Last night I had the privilege of talking with a lady who has been broken.  Our quartet was singing for an event at a church in Boise, ID.  It wasn’t a very large crowd so after the dinner we had everyone gather their chairs and move closer to the place we were singing.  We were to do an hour’s worth of music.  Each of us 4 guys in the quartet had selected a song to talk about with scripture and personal story reinforcing the song’s importance to us.  I had chosen the song:  He Didn’t Throw the Clay Away.  I used the scripture II Corinthians 4:6-11 and II Corinthians 5:17.  These verses tell how our bodies are remade by Christ–fragile as a clay jar but filled with Christ’s Holy Spirit as we give our lives to Him.  And in 5:17 it says “we are a new creation”.  I told how all this has been such a huge struggle for me personally.  I wasn’t worthy of a new body.  Mine was so tarnished, yet Christ has been needing to convince me that His work on the Cross hadn’t left me out for I am a new creation too.  A lady in the crowd was wiping tears the entire time I talked and while we sang the song.  As we ended the evening her husband came to me thanking us for coming and thanking me for my testimony.  He said his wife was really touched by this.  I went to his wife who opened up saying her story is much like mine.  We talked for 45 minutes.  This morning I journaled that I was surprised to see this lady so broken.  Christ immediately reminded me why He has us doing His Kingdom work so why should I be surprised?  This journey is very humbling.  Christ is chipping away at this old belief system of mine and little by little convincing me to more fully trust.  I gave this gal one of my books which I pray will be an inspiration for her to reach out for the help she needs in breaking this bondage of abuse.

Yesterday morning I had the privilege of meeting with a gal I thought could help with our Aslan Ministry.  She can alright, but I also found that she wants me to speak to the youth at the Juvenile Detention Center in Boise where she is the chaplain.  I didn’t know her at all but she had been given my book which she’d read.  She told me she hadn’t thought anyone had a dad like hers until she had read it.  She wanted the youth for which she ministers to know they don’t have to live their lives entrapped in the bondage of sins the world has given them.  Most of them have a history of sexual abuse and severe physical/emotional abuse and they are preteens and teens.  This will take place on July 31.  I will appreciate your prayers.  God is an amazing God.

There is a topic that keeps resurfacing for me in my daily journey.  This topic is “surrender”.  I was teaching our Celebrate Recovery lesson last evening and its topic was Gratitude.  Gratitude lesson emphasizes principle 7 which tells us to “reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.”  I’ve never taught the Gratitude lesson until last night so my processing this lesson has always been from the receiving end.  Yesterday’s process was different.  When I am teaching I have to be sure I have the lesson’s full understanding so I pass along the author’s intent for writing the lesson.  Little did I know God had a huge purpose in this for me.  The third part of principle 7 says we can gain the power to follow God’s will.  It goes on to say that we get this power by  reserving a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading and prayer.

I know that when I examine myself, reflect on my day, I can easily see when I do something for selfish reasons rather than for God’s Kingdom reasons.  These selfish ones are the ones I must surrender.  However, now I am at a place in my journey to learn to surrender them ahead of acting on them.  I also know that God’s word tells me in 2 Corinthians 12:10:  “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  It is these moments of temptation to be selfish that are my weakness.  So if I am to ever complete principle 7’s learning of gaining the power to follow His will–I must surrender when I am weak so I can then be strong.

What has brought all this to head for me has been the last couple days–meeting with people who have struggles from abuse similar to mine.  These times do make me recall many old memories.  Yet, these memories are now the very ones God is using to help someone else overcome their personal battles.  For this I am most grateful–the gratitude lesson of last night.   However, when all is said and done I find myself tempted to take a moment and self-gratify as I use to when I’d pull away in “my cave” as I’ve referenced in earlier blogs.  These are my surrendering moments.  Last night’s lesson brought to head that the gratification of fulfilling God’s Kingdom work is far richer than a momentary gratification that leads to guilt.

In all this I am also learning that I can’t just surrender at the beginning of the day and expect it to hold true for the entire day.  The moments of temptation come to me when I am tired and alone.  I’m never tired in the mornings so I want to be far more awake to all of this during the day.  I want to begin the era when I can examine myself at the end of each day and sense the gratification of a day well spent completing God’s Kingdom work and surrendering the moments I am weak so I can fully find “the power to follow His will.”

The journey of yesterday was a real testament of The Holy Spirit’s leadership.  This wasn’t just true from the standpoint of the meetings with people, but it was also true about how things got adjusted and fit so nicely with the next one and so on.  As my day was to begin I thought I was to have a couple hours in the morning to do some prep for today’s Celebrate Recovery lesson as well as for a concert our quartet is doing tomorrow night.  However, shortly after I’d done the blog yesterday my cell rang and a man I sponsor wanted to meet.  He is in the present step study for CR and needed to talk through some points of struggle.  That appointment took the couple hours ahead of the young man’s meeting.

