Have you ever been on a journey where FEAR was so present you kept stopping thinking this must be a mistake or you wouldn’t feel the way you do?  I have been paralyzed by fear many, many times in my life’s journey.  My growing up years taught me how to live in the future by fantasizing in my mind.  Somehow, in my adult years, when I thought I could just step out of that habit of living, I would do so and live in the present.  It isn’t that simple.  The character defect I’d developed was so embedded into habit, I didn’t even realize I was doing it.  Today, however, I’m much more awake to this.  I even sense fear as it begins to try and influence me.

This morning in my devotions there was much being said about fear.  In fact my Bible reading was stating over and over again God’s directives to the Israelites to not fear.  This was God’s message delivered by Moses in Deuteronomy.  I AM WITH YOU.  In every regard of their living God was telling them to not fear.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed to learn and relearn this truth–God is with me.  In Celebrate Recovery the very first principle is about denial–stepping out of denial.  I was in total denial about how much fear gripped me and influenced me regarding so many things in my life.  I can honestly say this is far less true for me now.

Writing yesterday’s blog and stating the 6 facts was fear invoking yet I needed to tell the truth of me and what God is doing to grow me out of this fear.  I told my share group this in Celebrate Recovery last night.  The beautiful thing I am learning is the consequence of honest sharing in spite of fear.  There is no judgment or condemnation in being obedient to God’s nudging.  Even if there were an attack of Satan or man with judgment, God’s armor told about in Ephesians 6 will shield us.  I love this truth and want to live in complete honesty from this day forward.  No more secrets and no more paralysis in what I do from fear.  Praise God.

My Bible reading in my devotional time each morning has me presently in Deuteronomy.  I’m about to finish this book and the Israelites will soon be headed into the “promise land” by crossing the Jordan River.  They have been on this journey for 40 years.  All the adults who left Egypt have died except for Moses, Caleb and Joshua.  Moses is giving them his final direction that he received from God and then he will die with only Caleb and Joshua going in with the multitude.  The sad part of this journey is that it was sheer disobedience that kept the first generation of Israelites from entering.  Upon entering they would have found God’s power revealed destroying all the ones they feared would be too powerful for them.  So, what does this have to do with my personal journey?

This morning the key word for me is obedience.  There are some things to fear when man begins to truly address with God what He tells us to do in order to find His freedom from our hurts, hang-ups and habits (as Celebrate Recovery categories them).  For me, the most difficult obedience has been the part that includes man.  One example is James 5:16 that states our need to confess to God, to self, and to someone we trust.  Well, that someone is a man.  For me, this confessing started with telling man:

1. I was abused
2. The abuse was from a homosexual brother
3. My father also emotionally and physically abused me
4. I haven’t repeated any of these behaviors
5. I have homosexual thoughts
6. I’ve used pornography (even gay)

It has taken me 8 years to unravel telling all these realities of myself to man.  I started with the first one but it took all these years to get to the most personal one which shames me the most.  Yesterday I was sharing with one of my accountability men and he said for him it is sheer pride that keeps him from confessing what I put above.  He isn’t ready to admit all of this to the men in his life.  He fears judgement and condemnation just as I have always feared.

It is amazing to me that we can have a Bible, thick with pages that tell the consequences of man’s obedience and disobedience to God and yet we don’t learn to step out of disobedience when it comes to the personal obedience God asks us to take.

OK, so Joshua is almost ready to take the lead for the Israelites.  In a few more chapters, Moses will pass the baton to him.  It is at this time that Joshua makes one of his most treasured quotes to the Israelites:  “But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then choose you this day whom you will serve….  But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  Joshua 24:15  It has taken me a lot of years to come to this point of genuine obedience to God.  In fact, it isn’t a one time event, I have to choose daily to be this honest.  But, I will say, the freedom from sharing truth has the most rewarding intrinsic gratification.  That’s the freedom I’m after.  To God be the glory!

