It is nice to be needed, and it is also nice to be supported.  However, for some it is a lot easier to support than to accept the support.  My sis has always been a supporter and her husband was just the same.  As I was asking God this morning to help me know how to support He reminded me to look with spiritual eyes and hear with spiritual ears.  Even though Bonnie and I have been very close all of our lives, we have differences.  Today I will listen and watch to see how to best give kindness and support.  I was also reminded in my one book study that the relationship God pursues with us is real and personal.  In listening to Bonnie last night, she told me about an act Randy’s life-long friend did for her just yesterday.  It made me realize just how real and personal God is and how He uses us kids to complete His kindness if we are listening and responding to Him.

One more thing God showed me this morning is that it is hard to listen to Him and hurt at the same time.  We become to self-focused when we hurt and listening is harder to do.  However, that is a good time for others to do the listening.  For these reasons I want to be an awfully good listener to God today to see how to give this needed support so it completes what God is doing.

This day began rather early, 4:00 am.  I had a phone call from my sis, Bonnie, just older than me who lives in S. California.  Her husband Randy died in his sleep about midnight.  She said she called because she needed to hear my voice.  We both wept.  This was all so unexpected.  Randy had fallen asleep on the couch after Bonnie had gone to bed.  Bonnie awoke to find that he was gone.  I don’t even know why I’m putting all this in my blog except to say, it is part of today’s journey.

Life is so fragile and we so often forget this piece as we live from day to day.  Randy and Bonnie had 47 years together.  They have 2 sons and daughter in laws.  Each of them has a young girl.  They are a close-knit family and I know they will pull together to support one another.  Kathy and I will leave to go down as soon as we know the right time to be of support for them.

God is good and His kindness is also just as good.  I started to wonder why God would take Randy at a time like this, but then I was reminded of this truth–God is good and one of his fruits is kindness.  It will be good to watch Him work with Bonnie and her family at this time.  Prayers would be appreciated.

This day started with me awakening at 1:17 am unable to sleep.  I found myself anxious about items that were on my mind.  I didn’t know they were bothering me so much until then.  I was brought to an awareness that even though they aren’t major things in life, I was anxious because they were out of my control.  Even though I surrendered them many times during the night, I didn’t fall back to sleep until sometime after 3:00 am.

This morning in processing these items with God I realized that as God and my relationship builds I can’t expect the same relationship to be in place with others in my life.  God was showing me that our relationship is ours, not theirs.  Of course some of these are family members.  I would love for them to have a close relationship with God, but I do know that they must be willing to surrender as I’m learning to do.  My learning is only mine.  I can’t transfer it.  If I try to push it on them, all I get is resistance which feeds the wrong learning.

The other thing I’m learning from this is what intimacy/sensitivity looks like in real life.  All my years, God has been faithfully waiting for me to awaken to my need to fully trust Him with my past.  Now I do and tell it when the door is open.  His intimacy and sensitivity has all the fruits of the Spirit in it.  One is these fruits is patience.  God was telling me this morning that His patience can be mine if I will open my eyes to see with spirit instead of with flesh.  I really needed this today.  These defects of character are rooted in me but thanks be to God, He is faithful in chipping away at them and replacing them with a new sensitivity.  No wonder I (we) love Him so much.  I tell Him to hurry up, but then that falls in that patience factor again!

If you’ve done the Experiencing God class you know that the 5th step in it outlines–Crisis of Belief.  When we are getting better acquainted with God, listening to Him, building a strong relationship with Him and obeying Him, we will be brought to a crisis of belief.  It isn’t easy to obey anyone all the time.  At some point obedience may come up against our own beliefs.  When it does, there is usually a confrontation of some sort.  This has been happening to me of late regarding my relationship with God’s Holy Spirit.

God’s Holy Spirit is all about sensitivity for me.  Sensitivity and intimacy are much alike.  Both are in tune with the other one/s involved.  Well, my struggle of late has been to grasp the awareness that sensitivity and intimacy are strengths and not weak.  Both terms are vulnerable.  Vulnerability has been a weakness in my mind for most of my life. As a child I was totally vulnerable to my bother and my dad.  I was abused over and over because of this too.  It taught me things that have been character defects all my life.  This is what God is now showing me about sensitivity and intimacy today.  He is directly using His Holy Spirit to do this.

