The veil has been rend in two. When I think of this statement I first think about when Christ died on the Cross, the thick veil in the temple was rend in two for Christ had paved the way for us to come to God ourselves through the work of Jesus. Well, this morning I feel as though my personal veil has been rend in two.

I wrote yesterday about God being I AM and we find Him in today, each and every day. Today it sinks in that when God is in today and I stay in today, He navigates us through the day when we keep Him on the throne of our day. All of this is what I’ve been taught since I was a child. I’ve seemingly known it for my lifetime. Putting in into daily practice has been a very different story. As a child I learned to not live in today. I lived in the future in my mind when I would be free of dad’s cruelty and my brother’s sexual use and the struggles of being “who I am”. I have never broken completely away from this practice either. However, this very morning I have seen clearly my need to let this go. When I let it go I do it for today. Everything about life is about today if I want God in it. Of course, I will plan. I am a planner for days ahead. However, I will not live in that day I’m planning. I’ll stay home in today.

It is so true that we are never done learning from God’s leading in our life. It is utterly amazing!

I’ve written several times about the 90 day book/journal I’ve been using. Today is day 78. It makes me smile in a way for after all of these days I finally catch onto the main message of this book which was clearly given on day 1. This message is that when anyone is wanting to break a habit, start a new healthy habit, change a belief system or address a character defect, it has to be done each and every day. One cannot change anything for a lifetime, but they can change it for today. The reason for this? God is in today–One of His many names is “I AM”. His name has never been I WAS or I WILL BE.

I write all of this because this morning as I was reading this devotional and making my daily commitment to sobriety for this day, I was lamenting that it is day 78 and I only have 12 more days to do this. It was then that I realized I can continue this process each and every day for the rest of my life. Along with this, I realized I’ve known this truth for a long time but never saw its application to me the way it hit me today. The serenity prayer says, “…one day at a time, one moment at a time….” Yet, I’ve not put this to real life until today. I’ve just wanted porn to be gone for the rest of my life! Well, today I accept the truth that it will be gone for this day–that I can do this today with God’s Strength. Tomorrow I will address it for that day for God will be present in it tomorrow. I will for today stay focused on today.

Now I realize why God had this author choose 90 days! Some of us need extra time for His Truth to sink in!

Today I’ve needed to address something that has troubled me for many, many years. It is something which I’d given up ever seeing it come to fruition. What I hadn’t realized is what the effects of burying this within me has done. It has been brought to my attention by a few important people in my life in the past months, but I had felt helpless in how to address it. This morning I bought it to God while I was journaling. I asked for His wisdom and He reminded me that this struggle needed to include Him. Many years ago I had tried to do this but I hadn’t thought it worked so I quit trying. Today, I confessed this “giving up” to God and recommitted to not quitting this time.

I’m purposely not giving any more detail, for the detail is just between God and me and the one I share it with as James 5:16 tells us to do so we can find healing. I would wager that all of us have these areas in our lives. It is simply amazing to me how God patiently waits for us to awaken to them and give them over to His Love and Power to overcome. He never gives up on us and I don’t ever want to quit living as fully as possible for Him!

Have you ever considered doing a T-chart regarding what you know about God in the left column and what you believe about God as it pertains to you in the right column? I wasn’t given this assignment, but it came to mind this morning as I was going through my devotional time.

Going to church all of my life I’ve learned a good deal about God from scripture I read and the voice of man. For much of my life I took what I knew and believed God to be much like the Old Testament described Him. He judged and punished and I feared it immensely. It wasn’t fear that built trust, it was fear as in “keep your distance”.

As I began my involvement with Celebrate Recovery exactly 16 years ago in June of 2007, I began to see some huge differences in God’s behaviors. When I started to simply be open about my past and my struggles of present with it, I received NO JUDGEMENT. I received NO PUNISHMENT. What I received instead was LOVE and GRACE. At first I thought this was only because the few people who found out were simply nice. That wasn’t really the case, Yes, they were nice, but they saw all of this through the lens of love and grace which God is and God gives.

Today, my right column about what I believe about God as it pertains to me is amazingly and humbly thankful and growing. How I love HIM!

Today’s message for me from God is centering around fear. An acronym for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. I had never seen myself as one who feared until the summer I had retired from my school district after 35 years of service there. I had retired not to quit but to step into consulting with schools who were struggling. Its too long of a story to write it out there, but a month after retiring I found out that the plan another friend and I had made (which seemed solid) had lost its financial support. I had told this to a good friend and said something about fearing what I was now to do? This friend had been a “best friend” since college days. When I said this to him, he grabbed my shoulders and said, “Earnie, when are you ever going to quit fearing and start trusting?”

As I began to process this truth spoken to me I started realizing just how much I did fear. I truly feared heights, deep water, unexpected touch, prolonged hugs, proximity when someone is talking to me, close relationships with men and much more. I’m well aware of the roots to these fears today, but at that time I had no clue–they just existed. I don’t let these fears dominate my life today even though they want to pop up in unexpected times. Today I know to put my HOPE in God for fearing God is what we are told to do. He is the very ONE who will take care of all our fears if we will simply TRUST Him to do so. He has been so Kind and Thorough in helping me address all of mine. (I am glad though that when He takes us to heaven I’ll not be in my flesh. That height might be a little much!)

Today, in my devotional time, I was taken back to the point in time when I chose to look at porn rather than to confess the desire and seek help. The devotional message had the reader going back to their decisions to choose sinfulness. In so doing, take that/those decision/s and give them to God. Then, following this step, ask God to give His Strength for the next 24 hours to keep you sober from taking that step today. Each and every day we can make this same decision seeking God’s Strength. One of God’s Powerful Names is I AM as He told Moses.

