How many times does one hear that they are a joy to have one’s life? NOT VERY OFTEN for most of us! Yesterday I stopped by my prayer warrior’s home to drop off a book she wanted to have which I’d told her about the day before. She wants her prayers to be very focused for those for which she prays. When I arrived with the book she told me right off the bat that I was a joy to her. She loved having me come by for she is always lifted up afterwards. Wow, I just teared up hearing that. On the flip side of this, what a joy she is to me and I told her so!

It is such a joy to serve our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Having a wonderful prayer warrior in one’s life is just like having Jesus Christ right beside you in the flesh. I thank Him for her with great abundance!

I met with my prayer warrior for a time yesterday and did a little gardening for her. She is such a treasure! She asked me about a couple of the men she’s been praying for. She wanted to know if they have found the Jesus she and I love so dearly and know He loves us? With all of the things these two men need prayer about, this is the first and most important or which she prays. If you are curious about the response–no, they have not found this Jesus as of yet, but their hearts are much more willing to address this topic openly than they had ever been before. I know God’s Spirit is working with them.

One of the things I keep having to remind myself about is timing. I know that God’s timing is perfect and He is never time bound as I feel I always am. I am not eternal and will not be until death’s door is opened for me to eternity. God already is eternal and he knows each of our timelines so working with us never needs deadlines. God’s Spirit reminds me that the relationship with Jesus we pray these young men will have is truly something God will take care of. Yes, I know He wants me to be an instrument in His Hands, but the readiness and the decision lye in the timing of The Holy Spirit. With this I can relax and do whatever my part is.

One of the amazing discoveries I’ve found by finally opening up fully to the bondage of my past, is the intimacy I’m finding with God, His Son Jesus and His Holy Spirit. I’ve heard many times that knowing the depth of love comes best when you’ve known the depth of an absence of it. I have no idea if I were loved as a child. I know that mom took care of the physical me but looking back on it there is little if any evidence of love. If my dad were to have loved me I wouldn’t have wanted it because I’d never want to be loved by someone who beats you and tears you apart with words.

I began to learn what love is when I had kids and married my wife of today. She knew love and gives it freely. There are so many others who modeled this well who were part of my life in adulthood. Trying to fit the love of God into my childhood left me knowing that God is Love, but for some reason He didn’t care for this “one” for some reason.

So many years later and having worked through these issues of bondage, I have found an intimacy with God that I treasure. Had I never known and experienced the emptiness of love’s absence I would not know the immensity of God’s Love today that all of us have access to. Reaching out by opening up to the bondage within is the important first step. Don’t live another day in the past’s bondage. There is a Love like no other awaiting you!

Today I’m going fishing. This is a common occurrence for my other two brothers who live locally. They each have boats and go fishing almost weekly. I might go yearly. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy fishing, I truly do. The passion for it just isn’t the same as theirs. I use to wonder why God made me such a freak? Why am I not good at all the things they are good at doing and why are the things I enjoy so different from them?

As I have learned to confess all of this instead of bottling it all inside me, I find that differences don’t make us a freak. It makes us different/unique and that’s all. God sure never intended for us to be clones of one another. Last night in the step study group one of the guys had asked me last week if we could talk afterwards the coming week? I told him I’d plan on it. So, last night he opened up to me telling me how he didn’t want to do the inventory because he’d have to confess so many things he felt made him ashamed of who he is. He’d rather live out his life with all of it a secret. (He is 39–the same age I was when I finally went for help/counseling the first time).

Listening to him brought back so many of my own thoughts and feelings. After he was done telling me all of this, I was able to help him see that keeping all of this inside creates the prisoner feeling we all have when we keep it bottled up. God won’t help turn these things into lessons for our learning until we begin to confess and open up. This is when James 5:16 begins to play out in our lives. This verse say: “Confess our sins one to another and we will be healed….” As we left he said he would take the risk. God is so AMAZING!

“We are not our past, we are who God created us to be.” So many of us see our identity through the lens of our past. This statement came out of the 90-day book I’m working through with the other men I counsel. I don’t think I know a single person coming for help that doesn’t struggle with this belief and I’ve been at the head of this line. Even today I have my moments where I literally have to say out loud that I am a new creation. I am the man who God created. I never was my father, my brother, my mom, I’ve always been Earnie–the person God knit in my mother’s womb. Yes, the things of my past have all been true/real, but they are things done, not identity.

The water runs deep in this belief system of ours. Part of good accountability is helping one another remember this foundation God has created in us. Satan wants to destroy it, but God is faithful and true and how much I love Him for this!

