The journey does continue and as it continues so does God’s work within us through His Loving Holy Spirit. The lesson I wrote about from Tuesday night addressed in depth the damage to intimacy abuse causes. In fact, intimacy is shattered from childhood abuse. The idea of surrendering yourself fully to someone else has always seemed ridiculous to me. “If you want to trust me that much, that’s your problem. I’m only going to trust God and me to the extent of ‘fully'”. These have always been my inner thoughts.

Today’s scripture reading began Songs of Solomon. These are the passionate love examples some say define God’s love for us and what God wants man and woman’s love for one another to be like. When I’ve read them in the past I’ve always thought they were a nice fantasy of thought. This morning, however, I’ve begun to read them as direct instruction for me. Song of Solomon is the Bible’s definition of intimacy and I am very far from it–I must confess. The message screams TRUST at me–TRUST in the form of giving myself totally to the control of someone else knowing they have my best interest at heart and would do nothing to harm me. Instead, everything they’d do is lift me up. I can see myself wanting to do this for my kids, my grandkids, my wife–but someone doing this for me?

The lesson in Celebrate Recovery tonight is Powerless. I am teaching it. To be powerless is something I’ve never wanted to be as an adult. I had too many years of this as a child. God is putting all of this reality before me presently so I can finally see that not only is HE trustworthy, so is Jesus, The Holy Spirit, and my wife. I’ll start with them. Becoming intimate is all about trust and surrendering self. This seems like more than a lesson–it is life changing! I’m ready to finally step into this knowing it is God’s next step for me.