There was something significant in my devotions this morning that shouldn’t be a new revelation to me, but it did hit me as though it were new for the first time.  It started with the awareness that my significance to God isn’t through anything I do, but entirely on His work:  His creation of me (us), His sending His Son Jesus to pay the price for our (my) sin, and His Gift of The Holy Spirit given to each of us as we (I) accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.  So what is new about this?  Well, what hit me this morning is the reality that everything I do for Christ is done through the Holy Spirit’s guidance in my life and the manner for which I do it should be done as Christ modeled for us in how He lived His life.

As I have stated many times, I thought I needed to find importance in my life.  Dad would say things like, “I need to kill that spirit of yours,” and “Good night, you act like you’ve never seen a tool like that before.”  I just wasn’t good at the things dad was and he let me know it.  Somehow I needed to remedy this problem by being overly good at other things.  In so doing, I got it in my head (probably through Satan’s deception) that I needed to do whatever I did well, and hopefully man would see that I am worthwhile.  Yet, all this time, God was wanting me to know that He only wanted me to do anything I did just for Him.  He already loved me.  Nothing I did was going to earn His favor, I already had it.  These aren’t new truths, but for some reason, this morning, the lights clicked on with the reality of their truths. An example of this is that I don’t write this daily blog so someone will notice me or read the book I wrote.  I do this blog so anything I write will lead one to the Christ I serve.

Now the last reality that hit me is the simple fact that when Christ came, His only purpose was to lead us (you and me) to God the Father.  All He did He did out of obedience to God’s leadership in His life.  He knew it wasn’t what He did that made Him loved by God, He already knew God’s love for Him.  God, this morning, emphasized this for me.  He already loves me.  I tear up just typing this.  This same truth is not new, and it’s not new for you.  He already loves you.  May all you and I do today be to the honor of this glorious God we serve.

I need to spend another blog moment talking about the saga of last week and the weekend.  If I’ve ever needed to awaken to a character defect in me, it is that “I can do this,” “I must do this.”  This desperation thinking has been instilled in me from the time my abuse started and I couldn’t tell anyone.  I would be strong and endure it for when it finally ends I will be free and can live the rest of my life without it.  I use to think this all the time when I was growing up both about my brother’s sexual abuse and about my dad’s emotional/physical abuse.  Now I am under 2 months away from turning 66 and I am still waiting for the freedom to happen.  This is because the actual abuse from my childhood turned into Satan’s lies and deceptions as I stepped away from those childhood/teenage years.  I really appreciate the spiritual warfare prayers I mentioned yesterday.  They awaken in me the need to pray through the conscious, subconscious and unconscious beliefs that are the character defects Satan uses.

Yesterday was a very busy Sunday which didn’t even include going to church.  A couple from our Celebrate Recovery group married yesterday morning at an event center in our area.  Kathy and I have been mentoring them and wanted to attend.  They had asked us to witness the wedding and sign with them their marriage certificate.  Following this event I had our monthly CR leadership meeting followed by a member of it needing to talk through something in their life.  Lastly our choir was singing a few songs with a gospel quartet who was singing at our church last night.  I just went from one thing to another and finally got home a little before 9:00 pm last night.  Through the day though, I was able to witness a couple stepping out of their bondage and into a beautiful marriage God had arranged for them.  In our leadership meeting I was able to express with our men the struggles of late where I could use their prayer support.  Lastly, and the greatest gift of all yesterday, following the concert, I was introduced to a couple visiting from Illinois.  She had read my book and wanted to talk.  Her story was different than mine, but the bondage of sin is much the same.  She and her husband talked with me for about 30-40 minutes.  She was now wanting to help others with their addictive behaviors but God wasn’t seemingly opening any doors for this to happen where they live.  When I asked her if she had completed her support team she seemed puzzled.  I told her that in the verse James 5:16 it says for us to confess to God, ourselves and to someone we trust and we will be healed.  The prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.  I’ve been learning that I truly need a strong support team when I am telling my story.  When I live my past over and over, I also am vulnerable to the character defects becoming truths again in my mind.  So I asked her if there was anyone God had been placing on her heart to talk to and she immediately said yes, but….  I told her to just be obedient and talk to the person, for God, if He is preparing this person to be a teammate, will have done His part already.  Using God’s readiness steps for becoming a warrior in this spiritual war zone and being properly supported is critical.  I look forward to hearing how God does use her in her days ahead.

