The journey of yesterday was a good one to travel.  The morning meeting was a great act of God having already worked and His Holy Spirit preparing a father and son to move forward in a God-honoring way.  I hardly needed to be there.  It was, however, great to be able to watch His handiwork.  The family reunion was also good.  My sister and husband were there who lost their grandson last Saturday.  My nephew was present who has recently been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.  The spirits are strong in each situation with everyone relying on the God we serve.  God is truly a Marvelous Savior and Friend.

Today is a new day.  In spite of the eerie weather passing through as I write this, I thank God for His leadership.  I woke up early again with the anxieties of today trying to take hold.  It was good to give them to God during my devotions and now to be at peace about them.  We have company with us all next week.  They will be fun, but the week also has several things planned in it which leave me needing to rely fully on God.  I always want to do this but as I said yesterday, I have to be reminded that it is God I want to serve, not my ego.  One thing I would ask you to pray about is a meeting Tuesday morning.  A young man in his early 20’s contacted me wanting to get a book and talk with me about his past which he says resembles mine.  I’ve know this young man since he was a preschooler.  I know his parents and his siblings.  I pray he will be able to talk about all that is on his heart.  I put myself in those shoes thinking how would I ever have exposed my past to someone when I was that young?  I’m always very proud of someone who is able to take these steps so their life can be set free much younger finding Christ’s healing.  Not living in the bondage of a past is a tremendous healing work of Christ.  Pray this young man can have this.

The lightning, thunder and wind are screaming outside but I am at peace inside.  God’s blessings to each of you.

Today’s journey has me facing some things that God needed to talk to me about early this morning before heading into them.  I was asked a few days ago to facilitate a meeting between a father and son who are both adults.  Each one struggles with an anger issue that got the best of them with each other and now they want to address the original issue with someone who can help them actually face the problem and reach a conclusion that honors God.  I feel honored that I was chosen.  This takes place later this morning. The second thing today is a family celebration for my brother-in-law’s birthday who was married to my oldest sis.  He is remarried now so the celebration is for his 85th birthday and their 10th anniversary.  There I will see family who are hurting deeply from recent tragedies.

Every since my grand nephew drowned and my nephew-in-law was diagnosed with cancer I’ve wanted to “rescue” them–give them/their families hope.  As I meet with the father and son I want them to love and respect one another in a new way resulting from the meeting.  This morning as I have been having my devotions God has been speaking to me about my motives.  I came face to face with a reality I didn’t like so much.  Of course I want the hope given to them and to anyone to be Jesus.  However, God was pointing out that I also wanted to glean some value from this.  He was bringing me back to that character defect within me–that deep seated need I have to be worthwhile.  He was reminding me to “be” his servant today before I step into  “doing” his work today.  This really jolted me into a reality I needed to face.  I didn’t take this as a punishment but as a light clicking on.  I am awakening to the fact that Jesus and His Holy Spirit are all about Light for today’s living.  I truly want my value to be from Jesus Christ and not from something man would give me.  The childhood longings to be of value to dad are fading, but they still get used by a deceptive Satan if I’m not fully cognizant to it.  It has helped to write this out too.  It grounds it deeper into my being and my intent for the day.

God is an amazing God–the one and only True God.  In pleasing Him there is a resulting humbleness that feels very peaceful.  In working to please man there is a resulting ego boost that feels vulnerable as I have to keep repeating the “value thing” to stay there.  I sure want to be much more awake to this reality in my journey ahead and live in the peace of humble surrender to my Loving God.

God had a lot He was wanting to share with me this morning.  I awoke at 4:00 am knowing I needed to get up and find out what was on God’s mind for me.  I was already needing to get up and process some things that had happened yesterday.  What I didn’t know was that God was wanting to talk with me about them.  Now it is 3 hours later and I’m needing to share what stepping into today’s journey has already revealed.

