How glorious to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Then, all of a sudden, it is the day after and life continues. However, I don’t want it continuing as it had. When Christ left this earth He promised the disciples His Gift–The Holy Spirit. He said to linger until their infilling came. That they did–they lingered until they were anointed with The Holy Spirit. (Read the beginning of Acts and you’ll see this).

This year, for the first time in my life, being filled with The Holy Spirit is done. I know in my mind that this gift was given when I accepted Christ, but for me to be awakened to the powerful source of Him has taken all of my life. The truths of the Bible revealing God’s promises is so marginalized by man and our own selfishness. We want God to be in our lives instead of us being in God’s life–His Spirit. It isn’t until this fundamental shift fully awakens in us that we can be surrendered. And, most importantly, it needs to daily take place. If I don’t daily bring myself to the Throne of Grace and surrender my will, I will slowly but surely shift back into the selfish me that wants God supporting me rather than me supporting God. It is just a shift of a few words when writing it, but it is a life-changing shift when we live it out each day.

Being Spirit-filled has had a lot of twists put on it from man and from our many denominations supporting Christianity. However, the one thing we all have in common and that is surrender. We will never be free of our daily selfishness if we don’t daily surrender it so God’s Spirit can begin its intended purpose. God is patiently waiting for each of us to daily surrender. I do this today.

He is RISEN! He is Risen Indeed! I can hardly fathom the depth of love it took for God to give His One and only Son for each of us. Knowing He would accomplish is one thing, but to actually give your son to die for each of us is the greatest demonstration of love I can imagine. How fortunate to serve this God!

We got home yesterday without a hitch. It was a couple of great flights. I hadn’t anticipated however the disconnect I feel this morning from our own Easter at home. Having gone through the Easter week with Amber’s family and church family and now being here to go to church at our own, I lack the connection I’ve always had. It’s an odd sensation but I know it is one which will soon dissipate when I get to choir practice and the Hallelujah Chorus begins to resonate in my spirit to Worship this Son called Jesus Christ! What a wonderful Savior He is!

Today all of our family here will be coming for Easter dinner and the little ones will find eggs while the older ones hide them. Kathy spent yesterday prepping for the meal and I kept myself from mowing the lawn so the grass will hide the eggs just a little bit more.

I’m in a whirlwind of learning from the book, The Spiritual Man. I just wonder if I can ever be so free of flesh and soul sins. As I was journaling this I was instantly reminded that I can be “one day at a time”. This is how God works with me and each of us. I want to be free forever, but for this earth, it is one day at a time. This is my commitment and I’m so grateful God made a way for us!

I found myself wanting to reread this morning the first chapters of Genesis. In them God is creating man but in the second chapter there is much more detail about His doing so. There is also the words that the river flowing through the Garden of Eden is the head of the 4 rivers which include the Tigris and Euphrates. I understand that the other two rivers are not in existence today. Well, that’s our geography lesson for today.

I had to take a break from this writing to go with my daughter to take my granddaughter to her high school and stop for donuts on the way home. It was well worth the break!

Today is our last day with our kids. Tomorrow early we will fly back to Idaho. I always love this break from home’s routines but it will also be nice to have Easter with our other kids and grandkids. I will likely not post tomorrow since we have to be at the airport by 5:30 am. God is good whether I’m posting or not!

“We don’t need a better living. We need a better dying. ”  This is a quote from The Spiritual Man.  As I read it yesterday I instantly wondered what the author was meaning.  Then he went on to say that it is not until we die to “self” that we can truly “live for God”.  So, in order to live well we must first die well.

As I began to start Genesis this morning for my Bible reading, I read once again about the creation of our world/universe and all that God did in those first 6 days.  I found a difference this time however.  This time I was reading it with the consciousness of my current awakening to all that God is teaching me.  God had created the perfect “living well” system for man and all that He gave man to have dominion over.  Then, man took that fatal step of choice–yielding to temptation.  It has never been the same since then.  However, God has provided a way of escape which allows us to personally have the “living well” within us.  In order to maintain this we are to daily, and sometimes many times a day, choose God’s nudges rather than our selfish nudges.

I find myself realizing like I never have before just how much I have based my decisions upon the lens of my earthly father.  If I were doing better than him I was doing good.  God has wanted me for so long to realize He is the Father I am to based my decisions on.  I’m glad to finally be awake to this huge flaw in me.  How much I want to live only for Him and choose only His Ways.

It was 37 years ago today that Kathy and I had that blind date which God used to bring the two of us together. How grateful I am for the way all of this turned out!

This morning I finished reading Revelation. This book is the one I always wish I could end reading it with a much greater understanding of the details within it. I realize we are limited in our capacity to grasp the fullness of scriptural meaning but I also know what I read is true and will come to pass. Most importantly to me is having my family all on board. I suppose every parent, grandparent, feels this way. With Resurrection Sunday so close, it only heightens the sensitivity to this.

As I continue to read my book, The Spiritual Man, I find more and more truth I want to have God help me with. It is one thing to think selfishly (I suppose that is natural since we are a being of flesh). However, to act selfishly is the troubling part. What comes into our minds is just that–what comes into our mind. However, how we respond to that is what we are held accountable to. This is exactly what God is placing on my heart as I read. The Holy Spirit is always tenderly responding to us helping us to know there is an option to what we are hit with. These options don’t always make sense at the moment, but if we stop for a second to process the nudge, it means there is a choice to make which supersedes our motive. I’ve had so many of these I’ve wished I’d responded differently to at the time. This is what I want to continue to improve upon as my life moves forward.