The conversation with this couple was God’s reminder for me that He is faithful to His Kingdom work.  This couple is in their early 50’s and have only been Christians a couple of years.  The husband told me I was the most courageous man he’s know in his current years.  My response was thanks, but for me it is all about being obedient to the nudges of The Holy Spirit within–Christ’s Gift to each of us who choose Him as Savior and Lord.

I’m glad last week is done, but I am most grateful for the growth it provided.  I pray the journaling through this blog is helpful for you the reader.  Feel free to respond if prompted.  God’s richest blessings to you.

As I said yesterday in my entry, I contacted my friend about the struggle of late.  That was good.  However, it didn’t end up freeing me throughout the day yesterday.  As the day continued I felt more and more defeated–acting on my own strength rather than on the strength of Jesus Christ through surrender.  I didn’t step into sin, I just stepped into believing the old lie that I am unworthy of freedom. I am fully awake to this struggle within me now.  Before, I use to bury it and determine not to think about it most of the time.  In Celebrate Recovery it is called denial.  I’m fully awake now to the truth of the struggle.  It goes back to my belief system.  The old man thinking is what tries to take over during the day.  The new creation that I am is still needing to mature within me.

Two weeks ago today the one teaching the intercessory prayer class at church gave out brochures on spiritual warfare prayers.  I think I mentioned this a few days back.  I had this brochure thinking it would be good to use when I butt up against warfare for someone.  Well, that someone happens to be myself.  There are two prayers in the brochure specific to demonic harassment and another to remove demonic influence.  The prayers address the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind.  I have prayed them this morning for myself and I am going into this day awake to the difference between the truth of Christ’s freedom and the bondage of evil’s deception.  I’ve asked Christ to keep me awake to this truth throughout the day.  This has always been my struggle on this journey of getting healthy.  As the day progresses, my belief in the new creation weakens.

Today’s blog entry is rather personal and I confess it because I know from myself and from working with others just how difficult it is to come out of the mind’s thinking from the old man’s point of view.  If this is true for you, a reader, let someone know of the need for help.  Help is only a confession away.

Have you ever been looking for something and all it took was another set of eyes to tell you that you were looking right at it but not seeing it?  That’s what happened to me this morning during my devotions.  I have had a couple things happen these past two days that have troubled me.  The “old man” within me was wanting to take control, (I thought he was dead) but I just couldn’t see any other way of dealing with what I was facing.  This morning during my devotions I was lamenting with Jesus about the details.  He reminded me of the scripture, James 5:16 which says that if I confess all of this to someone I trust I could be healed because the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.  I knew I needed to confess to someone of this present struggle but, good grief, how many times does one need to do this?  Well, my response to that question was simple–“just one more time”.  I needed healing about my thinking and confessing it to someone I trust was all I needed to do.

This journey to FREEDOM, or I should say, the journey within freedom is not trouble free.  The freedom isn’t an absence of problems, its a pathway with help once we reach out for it.  The things I could not see as I said in the first sentence of this blog were right there for me.  It was called HELP.  I just hadn’t reached out for it.  Now I have and I feel like a new person ready to move into a new day able to live as the new creation I’ve been all along.

So I write this to encourage you to reach out if there is something troubling you.  Help is close at hand.  It may be right in front of you as mine was.  God bless.

