My journey had me up @ 4:15 am yesterday so one of my grandsons and I could do our annual black Friday shopping.  He is my best helper getting gifts for all the other grandsons.  Kathy takes care of the 6 granddaughters and I do the 6 grandsons.  We had a good time together.  It never occurred to me until this morning that I’d not taken the time to sit down with God for my daily devotions yesterday.  There were a number of times during the day I felt His guidance.  He reminded me this morning that our daily time is not our only time.  He is my God and He is with me with our without the hour start in the morning.  I sort of knew that, but it was good to hear Him confirm it.

Yesterday while early morning shopping, we had completed the first two hours and were ready to hit IHOP for breakfast.  I didn’t know where any were in Boise by the mall.  I knew there was one in Meridian where we were headed so I thought I’d try and find it.  It was still dark and as I pulled out of the mall parking lot I could not believe my eyes to find an IHOP sign shining in my face!  We celebrated.  I asked our waitress how long they’d been there and she said, “Ten years.”  I laughed and she also said, “We have miracles even in the start of a day.”  I don’t know if she knew how firmly that hit me.

As we got home later morning and my grandson went back to bed I began to do Christmas lights on the front of our home.  Our neighbors came over with their son and daughter in law to say hi.  They were going across the road to an open house a winery was hosting which had purchased the 40 acres across from me.  I had been concerned because they were doing a great deal of excavating and I’d feared they were putting up a building across the road from my spectacular view of the valley and mountains.  They asked if I’d like to go so I went with the desire to find if my fears were going to be real.  As I met the neighbors and asked, I was told, “Oh, we would never put up a building there.  We are adding a drain field.  We will be planting berries and flowers in this area.”

Later in the afternoon I went to my hearing aid appointment.  Once the testing was complete they fitted me with aids they thought would be best suited.  I could not believe the acuity of hearing.  It was spectacular.  I could not remember when I’d heard so well.

As I began my journaling time this morning I was thanking God for yesterday.  I was asking Him to show me what would be the perfect gifts for each grandson–a gift they’d treasure and want to hang on to knowing it was better than even they’d imagined.  He seemed to ask, “You mean like what I gave you yesterday with the news about your new neighbors and the field of berries and flowers across from you and your new ability to hear along with showing you an IHOP right when you and Hayden were ready to eat?”  I thought, yes, Father,  “that’s exactly the kind of gift I want my grandsons to receive.  The ones they know are a gift–and one which is inspired by God Himself.

Our God is an amazing, intimate Father & Friend!

Today is truly a day of Thanksgiving.  However, if we only look around us at our country’s turmoil and discontent one would wonder where any Thanksgiving is.  The state of Thanksgiving is within us and within each of us if it is to be found.  The Pilgrims had much to be grateful with the shared help of the native Americans giving them physical needs–food and shelter.

Our gratefulness is likely more about God’s redeeming work within us.  That is what’s true for me.  Kathy and I are fortunate in that our material needs are few.  However, my life has been filled with a desire to be free within of torment I could do nothing about I thought except steel it off.  That worked for many years.  Today, however, God has shown me the “peace that passes all understanding.” Philippians 4:7.  This peace (freedom) is not of this world but it is a peace that only comes when we truly give God full access to our heart, mind and soul.  I cannot encourage you enough to take this risk.  God has proven over and over to me His genuine love and compassion.  He has taken my life which I thought could only be cleansed upon death of this earthly body and made it into a living testimony for Him.  This is God’s Miracle for each of us if we will trust and obey Him.

This is the story of my present Thanksgiving.  Yes, my kids and grandkids are coming and yes, I’m most grateful for each of them.  There are friends coming too for which I’m grateful.  But, what I’m most grateful about is what I stated above.  I pray this peace and freedom is yours.  If it is not, I challenge you to take the step of faith asking God to show Himself to you.  Invite Him to live within you.  He will do it for His heart’s desire is to be in your heart.

The journey is about to face Thanksgiving.  Boy, will I have new topics of thanks this year.  I just barely can fathom Christ cleansing this mind of mine from all the lies I’ve believed about me, the sins I’ve done and had done to me.  Just as I was typing this I got a text sent from the pastor I met with yesterday morning.  In part it reads:

“The first recorded miracle of Messiah was the changing of water into wine.  But wine is only wine if it’s aged.  But the wine of the miracle had no past to be aged.  Thus, in a sense, it had to be given a new past.  If God can give a past where there was no past, then He can remove a past where there once was one.”

