As I sit here in front of the computer, I’m wondering what I should write? I know what I should, but it is always difficult to confess our weakness/s. I took a moment to read yesterday’s entry and knew I was to follow it up with what I write today. The past several weeks and months I’ve been tested like I’ve never been for many years. Some days I couldn’t surrender it fast enough in order for the same temptation to hit again. I’d find myself just wanting to run, cover my ears to stop the voices, etc. Yet, God is faithfully present and all of this has lessened a great deal. This morning as I journaled about this, God reminded me of what I wrote yesterday regarding a sponsor. Then James 5:16 comes to mind: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

God is reminding me that swallowing my pride and admitting all of this weakness in my flesh is the right thing to do. I know this so well, yet I struggle to practice it on my own. I suppose we all have this to some degree. A new creation works to lessen the amount of time between struggle and confession. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m still of the flesh!

Yesterday, my younger brother went with me to change out some doorknobs which needed replaced at our daughter’s home. I could possibly do this myself, but anytime I try, I almost always end up calling him to finish what I can’t work through. It is so much easier to simply have him come with me and take the lead. I’m always so grateful afterwards. He has all of it done in a short period of time and we enjoy the time together while the work is being done.

This morning as I was reflecting on the thanksgiving of having a brother gifted in these areas, I was prompted to take a moment and compare this to having a sponsor in Celebrate Recovery. A sponsor is someone who may not have the exact struggle you do, but he is not anxious about tackling it. These types of struggles he knows are not his, he relies on his ability to see the steps as they come, do what he is to do and let God do what He needs to do. All this can be done while you enjoy being together. The anxiety is gone when you have someone you trust taking the steps with you.

I have learned to go to my brother for help. He is very trustworthy in his skills. A good sponsor is just the same. The important part in this is reaching out when you’re needing help. It is OK to not be OK. The only thing wrong with this is when we stay in the not OK mode with our thinking/worrying/temping without reaching out for help. The end result of reaching out is the enjoyment of having someone share the struggle with you and finding how easy it is to let the struggle go when you take this step. We all need this reminder.

Tonight our quartet is singing for a Christmas party of about 50-60 people. It is hosted by a dear lady who annually invites friends to celebrate this Christmas time together. She always includes those who are hurting to give them a lift. The time is more of a singspiration than a concert. Each year when this happens the gentleman who leads this event asks for me to sing “O Holy Night”. He called yesterday morning asking if I’d do this again. I was driving to a counseling appointment at the time so I thought I’d take advantage of the drive and sing through the song making sure I still remembered all of the words. As I got to the last verse which starts, “Truly He taught us to love one another. His law is love and His Gospel is peace. Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother….” I couldn’t sing any longer.

I was flooded with thanksgiving for the multitude of chains Christ has broken for me. I had been such a slave to the haunting memories of my past. I had no idea what Freedom in Christ was even like. I’ve been singing this song since I was a sophomore in high school where I sang it for the first time in our school’s Christmas program. Each year since then I’ve sung it for numerous Christmas events. Tonight, however, I will sing it with a new creation’s thankfulness. I’m not sure I’ll make it through the song, but the message of thankfulness for this Holy Night where our Savior was born will be shared.

Today my baby sis turns 69. Does that mean she’s not a baby anymore? It’s funny how aging doesn’t change the mindset. Our age moves on, but how we see our family often stays the same. Either way, she is fun-fun-fun as well as a real prayer warrior. She is in Indiana to be close to her own kids and grandkids. I love her!

Yesterday was an amazing day for me. I had a meeting on Tuesday with the two counselors that work with me. I had asked them to share a counseling process they’d referenced before, but I was unfamiliar with it. The meeting was long so the one said she’d come early yesterday and let me experience the process. In so doing, I needed to reopen a meeting/conversation with my dad, my mom and then she had me reopen a conversation with my “little Earnie”. All of this brought me very meaningfully back to my own days of counsel. What I hadn’t expected was my response to meeting with my own self. I found myself tenderly talking to little me. I didn’t realize I’d grown to love myself. I use to hate how God made me, but today, I love the person God made me to be.

As I sat through a counseling session I still observe the other counselor doing, I participated in a conversation about “living life” vs “enduring life”. She had asked the counselee when he knew he would live (this question follows a near fatal accident he’d had about 15 years ago). He stumbled with this question a good deal. I finally asked him if there were a difference for him between living life and enduring life? He immediately said, enduring life is what he’s been doing all of these years. He’d lost his youthful hope that he could live life. I truly resonated in his words. When I had gotten to college I had thought I would be free from the bondage of home only to find that now I had to hide this bondage. I couldn’t live life, I had to hide it/endure life.

The experience of meeting with dad, mom and me yesterday showed me how much I live life today. I have no secrets. Living life allows us to walk each day in the freedom from the bondage that suffocates us. This gift of Freedom God gives us is nothing less than a MIRACLE that has taken me a lifetime to accept. I am one grateful man for finally recognizing just how special this gift is!

The message of yesterday’s post is still important for today. In fact, when I began my scripture reading I was nudged to read the same passages I did yesterday. This is all in Psalms 89. The struggles of life don’t even begin to compare to the overwhelming love of God. My devotional went deeply into our need to surrender to God every single dark corner of ourselves. We all have those cravings, lusts, desires we want to hang onto. They deter us for a moment and we think that is OK–it’s only for a moment. God, on the other hand, wants every moment and He wants to be the cravings of our heart and mind.

In Psalms 89 vs’s 30-32, it says in part, “But, if his children turn from me and forsake my words refusing to walk in my truth…, I will surely punish them for their sins… until they regret it.” It goes on to say in vs 33, “But I will never, no never, lift my faithful love from off their lives. My kindness will prevail and I will never disown them.”

