We worship the God of the Universe. The cosmos and everything in it is under His control. But there is another universe that needs His rule as well. A universe that needs His power and His presence so greatly. It is our the universe of our inner world. The world where we store our core beliefs, our inner thoughts and our emotions. A world full of implicit memories reacting to the sensations around us, committing us to a path of action that often needs the touch of God. It is this world that so desperately needs Him. It is in our inner world that we need to ask, seek and knock for peace, joy and the filling of the Holy Spirit. It is in our inner world that we need the “peace that passes all understanding.” In her book, “The Healing Presence” Leanne Payne writes, “Personhood, identity, being itself come from Him as our hands and hearts are open to receive. Focused on Him, we climb up and out of the hell of self and self-consciousness. Listening to the words He speaks, we are freed from the words that emanate from our unhealed hearts, from the unhealed hearts of our fellow creatures, or from the powers of darkness: those that accuse and tempt us toward separation and death. In listening to the words that come from God, we become all we were created to be.—God the Father, who has the Power of Being, heals and affirms us. By fiat He spoke the worlds into existence, by fiat He can and does create in us a new and solid sense of being.” Today, ask God to do a work in your inner self. Seek, with all your heart, to be filled with His presence and peace. Knock upon the Father’s door, seeking His fellowship, His love. May His very presence flood you internally with a deep sense of purpose and eternal mission.

Father, You said that I can ask anything of You. You are the giver of good gifts and I come today asking that You would do a mighty work in my inner person. Guide me, save me, heal me, teach me, lead me. Help me today to become all that You created me to be. In Jesus’ name.
AMEN

AFFIRMATION & MEDITATION
I can bring God my most desperate requests
God is vitally interested in you and your inner life. He wants us to share with Him, allowing Him to work deep in our hearts. Today, visualize yourself before God. See Him come to you and ask, “How are you doing?” Though He already knows, you sense His sincerity and feel yourself wanting to share with Him. For the next moment go ahead and talk to God. Tell Him how you feel, what you are thinking and then listen for His response. Spend time with Him, you can share with Him your deepest thoughts and bring to Him your most desperate requests.

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Shame and guilt have so many of us in bondage. If it is not actual shame, it is the fear of being shamed. Yet this is not the way of life God has chosen for us. David knew this. In today’s passage, David is appealing to God to forgive him. He came to Him with complete abandonment, crying out for mercy, asking God to cleanse him from all his sin. He was counting on God’s unfailing love and compassion. Likewise, we come to God, through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, asking that all our sins be forgiven. But do we really believe that happens? Are we really forgiven? We need to get to that same place of trust that David was in. We need to know and experience the freedom that comes from the forgiveness of Christ. David accepted himself as clean. Will you? Live in His forgiveness today.

Try praying: Father, I refuse to believe that You are ashamed of me or that you will abandon me because of my transgressions. I confess my sin and accept the death of Christ on the Cross as the substitution for my wrongdoings. Help me Lord rise, not in arrogance, but humility, knowing that I am cleansed and accepted by Your unconditional love. I choose to accept myself as forgiven and not ashamed. In Jesus’ name.
AMEN

AFFIRMATION
I am forgiven and not ashamed
Shame is hard to shake. It is a felt experience. In order to overcome it you need to let the truth of your forgiveness calm you and return you to peace and joy. When you feel shame, your body is lying to you. So you need to practice “feeling” the truth. Picture your self being shamed by someone. It feels bad but let your body feel it. As you feel it deeply, start to think of Christ dying on the cross for you. Picture Him looking at you from the Cross saying to you, “I am doing this so you will not have to feel shame. I love you!” Say, “There is no shame in Christ. Jesus loves me and forgives me. I feel peace and joy.” As you meditate on this you will start to feel the shame dissipate and your stomach, chest, and head return to normal. Do this several times and begin to realize that shame is a body “lie” from the past and that forgiveness and peace is the way you should feel.

