Every year on this day I think I write this message–Thank You God for my sis Bonnie. She is the one I grew up with just older than me. She was and has always been my cheerleader. She was unaware of my brother’s abuse as we grew up, but throughout our childhood and adult years, she has been the one who always said, “You can do this” and “You make me so proud”. I never gave these two lines any credible attention at the time because I knew she was “just saying that”. Today, however, as I write this, I can hardly thank her enough for without her I doubt I would be writing this today.
46 years ago when I was finishing my first year of life following my divorce, all I wanted to do was to go to California and see Bonnie. Somehow, I knew I needed to just be with her. (I did do just that too). As we talk today she tells me this same message for she is the one who has had the series of strokes and is unable to live life on her own.
God takes care of us in so many ways that I so often overlook. It is so good to take a moment and reflect on His Goodness. How fortunate we are and I am!
I have two brothers who live close. Both are retired plumbers. The one is just younger than me and he has been a lifesaver for me so many times I have lost count. Our daughter who lives in a house we own called to say the water heater was leaking from the bottom in the garage. My brother and I went over yesterday once I finished the two morning appointments. I had no idea what replacing a water heater entailed. 6 hours later we had the new one installed. When I checked out what having a plumbing shop do this it would have cost me over $2,000.00. All I paid was the cost of the replacement and taking him and his wife to dinner last night (well, along with a lunch I bought him earlier). I don’t have the skills these two brothers have and I feel blessed that they are so willing to help!
God is so good in so many ways!! I have so much to give Him thanks for.
One of my biggest discoveries from opening up about my past is to find just how many people in our community/society are hurting. Yesterday brought a new, young couple to the counseling room. They have a young boy and have been married three years. He has given up on their marriage and she isn’t ready. He agreed to come to counseling for a month and then we will reassess. They were married in God’s Name asking His blessings to be upon them. In the three years they have forgotten to keep Him at the helm.
It is times like this that I wish one could simply give to a young person the learning one receives through life’s lessons. It is one thing to talk to someone about God in rough times, but one seems to need to find their own experiences in order to truly believe. The saying that “God is good all the time–all the time God is good” is not easily believed in one’s crisis. So often we set for God what we want good to look like. I did this for 60 years before I began to shift into believing that God may have a better “good” for me than what I had desired.
Today I well up inside every time I stop to realize how marvelous God’s Ways truly are. I pray this young couple can find His Way back to a loving relationship that is fully committed to Him and His loving leadership for the two of them.
As I have begun to read through the book of Leviticus I find another huge work Christ did on the Cross for you and me I most often overlook. This bible book goes into extensive clarifications for all of the different sacrifices which were to be done to correct the sins of the people. There was great detail in the operations of the sacrifices too.
When Christ died on the Cross for you and me He not only paid the price for our sins so that we never have to sacrifice as the Israelites were taught to do, He took away all of these rules. Our only rule is to confess our sins, for then, we are forgiven. At this point Jesus is our Savior for He saves us from our sins. If we want Him to be Lord as well as Savior of our lives we have one other rule–live for Him rather than live for ourselves. This is so easily typed on the computer, but it is a daily commitment for as the Serenity Prayer says, “one day at a time, one moment at a time….” The other beautiful part of living for Jesus is His endless forgiveness for us. I know of no human who has lived perfectly for Christ except Christ Himself. We slip up, stumble, fall during this process of daily living, yet the one rule for salvation is to simply confess it.
God has made salvation and lordship so doable for His kids. What a blessed God we get to serve!
Yesterday afternoon a couple came for their session. This couple that now comes started with just the wife coming. She was wondering how she could remain in her marriage after 35 years of putting up with her husband’s critical spirit and “narcissistic” behaviors? They were both christians and serving God in their church. After a few months she got the courage to ask him to come with her. They have now been coming together for about 3 months. When they came yesterday they had just returned from being with their son’s family in California for 4 days. They were ecstatic about the trip. This son had kept a relationship with them, but at a distance because of his resentment of “dad”. The weekend trip had resulted in the son talking deeply to dad about all of his hurt and dad for the first time listening and apologizing. Mom could hardly talk about it yesterday without more tears and dad just smiled with gratitude.
After sharing all of this they thanked me for helping them to find Jesus in their marriage and to treat one another with the “love of Jesus”. They went on to say their son told them he could see a big difference in them. It isn’t often one hears a story like this but it was so nice to experience how God is using this counseling ministry. I just well up with tears as I write this. I’ll forever thank God for helping me come to a place of giving back to Him with the very past I wanted God to obliterate. What God obliterated was the shame and guilt from it and replaced it with a desire to use it for His Glory. What a marvelous God we serve!
It is incredible to me how much God loves each one of us. I was trying to picture in my mind how infinite works with love. How can God’s love be endless so that no one receives any less love than anyone else? A little example that came to mind was my love for my grandkids. There are 12 of them. I remember telling my kids that 12 was enough! Not because of a love limit, but I needed to remember all of their names and birthdays and with those details I have limits! Love, on the other hand, is powerfully real for each one of them. The desire to see them thrive and the hurt one feels when one of them is struggling is just as real for one as for the other. I know this is a very small picture of God’s Love for us, but it does show me in part just how much God’s Love is real for all of us.