So many people need to know that God will never disown them. The world may, but not God. This is an abundant truth that needs to be delivered often to those hurting.

I have a dear friend who is battling cancer. She and her husband are seeing her doctor this morning to consult on a better route of treatment since the tumor is growing. As I was beginning to read Psalms 89 in The Passion (translation), there is a footnote in verse 1. The verse says: “This forever-song I sing of the gentle love of God!” The footnote for this verse says: “The Hebrew word for ‘sing’ has multiple homonyms. Shuwr can also mean wall. When we feel like we are up against a wall, it is time to sing and see ourselves break through by faith. But shuwr can also mean to behold or to perceive. As we sing to God in abandoned worship, we perceive that his glory is greater than the wall that stands before us….”

There is a second piece to this chapter which is also important. It is found in vs 15. It says, “O Lord, how blessed are the people who know the triumphant shout.” It’s footnote reads, “The Hebrew word for triumphant shout is teruah, a homonym for the word for brokenness. Our triumphant shout can be powerful even in the midst of our brokenness.”

I took a picture of this chapter with footnotes and sent it to this couple. I also want to share it with a couple of the folks I see in counseling sessions. We are going to sing this wall of darkness down and shout the triumphant shout just as the Israelites did (from God’s instruction) with the walls of Jericho.

There’s another lesson God has been wanting me to learn from the past many weeks of preparation for our Christmas production. That lesson I’ve hit upon in the past few days, but God was bringing it to mind again this morning as it relates to my everyday living. This is the point of God/Jesus/Holy Spirit being my Helper and not my lead. (This may sound trite to some, but to me it is a visual I’ve needed). All through scripture there are references to biblical characters asking for God’s help. In the New Testament Christ points out He will send The Holy Spirit who will Help. John 14:26 says, “But THE HELPER, the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

God has been wanting me to learn that I don’t need to be replaced, I need to be helped. He never once intended for me to believe the lies I was fed. Help is what He wants me to ask for, not replacement. Believing, Trusting, having Faith are the big ingredients for being HELPED. I was believing I couldn’t be helped enough, I needed to be replaced and that’s the big lie. This morning I asked God to HELP me believe as He wants me to believe from this day forward. As I said yesterday, it will be one day at a time and one moment at a time. I’m ready to be a new creation who believes better than I’ve ever believed before!

Trusting works! I say this because I’m following up the blog of yesterday. The production yesterday went as smoothly as any other and the audience said over and over it was the best Christmas production they’d ever witnessed. To God be the Glory! As I would begin to go into “my panic–control” and rehash every line I was to say, I reminded myself to trust. Every line was there and I just didn’t need to worry about it. I even had a moment to tell our director how God had used her prayer the day before to teach me a lesson in TRUST.

Today all of the angst of the past many weeks is fading. But, I don’t want to simply rejoice that it is done and move past. There were some big lessons God wants me to keep in my daily living while I continue to trust Him in ways I’ve not done before. I know this is “one day at a time, one moment at a time” (as stated in The Serenity Prayer). From this point forward I’d like to put this trust into place as I approach new, challenging items in life rather than having to learn to trust while going through them–whatever they may be.

What a wonderful GOD we get to serve!

I have lived for December 3rd to get here since last July when I was given the script for this Christmas musical. Today completes it. Now that it is here and I’ve lived through all of the practices and the angst of getting prepared, I had to ask God to forgive me for my attitude during most of this time. He has taught me many lessons and this last one is definitely one which I never want to lose.

In the process of living life I have lived with a belief that I am insufficient. (We all are within ourselves, but my belief of me went far beyond this insufficiency). I may do some things well, but that would be because I got lucky. Most of the time I blunder and have to bury it, redo it, etc. I’ve learned to pray for Jesus to not only take the lead, but to literally be in front of me so I am following up His Work. This way I wouldn’t be blundering. Last night as we were preparing to walk to the sanctuary for the program’s start, our director prayed that Jesus would “help” us complete our part to His Honor and Glory. I said in my head that I didn’t want His help, I wanted Him in front so I could simply follow His lead. I wanted far more than just “help”. The program began and all of this got lost in the production, (which did go well).

This morning Jesus wasn’t through with my needing to be awakened. He brought me back to our director’s prayer. He said that He didn’t intend to be in front, His Light (SPIRIT) was there and He wanted me to TRUST His Light. I’ve wanted to see Jesus Himself in front so I could be dependent on something “more secure”. His Light is sufficient when I TRUST. I can know this because that sense of “peace that passeth all understanding” confirms it. I can sense this peace when I take this step of TRUST. Today, in this last production, I’m going to TRUST!

The first program presentation is past. Just as God wants, the people laughed abundantly, shed tears and found tremendous JOY in the production. It felt good to know this and hear it from the halls where we waited for our next entrance. As I sat down with my coffee to start my journaling this morning I wanted to write–only two more times and then it’s done. However, Jesus had a different message He wanted me to hear from Him. It was, “It is time to lift your eyes from yourself and see my greater purpose for this program.”

When I wrote this message down I knew God wanted me to awaken to the truth that His new creations do not need to focus on “protecting” themselves. I have been allowing myself to live in that victim mentality. Yes, learning to live as a new creation–knowing as well as believing–is learning to trust. The preparations are over. It is time now to live in the purpose of the program, trusting God to complete what He inspired someone to write–letting people see a genuine Christmas program that brings honor and glory to our Savior and Lord–Jesus Christ–Son of the Most High GOD!