Typing the date: March 13, makes me smile.  25+ years ago I was writing my staff newsletter about 6:00 am as I’d arrived at school.  I’d typed the date at the top and realized the date was an important one.  It hit me it was St. Patrick’s Day.  Ha!  I frantically looked around to see a green M&M on a shelf in my office so with two-sided tape I put it on my sports coat lapel.  Later in the morning I was having a very serious talk with a teacher who had been struggling all year.  They couldn’t keep their eyes off the green M&M and it finally hit me why.  Now, I was the embarrassed one.  Anyway, all these years later I remember this as I see March 13.

In two days I am giving my testimony to our Celebrate Recovery group.  This puts me in a tail spin each time I do.  This morning I awoke with anxiety throughout.  As I put it before God He reminded me that I am fertile ground.  He is planting seeds with our story.  The anxiety I feel is from the attacks of the evil spirits wanting to retake this fertile ground and turn it back into a desert where no one comes and I don’t go either.  God uses what was ugly and makes it beautiful through His Redeeming Grace.  I was needing to hear this and be reminded of it so I could revise my story with all that God has done in the past year+ since giving it to our group.

God is an amazing God.  I want no other god before me.  Praise the Lord.

Yesterday I wrote about conviction vs condemnation.  The new creation does get tempted and sometimes steps into it.  This leads to conviction and the need to repent.  We then move on.  The old man would step into condemnation listening to the voices of the old life.  As I was driving home yesterday I was listening to a set of CD’s on the topic:  Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer.  One is told to state out loud the promises of God by Joyce to combat these old condemning voices.  She says she would do this throughout the day when she was first working on restructuring her belief system.  I have needed to do this too.

This morning I tried this.  I found I can hardly say some of the promising scriptures loudly.  The one in Psalm 139:14 says:  “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  I just whisper it.  I say it with hope instead of assurance.  This morning’s scripture reading was I John 4.  In the 17th verse it says, “…we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as He is, so are we in this world.”

My biggest battle right now is believing 24/7 that I’m a new creation.  My mind has so many defeating voices at times.  I’m going to start confronting these voices with God’s truth.  Even if I have to do so with whispers, I’m going to do it.  I know that my confidence is shallow at best right now, but I want to be fertile ground for God’s Kingdom work.  So, I am going to strengthen my belief with God’s promises to me.  Join me if you need this too.  There is strength in numbers particularly if God is at the head.

I wasn’t going to blog this morning until I got back to the room from loading the car and the nudge just wouldn’t stop, so here it is.  This morning’s devotion was filled with the topic of conviction vs condemnation.  I’m going to be giving my testimony to our Celebrate Recovery group this coming Wednesday.  Thus, I’ve been working on its revision to include all of the “new creation” things God has been awakening me to in the past few months.  The last couple days have been filled with condemnation because I’m still just the old man I use to be–my mind tells me.  Particularly in the evenings when I am tired, this hits and I stew and struggle to believe otherwise.  This morning’s scripture reading in I John 3 talks a great deal about these two and how the new creation is convicted because he still gets tempted and he has the access to the Almighty Team:  God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit.  The old man knows he has them but he doesn’t believe they’ll do the same for him as they will for others–he’s just not worth it.

Part of what God is showing me is that I’m learning to walk in the new creation.  Learning to walk, as we know it from being with young children, has many falls.  A little child just smiles and gets back up.  I, on the other hand, stew and condemn knowing I’m just not “new enough”.  So, God is reminding me to be patient with myself.  Write this testimony and let others know what the real battle is like in being a new creation is.  This I will do as I get back home today.  Thanks for letting me share this with you.

I’m in central Idaho attempting to write this blog on my laptop.  It is so sensitive that if I keep my finger on a key too long it wipes out the screen and reverts to the home website.  This is my third attempt.  I’ll keep my fingers above the keys!

The topic that has been hitting me of late is pride.  I ate dinner last night with friends who have a son in the same town where I’m working.  He is at a residential treatment center for drug rehabilitation.  They are here for 2.5 days of parent classes.  As we talked we found that pride kept coming up as a major inhibitor for everyone caught with this problem.  I found myself reflecting on how much this topic has kept me in bondage for much too long.

I use to think pride was what my dad had and I was not going to be caught with this same problem.  What I didn’t know was that pride in my dad looked like dad, pride in Earnie looked like Earnie.  For dad it raged and abused, for me it pulled away and kept very quiet.  When one lets pride interfere with making progress in their spiritual walk, it is a sin.