Freedom–that is an interesting word with huge meaning.  If you’ve read my book you know that the 3rd section of it is entitled:  Finding Freedom.  As I started this blog 2+ months ago I entitled it “The Journey Continues” and the journey I’m talking about is the continued journey to find and maintain freedom.  Not letting yourself slip back into bondage is a daily process unto itself.  I am finding that the longer I’m on the journey the more awake I become to the difficulties along the way.  Once upon a time I thought freedom was a one time finding which when had, was from that point forward, solidly in place.  Now I’m finding that the solidly in place part is the promise of Christ’s forgiveness as well as His Gift of The Holy Spirit.  My part isn’t solid at all unless I do my part of maintaining my relationship with Jesus and obeying His directions in my life.  He tells me to do things like I mentioned yesterday, believe:  “I’m forgiven” and “I’m a child of the King”.  Things also like: “I’m precious in His sight”.  These promises remove my need to do something to earn these statements.  I believe them instead of earn them.

My determination to stay on this journey is solid because I know the God of this universe, the Christ who is my Savior and Lord and The Holy Spirit within me are genuine and true.  I will continue to need to daily do my part by believing, confessing when I need to, and feeding my mind and soul with God’s Word.  I’m in this to stay.  I pray you are too.  Reach out if you find yourself slipping into confusion, old bondage, or other things that come from the “old self” we use to be.

Have you ever had a roadblock enter your life so you couldn’t get on the trail for the day?  That’s what seemed to happen yesterday and continued into this morning.  I wasn’t able to get to my blog to post the journey’s work.  Actually, the roadblock allowed me to process some very important things I’ll explain.

Tuesday evening, May 10, I co-led a step study for our Celebrate Recovery.  I’ve written about this in earlier posts.  Our session on the 10th was all about addressing “our mind” and the damage done to it and why we must address this damage in order to move forward with our recovery.  Over the years of working with Celebrate Recovery I’ve learned that my mind houses my belief system about me–Earnie.  In my book I reveal a good deal about my need to overcome my lack of worthiness.  I have spent much of my life trying to find the worthiness of God’s redemptive love and forgiveness.  Coupled with Tuesday night’s lesson, was the lesson of last night’s CR weekly meeting at our church.  I was teaching the lesson and the topic was “Forgiveness”.  There are 3 areas of forgiveness we are to address in our recovery:  1) Accepting God’s forgiveness for our sins, 2) Forgiving others and accepting the forgiveness of others, 3) Forgiving ourselves.

I knew from my past counseling experiences that when I hit a roadblock I need to take it to God and seek His wisdom and clarity for the block.  In times past I would flee to “my cave” where unhealthy habits resided and I’d be tempted to resume old patterns of behavior.  I was tempted this time to do the same.  However, in teaching the lesson last night I knew I had to get to the root of this desire to flee regarding this topic.  This morning I asked God to make it clear for me and He did.  Bringing me back to Tuesday night’s lesson on “our mind” and last night’s lesson on “Forgiveness”, Christ made it very clear I needed to address Earnie forgiving Earnie for the man he thinks in his mind he is.   Earnie never was the child his father wanted him to be (at least he believed that in his mind) and Earnie was never the man he wanted himself to be resulting from all the years of same sex abuse and the confusion it left him with.  Even though Earnie had worked through this and talked about it a good deal in later years, it still haunted him because deep inside it still shamed him.  (Note that I say all this as third person but I’m talking about me).  As we talked in our share group last night after the lesson, many of the men spoke of their disappointment in themselves and how they’d forgiven themselves for these disappointments or would now forgive themselves once they were awake to it.  This morning I forgave myself for being the disappointment to me–not measuring up to the expectations of my dad and not measuring up to the “perfect child” I wanted to be for my God.  God calls me a “child of the King” and I am now going to call myself that too–not just in words but in belief.  I write this now and I just simply feel clean.  One of the verses of last night’s lesson is Isaiah 1: 18-19 which says “…no matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can take it out and make you as clean as freshly fallen snow.  Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you white as wool!  If you will only let me help you.”  This morning I let Him help me and the results are so miraculous.  Thank you Jesus!