If I am sensitive to people, it means I’m in touch with them.  I understand them, respect them and more.  It doesn’t mean I let them walk all over me.  I have needed to be awakened to this truth.  I have always kept people at an arm’s length so I wouldn’t be too susceptible to them.  I’ve always been friendly, but….  God doesn’t want me living that way with Him, His Holy Spirit, or with His kids.  I can be sensitive and intimate and still be strong.  I know this but it has perplexity in it for me.  God is working this out little by little and I want to find this truth so my relationships can be all God wants them to be.  I’m curious if any reader relates to this?

Today I started Leviticus in my Bible reading.  I must admit that I’ve always read through books like these with intent to get them read so I could simply say I’d read them.  Today, now being conscious of being a new creation, I’m reading it with a different set of lens.  Today I read all the legalistic rituals the Israelites completed in order to be clean before God.  Little did I think about how Christ took care of all these rituals for me.  Somehow, I was still taking them in spite of Christ’s work on the cross.  I would punish myself for sins committed, I’d distance myself, I’d create shame and guilt because I saw myself as the person who needed to do this in order to be worthy of Christ’s redeeming love and grace.

Today as I started reading Leviticus I saw all the steps Christ replaced.  The other piece of Christ’s work on the cross for us (me), is the Gift of The Holy Spirit.  It is He–The Holy Spirit that is shaping me into the redeemed person God originally created me to be.  I am now becoming this person because I see myself as a new creation.  My step study lesson for tomorrow is entitled:  Gratitude.  I am most grateful for the redeeming gift of Jesus Christ and His personal Gift of The Holy Spirit.  Together, they are creating a new person for which I am so grateful.  There is an old hymn which words say:  “Oh how marvelous, oh how wonderful, and my song will ever be–Oh how marvelous, oh how wonderful is my Savior’s love for me.”  I am humbly grateful!

Listening with spiritual ears and seeing with spiritual eyes.  I’ve already said a couple times that this has been an assignment.  Little did I know how much learning I needed to do with this.  My challenge this morning during my devotions is how much do I trust what I hear when I hear from spiritual ears and see with spiritual eyes?  This is a rather new thing for me and I find myself questioning rather than trusting.  I want to test this rather than trust it.  In my Experiencing God lesson I am being challenged to believe.  If believing is used it wouldn’t be very long before I’d know I’m off track.  So, why would I procrastinate about stepping into trusting?  I don’t want to not trust.

Yesterday I felt God nudging me to step into an area where I questioned Him all day.  I even wanted to do a fleece this morning.  Then, God asked if the fleece was questioning His voice?  Indeed it was.  Today I’m going to step into trusting and see what develops.  If God’s voice was truly the voice of the message I heard, I will know from what develops.

This is a big step for me in continuing this journey of mine.  I pray that as I share these steps it is also a help for you to examine your own belief system.  My past has always been clouded when it came to trusting.  I want to be like Paul in Philippians 3:12-14 where he says:  “…forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal….”  In pressing on I will believe!

I mentioned that God wanted me to learn to listen with spiritual ears and to see with spiritual eyes.  When something like this happens I always think it’s nice, but then I quickly wonder what it actually looks like or what does this really happen?  In meeting with one of my pastors yesterday morning for our weekly book study, I mentioned that God had wanted me to do this.  It was interesting to hear him say that he needed to learn this too.  He said, “I listen with human ears.  I listen so I can respond to what I hearing.  I know I’m suppose to listen to understand, but this is something I’ve not yet learned.”  A key element in this I’m finding is the word “understand”.  How many times have you seen something happen or heard something said and you want to instantly respond to it?  However, when you do, you find that the situation wasn’t at all what you thought and when you went deeper into it you understood why it was the way it was and your need to respond disappeared.

Apply all of this to God’s Work.  I’ve spent most of my life wanting to please God with my work.  The thought of completing God’s work because I sought to know His work ahead of time takes on new meaning.  I’ve always hoped that what I’m doing is Godly and good, but actually doing God’s work takes on new meaning when we have this intimate relationship with Him so we know in our spirit we are doing so.

I know this is what God is wanting to teach me–listen in spirit and see in spirit so I can recognize what the Holy Spirit is confirming within me for the areas of work I am to do.  This is going to take more time, but I’m enjoying this challenge of approaching life through the spirit rather than through the more self-centered ways of man.

