Have you heard the saying:  “God is good all the time, all the time God is good”?  I hear it used off and on to open church related events & meetings.  I have no doubt about this statement either.  God is good all the time, all the time God is good.  In living out life, I just can’t always find the good in what I’m facing at the very moment.  As I even write this I can already see a “why” to some of my dilemma.  I’m going to be doing a short TV interview next Tuesday morning to be aired on Friday, April 15.  This is with KBOI, Channel 2.  April is child abuse prevention month so the host of Idaho Living is doing an interview supporting this topic.  My dilemma yesterday, ALL DAY in my head, was: what do I say in a few minutes that people can hear and do something with it?  I don’t like intangibles.  They stir the emotions but don’t give any tools one can grab a hold of so one can solidly do something with it. This topic is so filled with emotion already, it needs tangible substance. I act as though I know nothing about the scripture telling me not to worry about tomorrow.

In my devotional time this morning I read from the book: Everyday in His Presence by Charles Stanley, the following:  “What are sound biblical principles you can practice as you face the difficulties of your life?”  (5 were given but I want to emphasize 2 of them).

• What is really driving you in this trial–your goals or your devotion to the Lord?
• Trust the Lord so much that the victory already is decided in your mind.  You know your all-powerful, all-wise, perfectly loving Father would never let you down.

Of course I want to give something meaningful/tangible.  God wants me submitted to give what He gives me in response to what He has asked by the interviewer.  I do know from years of experience that God never lets Himself down when we are obedient to His work.  So, what am I fretting about?  Don’t you just hate being so human?  OK, Jesus, I will trust in You.  Help me to do it throughout this day focusing on what you want me to do in this day.  I will leave next Tuesday until I arrive into next Tuesday.

Thanks for being my listener as I process this.  God is good all the time, all the time God is good.

Yesterday was a most interesting day.  In my post yesterday I said that God was wanting me to live in my new nature and use the tools He’s given me (each of us) to assist me in staying in my new nature overcoming temptations and the struggle I often come up against with my identity.  I should know by now this will be challenged and that is why God is preparing me ahead of time.  I had a meeting with an individual who wanted to get a book and talk about my speaking at a symposium which is being prepared for this coming September.  We are going to meet again in a couple weeks.  Also, the TV channel confirmed I will tape next Tuesday morning.  I was going to church last night for a time of prayer our church is hosting this week.  I was planning to pray over a number of requests given to our church by many individuals.  However, I was somehow wishing I could have a prayer over me.  I was losing my grounding.  The beliefs of the old nature were trying to return.

As I got to the church and went to the room where prayer was to take place.  I sat by a lady  I met recently .  We were pairing up to pray over the pages of requests and told we could go to different rooms for the praying.  She and I went to a room where we were alone.  She told me much about herself and I shared with her my need for prayer and why.  She prayed over me and prayed the anointing of the Holy Spirit.  I truly felt the strength returning and replacing the fear I’d been struggling with regarding me having the right to represent God and His Kingdom work.  Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-11:  “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses….  For when I am weak, than I am strong.”

God is truly wanting me to learn how to use His armor to shield me in my weakness.  His assignment work I want to do as He provides it.   If you struggle with any of this I hope you can find assurance that this struggle is common and expected.  I pray the Holy Spirit’s anointing over you as was done for me.  God bless you.

In my devotional time today I was processing with God about the new creation He gives us when we accept Christ into our heart and lives and The Holy Spirit being given to us (me).  He was reminding me again that the sin nature we have is an earthly thing from which no one is exempt.  The biggest reminder was that my sin nature IS NOT my identity, it is simply my struggle.  I suppose all mankind struggles with this truth.  He went on to tell me that the momentary pleasure found in acting on a sin nature is never, ever as gratifying as the delayed gratification found when hope is fulfilled; trust is honored; and faith becomes complete.  These cannot take root in our lives if we continue to give in to the temptations that come our way.

When I’m on assignment for Christ which is everyday, I want to live in the victory of each day remaining true to whatever Jesus has put before me.  I want to surrender any temptation to Him and call for help–literally call my accountability as James 5:16 tells us (tells me) to do.  God bless you.

Yesterday turned out to be a day of obedience and learning.  I told you yesterday I had an interview with our local TV Channel 2.  That interview went for 1.5 hrs.  I am suppose to hear back from them today or tomorrow regarding the specifics of what they’d like to do for their viewing audience.  I am so grateful God awakened me yesterday to see that this is an assignment rather than an event.  The assignment of yesterday opened my mind to see more clearly the need to get the message out to people but to not make it a one time event.  People need help to know how to move from reacting to abuse to responding to it.  The two reporters I met with saw this clearly.  The other interesting thing about yesterday was that I was contacted by another person in our area who works for St. Al’s Hospital.  She is creating a symposium this fall and wants to talk to me about speaking for it.  We are meeting tomorrow afternoon.  All this happening in one day really helped me understand God’s message yesterday to me that these are assignments for the day, rather than events.  I saw events as something I’d do and never touch again.  However, my lens has changed.  I want to always see these as assignments God has created for me to fulfill His purposes within them.

