Yesterday morning while I was journaling I felt God nudging me to write down something that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time.  I wrote that I was to listen with spiritual ears and see with spiritual eyes.  During the morning yesterday I had a 30 minute conversation with someone who said they wanted my help creating a 3-day conference that would take place this coming Fall.  They had talked to me briefly about 6 weeks ago simply saying they’d like my help with the area of homosexuality since that would be a portion of what the conference would address.  I had taken the brief comments from 6 weeks ago and created several ideas which came out in yesterday’s conversation.  My problem was that I had been thinking/working from a very inaccurate amount of information.  I was thinking the conference would be for lay people and this person wanted it to be for the leaders working with the lay folks.  It wasn’t for the masses, it was for those who led the masses.  It took me most of the 30 minutes to finally hear this.

Now, lets go back to what I wrote in my journal yesterday.  God had told me to listen with spiritual ears and to see with spiritual eyes.  It had no connection at the time I wrote it but this morning when I reread it I could instantly apply it to the important conversation I had only a couple hours later.  I was listening with human ears and seeing what I thought would be a great plan of implementation.  Only when I heard who the audience was did I suddenly awaken to my inaccurate perception.

Today I’m meeting with one of our pastors who is doing a book study with me.  He has asked that I consider working with him on his area of ministry.  I am going to go into  this day much better prepared to listen and see what God is wanting me to do so.  Once I’m confirmed that I have the information accurately in hand will I take it to God for what He’d want me to do with it.  I’ve said often that I enjoy being a good learner.  This was a lesson that caught me off-guard.  However, now that I’m awake, I want to practice well what this lesson is teaching.

My scripture reading this morning was Exodus chapters 20-25.  In them God is outlining for Moses how He wants Him to lead the Israelites and what He wanted them to do and how He wanted them to live.  In Ex. 23:20 it says: “Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep and guard you on the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.” Later, in verse 30 it says:  “Little by little I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and are numerous enough to take possession of the land.”  I have always read these scriptures as God’s work of old.  This morning when I read them God had me realize what He wanted me knowing today.

I tell in my book how I would go away from our house on the farm to be alone.  One particular time I was sitting on the ditch bank very sad about what was happening to me by my brother and dad.  At this time I was probably 10 years old.  I sensed a very real presence that day, one that I would sense many more times.  Now, 50 years later, in my counseling therapy for PTSD I was being led into the shame of my past.  In the session I was literally overcome with the weight of the shame.  I could only whisper and couldn’t move any limb on my body.  My counselor told me to ask God to send an angel to help lift the weight of the shame from me.  Nothing happened when I asked.  When she asked me what was happening I told her, “nothing.  God didn’t send an angel and He never had.”  She told me to not believe that lie. She said to keep asking until something happened.  All of a sudden there were two beings present who lifted the weight of the shame from me.  When I told her someone had come she asked who was present?  I told her it was God and Jesus.  When the session ended she reminded me to thank them for coming to my aid today.  As I was driving back to work afterwards I realized I hadn’t thanked them.  I said out loud in my pickup, “God, thanks for coming today with Jesus.”  I then asked Him why He wouldn’t send an angel?  He immediately replied to my mind, “I didn’t send an angel because I wanted you to know Christ and I both care deeply for you.”  I had to pull over to the side of the road and weep.

Today, God revealed to me that He still has angels guarding each of us as He did for the Israelites so long ago.  He also pointed out the fact that He restores us from the damages of our past little by little as we are ready to meaningfully take over these areas.  In Celebrate Recovery I’ve learned to call these my character defects.  Those beliefs that were lies about me and the habits I’d also learned to cope with my unbelief.  God has been showing me how He wants me to work with the hurting people who still only know the hurts in their lives.  As He has brought health to me, He wants me joining Him to assist others finding their health.  I’m humbly grateful to do so.  God is so good.

My journey has had a lot of meaningful Easter’s come and go in it.  Today is the beginning of Easter never going away for it will remain alive forever.  Yes, this truth has been the case since Christ’s resurrection, but now that I’m a new creation in Him, I see the truth of His work on the cross and His resurrection from the grave so differently.  The relationship He has wanted me to have with Him, His Father and His Holy Spirit has begun to take root.  My God, Our God is Alive forever–Amen!