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Have you ever slipped? I have. It is a helpless feeling. Your legs fly up and your body comes down without warning. Once I slipped off a tree limb and landed many feet below on the ground. There were scratches down the side of my body from the many branches that I hit on my descent. Slipping out of control can be a terrifying experience. But there can be more fearful slips. Ever have the fear of abandonment or rejection or that leads to an anxiety so bad that you felt your heart would beat out of your chest? You feel like you’re going down a long winding chute picking up speed leading directly to annihilation. It is a fear of non-being, leaving you in terror, trying anything to bring relief. The Psalmist knew what it felt like. He cried, “I am slipping!” The good news is God can help you down from those mental and emotional cliffs that you are hanging on to by a thread. As difficult as it may seem, as terrifying you may think the outcome could be, God is with you to help and comfort. He will help you find a way. The Psalmist was in a dilemma. It was sheer horror that made him cry out to God, “My foot is slipping!” But when he did, God’s unfailing, better said, His never failing love, supported him. When his anxiety was so high, when doubts filled his mind so much that he could not stand it, God consoled him, bringing real joy deep to his soul. God will do the same for you. Bring him your fear, your anxiety, your terror. Bring Him to the spot where you are slipping. Reach up your hand and He will grab you. He will hold you with His strong arm. He will put your feet in a safe place.

Try Praying
Father, I am slipping. Please come to my aid. Catch me, hold me, help me find better footing. I need Your consolation. I need Your never failing love. I need Your help. Guide me, comfort me, rescue me, in the name of Jesus I pray.
AMEN

AFFIRMATION
When I fear, God is there to comfort
It’s not hard to imagine fear. Let yourself go there for a moment. Feel yourself falling. Sense your heart beating faster, your chest tighten, you start to get light headed and breathing gets shallow. But then there is hope. Take a deep breath and see God coming near. He is there, His love leading Him directly to your pain. He reaches and touches your heart. You feel comfort begin to flow to your extremities. Your breathing returns to normal, your head clears and you sense a deep, deep peace. God’s unfailing love has caught you and lifted you to safe ground. Praise God and affirm, when I fear, God is there to comfort.

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Emotion Regulation
Learning how to return to peace and joy from painful emotions is key to being resilient.

Self Control

Learning to focus on our emotions and sensations, practicing the delay of gratification, riding the emotional waves rather than reacting to them and learning to discourage urges or inclinations toward negative behavior and feelings early on will help us become more resilient.

Healthy Attachments and Love Bonds
Practicing empathy, the ability to feel and understand what is going on in someone else, to be in their world; and attunement, the tuning in to someone else’s thoughts and feelings will allow us to build strong caring bonds with others. We will be able to communicate on a non-verbal level and know intuitively that they are happy to be with us. As Christians we also have the ability to attune to God which is the best love bond we can have.

Reattribution
This is the ability to look beyond our immature belief systems and realize that there are other more legitimate reasons for emotions and behavior. It is an accurate assessment of causes for our situation. We learn to attribute cause and effect in a mature and accurate manner getting rid of child like superstitions, beliefs and assumptions.

Successful approximations
We grow and nudge ahead in our maturity. Little successes build into larger ones. As we bond with others and begin to see more mature thinking in our life we will start to change our assumptions and the brains predictions. This extinction of old neural pathways will give way to new ones and we will begin to think and act differently.

Reinterpretation
As we reflect and become more aware of our emotions we will be able to focus on memories of when we felt this way. With the help of God and our mature self we will be able to reintrepret the assumptions and beliefs that we took away from this situation. This reinterpretation will put the memory into a whole new protein and lose the old painful emotions that were attached to it.

Christian Spirituality
As we grow in our awareness of God and His love we will find ourself open to a whole new relationship with Him. This new Christian Spirituality will allow us to bring His love and power to our situation. His Holy Spirit will be alive in our soul and teach, comfort and guide us. This belief that God loves us and has an interest in our well being will give way to a new hope and optimism.

Why SOZO?
The Bible teaches that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” In the last 20 years neuroscience has learned how the brain and memory work hand-in-hand in shaping behavior.  SOZO uses Biblical principles and applied neuroscience to help us learn to regulate our emotions. Science teaches that the majority of people do not have the resilience needed to return to peace and joy from painful emotions. They struggle with the ability to regulate their negative emotions. When that happens, we turn to substitutes for joy, such as negative behaviors, events, experiences, relationships or substance; anything to give us instant or short-term relief.  With SOZO we can live the way God intended for us.