One other thing happened in my devotions this morning I want to bring out today.  Last night was the step study night for the group of men I co-lead for Celebrate Recovery.  A step study is a weekly meeting where the attendees go through 24 assignments over a period of about a year.  The assignments walk them through a Christ-centered recovery process addressing their hurts, hang-ups and habits.  We are on the lesson of “inventory”.  It is a grueling process as one must face the reality of their past and how it is impacting their present.  All the details are to be addressed in this and each one worked through with a sponsor.  For me, my second step study is what made me know I had to go back to counseling which became the 3 years I talk about in my book.  My hurts were buried deeper within me than my conscious Earnie could grasp.

This morning I was journaling about all of last night’s conversations and what others and I were learning from it.  God reminded me of the Earnie He’d created originally and now is the time to begin fully trusting that he (being me) could be trusted working with The Holy Spirit God has placed within me.  This is the very person He wants on the assignments He is beginning to give me as pointed out in the first paragraph of this blog.  I humbly accepted the assignment and look forward to getting much better acquainted with my new creation.

I hope this personal stuff is helpful to any reader.  I’d love to hear comments of how this might relate to your own personal journey.  Thank you and God’s blessings be upon you.

Today is one where I have a stomach full of angst.  April is child abuse prevention month.  I was contacted yesterday by a representative from our Channel 2, KBOI, to do a brief interview about my passion for this topic of abuse.  I am meeting with the representative this morning so I’ve been pondering and scribbling notes about what wisdom God is placing on my heart to share or to have shared.  I reread what I had posted yesterday in the blog and the first thing that screamed at me is–abuse breaks the relationship God intends for us to have with others.  It destroys the trust.  It also places within the victim many false ideas about who they are as an individual–their identity.  I talk about this in my book.  In fact it is the reason the title is what it is–The Journey From Error to Heir.  The old me was an error all in caps–ERROR.  I felt this way particularly with dad and I sure felt that society would think me an error if they knew of my sexual abuse.  God has been very diligent helping me find the truth about being His heir.

How does one say in 3-4 minutes what God would want people to hear?  I already hear Him telling me that this is a big trusting moment.  I need to trust that He will set the stage for this and He will guide the questions as well as my responses for they will be the wisdom His Spirit gives me to share.  This takes some of the angst away.

There is one other thing I want to share this morning.  When I was having my devotions earlier, full of anxiety for today, I asked God what He wanted me to know.  It was quite remarkable, at least to me.  He said, “I want you to see today as simply an assignment for today.  This event is something that will simply happen today.  It is not an end of the journey.  It is just an assignment along the path of the journey.”

All my life I have lived hoping to complete some major thing that will end my identity crisis–I will now be worthwhile.  (This goes back to my personal identity belief).  An “error” thinks this way, not an “heir”.  I want to learn this well so that I live more and more as an heir of Christ, completing each day the assignments given to me.

Today I am stepping into something I’ve only done a couple times in my life–fasting.  Our church is promoting a time of prayer and fasting for four days with each evening having a prayer time for ones to come and have requests prayed over and anointed as needed.  Others will come to pray over requests left on cards yesterday at church.  I am writing this because God is continuing to awaken me to the need for building strong relationships–relationships that reflect spiritual definition rather than human.

I said yesterday that I was looking forward to the 5 grandkids being here with for the day.  I did a lot of reflecting on relationships during this time privately as I wanted to see what relationships actually felt and looked like from this human point as I was with my kids and grandkids.  I saw bossiness, I saw love and concern, I saw selfishness and I saw sharing–lots of sharing.  The thing that is standing out is that there is always the element of human selfishness involved.  Humanness is selfish by nature.  It is only when our selfishness hurts someone else that we see it within us.  And, it is only when we like that other person enough to admit our wrong to them that we address the wrong in our selfishness.  We parents step into this with our kids so they learn to repair the damage selfishness causes.  When adults do this to one another it is another story.  Now we avoid one another.

When I was growing up the relationship I had with my dad was one of avoiding at most any cost, I didn’t want to risk being hurt by him physically or emotionally.  Only when a rare moment came that he wanted to talk to me about something important to him did he come to me and I felt safe with him.  I always felt safe with my mom, but I also always felt somewhat abandoned by her because she would listen to my pleas about dad and his abuse, but the help ended with the listening.  I could talk with my siblings about dad’s abuse because we all understood it and knew it personally.  The sexual abuse from my brother taught me avoidance.  This I could share with no one so no relationship was safe with this topic.

Now, let me bring all this back to the fasting today through Thursday.  Every request I wrote to pray about while at church yesterday  was about relationships–broken ones and/or fragile ones.  I was stunned to see that this was the case for each burning need. Most of them involve another human and one involves the person and their relationship with Christ.  My awakening is that in each case, the relationship is broken or fragile.  But, regardless, it is about relationship.

