TPM: Discovered, Not Created

by Apr 8, 2017

Nothing New Under the Sun

Whenever medical science comes forth with a new cure for some particular disease or human malady, it’s not that they have created something; rather, they have discovered something. The word “discovery” implies that what they found had been there all along, but it was just not noticed. The discovery is not something new but something found. God is the only creator; nothing exists that He has not made.

A person can take different things God has created and join them together to design something “new,” but he cannot make something from nothing. So, the one who assimilates things has not created anything new. He has discovered what happens when you join two different things which God has already created. In the same way that medical science discovers what God has already made and put in place and learns to use it beneficially, this is also true for the TPM ministry model.

God exposing our lies and replacing them with truth is not something He just recently started doing. He has been doing this all along. Even as early as in the fourth chapter of Genesis we hear God asking Cain some “TPM” type questions where the Scriptures say, “…The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door…” In this dialogue God is challenging Cain to look inside and take responsibility for what he is feeling and to determine why he is feeling his anger.

TPM is simply a system for operating within the context of what God is already doing. The system itself is new in the sense that it provides a structure that has not previously been articulated or described in this same way. Nevertheless, what God is doing in this process is not new.

The TPM ministry process provides a teachable and transferable structure that can be easily assimilated within the Body of Christ. This ministry model allows us a means to purposefully cooperating with what God is doing in refining our faith, renewing our minds and transforming our lives.

 

“It’s gone! I am not there any more. It wasn’t my fault!”

I (Ed) “discovered” what we now call TPM during a “counseling” session I did way back in 1995 in my humble pastoral counseling practice in central Kentucky, USA. It was there I observed what God was already doing in a dear person’s life. I witnessed a woman, who had suffered much childhood sexual abuse, instantaneously move from deep pain into perfect peace right in front of me. The lies she believed—“I am dirty,” “shameful,” “worthless”—that were producing excruciating emotional pain were immediately resolved as she received the Lord’s perspective.  In that moment she moved from pain to peace, freedom, and transformation. She declared her freedom when she said, “It’s gone! I am not there any more, and it wasn’t my fault!”

Where the lie-driven storm was causing waves of inner turmoil, the Lord brought about complete peace and calm in an instant. When I witnessed this, I recognized that what I saw was a work of God and not a work of Ed Smith. In that moment, I knew the solution to a person’s bondage was not about what I might do as a counselor, but it was about submissive cooperation and participation with what God is doing. This is TPM.