I found myself wanting to reread this morning the first chapters of Genesis. In them God is creating man but in the second chapter there is much more detail about His doing so. There is also the words that the river flowing through the Garden of Eden is the head of the 4 rivers which include the Tigris and Euphrates. I understand that the other two rivers are not in existence today. Well, that’s our geography lesson for today.

I had to take a break from this writing to go with my daughter to take my granddaughter to her high school and stop for donuts on the way home. It was well worth the break!

Today is our last day with our kids. Tomorrow early we will fly back to Idaho. I always love this break from home’s routines but it will also be nice to have Easter with our other kids and grandkids. I will likely not post tomorrow since we have to be at the airport by 5:30 am. God is good whether I’m posting or not!

“We don’t need a better living. We need a better dying. ”  This is a quote from The Spiritual Man.  As I read it yesterday I instantly wondered what the author was meaning.  Then he went on to say that it is not until we die to “self” that we can truly “live for God”.  So, in order to live well we must first die well.

As I began to start Genesis this morning for my Bible reading, I read once again about the creation of our world/universe and all that God did in those first 6 days.  I found a difference this time however.  This time I was reading it with the consciousness of my current awakening to all that God is teaching me.  God had created the perfect “living well” system for man and all that He gave man to have dominion over.  Then, man took that fatal step of choice–yielding to temptation.  It has never been the same since then.  However, God has provided a way of escape which allows us to personally have the “living well” within us.  In order to maintain this we are to daily, and sometimes many times a day, choose God’s nudges rather than our selfish nudges.

I find myself realizing like I never have before just how much I have based my decisions upon the lens of my earthly father.  If I were doing better than him I was doing good.  God has wanted me for so long to realize He is the Father I am to based my decisions on.  I’m glad to finally be awake to this huge flaw in me.  How much I want to live only for Him and choose only His Ways.

It was 37 years ago today that Kathy and I had that blind date which God used to bring the two of us together. How grateful I am for the way all of this turned out!

This morning I finished reading Revelation. This book is the one I always wish I could end reading it with a much greater understanding of the details within it. I realize we are limited in our capacity to grasp the fullness of scriptural meaning but I also know what I read is true and will come to pass. Most importantly to me is having my family all on board. I suppose every parent, grandparent, feels this way. With Resurrection Sunday so close, it only heightens the sensitivity to this.

As I continue to read my book, The Spiritual Man, I find more and more truth I want to have God help me with. It is one thing to think selfishly (I suppose that is natural since we are a being of flesh). However, to act selfishly is the troubling part. What comes into our minds is just that–what comes into our mind. However, how we respond to that is what we are held accountable to. This is exactly what God is placing on my heart as I read. The Holy Spirit is always tenderly responding to us helping us to know there is an option to what we are hit with. These options don’t always make sense at the moment, but if we stop for a second to process the nudge, it means there is a choice to make which supersedes our motive. I’ve had so many of these I’ve wished I’d responded differently to at the time. This is what I want to continue to improve upon as my life moves forward.

I’ve mentioned the book, The Spiritual Man, by Watchman Nee, which I am slowly reading. In the book’s preface, Watchman writes about his struggles to get the book written and if one is reading it to be prepared for their own struggles. I think I am beginning to understand just a sliver of this.

Watchman does an excellent job clarifying the make up of man from the flesh. He clearly helps the reader to know the defining differences of flesh, soul and spirit. He goes deeply into the sins of the flesh and now he is going into the sins of the soul. The sins of the flesh are often the “habits” I know so well from my involvement in Celebrate Recovery. These include my own habit I’ve needed to address involving pornography. However, as I was reading yesterday and found him addressing the sins of the soul, he defines well these sins as the selfishness we always battle no matter how “good” something may be in the eyes of man. An example of these would be my own desire to start the recovery classes we have been doing this past year. How these groups are managed, communicated, led, organized, etc. are all choices of man which I have led. Yes, there have been times when I wanted something just the way I wanted it and it was “non-negotiable” in my mind. The classes are wonderful and have profited those attending but I can limit so much by the way I manage. As I move forward with these I want to better address the voice of God’s Holy Spirit within not only me, but within the group of us.

I am coming to find that The Holy Spirit is very tangible once we better awaken to the hugely selfish soul we possess. I’ve always viewed my selfishness against my dad’s and thought if I’m not like him I’m more godly. Well, God has made it clear His Holy Spirit is still waiting to take control of all of this and He wants to be the scale in which the work I do is weighed. I have much to address here and much to awaken to. This journey is almost like it is just beginning. Wow, I want to be a good learner and listener.

A couple months ago my daughter thought this would be a good week to come and visit. Even though it’s a time when we’re all together, being Easter week there are things happening every night. Kathy and I both wonder if this was a mistake yet God never makes mistakes. I simply am going to relax and flow with it.

Last night I gave my testimony to their recovery group. It is always amazing and touching to know that God never wastes a hurt we have experienced. One gal in the group told my daughter she is now able to confess somethings from her childhood she thought could never be spoken out loud but now she knows she can. I love how faithful God is.

This Holy Week is one to stay in reverence of what God did for each of us. I don’t want to lose sight of this. He is worthy to be praised!

Today is my daughter Amber’s birthday and we arrive in Oklahoma City at 1:00 pm. I’m sure she knows our arrival we will be her best birthday present! Ha!