I have avoided relationships all my life even though I have always had them.  I just didn’t step into the reflecting side often because there had only been much hurt there in my past.  I’ve dealt with the hurt from the childhood ones, but God is awakening me to be much more alert to having strong relationships with Him and others on an intentional level.  This is my fasting prayer for the ones on my list which include me.  Because we are all human, we must know selfishness will be present.  This requires communication to identify it,  confession if it hurt someone and forgiveness if it caused pain.  This is God’s spiritual definition of keeping relationships strong.  I want to be very intentional in this.

The older I get the more I understand and appreciate relationships.  For me, there is something about grandkids that teaches the purity of how relationships ought to be.  I always wanted to be a parent as I do love children.  However, I was so filled with fear by the time I was a parent I often erred on the side of absence in order to not harm them.  Now I can easily see the faults in this.  My fears were in direct relationship to the bondage of my past.  So simply participating in  relationships with my grandkids is not only an awakening of God’s intent for them, it is just plain fun.  I love the way they run to you, hug you, want to kiss you and play with you.  There are no expectations, it’s just pure love at its best.  I have 5 grandkids coming today–I’m looking forward to it!

Relationships with adults are not so simple.  This seems to be, at least for me, the expectations part.  Did I do this right, did I say this wrong–these factors seem to be in the forefront of the relationships.  When I was journaling this morning and asking God what He wanted me to know for today, He nicely reminded me to simply focus on my relationship with others.  He would take care of His relationship with them and He will nudge me when He wants my assistance.  I don’t need to worry about their relationship with Christ.  His love and ways will open these doors and He will include me when He wants me included.  For some reason this did ease my mind.  How often I forget just how Almighty God is as well as how lovingly intimate He also is.

Trust is a word Jesus is often reminding me to put into my daily practice.  If someone asked me a few years back about worry/trust I’d tell them I wasn’t much of a worrier.  Today, now that I’ve awakened to the truth about me, I confess I often worry.  I worry about my kids, my grandkids, the problems others are experiencing in their lives who are connected someway with me or our family and the list goes on.  Much of the worry centers on my desire to have healthy relationships (as man would define them).

This morning, in my devotions, I was journaling and praying about some issues surrounding my family and the families of the Celebrate Recovery ministry for which I’m involved.  A couple of the cases are seemingly severe and I wanted to get myself involved knowing my involvement could help a great deal–see where that ego comes in.  Jesus quickly reminded me about TRUST.  In fact he quite bluntly said:  “I am glorified through your trust.  When you trust you stay out of the way and I am able to do the work I want done.  You know when I involve you as I nudge you.  Today I’m nudging you to trust in me.  There is a song for which some of the lyrics are:  “I will trust in you, I will trust in you….”  I wish I could remember the rest of the words but the tune and just those 5 words keep repeating in my mind.  I want this lesson to be one I let the roots grow deep.  I actually hate worry and I love trust so for today, I WILL TRUST IN YOU.

It may be April Fool’s Day but I don’t intend to write anything that will be an April Fool’s type message. Yesterday I exposed a part of me I have never liked–that selfish need to feel worthwhile and meaningful as man would define.  You know, I’ve sought this all my life but I’ve also buried the feelings because they reminded me of my dad who was a very egotistical, emotional man.  I never wanted to be self-centered as I saw him to be.  Yesterday I mentioned the brilliant thinking from Graham Cook. God showed me His brilliance for a moment yesterday in a human way.  Not only did a few of you send affirmation but I also happened to find out that I can see how many log into the message each day.  I hadn’t given any of this a thought when I started this, but my selfishness began to creep in–my ego needed to be stroked I guess.  Anyway, God used this incident to awaken me to Him and His Ways.  For a moment I could see that my vulnerability is indeed His tool when used for His glory.  I don’t want to lessen it to becoming a human reward only.  The purpose is of eternal value and meaning.  I commit to continuing this until God removes the nudge to do so.

So I’m learning about my new nature in Christ.  This new nature is the actual presence of The Holy Spirit within me replacing my old nature.  I just tear up writing this as it is so humbling to know this is true for me.  The tarnished vessel I was in my eyes overshadowed any value I could be for the Holy Spirit.  The ugliness of the sexual abuse and the resulting, ongoing thoughts I’d have left me “knowing” I was of no value unless I did valuable things for God. God is now wanting this thinking GONE.  It is not brilliant thinking.  Being in education all my life, I’ve experienced countless times the aha moments when a learner gets it.  Their face brightens, the eyebrows go up and their verbal response is something like: “YES!”  That’s the way I feel about yesterday’s lesson.  I get it!  In my new nature I do all things for the glory of my God.  I will never know that confirmation of “YES” if I try to do this just for me.

Thanks everyone for being part of God’s lesson for me yesterday.