not want people to know. Once people know this, the jig is up for him. He has nowhere to hide. But he has people so deceived that it really does require us to "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2).
In discussing the makeup of our spirits (desire, will and mind) Page states "the only choice that we as human beings are free on our own to make is either to believe or not believe. Another word for that is faith, another word for that is receptivity. As you receive the truth, as you faith into God in His truth, it becomes His choice through you that’s made. This is one of the most important things you’ll hear here. Because you really think it’s you: "I think I’ll go here, I think I’ll go there, I think I’ll say this, I think I’ll say that." It’s either Christ or Satan doing all the saying, all the doing, all the talking. What makes it God is the fact that you will dare to put your faith in the fact that it is God! Faithing in to the fact that it’s God is what makes it God!"
There is no way to communicate here in this review how wonderfully clear an explanation Page gives of how Satan uses our thoughts and emotions (soul) to trick us into thinking we are independent selves. I could listen to this section of the tape (and have!) over and over and never tire of it. She gives personal examples, funny anecdotes, tackles audience participation and most of all drills home life-changing truths in a way that has personally penetrated and convicted me to the core.
One particular highlight of this recording for me is an exchange with an audience member who has a question about being messy. She wants to know if it is Christ being messy by her, because she’s "quite happy to be messy so is Christ happy to be messy?" After Page answers this, the same lady continues with a question about worry. The exchange that follows is quite entertaining! The lady tries to convince Page that she "gets it" while Page can tell she doesn’t and in a delightfully humorous way tells her so in no uncertain terms! Eventually this lady does catch on and then states that she thinks she’s "getting a rough idea" which Page just loves and laughs about with the rest of the audience. This exchange, although funny and lighthearted, reinforces Page’s message that soul/feelings are neutral and do not affect who we are at our spirit center (Jesus Christ in our individual forms).
Page describes feelings as: "up and down, up and down, up and down"–always changing ("for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal." 2 Cor. 4:18). They are like mercury in a thermometer–they just register what is. But they do nothing to change the weather! "Thoughts and feelings are neutral. So you don’t ever have to feel guilty of them when they’re bad and you don’t have to be prideful about them when they’re good. They just are what they are. But it’s the choice you make about them from your spirit that makes them what they are."
The truths Page shares on this recording are scriptural, radical and if you apply them–LIFE CHANGING! After I spent years of living from feelings–trying to get rid of the bad ones and hang on to the good ones, using all manner of sinful, ungodly vices–I was totally liberated to hear and apply these truths in my own life. No matter what pleasant or unpleasant feelings come my way, I know they are just temporary and neutral and are going nowhere. They do nothing to affect or change who I am at my spirit center–Christ in my Joanna form. He is peace when I feel afraid, He is strong when I feel weak, He is love when I feel hate, He is ALL when I feel lacking.
Whatever the feeling/temptation might be–the answer is always the same. Satan is using whatever the situation/feeling/thought is to try and trick me in to thinking that I am "just me" and that I need to do something about the thought or feeling. If he succeeds in this then I allow him to boss me from the outside, through my members, and he lives out what I believed about my "just me" (really a lie) self: he lives out fear when I feel afraid, he lives out shy when I feel shy etc. BUT, if on the other hand I acknowledge the thought/feeling and then recognize that I am merely a vessel containing Jesus Christ and that He is here to live out His attributes in the situation (peace, strength, love, power) then He will! Faith creates a reality!
So, I hope if you have never listened to this recording you will get your hands on a copy. And if you have listened to it before I hope this review will inspire you to listen to it again. I’m sure I will continue to listen to this one for many more years to come!
Available on CD soon!
