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.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone.  Many of us aren’t moms but we all have one or had one and I do celebrate the wonderful mom I had plus the example she set for me day in and day out.

As I was reading my devotional this morning:  Every Day in His Presence by Charles F. Stanley, I was challenged to ask Jesus why a couple situations of late were so troubling to me.  It said in the devotional to specifically ask Jesus why someone’s name causes you to have ill feelings whatever the “ill” may be.  When this happens it goes on to say, “do not ignore the feeling, but ask Christ what it means.”  I did this actually for three situations involving three different people.  Wouldn’t you know that I not only got a very clear response to it, but I also was given one other name where I have ill feelings.  The disgusting thing for me to hear is that in each case it involved my pride and my judgment.  I needed to confess my pride and judgment as sin.  I asked The Holy Spirit to replace it with His fruit of the Spirit.  These people are dear to me and I’d never want to pass along my judgment instead of the Spirit’s love, joy, peace, etc.

As I was journaling all of this from the above paragraph I recognized a quality within my mom that I truly want to emulate.  She was such a great model of the Holy Spirit’s fruit.  She was always loving and forgiving as well as welcoming and nurturing.  I also recognized just how much I hate seeing sin within me.  It is now confessed and forgiven.  So, I am going to walk into this day as a new creation ready to lift people up that come across the path of the day.  I look forward to what God has in store for this Mother’s Day.

This morning I was awakened to the door bell ringing a little before 6:00 am.  I would typically be getting up about now but not to answering the front door.  I quickly grabbed my bathrobe from the closet and answered it.  There stood one of our Celebrate Recovery guys.  He had had a troubling night and needed to talk about it.  As he talked about his struggle, I was reflecting on my own life.  There is no one, no not one, who doesn’t fall short of the glory of God.  All of us want to “make it up” to God somehow.  Instead, God simply wants us to accept His free gift.  This fellow had done this but he’d lost his way momentarily and needed to refocus.  We talked about how to bring his life into balance feeding his spiritual needs, physical needs and his mental/emotional ones.  He hadn’t been coming to Celebrate Recovery in a while and I hope now to see him back this coming week.

Have you ever wanted God to take away your will so you’d not have the ability to choose the wrong?  This is something my CR guest kept saying.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’d asked this of God over the years.  Now I was sharing with this young man that God won’t break His promise for him just as He wouldn’t break it for me.  God doesn’t remove choice so that we always have the chance to choose Him and His ways over our own selfish ones.  We simply have to find the help to choose His ways consistently.  This sounds so easy when I type it here.  Yet, when I reflect on life, oh so recently, I know how perplexing it can be when human desires and evil lies hit us.  This is why we need one another.  The journey to freedom brings us into fellowship with one another where we find genuine support and accountability for our hurts, hang-ups and habits.  This completes the verse  James 5:16 where we are told to confess to God, ourselves and to someone we trust.  The reason we do this is because the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.  When we are in need, we are the one confessing.  However, the day will come when our faithfulness to this process will lead others to include us with their confessing.  It is when we begin to realize that we have become one of the ones whose prayers are powerful and effective for someone else.  God has used our past to bring glory to Himself and to another who is presently hurting.  God is truly amazing!

Happy birthday to my younger brother Ron.  He and I are the same age now until my birthday on July 1.  I always chuckle to myself when I think of this.  My mom was 41 when I was born and yet, 10 months and 6 days later, Ron was born.  My oh my!

It is probably no surprise that my devotional  today was all about living in the Spirit of God–The Holy Spirit.  Isn’t that just like Jesus to give this to me when I was needing it from what I’d posted yesterday?  He is so Good.  I have been attending a Sunday School class one of our pastors is teaching.  It is on intercessory prayer.  Last Sunday he gave each of us attending a pamphlet of prayers to combat spiritual warfare.  I’m going to post one of them.  It reads:  “Lord Jesus Christ, my old fleshly nature is tempting me to (name the temptation) and I know that if it’s left to itself, it is wicked enough to cause me to sin against you.  Lord Jesus Christ, I affirm that through the work of Your cross I am dead with you to the rule and control of my flesh and its desire toward (name of fleshly temptation you are experiencing).  Blessed Holy Spirit, I ask you now to replace this fleshly desire that is tempting me toward (state the fleshly temptation) with the fruit of Your control.  Put within my mind, will, and emotions Your love, joy, peace, patience, and all the virtues that my Lord Jesus Christ enables me to live out for His glory.  Amen

I love this prayer.  It puts into perspective exactly what I was needing yesterday and I am sure I will need over and over again in days ahead.  I hope it will be meaningful for you also.  Thank you Jesus.