So, the journaling started again just as it did yesterday.  Old habits do not die easily–even when they are good habits, but ones that need to be adjusted.  Once I’m able to shift into conscious journaling to God my Father, I enjoy it immensely.  I sense His leadership and fellowship within.  It is just the silly start that gets me each time.  I suppose they think this is funny. I will too when I get the shift made.

Today I leave with six others from our church to attend the Celebrate Recovery Summit at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.  It is the 25th anniversary of the ministry.  It has been sold out for over a month so no walk ins this year.  It is a huge event with some additions to the ministry being introduced and some others with meaningful adjustments.  The Delta glitch yesterday brought about a little panic with some since we are all flying with this carrier.  However, by last night we had the boarding passes and it looks good.

I haven’t gone to the summit since 2012.  It was then I was awakened to the fact that my testimony is not mine–but “ours”, God’s and mine.  It is to be the story of God’s redeeming love and mercy changing my life story.  I am the one who puts script to it and reads it as my testimony, but I am not to forget that it is our story.  It was after this summit that I signed the contract with the book publishing company.  It took two more years to get it written, but this is where God did the work to show me I was to obey his leadership in this.  This is also the time when I came face to face with the fact that I have gay thoughts.  That was the last of the hidden secrets I wanted no one to know.  God kept saying that He was the author of my changes and I was to be the teller of our story and His work.  So, I changed my testimony to reflect all of this.  It is amazing to write this and recall the bondage of fear I felt during this adjustment.  It is only of late that I’ve found fuller freedom to share all of this without the shame of the past.  What has brought the freedom in part is finding no judgment when I share this truth about me.  In fact, what I find is that people are so glad to hear someone tell their struggle so they are safer sharing this truth about their self.

I am taking my laptop with me but I don’t know what my mornings will be like so I may not be posting daily until I return on Saturday.  If I miss a day or two, this will be the reason for it. God’s blessings to you.

This habit I’m trying to begin, journaling to God the Father, is right in the middle of its challenge.  Sounds so silly to write this but this morning I began journaling to Jesus and had to scratch it out and replace it with Father God.  I feel like I’m crushing my best friend.  I know that Christ is also behind this.  He doesn’t want to replace the intimacy I’m to have with our Heavenly Father.

There is a person very dear to me that is struggling a great deal right now.  I talked on the phone with him last Saturday morning.  This morning when I was praying for him I was nudged by The Holy Spirit to send a text message to him.  The message was challenging him to thank God for his struggle.  God uses all things to draw us closer to Him and so begin with thanks for this present time.  It was a hard message to send because I too know the difficulty of thanking God for my personal past/current struggles.  It was amazing however, in that within a couple minutes I got a reply thanking me for it.  He said his own devotions this morning were encouraging him to do just what I had text him.  God, he said, was using me to confirm what his own devotions had told him.  That was really nice.

Tomorrow Kathy and I leave with 5 others for the Celebrate Recovery Summit at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA.  It is the 25th anniversary summit/celebration of the ministry.  I am looking forward to it and all the learning we will glean as we move forward with this in our own church/community.  I was asked to pray about starting a Celebrate Recovery in the detention/correctional center where I spoke a week ago.  I do not know what is developed in the way of curriculum for this.  There is a prison ministry already created, but I don’t know if it is utilized with teens.  It will be good to find out.  Please pray that I will know God’s leadership in this as we move forward.  It is easy for me to over commit when it comes to something like this and I don’t want to go beyond what God is wanting me to do.  This is another time when I need to be reminded to “take one day at a time, one moment at a time.”  To God be all Glory!

If you are a Facebook user you know that it sends notices to you that you might want to resend.  Yesterday I received a notice about the message I’d sent a year ago.  It was the message that my book was out and I was letting people know about it in case they would want it.  It was an excellent reminder of how God is continuing His work in me.  A year ago I was a basket case ahead of writing that message.  I spent a couple hours just wrestling with God about doing it at all.  However, He won and I wrote and sent the message.  Yesterday, when the notice came to possible resend it I simply did it knowing it was the right thing to do.  So much of the judgment I felt a year ago or feared a year ago is now gone.  It is funny writing this though as just a few days ago I wrote about my fear of bringing the book back inside the post office for the postmistress.  God isn’t done addressing all this fear but He is certainly relentless in helping me rid myself of it.