As I walked into the meeting with the young man I was amazed to see the boy I knew from his elementary years now as a young man who makes two of me.  Yet, the spirit of this man is no different than his spirit was when he was young.  He is one of those people who desires to work with people as a helpmate.  This was true when he was 6 and still is now that he is 24.  What I found from our talk was that life in his growing up years had truly given him some ugly abuses very similar to my own leaving him anxious about who he can trust as he moves into the rest of his adult years.  I marveled that here he was at 24 telling his story to me when I was 39 before I even attempted to tell someone and that was a counselor.  I couldn’t fathom me having the talk we had when I was that age. I praise God for this young man’s obedience to The Holy Spirit’s leading in his life.  He even thought he might come to our Celebrate Recovery tonight.  Please join me in praying for him as he continues to face these giants in his life.  The struggle I mentioned in yesterday’s blog is beginning to be a light switch for him.  Last April I blogged about the TV brief interview that took place for a program.  It was only about 5 minutes but it did introduce my story and my book.  This is what this young man had seen and what led him to speak to me.  That was over 2 months ago and it took this long for him to act on it.  God’s timing is always perfect with His Holy Spirit’s prepping us to be ready.  He is Amazing.

My grandson’s surgery went well and the doc said he should feel like a new person with much more energy once he heals.  His tonsils were both filled with infection and badly swollen.  The funeral for my grand nephew turned out to be a wonderful tribute to him and his family.  It was as though the entire community turned out in support.  The church was filled to overflowing with people having to stand outside even.  God is always so good.

A few weeks ago I was writing in this blog about God’s direct instruction for trusting His Holy Spirit and how to get started doing this.  I feel as though I’ve taken a couple steps into this.  I’ve always been a man who needed a schedule with specific times and accountability to them.  It was amazing to have yesterday’s schedule with its additions and adjustments and watch them fit perfectly with one another.  I did nothing but move through the day and watch it jive.  This morning as I had my devotions I told God I not only appreciated the chance to experience yesterday, but I also learned so much about trusting Him and His Holy Spirit’s control of these details I’ve always keep in tight reign.  To God be the Glory!

As today’s journey begins I find myself more anxious than normal.  I’ve now surrendered it knowing my role is to be Christ’s servant, following His Spirit’s lead and to let His Light so shine.  I think it is somewhat like being a torchbearer.

Today, one of my grandsons is having surgery removing his tonsils.  Not a big deal but he and his mom are in turmoil.  They need prayer.  I meet today with a young man who wants to talk to me about his past which he says is similar to mine. He wants a book and to talk.  Late this afternoon is the funeral service for my grand nephew who drowned a little over a week ago.  Tonight is the weekly step study where everyone is now addressing their inventory.  On top of this, Kathy and I had friends arrive last night who will be with us throughout this week.  They are here to see many friends so the fact that this day keeps me away from them is no problem in that they will be out and about.  I just know that in my old self I would be anxious and preparing all kinds of “mini-speeches” in my mind for each of these events of the day.  However, God made it very clear this morning that He simply wants the Light of His Spirit to be what is seen today.  The darkness of our soul is not penetrated by our human words, but entirely by the message He inspires at the time He is working.  The Holy Spirit’s work is always about reaching into the darkness of each one’s soul.  It is in this arena that I want to be fully awake and surrendered as I personally walk into each of the day’s events.

It is a sad thing to me knowing that it is only in struggle that we reach out to Jesus fully.  How I’ve prayed in previous years for this to not be the case for my kids and grandkids and for others precious to me, but as life unfolds, the truth of living each day reveals that struggle is the light switch.  It is from the struggle we see our need to find the Light of Jesus.  I want to keep this foremost in my living of today.

Today’s journey is getting a late start at least from the writing of it is concerned.  Our pastor was having a meeting with the men of our church at 7:00 am this morning.  I got up early enough to have my devotions before leaving but not enough time to write the blog at that point.  Our pastor’s sermon yesterday was tied to this morning’s meeting with the men.  He was pointing out our need to stand in the gap for our nation’s moral health and to take a stand for God when God is prompting us to do this.  Our prayer time this morning was setting the stage for getting this started.

After the prayer time was done I met with one of our Celebrate Recovery men who is wanting to get his testimony written.  I am his sponsor and have been nudging him to do this.  He finally had said he was ready to start on this part of his own journey.  It was a couple hours well spent.  Somehow, getting the start of something so emotionally charged is very difficult.  It is also hard to take what we say and put it on paper.  Writing this is much more permanent that simply saying it.  However, the beauty of writing our story enables us to use God’s work in our lives to help someone else find the strength to trust God to do the same with their own mess.  Celebrate Recovery says God takes our mess and makes it a message.  The message is best told through the written testimony.  I love this about our Celebrate Recovery connection.