This is exactly what I now see God has done for me.  He has backed up my past to the very point where He created me.  All the memories of abuse He has now changed to lessons to be shared in helping others unravel their bondage.  How does a Savior do this?  Well, He is Almighty and full of Compassion.  He does not want any of His Kingdom creations to be lost as I’ve been for so long.  He does this as we are ready for these steps to take place.  His miracles are truly Miracles!

Yes, I have much to be thankful for and this year I will praise and glorify my God as I worship Him!

The journey has me continuing to grow in my spiritual awakening.  Yesterday I went and talked to a good friend and co-leader.  As we talked I asked her if she was aware that the home of the Holy Spirit was our mind?  Her response was something like, “Oh, you are just now realizing this?  I’m glad to know you are catching on to what God is wanting you to know.”  As I talked to her about deep taproots needing to be removed, she likened them to the roots of wild morning glory.  This is a noxious weed which grows in our area of the country.  It is almost impossible to completely remove without intense attention.  These are the very roots I know The Holy Spirit is removing from me of late.  These roots were my beliefs about my value, who I thought I was and so much more.

I can hardly put into words the gratitude I have for all the help God is providing me these days.  Now that I can see a clear picture of Christ on His Throne in my mind it becomes easy to let Him respond to issues I have to face within a day.  I know I’m only a few days old with this clarity, but I can now see this growing instead of fading in time.  The picture of Christ in my mind is not fading.  It is clear and anchored.  The Holy Spirit is also free to work in me and through me now that I know Christ is at home in me.

My one question at this point is centering around why the church doesn’t teach this better?  I asked this of my friend yesterday and she said she wondered if the church leaders are aware of this reality?  I’m meeting this morning with one of them and I’m going to ask.

God being Almighty God is also Almighty and Powerful in His Intimacy towards us.  His love and compassion towards us is shown by His relentlessness in pursuing us and patiently waiting for us to see Him as our personal Lord and Savior through His Son–Jesus Christ.  How I praise Him!

The reality that The Holy Spirit’s residence in our lives is our actual mind is still a stunning reality to me.  I don’t know if any of you readers have wondered–struggled–contemplated this over the years, but I sure have.  I’ve never been able to grasp an understanding of my body being the home for God’s tremendous Gift to me–The Holy Spirit.  In the past several days, God has made it abundantly clear that this is not only something He wants me to know, but He wants me to now respond fully to this.

Since I first heard that The Holy Spirit lived within me when I was a preteen boy I’ve often wished I could better understand His presence.  I’ve never wanted to disobey Him but I’ve struggled to know His whereabouts within me.  The idea He was in my heart seemed nice, but my heart was simply an organ pumping blood.  It has a vital role for life which I understand.  I could see why The Holy Spirit was said to give me a new heart, but my heart was still just an organ/muscle responding to unconscious commands to pump.  Christ is Alive and The Holy Spirit had to be too so why would He live in a muscle?

The clarity that He lives in my mind–that is His Home, is so striking.  My mind is always full of thoughts, ideas, things to do and complete.  Of course it makes sense this would be what The Holy Spirit wants to take charge of if I surrender my heart to Him.  The heart of my thoughts and actions is my mind.  It is there I pump out all the thoughts of what I do each day or don’t do.  It is there The Holy Spirit can not only influence me but He can take charge of impulses which happen when crisis hits.  I can trust Him to do this.  I simply need to be willing to surrender control of my life to Him and I do this by giving control of my mind to Him.  (I know I keep saying this but I need to in order to bring this reality home).  I’ve lived so long with this mixed confusion and I love the fact I am seeing it so clearly now!

If this has any meaning for you, which I hope it does, know that Christ’s redemption on the cross was for each of us no matter what memories are stored in our bodies, what actions we have done or what thoughts we’ve had in our mind.  Christ’s redemption has left us debt free and this is why we are said to be “born again”.  This is a spiritual act performed in human form by Jesus Christ.  Our gift included in this redemption is The Holy Spirit and His home is our mind.  Let Christ establish His throne of Grace in your mind as He has done with me.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see!”