So, I couldn’t write yesterday  morning because I had to be at a school where I was working at an early hour and when I got home yesterday afternoon I had company at the house who stayed the night.  They left this morning to head home and so I’m late getting this written.  However, because of these roadblocks, I’m giving a message I’ve longed to someday be free to give.  It also follows the time God wanted me to take to find it.  Now I am free–Praise the Name of the Lord God Almighty!

Today is the birthday of a good friend.  She’s a widow and was needing some help with her yard yesterday so I told her I’d come and take care of it as her birthday present.  I had already told someone else I’d come and help with their yard yesterday and they live in the same vicinity.  I thought this would be a couple hours total.  Before I finish this I want to tell what Jesus had revealed to me in my devotions first thing yesterday morning.  When I was journaling during my devotional time He’d told me to look around during my day and see Him.  So, now this morning during my devotional time I was journaling again.  I asked Him about seeing Him yesterday.  What I had walked into in both cases of “helping” was a real mess in each case.  Instead of needing a couple hours I needed about 6 hours.  It was nothing but hard work; not what I’d call happy gardening.  As I asked Christ about seeing Him in this He instantly said to recall what the work looked like when it was done compared to when I started.  Of course, as I did this in my mind, I saw a nicely groomed yard for the one and a nicely cleaned garden for the other.  He said to me that this is exactly what He does for each of us when we come to Him with our lives.  He takes all the mess of them and makes them into something beautiful.  It sure gave me a different perspective on what I’d done and a nice reason to have a few sore muscles this morning.

When I got home from the yard work yesterday I needed to get myself cleaned up, eat a bite of supper and go to choir practice.  By the time I got home I wasn’t feeling at all like the new creation God makes of our lives.  I even text my accountability person and told him I was feeling like my old man and rather helpless.  I use to tell my oldest daughter when she was younger and feeling down to go to bed and get the needed rest.  In the morning God would restore her vigor and give her the insights needed.  This is just what God did for me this morning.  It is fun to be used by God even when we don’t know we are being used.  So join me in seeing how God will use us today.  We are a new creation.  Feelings don’t tell the truth all the time.  I’m going to choose to believe what Christ promised.

Each morning when I type the title “The Journey Continues” I reflect momentarily about what the journey is.  I bring myself to the starting point of this journey from the bondage of abuse.  As I do this I am reminded that I am a new creation and the bondage is only part of the old self.  The new self is purified by the shed blood of Jesus Christ and the gift of The Holy Spirit is placed within me.  This journey is teaching me that I have much to learn about living in the spirit and not in the flesh.  The flesh is where the bondage is.  My spirit is free.  Our society in America teaches little about our spirit.  We spend way too much time teaching to be self-reliant.  This is a trick of Satan.  We were never created to be self-reliant.  If we were we would never need God and we certainly wouldn’t have needed Christ’s gift–The Holy Spirit.  The battle of living in the spirit is a spiritual battle and not a flesh one.  If we don’t learn about our spirit and The Holy Spirit we stay crippled not knowing how the battle is won.

In the intercessory prayer class I’ve been taking on Sunday morning I learned that the warfare is largely  won through surrender, praise and obedience.  This all starts with our surrendering the battle to the One who has already defeated it–Jesus Christ.  We then praise Him for this along with praising the Holy Spirit.  We can do this out loud too.  We can bow, kneel, raise our hands to show our appreciation for the work already done.  We can sing or listen to uplifting songs if we don’t choose to sing for music is a form of worshipful praise.  It is also good to know that praise is emotional.  There are many scriptures in the Psalms declaring our need to dance, clap, shout, leap into the air with our praise to God.  Sometimes this joy is expressed in tears of thankfulness.  The obedience comes in doing this.  It is one thing to know it, it is another to actually do it.

Personally, I am not very good at most of this.  However, I am determined to live the victorious life of the new creation Christ gave me.  So I am starting this morning surrendering my doubts to Jesus and lifting my fingers to the keyboard so I can praise Him with each of you.  God bless us all as we give our Praise to our Almighty God.