Today I write this from Albany, OR.  I am at my brother-in-law’s home.  At noon time I will be meeting the director of Mid-Valley Fellowship.  My brother in law, the director and I will spend much of the afternoon together so I can become familiar with the programs they use and much more.  This all sounds important I suppose, but deep inside me there is something far more important that has taken place just this am.  Let me explain.

Prior to making this trip I’ve blogged each day about the angst, worry, anxiety, stress of making this trip.  I knew beyond a shadow of doubt God wanted me doing it.  However, I had a multitude of fears bombarding my mind and soul.  I was putting myself into the very presence of all my years of abuse all over again.  Why would God want me here I kept asking?

I mentioned a book I’ve finished reading, Homosexuality and the Christian, I wanted to read it so I could better understand how these two topics could be placed into one person–if that were ever possible.  Little had I understood that this has always been a tremendous haunt of mine.  Just the thought of a gay topic made me just like my brother–an abuser.  Well, today I know beyond a shadow of doubt the lie in this message or thought.  Satan has had a hay day my entire life keeping me in tremendous bondage over it.

As I was reading the start of the Old Testament book, Jeremiah, this morning, I read that Jeremiah, when young, doubted his ability to be a prophet of God.  People wouldn’t listen to him, etc. he thought.  God assured him that he was to obey Him, not his fears of man.  God says He chose Jeremiah while he was in his mother’s womb.   God made a comparison to obeying Him in His bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt where they had plenty of water from the Nile to a parched land called Israel.  What the people couldn’t see in their Promised Land was the wealth of water under the parched land–Springs of Living Water.  It was at this moment this morning that God showed me He had placed those same springs of living water within me long ago.  This Spring of Living Water is His Very Holy Spirit.  I had always seen myself as this parched, barren land.  No matter what I’d done, I never could picture myself as being productive.  I was only temporarily lucky.  The next time I probably wouldn’t be lucky.  Today, the idea I needed to hope I was good is replaced with assurance that His Gift within me was what was good.  I–the vessel of this beautiful Gift–as chosen by God and even created by Him is now with a purpose and I can be good.  So much of this I’ve known in my thinking mind for years.  Today, I know it in my heart and feel real assurance it is now true.   How I love this patient Father of mine!