Today I read something in my devotional I can’t get out of my mind. I’m sure God wants it there for good reason. It says, “Grace…is not looking for good men whom it may approve, for it is not grace but mere justice to approve goodness. But it is looking for condemned, guilty, speechless and helpless men who, it may save through faith, then sanctify and glorify.” C. I. Scofield.

I have a client who is working through a forgiveness issue. The person needing forgiveness fits the first part of the quote, but in their lifetime committed an act of sin which hurt deeply the client. They are both devout Christians, but forgiveness doesn’t come easily just because “I’m Christian”. I know that for a fact!

It is always such a good reminder that GRACE is what God gave me and He asks me to use it too. I want to share this with the client whom I will see today. “AMAZING GRACE–how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”

How enjoyable it is to have the family come together to honor the moms and grandma! A grandpa can never get too much of this.

Last night Kathy and I finished watching season 3 of The Chosen. We hadn’t watched any of them until a couple of weeks ago. We have done a marathon of watching and last night ended it. The closing scene of Jesus holding Peter in his lap is so touching. I won’t tell anymore as I don’t want to ruin anyone’s experience. What got to me is observing Jesus holding him. It has taken me a lifetime to get to the point of knowing and believing that Jesus actually held me with sheer love and grace and anointed with His mercy. Grieving my past and redirecting the lies I’d come to believe, were a start for knowing Jesus wants to let us know He holds us in His Spiritual Arms of love.

God is so much more loving than I was raised to believe. The days of judgment were very big in the messages I was given as a child. I know that these days of judgment will come, but right now God is wanting His kids to know this is His time of Grace. He wants to forgive our sins if we will simply come to Him asking for forgiveness and beginning to live daily serving Him. He is such a remarkably loving Father!

God is so GOOD! Last night our quartet did a concert at the home of our accompanist. There were 50+ people invited. I don’t know when I have felt so motivated to glorify God with music that points the listener directly to Him. The evening seemed to do just that. The audience responded with many wiping tears and raising hands in thanksgiving plus clapping at times to the rhythm and words of the song/s. There were times when it was simply hard to keep singing. I had my own emotions to contend with. I use to hide these emotions as best I could always thinking emotions were not good. They lead to trouble. Even good emotions trigger negative ones when they are heightened. (So my childhood had taught me). So, best to keep them all in check.

I am learning to enjoy emotions. Little had I recognized in myself how deeply I love and appreciate them. From telling a funny joke to experiencing the Love and Grace of Jesus Himself, emotions are the expression of our appreciation. God’s Spirit is filled with emotions and I now love them within myself. Our God is so patient and good helping us to grow and continue to grow even in our “older days”.

The journey’s message for today is to address The Holy Spirit’s nudges for the sake of obedience–not for the outcome. I had thought I was done with making amends as we call it in Celebrate Recovery. However, when I was reading my devotional and came across this challenge, I quickly thought–“well, I’m done with that part”. It was then that God’s Spirit reminded me of a very ugly statement I’d made a few years ago. It was in a setting when the small group of people laughed out loud. However, the statement had an underlying purpose of “hurt” on my part. The hurt I’d felt from the person I said it to has never been addressed and my sarcastic statement only added complications to the hurt for me. Well, it is time for me to address it, not for the sake of the outcome, but for the sake of obedience. I truly love that line!

I’m not sure when this will take place, but I know now that it will. I do not want to be disobedient. God has been so good to me and now I need to clean an act that sure didn’t look like one representing the God I serve.

I’m not sure when I’ve been in such a steep learning curve as I have been experiencing these past few days/weeks. It’s as though God is wanting me to finally learn once and for all what living in His Holy Spirit is about/like. Making a 24 hour commitment to sobriety has been the start to this. Keeping myself reminded that my strength is only for now, not for “the rest of my life”. That’s too overwhelming and it has never worked! I’m also learning that it is in the present 24 hours that I can rely on the Strength of God’s Holy Spirit. It is also in the present that I can say to the tempter that I surrender this temptation to Jesus Christ who lives in me. I can also call/text letting my accountability know that the struggle exists. I am learning that to live by the Spirit’s Power within me I am to make decisions built on what I Trust and not what my own adrenalin wants me to–be strong within myself. This only works for a short period of time and then I fall again.

I honestly feel as though today I’ve awakened to the truth that I’ve dealt with temptation as though I fought it like I did when I was a child–with fear and repeated failure. This is fighting in the flesh. It’s time to put into practice what the new creation Earnie is learning: Praising God that I am weak in the flesh and know this plus admit this. This allows me to then surrender my weakness to Christ–“for when I am weak He is strong!”

II Corinthians 12:10–“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong!.”