A young man came to see me for the first time late yesterday afternoon. He truly struggles with his esteem and value. When I told him about Psalms 139:14 and its promise to each one of us, he asked if he could have a copy of it. To know that God created each one of us fearfully and wonderfully is one thing, but it also says “we can know this full well!” I gave him a sheet of these promises. I told him we will continue to work on this until he finds his grounding in this truth. God’s Love is real and we can not only know this but we can also believe it to be true for each one of us!
Yesterday’s counseling Sunday School class was an unexpected surprise. It was week 5 of the 6 week class. These last two weeks have a focus of Spiritual Intimacy in marriage. The counselor leading this portion told the class why this area was so important to her and her husband who was sitting right beside her. They have been married 45 years but they have only celebrated 4 years of spiritual intimacy in their marriage. Her husband was sexually abused in his childhood years by his own father along with one other of the 4 boys in the family. This abuse had him locked up in bondage he couldn’t talk about until….
It brought tears to my eyes hearing this story. I’ve known some of it and not all of it was told nor did it need to be. What the beauty of it is, is that intimacy begins when we can finally address the truth with vulnerability with someone we trust. A definition for intimacy which I hadn’t heard until yesterday was: in-to-me—see. This step was finally taken by the husband just 4 years ago and he has had much help since then. He said that after all of these years living in secret, he is now beginning to truly know his wife.
When we begin to tell our truth with vulnerability, we also begin to find genuine intimacy with God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit. It is amazing how all of this works, but it always starts with the confession of truth. Don’t fear it, embrace it for the results are “too wonderful for comprehension!”
Today as I was praying through my prayer list I was also going through the 7 Keys used in the Every Man a Pure Warrior. One of those keys is looking at Wounds and Triggers to see if temptations are attached to unresolved wounds. In doing this I asked Jesus why wounds can become temptations? Why would a wound be sought? In asking this He asked me to take my journal and let Him explain.
As I journaled what I heard Jesus telling me I heard what I’ve learned in past years and in counseling. Sexual abuse that continues into adolescent years begins to bring pleasure in a very distorted, but nonetheless, enjoyable way. Jesus went onto say that Satan gloats as this takes place for he knows how this distorts our brain’s function in the future of the victim. The victim easily becomes a slave to this sin and in so doing, Satan has a moment of victory. Jesus said he likes to throw this in His face. Of course this is all part of the spiritual warfare we in our flesh don’t see. Jesus wants to break these strongholds but we have to want the stronghold gone and the pleasure side of it.
What got to me more than anything was visualizing Satan’s pleasure in this awful, disgusting sin. There are so many victims of this sin and I was one of them. I sure want to replace that smirk on Satan’s face with a one of loss. If you are a victim, let Jesus give you this victory as you surrender this awful wound to Him. In so doing we let Jesus replace that sinful pleasure that makes Satan smile with a thankfulness and a freedom like none other!
Today in just a couple of hours I’ll be leading a group of men through our last session of the curriculum, Every Man a Pure Warrior. This has been one of the finest curriculums I’ve ever used to help one address what overcoming can be like if one will only follow through. I know each one in the group has had different awakenings as we’ve gone through the 17 lessons. My own has been my awakening to the critical role of Spirit. This significance has been a topic off and on through out my life in sermons, etc., but never having the grip on me this has had.
God gave us His Holy Spirit as His Gift for accepting His Son Jesus into our lives. For the most part this great GIFT sits dormant for much of each day as we rely mostly on our own spirit of flesh to work things out and complete the day’s responsibilities. Learning to awaken my spirit each morning and surrendering me to God’s Holy Spirit within me has been my greatest take-away from this work. In so doing, any stress, anxiety I might have for the day is now under The Holy Spirit’s work. Earlier this week when I wrote about speaking to the church group, I would be anxious until I’d surrender it to The Holy Spirit. That particular morning I did this a half a dozen times as my own fears kept wanting to resurface as the time approached.
The beauty of God’s Work in us has no limits if we will only stay surrendered each and every day to Him. Even in my journaling this morning I was reminded that God’s great gift of freedom comes from this surrender. I only want to live in this for the remainder of my life!
I have begun to read through the Old Testament during my devotional time using The Living Bible. I’m into Exodus where God has called Moses to come up Mt. Sinai where He gives him the directions for His people to live by. He goes into great detail about having NO other gods before Him. He then goes into much detail about how to worship Him and sacrifice to Him.
What is standing out to me is that they were to take no tools to create any altar for the sacrifice. Use what nature already provides instead. God has already created in nature itself the altars for which we offer our thanksgiving and praise. It hit me as I was reading this that no wonder the mountains, the ocean, the rivers and streams, the gardens and nature itself is SO INSPIRING! God has already created them to be our altars where we give our sacrifice of praise. Somehow if we put our tools to the “altar” we will always notice our work rather than appreciating what God has already created.
Keeping our eyes solely on God and His Eternal sacrifice for us of His Son Jesus, is what God wants us now to see and worship. That’s all. God is a selfish God and for good reason–it is so easy for us to shift our focus onto what we have done rather than on what God Himself has done for us. WOW, our GOD is so AMAZING!
Earnie Lewis 