The Renewal Code

How Scripture, Discipline, and "Soul Science" Set Us Free

Nov 11, 2025

Dear Friends,

My journey of my guest from this past Sunday, Kathleen Johnson (“Scripture Girl”) puts flesh on ideas we so often treat as theory: that daily immersion in the Word can rewire despair into hope; that spiritual discipline is not bondage, but our truest liberation; that science and scripture, if we stop pitting them against each other, may blend into something astonishing: the actual transformation of the human soul.

Kathleen’s story, like a living parable, threads all of this together. And as we talked, my own memories resurfaced—years spent memorizing scripture, wrestling in prayer, and learning (or re-learning) that holiness is not what we’ve been taught to fear: it is, in fact, radical freedom.

The Power of Programming: When the Word Becomes the Wiring

Many of us carry wounds that sit deeper than conscious thought. For Kathleen, crippling physical pain—and later, an unwanted divorce—drove her beyond surface “belief” into the desperate pursuit of healing: spiritual, emotional, even neurological. In the darkest moments, she leaned, as she said, on “all my verses”—not just as comfort, but as medicine; not just as memory, but as daily bread.

But here’s the shift: it isn’t about recitation for its own sake, or performance. Kathleen diagnosed the real problem we all share: our brains and hearts are already programmed—by childhood, trauma, media, culture, and, yes, even well-meaning theology. “Those things have to be overwritten. We have to be rewired, recoded,” she said. That is the essence of what Paul meant by “being transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

It’s astonishing how modern neurobiology corroborates this truth—neuroplasticity, the actual physical reshaping of the brain through repeated thought, practice, and meditation. (See, for example, Andrew Newberg & Mark Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain, Ballantine, 2010.) The “washing of the water of the word” isn’t just mystical metaphor: it is, in every sense, an act of programming—where new pathways are laid, not by white-knuckled effort, but by steady, imaginative, repeated soaking in truth.

Why does this matter? Because so many of us try to white-knuckle our way through broken habits, crippling fears, or persistent low-grade shame—arming ourselves with “good ideas” but wondering why the heart, when pressed, runs on the old despair.

Kathleen’s counsel is practical and spiritual: let the Word sink below the surface. Build your arsenal, not to impress anyone, but to give the Spirit a vocabulary when the battle is fiercest. As Jesus said, “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Matthew 12:34) But the overflow is what we have filled it with.

Discipline—and the Liberation of Holiness

If this sounds dangerously close to legalism, pause for a moment. Because Kathleen’s breakthrough (and mine, and that of every saint and seeker) is that disciplines—memorization, meditation, fasting, worship—are not about “earning” anything from God. They are about emptying the soul’s cup (the ego, the fear, the façade) so that something else—Someone else—can fill it.

As Kathleen put it, “holiness is freedom.” Not the anxiety of trying to “conquer” yourself, but the grace of yielding your old programming to a new Author. Fasting, whether for a meal, a day, or a week, isn’t a hunger strike to win God’s approval—it’s a way to humbly starve the distractions and give space for the deeper reality to pour in. “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it,” Jesus said, “But whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25) In spiritual practice, the air is displaced not by shaking the cup, but by pouring in living water.

This isn’t just the voice of ancient wisdom; modern science is finally catching up. Fasting has measurable impacts on brain chemistry, resilience, and mental clarity. Meditation—on scripture, on breath, in stillness—remaps circuits of rumination and anxiety. The mind literally becomes what it daily beholds (see Romans 12:2; Psalm 1).

But this only works when we remember: the disciplines are for freedom, not for self-imprisonment in performance or guilt. “Perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18) The point is to dwell in love—not as feeling, but as the capacity to receive and transmit the reality of God present within us.

Scripture and Science: The Dance of Transformation

For Kathleen, science and the Spirit have never been at odds. Raised by a nuclear physicist who revered both Christ and curiosity, she inherited a legacy of seeking—calling out, as Jeremiah says, to be shown “great and unsearchable things you do not know.” (Jer. 33:3) Her story echoes a truth I have found again and again: the “curriculum” of God’s self-revelation is as much in creation—biology, neurology, ecology—as in the written or spoken Word. They are two sides of the same coin, two texts authored by the same Spirit.

When she describes healing as not just an act of willpower, but of surrender to a deeper reality, it is both spiritual and biological. When she recounts the mind’s tendency to “latch onto lies” about God, self, or future, and then the slow, sometimes painful work of replacing those leaks with the living water of truth, she is reciting both theology and neuroscience.

We are, as Psalm 139 affirms, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Our brains and souls are open-source—vulnerable to bad code, yes, but also capable, by grace and intention, of remarkable renewal.

Invitation: Practical Soul-Upgrades for Today

So where do we begin, in an age of relentless input and subtle programming from every direction?

Start with just one passage—meditate on it morning and night. (Try Psalm 1, Romans 8, or your hardest part of Scripture.)
Practice fasting—not as penance, but as a liberating break from the world’s voices. It could be a meal, or a day’s news, or screens. Use the absence to let something more lasting fill you.
Notice and name the “stories” playing in your mind. Do they align with the love, freedom, and courage we see in Christ? If not, what new story—what Word—can begin to overwrite it?
Invite the Spirit—and don’t pit faith against evidence. Science can confirm what God’s people have always known: that transformation is possible, but never accidental.

And Always… Remember the Why

As Kathleen reminded us, none of these practices are about spiritual “points.” The goal is freedom—to love, heal, and help—as channels of the living water that flows from the heart of God into a parched and weary world. “Healed to heal.” Filled, to overflow. Freed, to set others free.

That is holiness: not escape from the world, but a renewal so deep, it spills into every corner of daily living—mind, body, soul, family, story, community.

So where do you need rewiring—renewal—today?

What discipline or word could you take up, not as a shackle, but as a key?

How might your own journey from science, skepticism, or suffering open space for others to believe again?

Share your stories, Scripture memory strategies, or wins (large or small) below—or ask for prayer if you’re weary of the fight. If these conversations provoke you or bring you peace, consider sharing, subscribing, or becoming a paid member.
May we all learn to code our souls with freedom, and truth, and unshakeable love.

You are created in the image of God. Let’s become fluent in the language of our healing.

—Wade Fransson

Created in the Image of God

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