Today I get to go fishing with my brothers for a second time. Wow! I haven’t gone fishing two weeks in a row since I was a much younger man. It is a real treat.

Yesterday I had an opportunity to see a lady in her 80’s have God’s brilliant Light shine into an area of darkness she has carried for more than half of her lifetime. She had come for counsel to address the period of darkness she was trying to keep to herself but it was overwhelming her just as sin always does when it’s kept in secret. I am always amazed to see how God’s Light anoints one’s countenance. This older lady was simply beaming!

Our God is so Amazing and what an honor it is to get to live life where He takes our messes and turns them into His Messages. Is He Worthy of our honor and praise? HE IS!

I was asked by a leader in our Celebrate Recovery ministry, “What do you do when someone keeps relapsing even though they are daily committing to sobriety to God and to their accountability partner?” Because of my own interest in this, I emailed the author of the book Freedom Starts Today and asked him the question. To my surprise I got a response within a couple of hours–(good leader). He gave several reasons this may happen which we could all expect. His last one was the one that truly hit home. He said, “Most often, I find, it’s a spiritual apathy and love for the sin. We cannot serve two masters.”

As I look at this statement I see in my mind the picture of Jesus Christ taking my sins to the Cross. Right beside this picture of Christ I see myself handing Him another sin that I chose (you can put any sin in this picture). With this I tell Him that I chose this one over Him just for the moment. I hope He doesn’t mind, I just had a moment of selfishness. This ugly reality is the attempt to serve two masters. It is spiritual apathy. I never want to do this, yet at some moment, we all do.

What I love more than anything is the reality that I can commit just for today that I will serve only God and He will help me do so. Tomorrow I can do this again and will do it again. However, my focus remains on God being with me just for today. That’s why He called Himself–“I AM”.

Yesterday was our monthly Celebrate Recovery leadership meeting. I was to bring the devotion and the training. I had decided to introduce the book I’ve mentioned a few times–Freedom Starts Today. I was amazed afterwards for every person wanted to have one so they could go through the 90 days addressing something they face in their own life. I had been hesitant to bring this book to the group since it is not part of the work of CR. Yet, I had felt God’s nudging so I did it. I know that no ministry in and of itself is complete. Ministries thrive when we can use them to complement one another and that is exactly what God was wanting.

I greatly appreciated the message for today in this book. It is addressing the fact that we often ask God’s forgiveness for a sinful step we have taken knowing it was taken out of our selfishness. Examples would be: taking the drink I know I can’t drink, looking at a website that I just can’t enter, eating just a bite of this, reacting to a gossip just because I had something to say, and the list goes on and on. I deeply appreciate that this book identifies so many “selfish things” we do and calls them out. If our freedom from sinful behavior is to take root, we have to go to the root of the behavior and that usually is “a selfish desire to indulge just one more time” but, only for a moment.

All of this certainly emphasizes the patience and love of God for His children. How grateful I am for His patient endurance as each one of us learns how to battle our own flesh by surrendering it and turning away from it.

How many times does one hear that they are a joy to have one’s life? NOT VERY OFTEN for most of us! Yesterday I stopped by my prayer warrior’s home to drop off a book she wanted to have which I’d told her about the day before. She wants her prayers to be very focused for those for which she prays. When I arrived with the book she told me right off the bat that I was a joy to her. She loved having me come by for she is always lifted up afterwards. Wow, I just teared up hearing that. On the flip side of this, what a joy she is to me and I told her so!

It is such a joy to serve our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Having a wonderful prayer warrior in one’s life is just like having Jesus Christ right beside you in the flesh. I thank Him for her with great abundance!

I met with my prayer warrior for a time yesterday and did a little gardening for her. She is such a treasure! She asked me about a couple of the men she’s been praying for. She wanted to know if they have found the Jesus she and I love so dearly and know He loves us? With all of the things these two men need prayer about, this is the first and most important or which she prays. If you are curious about the response–no, they have not found this Jesus as of yet, but their hearts are much more willing to address this topic openly than they had ever been before. I know God’s Spirit is working with them.

One of the things I keep having to remind myself about is timing. I know that God’s timing is perfect and He is never time bound as I feel I always am. I am not eternal and will not be until death’s door is opened for me to eternity. God already is eternal and he knows each of our timelines so working with us never needs deadlines. God’s Spirit reminds me that the relationship with Jesus we pray these young men will have is truly something God will take care of. Yes, I know He wants me to be an instrument in His Hands, but the readiness and the decision lye in the timing of The Holy Spirit. With this I can relax and do whatever my part is.