Yesterday morning while I was journaling I felt God nudging me to write down something that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time.  I wrote that I was to listen with spiritual ears and see with spiritual eyes.  During the morning yesterday I had a 30 minute conversation with someone who said they wanted my help creating a 3-day conference that would take place this coming Fall.  They had talked to me briefly about 6 weeks ago simply saying they’d like my help with the area of homosexuality since that would be a portion of what the conference would address.  I had taken the brief comments from 6 weeks ago and created several ideas which came out in yesterday’s conversation.  My problem was that I had been thinking/working from a very inaccurate amount of information.  I was thinking the conference would be for lay people and this person wanted it to be for the leaders working with the lay folks.  It wasn’t for the masses, it was for those who led the masses.  It took me most of the 30 minutes to finally hear this.

Now, lets go back to what I wrote in my journal yesterday.  God had told me to listen with spiritual ears and to see with spiritual eyes.  It had no connection at the time I wrote it but this morning when I reread it I could instantly apply it to the important conversation I had only a couple hours later.  I was listening with human ears and seeing what I thought would be a great plan of implementation.  Only when I heard who the audience was did I suddenly awaken to my inaccurate perception.

Today I’m meeting with one of our pastors who is doing a book study with me.  He has asked that I consider working with him on his area of ministry.  I am going to go into  this day much better prepared to listen and see what God is wanting me to do so.  Once I’m confirmed that I have the information accurately in hand will I take it to God for what He’d want me to do with it.  I’ve said often that I enjoy being a good learner.  This was a lesson that caught me off-guard.  However, now that I’m awake, I want to practice well what this lesson is teaching.

My scripture reading this morning was Exodus chapters 20-25.  In them God is outlining for Moses how He wants Him to lead the Israelites and what He wanted them to do and how He wanted them to live.  In Ex. 23:20 it says: “Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep and guard you on the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.” Later, in verse 30 it says:  “Little by little I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and are numerous enough to take possession of the land.”  I have always read these scriptures as God’s work of old.  This morning when I read them God had me realize what He wanted me knowing today.

I tell in my book how I would go away from our house on the farm to be alone.  One particular time I was sitting on the ditch bank very sad about what was happening to me by my brother and dad.  At this time I was probably 10 years old.  I sensed a very real presence that day, one that I would sense many more times.  Now, 50 years later, in my counseling therapy for PTSD I was being led into the shame of my past.  In the session I was literally overcome with the weight of the shame.  I could only whisper and couldn’t move any limb on my body.  My counselor told me to ask God to send an angel to help lift the weight of the shame from me.  Nothing happened when I asked.  When she asked me what was happening I told her, “nothing.  God didn’t send an angel and He never had.”  She told me to not believe that lie. She said to keep asking until something happened.  All of a sudden there were two beings present who lifted the weight of the shame from me.  When I told her someone had come she asked who was present?  I told her it was God and Jesus.  When the session ended she reminded me to thank them for coming to my aid today.  As I was driving back to work afterwards I realized I hadn’t thanked them.  I said out loud in my pickup, “God, thanks for coming today with Jesus.”  I then asked Him why He wouldn’t send an angel?  He immediately replied to my mind, “I didn’t send an angel because I wanted you to know Christ and I both care deeply for you.”  I had to pull over to the side of the road and weep.

Today, God revealed to me that He still has angels guarding each of us as He did for the Israelites so long ago.  He also pointed out the fact that He restores us from the damages of our past little by little as we are ready to meaningfully take over these areas.  In Celebrate Recovery I’ve learned to call these my character defects.  Those beliefs that were lies about me and the habits I’d also learned to cope with my unbelief.  God has been showing me how He wants me to work with the hurting people who still only know the hurts in their lives.  As He has brought health to me, He wants me joining Him to assist others finding their health.  I’m humbly grateful to do so.  God is so good.

My journey has had a lot of meaningful Easter’s come and go in it.  Today is the beginning of Easter never going away for it will remain alive forever.  Yes, this truth has been the case since Christ’s resurrection, but now that I’m a new creation in Him, I see the truth of His work on the cross and His resurrection from the grave so differently.  The relationship He has wanted me to have with Him, His Father and His Holy Spirit has begun to take root.  My God, Our God is Alive forever–Amen!

Today is the 35th anniversary of Kathy and my first date.  It was a blind date at that.  God gave me a wonderful gift that day.  I will always be most grateful for the couple who introduced us and Kathy’s love and perseverance through our and my struggles to find the freedom I have today.  Yes, I love her!