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I like this thread. 2 thumbs up!!!! There's a healthy balance between all the visualization and mental images of success, confessions, and the work necessary to succeed. To me, God and believing are involved because it's my personal relationship with God in prayer that's wrapped up in it. I get it straight with the Father what I should be pursuing first and get convinced. Then my prayer life is a continual source of motivation and inspiration. And then it's just a healthy dose of good 'ole fashioned hard work. Actually the more amazing thing to me lately is just how hard you should work at it. The people that are seeing success over their peers in endeavors I see putting in a SIGNIFICANT amount of work over and above. The lie, the trap, the false premise that is portrayed by this "law of believing", as well as all the self-help mind-game philosophies and products is that it teaches people to focus their efforts in the wrong place, to translate the efforts into focus on the human mind as opposed to the actual endeavor. It's a pipe dream and fool's gold that people construct spending all their efforts on their 'perfect' visualization technique and mind game as opposed to spending the bulk of their effort 'getting after it' in what they are pursuing. Yes you can succeed, and yes it will take more effort to do so than you might have first thought. And absolutely prayer life can be misguided in this fashion. God doesn't need endless repetition to understand the desires of our heart. I mean look at our relationship with our kids. They don't need to come up and say "daddy, daddy, daddy, mommy, mommy, mommy" 8 million times to have a conversation with us where we understand their needs and wants. If they bring it up in coversation 8 or 9 times during a 2 week period we pretty much get the picture what they are intersted in and looking for. God probably knows this even before we specifically address it with him. So IMO prayer life and believing shouldn't involve all this camera analogy mind game self help psychosis, but just be a healthy interpersonal relationship with our Father. And put your efforts into where they belong - the task at hand - what you are 'believing for, or to accomplish'.

Upon reading the Facebook accounts of wonderful WOW years, William Shatner's performance on Saturday Night years ago comes to mind. In a sketch he is playing himself appearing at a Star Trek Convention. People are asking him questions about Vulcans, warp drive, whatever until Shatner bursts out with, "People, get a life!" "Move out of your parents' basement!" "It was just a T.V. show!" In context of this Facebook I would like to say, "People, get a life! PFAL was just a country preacher's teaching, a mediocre one at that!"

I think everyone gave great advice.. So I won't add to em.. I really don't know what you ought, should, or could do to get over them, it is different for everyone. But there was listed a great many suggestions.. What I can do, is suggest some things NOT TO DO to get over them.. Such as: Don't read another TWI book ever for a very long time.. Don't join another group especially one that had affiliations with TWI, at least for a few years (hopefully never).. Don't put your thoughts and life in a box, realize there are many possibilities, and no one has a corner on truth.. Don't put God in a box, and think any one or many groups have the sole answers to define Him.. Don't think God has left you, He worked with Israel for milleniums and still never gave up.. and overall.. just don't worry.. Take life one step at a time.. Each step puts TWI further away in the rear view mirror. But keep walking.. And of course, those are just what comes to my mind that might (or might not) help..

You know, I'd almost forgotten what it was like to deal with the blanket "I know more than you, I have all the answers, you know nothing" stuff endemic to twi. It's been so long since I've lived in the real world where people are allowed to not have all the answers, or to know some things but not others. Of course, the idea that we actually looked at the evidence and made informed decisions isn't even allowed to be CONSIDERED. A) Even the Aramaic-Primacy people on this thread admit-in this very thread- that there's no evidence for Aramaic texts of, say, the Epistles in the first 2 centuries AD. B) There's increasing amounts of evidence of Greek texts in the first 2 centuries AD. That includes in the places where, supposedly, the early Christians were Aramaic only- but mysteriously, their Aramaic texts are missing, and their Greek texts-which would have been useless to them, supposedly- have survived. Granted, that's not necessarily the "smoking gun" of documentation. However, it's a HECK of a case for Greek primacy of the Church Epistles. The existence of Greek texts in the earliest centuries (for the NT) has been PROVEN. The existence of Aramaic texts in the earliest centuries (for the NT) has been SPECULATED. Embracing the SPECULATED and discarding the PROVEN is not responsible scholarship. Turning around and accusing those who embrace the proven over the speculated of being "judgmental" is not only notably "judgmental", but it's also remarkably HYPOCRITICAL! Accusing them of not "grasping" the issues is not only unproven, it's INFLAMMATORY. Accusing them of being "short-sighted" because they looked at all the unearthed evidence is not only an ERROR, it's DEMEANING. That's forgivable if it's true, even if rude. When it's ERROR, like now, it's just an attempt to fog the actual issues and evidence. And to "allude" to all sorts of analogies that have nothing to do with the discussion while refusing to discuss the actual archeological evidence is little more than ANOTHER attempt to fog the actual issues and evidence. When one side of a discussion has to descend to 1) "I'm an expert and you dare not question me" and 2) "Those who disagree with me are unable to grasp the issues" while ducking the evidence, that's the side desperately trying to hide the fact that the evidence supports THE OPPOSITE SIDE. They'd rather be deceptive, live in denial, and forever BE wrong so long as they and other people can THINK they're right. For those who wonder why I bothered to analyze this and form a judgment, well, THEY were the ones who were making the comparison...