This morning I started my journal writing to Jesus yet again.  I had to backup and think God the Father and rewrite.  I know this likely seems silly, but for me it is critically important.  The intimacy God wants to have with me (us) is tied directly to our belief about our value to Him.  In my last couple months with dad before he passed away, I had confronted my past with him only to find that He had loved me and had even admired me.  This was awfully good for me to know but the 50+ years before this had a huge character defect to address.  I now knew this truth but deep within me I didn’t believe it.  This is what God is now showing me by my journaling to Him.  Even my devotional this morning read that God calls us friend.  In Exodus 33:11 He calls Moses friend.  The translation of meaning for friend is “intimate companion”.  I loved reading this because I know this is the present task God is wanting to show me and have me know well.  In my mind I know He wants each of us to know this well.  Mark 12:31 says we are to “love your neighbor as yourself”.  If we are to do this well, we need to know this intimate companionship with God the Father so this will be exactly what we pass along to others.  I’m kind of excited to get further into all of this.

“This is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24.  This verse doesn’t tell me to rejoice at the end of the day, but to do so at the beginning of it.  When God has made the day as He has each and everyone of them, I can trust His best for it.  I don’t know if I will ever get to the place where I have this truth fully embedded in my soul–the truth that living each day is all about God and His Ways, not Earnie and my ways.  I know this but my day to day living within the day doesn’t always reflect this.  One of the beautiful things I’m learning on this journey is that the new creation God has made in me allows me to come to Him with my struggles, my sins, my shame and leave it with Him.  I don’t have to carry any longer the depth of shame I use to carry that took me back to the actual sins done to me in the abuse.  Those are no longer mine in my mind.  God has fully taken that away and cleansed me of that defect of thinking.  I’m so grateful for this.

When I met with the man yesterday to give him the book he’d purchased the week before, I told him the story of the lady at the post office and that I had a book I could have given him the week before.  Somehow I needed to tell it so I could get the bondage of these actions out on the table.  I needed to see his response.  He just smiled and assured me that it was OK.

There is one thing I’m loving about journaling each morning to God the Father.  I still end the journaling with the question about what He wants me to know from Him this day.  My heart just melts when I hear His voice say:  “My son….”  I have known this conceptually most of my life.  To know it intimately is so humbly touching I can’t find words to express this gratitude.  I’m needing to stay with this process for quite a while I know and likely for the rest of my life.  He is the One True God and I want no other gods before me.  Praise the Lord.

I rather bared my soul with you yesterday.  It was good for me to have done that.  God gave perspective to much of it as I simply walked through the day.  One little incident yesterday told me a lot about myself that I still need to address if I am to walk fully upright as the new creation God has made me to be.  A week ago I was called by our church secretary.  A visitor had come to the church that afternoon to walk through the facilities.  The secretary took her on the tour.  As they walked through it the guest told her she had grown up in the brick church in the 70’s.  She mentioned my name a few times as her family was a musical one and she remembered my singing.  Her mom had recently passed away and she wanted to revisit her old stomping grounds before heading back to Seattle, her present residence.  The secretary called me to give me her name and phone number.  I remember her and the family very well so I called her.  It was fun to catch up about her and her family.  I mentioned my book which she wanted so I told her I’d send her one.  A week went by and I’d forgotten until yesterday afternoon.  I took one to the little post office (Huston) just a half mile from our home.  As I was addressing the padded envelope I purchased from the postmistress she asked if the book I was sending was a good one.  I froze!  I uttered a brief statement that it was my autobiography so it might be good if the reader liked it.  I waited a little bit and then told her my childhood had some sexual abuse and physical/emotional abuse which now I wanted to use my recovery to help others.  She instantly said she’d like to have one of them–know that I don’t know this lady. She’s new to her spot at the post office.  I said that I could bring her one when I came by sometime.  I finished mailing the book and got to the car where I realized I have a couple in the car I keep for occasions like this.  However, I couldn’t walk back in with one.  I drove the short distance home and told Kathy about it.  She laughed and said, “For heaven’s sake Earnie, turn around and give her one. She asked for it.”  I suddenly realized I was making this event all about me rather than God’s work in me.  I drove back and walked in with the book.  The postmistress said she’d not expected me for several weeks.  I told her the story and she laughed.  Like Kathy, she saw my anxiety but didn’t see “the Earnie pushing a book down her throat” like I saw in myself.  She quickly wrote me a check and thanked me for being so quick to get it to her.  She said she had a close friend who had a past like mine and she was eager to read it.