I’ve mentioned the book, The Spiritual Man, by Watchman Nee, which I am slowly reading. In the book’s preface, Watchman writes about his struggles to get the book written and if one is reading it to be prepared for their own struggles. I think I am beginning to understand just a sliver of this.

Watchman does an excellent job clarifying the make up of man from the flesh. He clearly helps the reader to know the defining differences of flesh, soul and spirit. He goes deeply into the sins of the flesh and now he is going into the sins of the soul. The sins of the flesh are often the “habits” I know so well from my involvement in Celebrate Recovery. These include my own habit I’ve needed to address involving pornography. However, as I was reading yesterday and found him addressing the sins of the soul, he defines well these sins as the selfishness we always battle no matter how “good” something may be in the eyes of man. An example of these would be my own desire to start the recovery classes we have been doing this past year. How these groups are managed, communicated, led, organized, etc. are all choices of man which I have led. Yes, there have been times when I wanted something just the way I wanted it and it was “non-negotiable” in my mind. The classes are wonderful and have profited those attending but I can limit so much by the way I manage. As I move forward with these I want to better address the voice of God’s Holy Spirit within not only me, but within the group of us.

I am coming to find that The Holy Spirit is very tangible once we better awaken to the hugely selfish soul we possess. I’ve always viewed my selfishness against my dad’s and thought if I’m not like him I’m more godly. Well, God has made it clear His Holy Spirit is still waiting to take control of all of this and He wants to be the scale in which the work I do is weighed. I have much to address here and much to awaken to. This journey is almost like it is just beginning. Wow, I want to be a good learner and listener.

A couple months ago my daughter thought this would be a good week to come and visit. Even though it’s a time when we’re all together, being Easter week there are things happening every night. Kathy and I both wonder if this was a mistake yet God never makes mistakes. I simply am going to relax and flow with it.

Last night I gave my testimony to their recovery group. It is always amazing and touching to know that God never wastes a hurt we have experienced. One gal in the group told my daughter she is now able to confess somethings from her childhood she thought could never be spoken out loud but now she knows she can. I love how faithful God is.

This Holy Week is one to stay in reverence of what God did for each of us. I don’t want to lose sight of this. He is worthy to be praised!

Today is my daughter Amber’s birthday and we arrive in Oklahoma City at 1:00 pm. I’m sure she knows our arrival we will be her best birthday present! Ha!

The journey of life, when it is no longer ours to plan, but ours to complete with God’s leading, takes a daily/continuous reminding for me. I so often forget in a day that I’m on assignment for God and that He has already orchestrated the steps I’m to take. The details of being gone for a week leave me thinking its easier to stay home, yet as the tasks needing done get addressed, I find they are easily addressed. How human this new creation called “me” is and how much I have to daily surrender and be reminded that I no longer need to take charge.

God is so GOOD!

Yesterday morning I met with a young man for a couple hours. He had contacted me a week ago having been given my book. He had read it and wanted to talk. His story has some parallels to my own. He is already attending Celebrate Recovery in his town and seeing a counselor. He is in a step study and preparing to do his inventory. I write all of this because in doing these things there is the nagging fear that “I am being too exposed” and “what don’t I remember that is going to come up and I’d wished I’d never started this process!” I was pleased to see that he is taking such big steps and he is younger than I was when I started seeking help. These fears are only fears for as he takes the steps he will find new support and continued Light from God for taking the next ones. For me personally it was good to relive in my own mind the anxiousness I lived through only to find love, kindness and support as I finally took each step. This is still true for today.

Kathy and I leave for Oklahoma City tomorrow to be with our daughter’s family there for a week. I’ll be giving my testimony to her church’s recovery group. I’ve given it a couple times when they first started. What I look forward to the most is simply being with the group again. Each year we go to their group while visiting and I find it just doesn’t matter where we are, when you are in a Celebrate Recovery group, you find new “family members”.

God is so good when we finally give Him a chance to prove His Love for us. Taking each day as a day on assignment with Him is amazing. The anxiousness is largely gone when I go into this as God’s new creation, rather than the old self still attempting to prove his worthiness somehow to a God who gave him his worthiness already by adopting him into His Kingdom Family.

It is simply amazing to me how endlessly patient God is with me (us) waiting for us to turn to Him and finally give all to Him. Revelation’s reading this morning talks about the churches becoming lukewarm in their relationship with God and His Kingdom Work. They still supported Christ but their passion was dead. Their lives had once again turned back to themselves. As I read this God began to show me how in living each day there are the moments when we are challenged by whatever does challenge us and immediately our response is to defend, protect, guard ourselves. There are a multitude of ways we do this but none are God’s Ways. He even went so far as to show me that as a child the situations which attacked me were called abuse and I learned several “character traits” to shield me from the pain. Now that I’m an older man these traits are called “defects”. They keep me from being fully open to complete God’s Kingdom Work He has for me. My role is no longer to question, defend, protect, guard myself from these God nudges, but to fulfill them.

Somehow, I think the lukewarm behavior we Christians fall into stem from our eyes turning back to self. The new creation God has made us to be has eyes for Him and Him alone. I’ve asked God to not quit revealing to me these defects I possess until I have them surrendered and buried at the foot of the Cross where Christ did His Work for each one of us–me included.