The journey of life, when it is no longer ours to plan, but ours to complete with God’s leading, takes a daily/continuous reminding for me. I so often forget in a day that I’m on assignment for God and that He has already orchestrated the steps I’m to take. The details of being gone for a week leave me thinking its easier to stay home, yet as the tasks needing done get addressed, I find they are easily addressed. How human this new creation called “me” is and how much I have to daily surrender and be reminded that I no longer need to take charge.

God is so GOOD!

Yesterday morning I met with a young man for a couple hours. He had contacted me a week ago having been given my book. He had read it and wanted to talk. His story has some parallels to my own. He is already attending Celebrate Recovery in his town and seeing a counselor. He is in a step study and preparing to do his inventory. I write all of this because in doing these things there is the nagging fear that “I am being too exposed” and “what don’t I remember that is going to come up and I’d wished I’d never started this process!” I was pleased to see that he is taking such big steps and he is younger than I was when I started seeking help. These fears are only fears for as he takes the steps he will find new support and continued Light from God for taking the next ones. For me personally it was good to relive in my own mind the anxiousness I lived through only to find love, kindness and support as I finally took each step. This is still true for today.

Kathy and I leave for Oklahoma City tomorrow to be with our daughter’s family there for a week. I’ll be giving my testimony to her church’s recovery group. I’ve given it a couple times when they first started. What I look forward to the most is simply being with the group again. Each year we go to their group while visiting and I find it just doesn’t matter where we are, when you are in a Celebrate Recovery group, you find new “family members”.

God is so good when we finally give Him a chance to prove His Love for us. Taking each day as a day on assignment with Him is amazing. The anxiousness is largely gone when I go into this as God’s new creation, rather than the old self still attempting to prove his worthiness somehow to a God who gave him his worthiness already by adopting him into His Kingdom Family.

It is simply amazing to me how endlessly patient God is with me (us) waiting for us to turn to Him and finally give all to Him. Revelation’s reading this morning talks about the churches becoming lukewarm in their relationship with God and His Kingdom Work. They still supported Christ but their passion was dead. Their lives had once again turned back to themselves. As I read this God began to show me how in living each day there are the moments when we are challenged by whatever does challenge us and immediately our response is to defend, protect, guard ourselves. There are a multitude of ways we do this but none are God’s Ways. He even went so far as to show me that as a child the situations which attacked me were called abuse and I learned several “character traits” to shield me from the pain. Now that I’m an older man these traits are called “defects”. They keep me from being fully open to complete God’s Kingdom Work He has for me. My role is no longer to question, defend, protect, guard myself from these God nudges, but to fulfill them.

Somehow, I think the lukewarm behavior we Christians fall into stem from our eyes turning back to self. The new creation God has made us to be has eyes for Him and Him alone. I’ve asked God to not quit revealing to me these defects I possess until I have them surrendered and buried at the foot of the Cross where Christ did His Work for each one of us–me included.

Today I began the book of Revelation. It is an amazing book with so much depth of understanding needed, one can’t fathom all that is contained in it. Yet, I appreciate what Joyce Meyers says in the preface. “Don’t worry so much about what you don’t understand, trust God to reveal it as time unfolds. Pay attention to what you do understand and live it.”

As Revelation begins John is being informed to write letters to the 7 cities. In the letters he is to commend them for what they’ve done, but to focus on what has become shallow. At first I wasn’t sure how this applied to me but it didn’t take long for God to start connecting some dots which led to me. Way back in the first books of the Bible man was given the 10 Commandments. The first one was “to have no other gods before ‘Me’.” This morning I found God asking me what gods I still have before Him? My initial response was none and then I was nudged to look at myself. God began to clarify that man was a self-centered ego which is innate in him. It is easy for Satan to influence it as we can feel so right about satisfying our ego. For me, satisfying my ego to “do well what I do for God” is still about me if I’m doing it so I feel better rather than doing it for the sole purpose of honoring God’s nudges. When I’m nudged and I don’t want to do it, I pause, procrastinate, question God, and I don’t do it because “I” don’t feel right about it. God seemed to be saying it is time for me to surrender this god call “me”. This is when complete trust in HIM will begin. My first response when I saw this was that I have to do this frequently for my self-centeredness flares each time I think I’m at risk in completing a nudge. However, God continued to clarify that this is what serving Him is all about–continually surrendering.

Living the life of a new creation seems at first somewhat like a panacea of endless love and kindness. How quickly I forget I live in a broken world and the grip of human nature will not be broken until death and I am no exception. I so want to serve God well and learn to quickly obey Him removing me from the equation.

It was odd yesterday morning as I had my devotional time. It was good but my spirit was troubled. I couldn’t connect it to anything tangible. I simply went into the day just wondering? As I left last night to go to choir I had chalked it up to just being me. Half way through choir I received two phone calls from the same person. My phone was turned off but with my hearing aids I still hear the phone ring because the aids are bluetooth and pick up the phone. After the 2nd call I stepped out to see if there were a problem. I found that it was a good thing I had. I left and went to address it. Today we are dealing with the fallout of it. I’m praying for God’s leadership in it and also praying I only step into what is mine to do as God would lead. It is so easy to overstep bounds at times like this.

I’ve been praying for a while that God would do whatever needs to be done in the case of above. I’m still doing just that and praising Him for what I do not see or know. Living as a new creation helps me to believe God is doing what He does best and I can trust that rather than fear it. How I love HIM!