Learning to trust our God with the details of our life like telling our personal story and also knowing how to trust Him with our country and world woes are huge steps.  Both of these steps are big ones and need clarity on how to take them.  I want to become much stronger in each arena.  God’s journey for me has me doing both right now.

The journey of yesterday was a good one to travel.  The morning meeting was a great act of God having already worked and His Holy Spirit preparing a father and son to move forward in a God-honoring way.  I hardly needed to be there.  It was, however, great to be able to watch His handiwork.  The family reunion was also good.  My sister and husband were there who lost their grandson last Saturday.  My nephew was present who has recently been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.  The spirits are strong in each situation with everyone relying on the God we serve.  God is truly a Marvelous Savior and Friend.

Today is a new day.  In spite of the eerie weather passing through as I write this, I thank God for His leadership.  I woke up early again with the anxieties of today trying to take hold.  It was good to give them to God during my devotions and now to be at peace about them.  We have company with us all next week.  They will be fun, but the week also has several things planned in it which leave me needing to rely fully on God.  I always want to do this but as I said yesterday, I have to be reminded that it is God I want to serve, not my ego.  One thing I would ask you to pray about is a meeting Tuesday morning.  A young man in his early 20’s contacted me wanting to get a book and talk with me about his past which he says resembles mine.  I’ve know this young man since he was a preschooler.  I know his parents and his siblings.  I pray he will be able to talk about all that is on his heart.  I put myself in those shoes thinking how would I ever have exposed my past to someone when I was that young?  I’m always very proud of someone who is able to take these steps so their life can be set free much younger finding Christ’s healing.  Not living in the bondage of a past is a tremendous healing work of Christ.  Pray this young man can have this.

The lightning, thunder and wind are screaming outside but I am at peace inside.  God’s blessings to each of you.

Today’s journey has me facing some things that God needed to talk to me about early this morning before heading into them.  I was asked a few days ago to facilitate a meeting between a father and son who are both adults.  Each one struggles with an anger issue that got the best of them with each other and now they want to address the original issue with someone who can help them actually face the problem and reach a conclusion that honors God.  I feel honored that I was chosen.  This takes place later this morning. The second thing today is a family celebration for my brother-in-law’s birthday who was married to my oldest sis.  He is remarried now so the celebration is for his 85th birthday and their 10th anniversary.  There I will see family who are hurting deeply from recent tragedies.

Every since my grand nephew drowned and my nephew-in-law was diagnosed with cancer I’ve wanted to “rescue” them–give them/their families hope.  As I meet with the father and son I want them to love and respect one another in a new way resulting from the meeting.  This morning as I have been having my devotions God has been speaking to me about my motives.  I came face to face with a reality I didn’t like so much.  Of course I want the hope given to them and to anyone to be Jesus.  However, God was pointing out that I also wanted to glean some value from this.  He was bringing me back to that character defect within me–that deep seated need I have to be worthwhile.  He was reminding me to “be” his servant today before I step into  “doing” his work today.  This really jolted me into a reality I needed to face.  I didn’t take this as a punishment but as a light clicking on.  I am awakening to the fact that Jesus and His Holy Spirit are all about Light for today’s living.  I truly want my value to be from Jesus Christ and not from something man would give me.  The childhood longings to be of value to dad are fading, but they still get used by a deceptive Satan if I’m not fully cognizant to it.  It has helped to write this out too.  It grounds it deeper into my being and my intent for the day.

God is an amazing God–the one and only True God.  In pleasing Him there is a resulting humbleness that feels very peaceful.  In working to please man there is a resulting ego boost that feels vulnerable as I have to keep repeating the “value thing” to stay there.  I sure want to be much more awake to this reality in my journey ahead and live in the peace of humble surrender to my Loving God.

God had a lot He was wanting to share with me this morning.  I awoke at 4:00 am knowing I needed to get up and find out what was on God’s mind for me.  I was already needing to get up and process some things that had happened yesterday.  What I didn’t know was that God was wanting to talk with me about them.  Now it is 3 hours later and I’m needing to share what stepping into today’s journey has already revealed.