In 30 minutes I’m leaving the house for a follow up meeting with a gentleman regarding our Aslan ministry.  I’m taking him a book too.  He had given me money last week for one saying he’d heard I’d written my autobiography.  The sad thing is that I had one in my car a week ago but like yesterday, I was frozen in place and couldn’t walk back into his office to give it to him.  I have this awful feeling overwhelm me at these moments that I’m pushing myself onto them if I immediately walk back in with the book.  After these two incidences, I can finally see why Kathy laughed and the lady yesterday laughed.  I just need to get out of the way.  I’m going to try now to simply follow through if this happens again.

Today my head is spinning with emotional unrest.  God has already, in my devotions, told me to call Him Blessed as the Psalms I was reading did.  I have done that and I recognize the truth in that.  I have much from yesterday I am struggling to know what to do with it.  Family situations, my dear friend who is wasting away from dementia, A Celebrate Recovery man who is struggling with his son’s recent admission of homosexuality, a request to begin a Celebrate Recovery at the probation center where I spoke last Sunday night and more.  I know in my head what I am to do with these–pray for them and take them one day at a time and as God shows me what to do if I’m to do anything.  Yet, each one is dear to me and my emotional side wants to jump in and be right there for each of them.

Writing this blog has brought about something else I’m not use to dealing with and that is stating my struggles like written in the first paragraph before they are resolved.  My whole life has been living in the struggles I face silently until they are resolved whether good or bad.  I then will talk about them.  However, if I’m to tell my journey each day I need to tell what is actually happening in it.  My first thought as I wrestle with these is what I already do with my time that can be rearranged.  So I think about my singing in church choir which takes each Monday night for practice.  For anyone who knows me well, know I do love singing.  However, at this point in my life is God asking me to reprioritize what I do with what He has as His priorities for me?  I do know to wait on this and see what begins to develop.

For so many years I had the bondage of my past before me and within me.  Now that this past is a ministry of purpose being used for God’s Kingdom building, I want to follow God’s leading very intentionally.  I am so grateful there are doors opening to give help.  How to give the help and which ones are the ones for me to directly do are the items of today.  God is Blessed and God is Good–this much I know and the rest I will surrender until I have a more solid lead from Him.

Last night’s Celebrate Recovery Step Study was lesson 19–Crossroads.  This lesson focuses on our need to do a daily inventory:  the good of the day and the ills of it.  For the ills we need to own them and quickly repair them.  The interesting part of this lesson isn’t so much that these steps should be taken, it is that the first question centers around the strength of relationships we have established by now with self, others and with God/Jesus.  It solidly reinforces the truth that life is lived first and foremost for relationships.  We cannot have strong relationships if we keep injuring them and not addressing the injury we caused.  The Crossroads lesson allows us to address the significance of this and to help us establish a new habit or way of living each day so when we fail we can see it, own it and correct it quickly.

There is one question asking: “What specific relationships have been repaired or improved?”  This brought me to share with the guys my current awakening with God my Father. Having a fulfilling relationship with Him is (I’m grasping for words which can describe what I wish to say here).  I’m simply stunned and amazed to finally awaken to the truth that I don’t have to earn my relationship with my Heavenly Father.  What I’ve known in my head for much of my life I now know for certainty in my heart and spirit.  When I shared this with the men last night one of them said, “Wow Earnie, that’s really deep stuff.”  My thought was that this was never intended to be deep by God.  Sin’s deception is what has kept me and everyone else believing the lie I’ve had.  I’m so humbly grateful to finally be fully awake to this.