Today is the 35th anniversary of Kathy and my first date.  It was a blind date at that.  God gave me a wonderful gift that day.  I will always be most grateful for the couple who introduced us and Kathy’s love and perseverance through our and my struggles to find the freedom I have today.  Yes, I love her!

Our daily journeys don’t often have a day like today–Easter.  But, when we do, we need to recognize its significance and praise God for it.  Today, like no other, is our reason to celebrate Jesus Christ, God our Father and The Holy Spirit.  Today, I go to our Sunday celebration as a new creation all because of Christ’s work on the Cross.  I’ve always gone to Easter celebrations no less thankful than today, but always covering up something within.  Originally it was my past, then it was my inability to stop addictive patterns, then it was gay thoughts, then it was doubt that I could ever be free, and even more.  But–today Christ is Risen and has taken all of this to the Cross.  Today, as a new creation I am free to go to this Easter Celebration whole.  Yes, these doubts will crop up, but I now believe that what Christ did by Rising Again included me and by my accepting Him into my heart and life, I am FREE, I am redeemed and I am whole in Christ.

How I pray for this deep settled peace to be rich in each of us today and each day forthcoming.  God is Alive and so are His Son and His Spirit.  Embrace Them and let them guide us as individuals, couples, communities, states and nations.  He Is Alive–Praise His Holy Name!

The darkness of Easter weekend is felt today.  Can you imagine the agony of Christ’s believers on this day?  Yesterday they witnessed Christ’s brutal death and today they questioned in silence.  Last night someone very important to me wept on my shoulder about their own questioning.  I didn’t sleep well last night waking to pray again for him and others involved.  This morning as I’ve walked through the event of last night again with God and His word, I recognize the intimate love of our Father pointing everything to Him.  My part is to only ask the questions that would keep one focused on looking to the Cross to see what Christ/God has to say in the matter.  What are you hearing Him say to you?  If you are not, know to be patient, God is not silent when He knows we are ready to hear.

Easter is a glorious day.  It comes however through the battle of the Cross of Christ.  There is much darkness ahead of Christ’s resurrection.  We have all had our days of darkness.  Lets not get lost in it, but know to wait.  In just 24 hours the Light of the Cross will break all shrouds of darkness.  Patience is difficult, but it is critically important for me/us to learn to wait on the Lord.  He is diligently working to abolish the strongholds.  He did it too!  Claim the victory even if the darkness seems to surround you.  I am learning this and learning to claim what we know is true but can’t see its truth at the moment.  God is faithful and true.  Praise His Holy Name!

As much as I love Easter, I have always struggled with Good Friday.  The darkness of today is so penetrating.  My own personal darkness, thinking I could never let light shine on my past, probably has influenced this struggle.  Today is my first Good Friday as a conscious, new creation.  I’m going to keep that in my mind as I walk through the day and go into our Good Friday service at church tonight.  The promise of Christ’s redeeming love and forgiveness penetrates all darkness.  I know it is true for me as well as for everyone who will come to Him as God’s Son.  Let us rejoice today that the price of our sinfulness is paid.  God’s greatest gift to mankind–that, my friend, includes you and me!  Hallelujah, Praise the Lord!

Today is my middle daughter’s birthday.  How fun to watch our kids grow into such beautiful children of God.

I didn’t post yesterday.  I needed to be in town to get 4 of my grandkids to their schools.  Their mom was heading to a training early in the morning so I was the breakfast cook and taxi service.  It was rather cute and fun.

I want to back up to where I was in this blog from two days ago.  God had given me new insights about the lack of freedom I was sensing the previous couple weeks.  The awakening for me was that I had completely forgotten during those couple weeks who I was.  The content of the 7-Pillars class was only reminding me of my abusive past.  The memories were so vivid that I momentarily forgot I was a new creation.  I had become the old self who had lived his life hiding that abused past.  However, in finding the new creation again, the event of these two weeks have helped anchor the truth for me that my old self is dead.  I can be free from it.  It was in abiding in Christ and determining to stay there trusting that He provided the truth once again of who He is and who I am in Him.