God has been wanting to convince me He loves me unconditionally.  He is not keeping score–I am the one who has always done that.  In the book He Loves Me, by Wayne Jacobsen, the author tells a story about himself in this arena.  He points out that every time we do something wrong or are hanging onto shame, etc., we think we put another point on the scorecard of ruining our spiritual relationship with God.  God on the other hand wants us to know that when He had His Son, Jesus Christ, die on the cross for us He filled our scorecard once and for all.  This is His unconditional love.  I want to quit keeping score.  In fact, just as I was about to write this paragraph my cell phone rang.  It was one of my CR buddies who was needing to confess a very recent sin he’d committed.  His very words were that he was afraid he was ruining his chance of ever having a genuine relationship with Christ.  I was able to share with him exactly what I’m trying to make clear here.  Our sin will not stop God from loving us.  It sure allows Satan to have a hay day convincing us we can’t have any relationship with God.  But, that’s why James wrote in his book in chapter 5 verse 16 that we are to confess our sins to one another so we can pray for each other.  It goes on to say that the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.  God wants our relationship with Him to connect with those we trust.  In sharing our burdens and sins with our trustworthy friends we grow in our relationship with God.  It is a beautiful piece of Christ’s gift once we take the risk to try it out.  It also helps those we share with.  They grow in their own relationship with you and God.

I told yesterday that my grand nephew had drowned in the Snake River last weekend.  His body was found Wed. evening–Praise the Lord.  This has already eased some of the burden for his parents and my sis and husband, the grandparents.  His service is next Tuesday evening at 5:00 pm if you’d like to pray for it.  Thanks for the prayers to find his body.

God is really driving home for me that He loves me.  I just want to add that I’m not a favorite child either.  He loves you equally so.  He is the only parent without prejudice.  If you struggle with this yourself, reach out.  He wants to prove to you that He is genuine in this commitment for you.

I’m feeling like I need to reintroduce myself to anyone who would read this today–“Hi, my name is Earnie.  I’m a grateful believer in Jesus Christ who has struggles from the effects of childhood sexual abuse and physical/emotional abuse.”  This is my introduction in Celebrate Recovery.  I have missed this connection and I’m glad to be back with you this morning writing the blog.  Kathy and I got home yesterday afternoon about 3:30.  It was a great little vacation time that also had it’s own tragic moments.

My birthday was so nice having spent the day with Bonnie, my sis just older than me who lives very close to Alice, the other sis in California.  That evening all of us were together for dinner and having fun just being family.  Alice is doing better each day we were there with the doctor having adjusted her meds the day prior to our arrival.  She has an appointment today that may begin a change in how they are medicating her.  We pray this will be a big–healthy–adjustment for her.

While we were there I found out that a niece’s husband has been diagnosed with bone cancer.  There’s quite a story behind this but for those of you who would–please pray for Dave.  They are running tests now to see what stage the cancer is in.  Secondly, on Sunday morning my sis Bonnie got a call from my youngest sis Polly.  Polly told us that her oldest grandson, Devin–22 years old, drowned in the Snake River while fishing with a couple friends.  He’d waded out too far into the river.  This happened last Saturday, July 2nd @ Swan Falls outside Kuna, ID.  His body hasn’t yet been found.  There will be a memorial service for him next Tuesday.  Please pray for his family.  There is much grief there.

This morning I started a new journal having finished filling the previous one as my trip ended.  I always go back to the beginning of the previous journal and reread entries at this point so I can see what God has been doing in my life.  Celebrate Recovery teaches us to do this so we can celebrate growth and also see where we may still be stuck so we can focus on areas we may have been blind to.  While doing this earlier this morning I found the entries I’d made back when I first started this blog.  I was anxious and worried because after the first couple weeks no one was responding to it.  It was there I was challenged by God and reminded that He wasn’t asking me to write this blog for human response, God was challenging me to write it helping me to better know Him and who I am in Him.  In these long but brief three months of journaling and growing since starting the blog, God has brought me face to face with Him and His Holy Spirit.  He has shown me my worthiness of His Spirit within me because He has replaced the temple called Earnie with a cleansed one still called Earnie.  I keep wiping tears as I write this.  It is such a humbling yet invigorating reality.  I am a new creation.  he reminds me too that my grand nephew Devin, is now in heaven with Jesus because he was a new creation too that has taken the step in Gloryland.

There’s so much more I want to share but the next days will provide the opportunity to do so.  God’s richest blessings be yours today.  I’m glad to be back home.