One of the amazing discoveries I’ve found by finally opening up fully to the bondage of my past, is the intimacy I’m finding with God, His Son Jesus and His Holy Spirit. I’ve heard many times that knowing the depth of love comes best when you’ve known the depth of an absence of it. I have no idea if I were loved as a child. I know that mom took care of the physical me but looking back on it there is little if any evidence of love. If my dad were to have loved me I wouldn’t have wanted it because I’d never want to be loved by someone who beats you and tears you apart with words.

I began to learn what love is when I had kids and married my wife of today. She knew love and gives it freely. There are so many others who modeled this well who were part of my life in adulthood. Trying to fit the love of God into my childhood left me knowing that God is Love, but for some reason He didn’t care for this “one” for some reason.

So many years later and having worked through these issues of bondage, I have found an intimacy with God that I treasure. Had I never known and experienced the emptiness of love’s absence I would not know the immensity of God’s Love today that all of us have access to. Reaching out by opening up to the bondage within is the important first step. Don’t live another day in the past’s bondage. There is a Love like no other awaiting you!

Today I’m going fishing. This is a common occurrence for my other two brothers who live locally. They each have boats and go fishing almost weekly. I might go yearly. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy fishing, I truly do. The passion for it just isn’t the same as theirs. I use to wonder why God made me such a freak? Why am I not good at all the things they are good at doing and why are the things I enjoy so different from them?

As I have learned to confess all of this instead of bottling it all inside me, I find that differences don’t make us a freak. It makes us different/unique and that’s all. God sure never intended for us to be clones of one another. Last night in the step study group one of the guys had asked me last week if we could talk afterwards the coming week? I told him I’d plan on it. So, last night he opened up to me telling me how he didn’t want to do the inventory because he’d have to confess so many things he felt made him ashamed of who he is. He’d rather live out his life with all of it a secret. (He is 39–the same age I was when I finally went for help/counseling the first time).

Listening to him brought back so many of my own thoughts and feelings. After he was done telling me all of this, I was able to help him see that keeping all of this inside creates the prisoner feeling we all have when we keep it bottled up. God won’t help turn these things into lessons for our learning until we begin to confess and open up. This is when James 5:16 begins to play out in our lives. This verse say: “Confess our sins one to another and we will be healed….” As we left he said he would take the risk. God is so AMAZING!

“We are not our past, we are who God created us to be.” So many of us see our identity through the lens of our past. This statement came out of the 90-day book I’m working through with the other men I counsel. I don’t think I know a single person coming for help that doesn’t struggle with this belief and I’ve been at the head of this line. Even today I have my moments where I literally have to say out loud that I am a new creation. I am the man who God created. I never was my father, my brother, my mom, I’ve always been Earnie–the person God knit in my mother’s womb. Yes, the things of my past have all been true/real, but they are things done, not identity.

The water runs deep in this belief system of ours. Part of good accountability is helping one another remember this foundation God has created in us. Satan wants to destroy it, but God is faithful and true and how much I love Him for this!

Today I read something in my devotional I can’t get out of my mind. I’m sure God wants it there for good reason. It says, “Grace…is not looking for good men whom it may approve, for it is not grace but mere justice to approve goodness. But it is looking for condemned, guilty, speechless and helpless men who, it may save through faith, then sanctify and glorify.” C. I. Scofield.

I have a client who is working through a forgiveness issue. The person needing forgiveness fits the first part of the quote, but in their lifetime committed an act of sin which hurt deeply the client. They are both devout Christians, but forgiveness doesn’t come easily just because “I’m Christian”. I know that for a fact!

It is always such a good reminder that GRACE is what God gave me and He asks me to use it too. I want to share this with the client whom I will see today. “AMAZING GRACE–how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”

How enjoyable it is to have the family come together to honor the moms and grandma! A grandpa can never get too much of this.

Last night Kathy and I finished watching season 3 of The Chosen. We hadn’t watched any of them until a couple of weeks ago. We have done a marathon of watching and last night ended it. The closing scene of Jesus holding Peter in his lap is so touching. I won’t tell anymore as I don’t want to ruin anyone’s experience. What got to me is observing Jesus holding him. It has taken me a lifetime to get to the point of knowing and believing that Jesus actually held me with sheer love and grace and anointed with His mercy. Grieving my past and redirecting the lies I’d come to believe, were a start for knowing Jesus wants to let us know He holds us in His Spiritual Arms of love.

God is so much more loving than I was raised to believe. The days of judgment were very big in the messages I was given as a child. I know that these days of judgment will come, but right now God is wanting His kids to know this is His time of Grace. He wants to forgive our sins if we will simply come to Him asking for forgiveness and beginning to live daily serving Him. He is such a remarkably loving Father!