SOZO meaning
SOZO is the Greek word translated “salvation, healing, wholeness, restore, deliver, recover.”
Salvation
“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved (SOZO).” Romans 10:9
Healing
“But Jesus turning and seeing her said, ‘Daughter take courage; your faith has made you well.’ (SOZO)  At once the woman was made well (SOZO).” Matthew 9:22
Wholeness
“Those who had seen it reported to them how the man who was demon-possessed had been made well (SOZO).” Luke 8:36
“For she said within herself, ‘If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole (SOZO).’ Matthew 9:21

Goals of SOZO
What are the goals of SOZO? What do we hope to accomplish in this class? Rate the different reasons for being here on a scale 1-5. (1 = not even close, 5 = right on target)
___ To know God and myself better
___ To come into full maturity
___ To build deep and satisfying relationships with God and others
___ To change some of my negative beliefs
___ To regulate my emotions
___ To overcome negative and critical thinking
___ To seek help for emotional struggles
___ To stop addictions and other negative behaviors that I escape into

Eight Pillars of SOZO
I. Christian spirituality
II. Neuroscience  – how the brain works
III. Relationships with God, self & others
IV. Resilience through learning how to return to peace and joy
V. Renewing your mind
VI. Changing your interpretation of memories
VII. Maturing the child-like parts of ourselves
VIII. Reparenting

Elements of SOZO
Brain exercises
Telling our stories (verbally and through journaling)
Video and teaching
Weekly meeting with partner, sponsor or group
Participate in discussions
Guided visualization/meditation
Devotions
Prayer
Scriptural meditation

We are excited and look forward to expanding our ministry. If you are interested in helping let us know.

You can download this new book here.

May God bless you and help you as you put on the full Armor of God.

What do these beliefs do?
Remember, we have said that the primary job of the brain is to predict. It takes in all variables, whether it is from the left brain’s rationalization of what is going on, or the right brain’s interpretation of what it senses to be the situation, and predicts the outcome of different behavioral options. If the prediction is perceived as negative, our inner beliefs from our childhood of shame, guilt, fear, anger, judgment will attempt to shape our behavior. Our beliefs will also be full of self-judgment and comparison to others in order to “keep us in line.”

Unfortunately, these beliefs may have nothing to do with the real world going on around us, but to us it will seem like reality. It is like a person who has real athletic ability but is told they are not coordinated or as good as other children. They never test their ability or when they do they are hampered by all the negative attributions they have of themselves.

Test  For Inner Negativity
Do you find yourself needing to please people? Y / N
Do you get overly upset if someone is mad at you? Y / N
If you are working by yourself and make a mistake, do you get angry at yourself? Y / N
Do you have extra high standards? Y / N
If you do wrong, does it take you a while to get over it? Y / N
If you are alone and make a mistake, do you strongly berate yourself? Y / N
Do you avoid competition where you know you might lose? Y / N
Is your self worth based on performance? Y / N
Do you compare yourself to others and their successes? Y / N
Do you feel you need to hide your faults or past failures? Y / N
Are you self conscious when you go into a room of strangers? Y / N
Do you find it hard to finish a difficult task because of negative thoughts? Y / N
Do you find yourself overly critical of others? Y / N
Emotions Without Judgments – Stop the Inner Critic
It is hard to have emotions without having judgments at the same time. We don’t always notice our self beliefs because we are into the emotion, but if we focus we will be able acertain these beliefs. This affects our thinking. Much of this is really “trash” thinking. We go through the day “negative and critical thinking about ourself and everything around us. Part of our healing will be learning to be “in a moment” without judging but instead trusting God and who He has made us to be. It takes much practice to be able to be in the moment with God and not to be sucked up into being negative with everything around us.