In Matthew 11:27-30 Jesus tells the crowd with him, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  That verse was never true for me when I tried to accept this yoke and put it on my old self.  My personal burden was already too heavy and putting a yoke around it was impossible.  However, it is on the new creation God gives once we accept Christ into our lives where we find the truth of these verses.  The weight of the burden Christ carries when we remain in Him as the new creation.  The yoke he gives us guides us in the direction He wants us for the day.  This is the truth I want to keep before each day as I move forward.

The crisis of belief I talked about yesterday has become a time of celebration.  It is amazing to me to see how God takes what has been the most troubling part of our lives and turns it into a praise moment.  All day yesterday and again this morning I have simply felt free of the bondage the triggers in the content of the 7-Pillars material have had on me.  Instead of fleeing this time I did abide in Him.  It did take a few days of this to get to the root, but God is faithful in getting us where He wants us to be in our trust. This in turn strengthens our relationship with Him.  I do feel more confident than ever before that the God within me is bigger than any task He would ask me to complete.

In the last few days I’ve exposed a good deal of my own vulnerability.  I pray that in so doing it will help anyone reading this to do the same with someone they trust.  If God is asking you to take a step of faith that has always paralyzed you in the past, He is doing so with a reason.  He wants you to join Him with it.  I’ve always fled from Him or isolated myself prior to this present time.  God is so much more powerful than we would ever realize.  It is when we take these steps of vulnerability that we learn this about God and ourselves.  I’m praying for you today.

Have you ever had a crisis of belief?  I went through one this weekend.  I will explain.  The Experiencing God study I’m doing talks about a step we must take when God is challenging us to engage with Him in His work.  This step is facing any crisis of belief.  The last couple of weeks in the 7-Pillars class for men with sexual addiction, the readings and activities have thrown the ugliness of the addiction right in my face.  I have dealt with these through the lens of abuse and the impact all of this had on my life.  Now I am attempting to do this through the lens of addiction.  I was truly stuck in this attempt over the weekend.  Yesterday morning I was contemplating dropping out of the 7-Pillars thinking it was wrong for me to reintroduce all of these triggers.

Celebrate Recovery was having its monthly leadership meeting yesterday following church.  I had a guest join us who is a licensed counselor.  She was talking to us about dealing with mental health issues and their impact on individuals and how we support these folks without enabling them.  A comment she made directly related to my dilemma outlined in the first paragraph.  She said that those who have battled with PTSD will have triggers from environmental factors which stay with them and this will cause reactions in their lives outside of the present environment.  I knew immediately this is what was happening to me from the 7-Pillars class.  These classes are nothing but triggers for me of my years of abuse.  The emotions that I feel inside stay with me for days following these classes.  Over the weekend I was thrown back into dealing with them from my old self–the abused self rather than living in the freedom of my new creation in Christ.

This morning as I was able to see the truth of this problem in the light of Jesus Christ’s redeeming work on the cross.  I was able to let this crisis go.  Yes, the 7-Pillars class is a potential threat to me, but I will never be able to stand up against the voices of evil unless I learn to stand against them within me personally.  God tells me to “abide in Him”–John 15:4.  When I do abide in Him I will bear much fruit.  The ministries of Celebrate Recovery, 7-Pillars and more are setting people free.  Along with this, I am continuing to find more freedom myself.  Yes, it is hard work, but it is the best hard work I’ve ever done.  Praise God.

Today’s journey has me deeply focused on abiding.  When I said yesterday that I am ingrained in the habit of doing, I really meant it.  Even in Celebrate Recovery I have promoted the idea that if we do something different to change our thinking, it will get us away from the triggers of addiction.  This much is true, but I’ve leaned heavily on simply doing to overcome the addiction or to escape from the temptations leading into acting on the temptation.  The idea of abiding in Jesus during temptation is somewhat of a mystery, yet I know there has to be tremendous spiritual substance in this.  I know the battle is already won by Christ so abiding in this is a start.

There was a quote in today’s lesson from Experiencing God that says man will often say, “don’t just stand there, do something!”  God, on the other hand often says, “Don’t just do something, stand there.”  He wants us to know His plan before we act.  This is counter-intuitive to man’s ways.  However, when we look over the period of time to see what is still rock solid, we see what God has put into place.  What man puts into place on his own usually crumbles over time when it is done without God’s leadership.

There are many things being done that man calls important, but I want to spend the rest of my life doing what God calls important.  I’m going to need to “stand here” for a while and learn well this lesson on abiding.