God never takes a break from His work in us.  The fact that He loves us and desires deeply a relationship with us is constantly real as we give Him opportunity.  How resistant I’ve been to fully trust Him in all areas of my life.  This breakthrough of the need to surrender my mind to Him is a great example.  This morning He told me that His nudges or His Holy Spirit’s nudges I sense are His Holy Spirit’s way of completing something He’s doing both with me and with another.  If I don’t act on the nudge His work is left unfulfilled with the assignment.  Until recently I’ve looked at nudges from the Holy Spirit as nice things to do but acting on them was more of an option.  I suppose in some ways they still are since we always have a choice.  However, now that I more fully understand God’s Purposes and Ways, I don’t want to hinder any of His work that includes me.  I will trust His Holy Spirit and act more obediently.

On a very different note, a close friend’s mom had a severe stroke yesterday morning and has hours/a few days to live.  She is in her 90’s and has been a widow for over 30 years.  It’s never easy to watch the human life of a warrior of God drift away.  Please pray for them.  God is such a merciful God and I cherish Him for this.

Today’s time with God and The Team–Jesus and Holy Spirit has been hugely awakening.  This is not just some nice idea or good thinking that Jesus is Almighty and Powerful just as God the Father is.  Let me explain this as it unfolded this morning.  As I was having my Bible reading finishing the book of Mark, the book ends with Jesus’ words commissioning all His followers to spread the Good News.  “Go ye into all the world….”.  Joyce Meyer says in a footnote to this commission that we are to carry forth the miraculous work Jesus started.  Man often thinks of Jesus work as that of miracles which they are.  However, we too often limit the miracles to that of body-flesh healing.  Joyce said to consider breakthrough as another way of interrupting healing.

In the last couple days God has had me switch my journaling to Jesus once again.  However, now that I’m more grounded in the Almighty God I needed to see that His Son Jesus carries within that same Almighty Power.  I have been awakened to this truth mightily too.  My own breakthrough has been that within me is God’s Precious Holy Spirit Who also embodies the same Almighty Power.  So, how is this accessible to me?  My breakthrough came when so many pieces to the puzzle started fitting into place.

First and foremost, I’ve given power to my mind and my control of it.  I’ve said many times this was the one area my dad couldn’t get to and I had to keep it strong so I could not let his damage control me or the damage of my brother.  We know that story.  I’ve also tried all my life to control my responses to temptation and sin by controlling my mind–we also know that story.  A year ago I heard for the first time that the home of God’s Holy Spirit is our mind–it is our heart (the amygdala).  If I allow (surrender) my mind to being the home of the Holy Spirit and The Throne of Grace where Christ resides I don’t have to try and be in control of my mind–This Almighty Team is.  I hear and feel God’s messages in my mind and no wonder I do–we do.  He lives there!

I’ve always thought the mind is the control of flesh and the heart is the control of spirit.  Well, everything we are is spirit in flesh.  Now that I’ve had this mental breakthrough I can easily see my need to surrender my mind’s control to Jesus.  If you’re shaking your head wondering how this old grandpa could be so dense–go ahead.  I am shaking mine too.  I’m just glad to finally see this truth clearly.  So I tell all of this because I call this my morning miracle.  This breakthrough is great.  I feel freed from a task I’ve never been able to accomplish and now I know why.  I wasn’t suppose to complete it.  I needed to surrender it and now I have.  Somehow, I’ve always thought surrendering control would then provide strength to control it.  Instead, I’m learning that surrendering control means washing my hands and letting it go.  God’s Almighty Team is taking care of it entirely.  To God be the Glory!  Great things He hath done!

I don’t know what happened to yesterday’s blog.  When I logged in just now I see that it is missing.  I’m no techy nerd so I’ll let it go as something I likely did and didn’t know I did!  Yesterday was quite the day.  It started with devotions where I felt God wanting me to readdress my journaling back to His Son Jesus.  I quickly learned why as I needed to now see Jesus just as powerful as His Father is.  There were several things which took place yesterday morning that I won’t go into at this point.  They were confirming in one way and very challenging in most others.  I found myself wondering just how much God does love me.  I was so gripped by all of this that I got up at 4:30 this morning to see what God in His Word had to say to me.  I’m in Mark and the chapters leading up to Christ’s death on the cross.  He’s hammering into the disciples the message of faith and trust.

As I got to my journaling I asked God where in scripture does He precisely say He loves me?  There are hundreds of scriptures saying what He does for us out of His love.  Somehow I needed to know that He simply loves me.  I found in John 15:9 where Christ said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.”  This verse says so much to me today.  As I’d mentioned a couple days ago about the 7-Pillars class, I needed to write 4 encounters I’ve had with God.  I also needed to support the encounters with verses that show the validity of each one.  The first encounter I wrote was going back to my first counseling 28 years ago.  Christ had told me my brother had never abused me to hurt me.  He was only intending to gratify himself.  Secondly, Christ said, “And, I want you to know I love you.”  This scriptural validity I found in the verse from John.