The Inner Fanatic
There is an extreme form of inner persuasion that goes deeper than just thinking. It is what I call the inner fanatic. It deeply believes in all the propaganda that it has been fed into our brain and is a true believer in all the lies we believe about our self. It is the part of us that believes all things that we are starting to find out are lies and this part of ourself will go to any length to get us to behave in what it believes to be correct behavior. This is the part of us that will become the antagonist to any change in your thinking. It will become the saboteur toward any change in behavior. Why is this? Why can’t we have all of our parts believe in this new life that we want to live? Because it is that primal part of us that is scared to death, that is so conditioned by our implicit memory and dead set against change that it will do anything to get us to act consistent to what it thinks is representative of our true self. It comes from a very frightening place when our life was based on FEAR BONDS not LOVE BONDS. Fear and shame are powerful deep rooted emotions.

This is the part of us that frustrates us the most. It is the part of you that will act out anyway it has to in order to be consistent to the lies you believe. Even if you have consciously decided that you must change your behavior your inner fanatic will fight to get it’s twisted way. It is the part that says we must go back to our addiction. It is the part that acts out in behavior that is opposite of what we are starting to believe can be true for us. It is the part that denies that things are really that wrong, or the part of us that tells us to give up. It is also the part of us that Satan likes to lure into action because it is the part of us that is most vulnerable.
 
Paul talks about this in the book of Romans. Listen to him as he talks about his dilemma with his behavior.

“The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. – I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.”
Romans 7:14-15; 18-20 (NLT)
 
Paul calls this our sinful self, but think about it. Much of what we call sin is acting out in a negative way in order to regulate our emotion. Lying, cheating, fighting, quarreling, these and other sinful behaviors are the result of trying to protect ourself from what we perceive to be dangerous, or in order to keep the status quo. 

What Can We Do? How Can We Change All The Negative Inner Thinking?

1. Learn to listen
When you feel a mood shift learn to STOP and ask, “What am I feeling right now? What am I thinking?” Try to put it into words. Get a good sense of what is going on in your head. Write it down. Be your own detective and researcher. Journal and work on this. If you won’t who will?

2. Examine for truth
Most of the time the messages in our head are LIES! Why? Because it is not part of our Rational thinking. It is part of the emotional system. We have emotions and our left brain gives a rationale for why we are having that emotion. However, just because it is a rationale doesn’t mean it is rational! Rather it is “faulty logic.” Instead we need to discern exactly what it is we are feeling and thinking so we can examine it. Which voice is it? Who’s voice is it? Get a good image of it so we can eradicate it.  Paul wrote to the church,

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. 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.’ Philippians 4:8 (NLT)

3. Renounce the lies
The best time to pull out a weed is in the early stages. Grab it firmly as low as possible and pull it out by the roots! Likewise, once you discern what the message you are listening to, if it is not true, get rid of it. Renounce it, refuse to let it go any farther.

Paul shares with us how we are suppose to deal with lies and deception.
“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” II Corinthians 10:4-5

4. Pronounce the truth!
It isn’t good enough to just renounce the lies. We need to REPLACE the lie with the TRUTH!
Jesus said that the truth will set us free.

5. Practice being in the moment and return to joy from judgments
We need to monitor our reactions to the events around us. We need to catch ourself making judgments, being critical, complaining and STOP! Take a deep breath, be in the moment, commit it to God and move on.

6. Tell the Inner Fanatic to stop acting out!
In order to get to our inner fanatic we need to be just as fanatical about our new beliefs. We need to name the thought or behavior and “shout it out!” Get stern, get direct and tell it to STOP! When we recognize this behavior and bring it out of our head, we can see it for what it is and become resolve to go forward with positive behavior.

7. Commit to the Holy Spirit and let Him change you.
In II Corinthians 3:17-18 Paul writes about the Holy Spirit’s ability to change us. He writes, “For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. – And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.” The power in the Word of God, Holy Spirit and fellowship of other Christians will change you from the inside out.