As I step into today’s journey I am starting to realize something very fundamental.  For years I’ve heard that a person’s relationship with God the Father is directly connected to their own relationship with their dad.  I’ve always poo-pooed this as I completely separated God the Father as my Heavenly Father and my earthly father as my dad.  That was good enough for me and besides, comparing the relationship seemed ridiculous.  A Heavenly Father would never be like my dad was.  I have been deeply impressed to now come to terms with this connection.  As I read my devotional, as I read the scripture, as I journal all through my devotional time, God is not letting up on this need.  I think I mentioned a couple days ago that I started journaling to my Heavenly Father each morning now instead of to Jesus.  This might seem trite, but it isn’t to me.  This morning God was pointing out to me that I did this as an alternate route to Him.  The reason I’ve taken the route of journaling to Jesus is that He isn’t my Heavenly Father and I could trust Him more easily.  It is now time to come directly to God my Father and place my full trust in Him.  He did not create this life to make it a sport or game.  He is life and He has me in life to build a trusting relationship.  He gave me Jesus Christ to show me the way He intended it to be done and He gave me the Holy Spirit to replace my wounded spirit.

I’m needing to pause as I write this and capture my wits about me.  I’m on the verge of breaking down in tears.  God has never wanted Him and me to have the relationship I had with dad.  This morning He has been pointing out to me that the longings I’ve had in my heart all these years are safe to share with Him and to know they will never be labeled as dumb, stupid or “Where in the world did that idea come from?”  He actually told me I should start this type of intimate sharing with Kathy, my wife.  She has longed to know this about me.  Once in a great while I attempt to do this, but the moments are few and far between.  I’m sure all this ties to my struggle with intimacy also.

I feel rather raw sharing this, but I do know the time is right for me to step into it.  God is waking me up to something very fundamental for which I want to now do. I want my relationship with God to be comfortable in His presence, rather than hoping the work I’m doing for Him is making Him happy with me.  He seems to want this too and that’s what seems so tender and precious right now.

Before I started today’s blog I reread yesterday’s entry.  I did this because yesterday’s writing was expressing a revelation God had made for me.  As I began today with my  daily devotions I found myself feeling drained physically and emotionally.  I wrote in my journal that I felt like an empty reservoir now ready for spring snow melt and rainfall.  Yet, it is August 1.  I also knew that speaking for the detention center teens last night was very draining.  I was feeling the results of it.  The kids, about 30 total, were very attentive during the talk and then the last 30 minutes were their questions.  During this time the revelations of their stories, their abandonment, their literal training from home to lie about the truth of their lives, etc., were overwhelming.  At the moment when I was in front and attempting to listen to them and respond with the Holy Spirit’s lead I felt empowered.  This morning is different.  I’m left with these kids’ faces looking at me, the stories I heard from them, and the knowledge that they are at the age I was when the abuse was still happening or had just about ended.  Yet, they don’t need to live another 50 years in secrecy, isolation, choosing poorly and ending in jail/prison as many of their own relatives–and they themselves are in this center.

Their questions about how to find God, how to hear God, are difficult–I had the same ones at that age.  God lived in my heart but accessing help from Him didn’t seem to happen.  Only now do I see the handiwork He was doing.  The one lad, most troubled with his torment, came up afterwards apologizing for some of his outbursts during the questioning time.  He said he just didn’t know what to do.  I asked him if he knew what not to do?  He said he knew that much.  I told him to simply do that much.  At that point of “not doing” ask God for His Light in what to do.  This is the step of faith.  That much seemed to register with him.  Everyone of these young people is a treasure to God but for most of them, they don’t know that and I didn’t either at that age.  Join me in praying for them.

After getting home last night I went out to cover the swimming pool.  My granddaughter and her friend had been out in it while we were gone.  It was getting dark so I was in a hurry.  As I was walking the edge of the pool I got too close to the pool’s edge and slipped into it.  My cell phone was in the pocket of my shorts so it is now dead.  Somehow this jolts me back to reality.  I’m going to court this morning for one of the guys in our Celebrate Recovery and then I’ll head to the Apple Store.