God has been wanting to convince me He loves me unconditionally.  He is not keeping score–I am the one who has always done that.  In the book He Loves Me, by Wayne Jacobsen, the author tells a story about himself in this arena.  He points out that every time we do something wrong or are hanging onto shame, etc., we think we put another point on the scorecard of ruining our spiritual relationship with God.  God on the other hand wants us to know that when He had His Son, Jesus Christ, die on the cross for us He filled our scorecard once and for all.  This is His unconditional love.  I want to quit keeping score.  In fact, just as I was about to write this paragraph my cell phone rang.  It was one of my CR buddies who was needing to confess a very recent sin he’d committed.  His very words were that he was afraid he was ruining his chance of ever having a genuine relationship with Christ.  I was able to share with him exactly what I’m trying to make clear here.  Our sin will not stop God from loving us.  It sure allows Satan to have a hay day convincing us we can’t have any relationship with God.  But, that’s why James wrote in his book in chapter 5 verse 16 that we are to confess our sins to one another so we can pray for each other.  It goes on to say that the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.  God wants our relationship with Him to connect with those we trust.  In sharing our burdens and sins with our trustworthy friends we grow in our relationship with God.  It is a beautiful piece of Christ’s gift once we take the risk to try it out.  It also helps those we share with.  They grow in their own relationship with you and God.

I told yesterday that my grand nephew had drowned in the Snake River last weekend.  His body was found Wed. evening–Praise the Lord.  This has already eased some of the burden for his parents and my sis and husband, the grandparents.  His service is next Tuesday evening at 5:00 pm if you’d like to pray for it.  Thanks for the prayers to find his body.

God is really driving home for me that He loves me.  I just want to add that I’m not a favorite child either.  He loves you equally so.  He is the only parent without prejudice.  If you struggle with this yourself, reach out.  He wants to prove to you that He is genuine in this commitment for you.

I’m feeling like I need to reintroduce myself to anyone who would read this today–“Hi, my name is Earnie.  I’m a grateful believer in Jesus Christ who has struggles from the effects of childhood sexual abuse and physical/emotional abuse.”  This is my introduction in Celebrate Recovery.  I have missed this connection and I’m glad to be back with you this morning writing the blog.  Kathy and I got home yesterday afternoon about 3:30.  It was a great little vacation time that also had it’s own tragic moments.

My birthday was so nice having spent the day with Bonnie, my sis just older than me who lives very close to Alice, the other sis in California.  That evening all of us were together for dinner and having fun just being family.  Alice is doing better each day we were there with the doctor having adjusted her meds the day prior to our arrival.  She has an appointment today that may begin a change in how they are medicating her.  We pray this will be a big–healthy–adjustment for her.

While we were there I found out that a niece’s husband has been diagnosed with bone cancer.  There’s quite a story behind this but for those of you who would–please pray for Dave.  They are running tests now to see what stage the cancer is in.  Secondly, on Sunday morning my sis Bonnie got a call from my youngest sis Polly.  Polly told us that her oldest grandson, Devin–22 years old, drowned in the Snake River while fishing with a couple friends.  He’d waded out too far into the river.  This happened last Saturday, July 2nd @ Swan Falls outside Kuna, ID.  His body hasn’t yet been found.  There will be a memorial service for him next Tuesday.  Please pray for his family.  There is much grief there.

This morning I started a new journal having finished filling the previous one as my trip ended.  I always go back to the beginning of the previous journal and reread entries at this point so I can see what God has been doing in my life.  Celebrate Recovery teaches us to do this so we can celebrate growth and also see where we may still be stuck so we can focus on areas we may have been blind to.  While doing this earlier this morning I found the entries I’d made back when I first started this blog.  I was anxious and worried because after the first couple weeks no one was responding to it.  It was there I was challenged by God and reminded that He wasn’t asking me to write this blog for human response, God was challenging me to write it helping me to better know Him and who I am in Him.  In these long but brief three months of journaling and growing since starting the blog, God has brought me face to face with Him and His Holy Spirit.  He has shown me my worthiness of His Spirit within me because He has replaced the temple called Earnie with a cleansed one still called Earnie.  I keep wiping tears as I write this.  It is such a humbling yet invigorating reality.  I am a new creation.  he reminds me too that my grand nephew Devin, is now in heaven with Jesus because he was a new creation too that has taken the step in Gloryland.

There’s so much more I want to share but the next days will provide the opportunity to do so.  God’s richest blessings be yours today.  I’m glad to be back home.

I think when the journey has a vacation built into it the idea of schedule goes flying out the window.  My one sis has wireless in her house and the other doesn’t so in order to do this blog I need to walk down to the other’s home.  It really isn’t much of an issue in that Kathy and Alice both sleep a couple hours after I get up in the morning.

When I was having my devotions earlier I was pondering why I love being here.  It suddenly hit me that I’ve always loved being with these two.  Then it hit home, with these two I’ve never felt like the error I talk about in my book.  These two sis’s have always made me feel like I was worth something to them.  I know this is important for each of us to have value.  However, when we are young we don’t often have the capability of thinking through these emotional items.

Tomorrow I turn 66.  It seems as though I’m going to be 2/3’s of “the mark of the beast”.  If any of you readers have advice for me, I’d like to hear it.  I don’t want to be any closer to this beastly being than I have too!  God blessings to you!