8. Change the memory
Much of what we believe about ourself comes from our experiences as a child. As we allow God to make us more mature and we, as a mature adult enter our memories and rechange our interpretations and beliefs resulting from that experience we will see change. Then we can ask Jesus Christ to come to our memory and do a deep work in our heart by speaking truth into our memory. God’s influence on our memories is powerful and life changing. We will be spending time in this section working on changing our memories. This is KEY to changing our emotions and the faulty logic that comes with it.

So far we have studied the brain and how it works. We have looked at the importance of attachment and bonding. We have investigated maturity and how to regulate our emotions. Now we want to look at our Inner Self and the different voices that speak to us.

When we were children our parents projected many of their problems onto us. Projection is where we focus on the faults in others that are really dominant in us. So when something we did reminded them of their own problems they would react to us. They would be mad at our childish selfishness if indeed selfishness was something they got in trouble for. Now, as adults this happens to us all the time, no problem we take it with a “grain of salt”. However as children we don’t get off that easy. A child doesn’t have the ability to challenge the parent. Instead the parents body language, tone of voice, non-verbal communication gives us feedback and forces us to assume that something MUST be wrong with us. The child assumes that “I must be the reason for your look of anger, disgust, fear, sadness or what ever emotion is conveyed. Soon I develop an belief system that labels me and accuses me relentlessly. WE MUST LEARN TO REPARENT OURSELF and REWRITE OUR INNER BELIEFS. We do this by changing our memories and their meanings, by believing what God believes about us and by creating new thoughts and neural pathways.

Healing Your Emotional Self
In her book, “Healing Your Emotional Self” Beverly Engel uses what she calls Mirror Therapy. She says that for most of us, our self image is a reflection of how our caregivers treated us and thought about us. She names seven types of mirrors we reflect. Read each and rate your on a scale 1-5 as to your self belief on each one, 1 = Don’t believe it at all; 5 = I really see myself clearly.
___ I am unloveable   ___ I am powerless
___ I am worthless   ___ I am never good enough
___ I am nothing without my parents ___ I don’t matter

Emotional Triggers
As we review the “mirrors” we can see where any one of them can become a deep seated belief about ourself. These believes about our self lay there in our left brain waiting for some right brain cue to set off the alarm and then our beliefs come into awareness explaining why we feel this way. Some of those right brain triggers are:
___ Looks of disgust  ___ Being put down or mocked, degraded
___ Let down expectations ___ Unforgiveness
___ Angry tone or look  ___ Threats
___ Looks of rejection   ___ Negative tone of voice
___ Sadness or hurt look ___ Blank stare
___ Abandonment  ___ Favoritism or comparison to someone else
___ Over expectations  ___ Smothering or over protection
___ Other? _____________________

Our Inner Belief
When the emotional triggers are recognized, what beliefs do you respond to?

Inner Critic – “How awful.” “You’ll never amount to anything.” “You are so stupid.” “You can’t so don’t even try.”  “There is something wrong with you!” It’s all your fault.” “No sense trying.”
 
Inner Shamer- “There is something wrong with you.”, “You’re no good.”  “You’re broken”, “You’ll never amount to anything.” “You ruined everything.” “I can’t ever count on you.”  “You never will get it right.” “You did it this time, no one will ever love you.” “Everyone is ashamed of you.” “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Inner Pessimist/Doubter – “This won’t work”, “Don’t even try.”, “Everything is wrong.” , “You can’t do anything right.”, “I doubt if it will work.”, “It never works out.”, “You always get it wrong.” “ It can’t, won’t  or never…finish the statement.” “God doesn’t really love you.” “All is lost.” There is no God.” “You are not really forgiven.”

Inner Punisher – “You better not fail or else.”, “I’ll take you down a peg.”, “I’ll knock you off your high horse.”, “Don’t look at me.”, “I’ll give you something to cry about.”. “I’ll wipe that smile off your face.” “You’ll regret this.” “ Wait till your father gets home.” “You better not…”

Inner Terror – “I won’t love you.”  “If you fail you will be nothing!” “If I don’t do it right, they may never come back.” “They will all leave you.” “You will be annihilated.”

Inner Sadness – “It will never be the same.” “You will be all alone.” “It was all your fault.” “You really blew it.” “They will never love you again.” “There is no justice.” “Why?”