I have worked so hard for God’s love and affirmation.  Now, He is wanting me to know firmly, once and for all, He loves me without any works attached.  I am free to serve Him out of my love for Him rather than trying to earn love in return.  How I want these seeds to grow within me.  I hope this is happening too for you.  God’s love through His Son Jesus Christ is as real for you as it is for me.

In my 7-Pillars class last night God opened a whole new reservoir of “stuff” I need to let go of.  I had thought we were ready to start the first lesson of our last pillar but one of the guys in our group needed to complete almost all of pillar 6 lessons.  So the first 2/3’s of the time was given to him.  I found myself hearing so much of these lessons for the first time even though I’d done them 3-4 weeks ago.  All of these lessons focus on the trauma of our past and replacing the trauma with God’s truth about us.  In my doing them I’d put answers which were true but I hadn’t allowed God to replace the lies of them with His truth.  I finally heard last night seemingly for the first time that the lies of our past occupy the space within us which God wants being used to store His truth about us.  Truths like: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  “I am God’s masterpiece.”  “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”  I have said and written this stuff so many times, yet, even though I have, I hang onto the lies within me.  Their deep roots were not uprooted.  This truth was what came out of just listening last night and not needing to participate in sharing answers.  So today, God said I need to share the lies and let them go!

My brother’s sexual use of me over so many years became my first sexual stimulation.  So in my mind I was gay because I’ve had sexual thoughts all my life like this.  Secondly, my dad’s verbal labeling calling me Hazel during my high school years and a sissy when I was younger left me believing this is who I really am.  I’ve kept these lies deeply within me.  Over the years I’ve told them and had so much therapy to replace them.   God shared with me that my inability to accept a compliment was because there was no room for them within because I had so many lies within taking up the storage of a compliment’s truth.  He wants me (us) to let the lies go once and for all so the truth about who we are in Him can start being who we actually believe we are.

Today in my devotional time I’ve taken time to let these lies go once and for all.  I know Satan will try and get me to believe them again, but I need to confess this because confessing is one of the steps God has us use to get the lie outside of us creating space for the seeds of truth to take root replacing the lies.

I sure hope this makes sense to you.  If you struggle like I do, God is patiently waiting for you to take this truth and act on it with Him.  He wants you to know just how much you are treasured by Him.

Last night was our weekly choir practice.  We are deep into the preparation for the Christmas drama/production: Four Tickets to Christmas.  It is one of the finest productions I’ve ever been part of and so touching.  Its story line is one every person needs to experience.  It’s one of forgiveness, love and compassion.  Unlike most, this one is filled with drama and requires much movement:  dance-like stuff.  It is hugely stifling and embarrassing for someone like me.  As I was watching the teens involved in it last night I saw and felt something inside me.  The kids were free to move and learn the moves with ease.  I recalled for a moment when I had that kind of confidence–innocent confidence.

As I was journaling this morning I was reflecting on this from last night.  I felt God walking me through my past.  Yes, in my youngest years I was a fairly confident boy in an innocent way.  The confidence was a natural part of me.  The years of abuse from my brother and dad did a huge number on it.  The bigger message however that God wanted me to see was one of His Work.  Once I was willing (out of desperation) to step out of my hiding and face the giants in my life:  my belief of who I thought I was, the value of my worth, the hurts, hang-ups and habits, etc., God was able to start replacing what was innocent confidence so long ago with faith in Him and trust in Him.  As I got into college I quit participating in productions.  I struggled to memorize when it wasn’t a song and I looked like a fool trying to dance.

So, this morning God was showing me He wanted me focusing on Him and His message and His work.  My part in the production is simply one part, but without it, the production is incomplete.  If I worry about what I cannot do well I will waste valuable time I could spend learning.  I’m also disrespecting my God who says, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13.  From this tidbit of a memory last night, God also showed me how the insecurities I’ve learned to think were me are now growing into trust and faith in Him, Christ and The Holy Spirit.  The work with Celebrate Recovery is helping others to do the same.

God is amazingly good at taking our humanness and turning it around into His handiwork.  I don’t want to be a hindrance to this.  So, I’m going to have faith that I can dance and move with the crowd as God is glorified in this upcoming Christmas production.