I have grown to love this name–I AM. I’ve also grown to much better understand its significance. God has never said His name is I WAS or I WILL BE. Thus, we find God in His Name–today. When we find God today we also can find His Strength/Power–His Holy Spirit. In so doing we have the opportunity to choose God’s tremendous TEAM (God, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit) over any sinful desire. We can easily apply the three R’s. We can Recognize the temptation, we can Reject it and then Replace it with our surrender of it to God. His Power will take it from there. When the temptation is overly strong, confessing it to my accountability also factors in. I not only surrender the temptation to God but text or call my accountability. Saying the temptation out loud is a really good way to get it outside of you so you can see it and the ugliness of it rather than just feel it inside of you.

Isaiah 1:18 says, “Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow….” Taking these simple steps outlined above is genuine reasoning with God. He wants to make our sin/s as white as snow if we will only let Him and I want to let HIM!

Have you ever prayed for God to take away the desires of your heart and replace them with the desires of His heart? This is my devotional’s message for me this morning. It has caused me to do some reflecting. I often ask God to help me serve Him fully surrendered to His Will in my life. However, along with this prayer then comes “my desires”.

It is not uncommon for me to pray at the end of the day to not let anyone call that needs to vent, ask for help, etc. Have them do this in the morning when I am rested, I selfishly want. My eyes have quickly turned to me rather than keeping them on God. I know in my head that God promises His rest for the weary soul, but my selfishness supersedes what I know and replaces it with what I want. Once I reflect on this and write it out as I am doing right now I am ashamed of my selfishness. I don’t get many calls in the after hours of the day anyway, but if I do they are almost always for good reasons and I’m grateful afterwards the person did call.

Learning to trust God with my entire day and stay surrendered to what I trust is something I need to do each day. I can do this when I keep focused on the truth that I only need to do it for today. Tomorrow will be a new day and I can make the same commitment to God for that day. Today’s focus is God’s purposes for today and my surrender to them all day long. God takes care of me along with His taking care of everyone else as I keep my TRUST in HIM.

Keeping a secret can have very negative results when it needs to be exposed. In my working through the book of 90 days journaling and reading the devotional, writing my commitment to God and contacting my accountability, I keep coming back to the consequences of secrets. If we have a physical issue like cancer or an ulcer, etc., and we don’t address it medically, it can eventually kill us. The same is true for our spiritual self when we keep hidden what hinders us from confessing to God and telling a trusted friend.

The reason this hits home for me is that I have found great freedom staying “exposed”. However, sometimes I will generalize the issue when I need to specify the exact issue. I need to get specific with God and the trusted friend. There truly is great freedom and strength in doing this. When I tie this to the Power of God I find at the portal of this specific issue–telling is when the Strength is found. Yesterday’s entry defined this portal.

Complete freedom comes as we confess all there is to confess both to God and this trusted friend!

In 2 Corinthians 12:10 Paul writes, “I’m not defeated by my weakness, but delighted! For when I feel my weakness and endure mistreatment–when I’m surrounded with troubles on every side and face persecution because of my love for Christ–I am made yet stronger. For my weakness becomes a portal to God’s Power.”

I have hated my weaknesses throughout all of my life. When I was little it was the things I couldn’t do like my dad and several of my brothers. Not one of them seemed to be like me, I was the anomaly. By high school I was given singing, leadership and a drive for good grades which gave me somethings to hang onto. I also had this burning desire to please God (now I wonder if that was because I couldn’t please dad, so I’d try to please God). By college my sexual abuse had ended and my secrets began to be fueled by things I heard and experienced while there. Life only added to this as I got beyond college.

Fast forward many years to today and read again the bolded print in the scripture above–For my weakness becomes a portal to God’s Power. The weaknesses of today–desires for porn to gratify fleshly cravings, the pride I have that wants to keep it a secret still–are a portal to God’s Power when I’m not defeated by my weakness but instead–delighted. What a paradox! I see this truth everyday when working with others and their struggles/weaknesses. I confess and surrender and what happens–God’s Power shows up! What an AMAZING GOD!

I began yesterday’s entry saying what a blessed day it was starting out to be. That didn’t change. All day remained the same. It seems there are few days in life that pristine. One of the surprises (blessings) was finding how many raspberries were ready to pick. I had picked a couple of them next to the garden that were ripe so I thought I’d go through the patch to see just how many were ready. Well, that picking turned out to be about 1/3 of a gallon. That’s not a lot compared to the ones to follow, but it is great for the first. I now know I’ll be picking every other day for a couple of weeks!

For years and years I wondered why God allowed the abuse of my childhood to come about? Then when I married the first time, why He allowed a divorce when my two girls were only 2 & 4? I had tried so hard to live well for Jesus and obey His leadership in my life, but still all of this happened. One of my devotional readings started with a quote from Charles Spurgeon. It reads: “No man ever became holy by chance. There must be a resolve, a desire, a panting, a pining after obedience to God, or else we shall never have it.”

My biggest reason for making a resolve, having a deep desire, a panting, a pining for obedience to God was because I could not do this on my own. I had tried for 30 years only to find my self hurting deeply. Full surrender of all my efforts was the only way I was ever going to find FREEDOM in Christ Jesus! All these years later God has made it abundantly clear about my childhood. He never created it, but He wanted to use it for His Honor and Glory. When I finally committed to partnering with God to share my story, I began to find what I never had before hand. What a humble honor it is to be able to serve God in this capacity.