Reactions to Emotional Triggers and Inner Beliefs
We have a PRECONCEIVED IMAGE of our self in our head, so when we experience the emotional triggers and our inner beliefs begin, we react to the trigger accordingly. What are some of the REACTIONS?
 Fight – Protect ourself and make the distress stop
 Anger, rage, attack, dig in, resist, rebel

 Flight – Run and get away
 Fear, anxiety, addiction, seeking comfort, avoidance

 Freeze – Shut down until the pain goes away
 Disassociate, block, dig in, ignore, procrastinate

NEXT TIME – Changing Your Inner Beliefs

To learn to return to joy I need to have a healthy relationship with someone:
Who already knows how to return to joy from the emotion I am feeling.
Who is glad to be with me
Has more joy than I do pain, and can stay relational with me in spite of my distress
Must synchronize with me while I am in the pain

Do you have a relationship with someone like this that can do this for you? Can you be that for someone else?

What keeps us stuck in our pain?
1. It is our Right Hemisphere that reacts to non-verbal signals and sets us off!
Our pain is that deep felt emotion that seems like it just comes upon us. It is the result of something triggering our right hemisphere to react this way. It could be a certain look, body posture, tone of voice, sensation in our body. It could come in a form of an emotion, craving, someone else’s “mirror neurons” signaling us.

When this emotional pain comes we focus on eliminating, avoiding or medicating the pain. Relationship with God is mostly about eliminate, hide or avoid pain. This leads to our wanting to ESCAPE our emotions instead of regulating them.  Escaping our emotions is a negative form of regulation. Rather than a healthy returning to joy we turn to other negative ways to escape the emotional pain. We have made an acronym using escapes.

ESCAPES  Excitement, Substance, Comfort, Avoidance, People, Emotionalism, Sex
We use all of these to escape the pain.

The Good News is that there is HOPE!
Instead of trying to ESCAPE through an over emphasis, almost addiction to excitement, substance, comfort, avoidance, people, emotions or sex, we need to come to God, admit our need, share our story with trusted friends, bond with each other and return to joy from painful emotions again and again until it becomes second nature and creates the new neural pathways we need.

2. We believe Our False Assumptions and Rationalizations About Our Pain and Behavior
When our Left Hemisphere hears something or gets a signal from the Right Hemisphere, it “creates” a reason why. It assumes that something is wrong. Depending on how we have reacted in the past chances are our interpretation of what is going on is going to be due to something wrong with us. We are flawed. We are damaged goods. We are in danger. This left hemisphere “jumping to false conclusions” causes us to begin to “REACT” to the situation. It experiences the screaming of the right brain pain and wants to react. It will rationalize all kinds of negative ways to eliminate the pain. Unfortunately these are not God’s ways of seeking help. Usually we will react to OLD HABITS with well worn brain pathways of destruction.

False Beliefs
If it hurts it is bad and must not be from God
If it is less painful, it is good and must be of God
If I follow God and it is painful – it can’t be God’s will or God/others don’t care about me
If I follow God and it is NOT painful – It must be God’s will, I must be right and God and others must care

Good News is we can change the way we react to emotional pain
1. Choose to believe the truth and not lies
2. Choose to surrender to God and let the Holy Spirit change us from the inside out
3. Choose to get the kind of support we need to “return to joy” – synchronize with someone who knows how to return to joy from the negative emotion you are struggling with
4. Create new “brain pathways” by:
Sensing that others care and that they are not giving up on you.
Visualize new behaviors and meditate on God loving us and accepting us

WE KNOW FROM NEW RESEARCH ON BRAIN PLASTICITY that we can create NEW neural pathways
Here is one way. We can begin to retrain our mind with meditation on God’s Love For Us
Relax and take three deep slow breaths.
Close your eyes and visualize a peaceful place
Stay there and sense the peace. Feel your body relax
Invite Jesus to come to the place and be with you
Sense His peaceful presence
Just be with Jesus and sense the peace.
Hear the words of God saying,
“I love you.” “I am so happy I created you.” “I have a great future for you.”

Next Session 5