This morning I read the first chapter of I John.  It says in I John 1:9 that we can confess our sins and He is faithful to forgive all our unrighteousness.  I’ve know this verse for many years but today I confessed the pride that causes me to stumble and asked for God’s light to shine into this area of me.  In fact, I felt God telling me to step into His Light when I feel tempted.  It is always right there waiting for me to recognize it.  I’m sure that is what a believer does.  A beggar pulls away and pouts that he just can’t change.  I’ve been there most of my life.  I want to be a believer from this point onward.  God is so Good and always waiting for us to seek Him.

Well, God being true to Himself, ended yesterday with the finality of yesterday’s blog.  I was wondering how I could ever truly believe that I am “beloved”, and more.  Last night was our men’s class for those dealing with a sexual addiction.  One of the many pieces of the lesson had to do with reading an article about addiction and its effect on the brain.  It also went into some detail regarding early childhood impacts on our brains’ development and patterns of behavior.  The assignment ended with the participant needing to write down 4 promises God has given since starting the course.  Secondly, one was to write down your dream of what your life will be like for you once you have finished this course.

I had attempted to tackle this assignment two weeks ago and had left it.  The only thing I’d written was 3 words about what my dream would be like after finishing the course.  I had written:  “I will live.”  I had put nothing about promises God had given me.  In the two weeks since attempting the assignment our choir had sung at church:  Even in the Valley God is Good; I had received the letter from my prayer warrior, I’d done the Freedom book assignment, read the scripture from II Peter 1:19 and posted yesterday’s writing for the blog.  Last night I was to report out on the assignment and I simply fell apart.  All the other guys read these great responses and wonderful paragraphs of what their lives would be like after the class.  I couldn’t access anything except the trauma of growing up unloved and abused by both my brother and my dad. I mostly tried to withhold my tears and finally passed. I felt like I needed to go back to counseling and start all over again.

At 4:20 this morning I was awakened to the song I mentioned:  “Even in the Valley God is Good” going through my mind.  I couldn’t sleep so got up and began to complete the assignment I hadn’t been able to tackle.  All of a sudden all the promises God had been giving me came to mind.  Promises like:  I am fearfully and wonderfully made, I am my beloveds and He is mine, God created me with His purposes in mind, I am not a mistake.  There were more but these are some of the powerful ones.  The paragraph I was to write but only got 3 words down also came together.  Before, I had written the words:  I will live, because I use to tell myself I would live so I could die.  I looked forward to death so I would be done with all the mental torment.  My promise was I’d live the best I could while I was alive.  However, of late, God has been replacing that desire to die with a genuine desire to live this life with abundant freedom rather than to escape it.  God’s penetrating light promised in II Peter 1:19 hit home and I’m so grateful!

I hope this helps anyone who has similarly struggled.  My prayers are with you until you also find God’s miraculous freedom He promises each of us if we will only BELIEVE.

This morning has been a most tender one for me.  Last night I got home from my grandson’s tournament basketball game and there was a letter from the lady who is my prayer warrior.  In it she had written that she sees a trophy case in heaven with my name on it.  In it are the trophies of those whose lives have been changed by God using me in their lives.  I got teary reading it but put it down wishing down deep this could be true.  This morning in The Nature of Freedom, I read, “Beloved, if you want to know Me as Father then you must learn to love being a much loved child.”

These truths of God’s tenderness–loving me, calling me beloved and a much loved child are so thoughtful.  Could I ever believe it?  Then, in my Bible reading I was in II Peter 1:19.  It says:  “And we have the prophetic word still.  You will do well to pay close attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dismal place, until the day breaks though the gloom  and the Morning Star rises in your hearts.”  As I read it God said it was now time to believe Him and not what my dad had taught me to believe about myself.  I am not Hazel the house maid.  I am not someone who will make a “nice wife” someday.  I am not the boy only good enough to be used sexually by a brother for 12.5 years.  Yes, the bondage of all those sins are gone.  But what wasn’t gone was the “dismal place” where the day break hadn’t shed the Morning Star’s Light as of yet.  Today, having had the letter from my prayer warrior coupled with The Nature of Freedom book, I was challenged to face this.  I asked God how I could possibly let this darkness go?  He instantly said, “Stand and Believe”.  I did and I wept.  The truth is I did this about 4 times.

As I write this now I sense the darkness gone.  I know I am to believe.  I wrote in my journal, Mark 9:24–“I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!”  I know God in His Faithfulness will help me do this too.  Somehow I know His Holy Spirit has been wanting this moment to take place for a while.  Embracing this is daunting for me.  Feeling loved and good about yourself doesn’t have to mean one is egotistical.  That was another of dad’s messages.  These lies will be replaced with truth now that the Morning Star is shining into this dismal place.  I do BELIEVE!  I am so grateful for God’s continued love and patience.

Yesterday I didn’t post.  I had time to do so after finishing my devotions ahead of leaving for church.  However, I simply had nothing inspired within me to write, so I didn’t.  Today I believe I know why.

I’ve had a couple troubling items on my mind.  One is taking place today.  I am doing some work with a neighboring school district that recently took some steps I detested.  My reason for going to them today and tomorrow have nothing to do with the steps taken, but my attitude towards the leadership has been difficult.  I will be working directly with them today and tomorrow.  This morning God showed my that arrogance is from man’s pride and I needed to see mine before I go in His Name to the work He has me doing.  He told me I am to go do the work I’m assigned to do and He would do the work He is assigned to do.  I am not God and He hasn’t asked me to step into the trouble I’ve noted.  I really needed to hear this and so now I’ve let it go and asked forgiveness for  an “old me” attitude.

Secondly, the other thing God pointed out is regarding the landscaping wall I’m doing in my yard.  I had my grandsons helping me this weekend and I wanted to get the most of it done with their help.  The kids were eager to help, but it is hard, heavy work lifting those blocks and tearing down the old wall being replaced.  I was going to drive us through the resistance and get as far as my mind saw us getting.  Well, that didn’t happen and yesterday morning God pointed out that He didn’t want me persisting with the wall work on His Day.  So, after I got home from church, the first words out of my grandson’s mouth were, “Grandpa, I don’t think we should be doing the wall today.”  I told him I agreed and that we would enjoy the afternoon relaxing.  This morning God showed me how much my attitude was reflecting my disgust for the unfinished projects my dad would start and then never finish.  I’d hate that.  My drive to get the work done was interfering with the relationship I want to keep with my grandsons.  I’m awake to this now and it feels like a new creation’s work now and not that old me who is dead and in my past.

I truly want to live 24/7 as the new creation God has given me.  I am learning and so grateful that our God is eternally patient.

The faithfulness of God is Amazing.  I don’t know why I’m always surprised by this, but I am human and each time God fulfills what He promises, I shake my head in amazement.  Yesterday I needed to prove to myself that I could live in intimacy as a new creation and not the anxious old man I’d always been.  God not only showed me that I can do this by believing and not begging, but that this world is made up of many more new creations.  I’ve been so focused on what being a new creation is all about for me that I hadn’t opened my eyes to all those around me.  God is making my world bigger all the time.

Today I have another new creation action I’m taking.  I know that it is one God has opened the door to do.  I can write more about it when it would be appropriate to do so.  In times past I’d be anxious about this but not so today.  The assurance that God is the creator of all and we are His servants leaves me trusting and believing.  The beggar is gone now that my eyes are opened.  God is so AMAZING.

Today I am a new creation, a believer and not a beggar.  Also today, in my devotional time I read that the new creation no longer has a sin nature within.  It was replaced with the nature of God through the Holy Spirit and Christ coming into my life when I accepted Him as my Lord and Savior.  If I had ever been taught that at some point in my life, it sure didn’t register.  I have always been so filled with my belief that something as pure as The Holy Spirit just couldn’t take residence in me.  Now God is taking all my old character defects, beliefs, lies of Satan, and replacing them with the truths of Himself and His Team:  Jesus Christ and The Holy Spirit.

So many times when people have revelations in their lives like this they say something like:  “I just want to back up 40 years and do this all over again.”  Unless I could change all the first 22 years of my life, I would not want to ever go back.  What is strikingly different for me is my personal desire to live.  I have always enjoyed life from the standpoint of having moments of fun with people and rewarding times in nature with just nature, God and me.  But, the abuse of childhood left me wishing for human life to end so I could live for eternity without the haunts of it.  This is what has truly begun to change for me.  Most of the haunts are gone and I look forward to living life each day.  That is an amazing feeling I hope you have too.

Yesterday was truly a Spring day.  Not only did I get a small start doing the landscaping wall, but I pruned all my raspberries and dug 200 of them to give away tomorrow.  My muscles are sore today but I love this type of “sore”.

I am awakening to living as a new creation 24/7.  A few weeks back I recall writing that the journey had come to a halt momentarily.  I wasn’t going forward, I was actually staying put and God was taking me through a few days of letting go completely the old me and showing me the new creation.  After about 4 days of that I knew I was stepping into the world as a new creation.  All of that went quite well for about 2 weeks.  Now I am learning what it is to be a new creation and live in a sinful world where I am to face temptations, address all the same things I already do and see them through the lens of a believer and not a beggar.  The new creation believes that God has placed me there on purpose.  The beggar believes that he must endure to the end and hope he makes it without stepping into sin.  This change is me through and through.  There is work and discipline connected to this but the reality is showing me that God meant it when He said I am a new creation in Christ.  He is faithfully making this very clear.  How I love Him for this.