Yesterday was a day of obedience.  As I was out doing some errands I met with my accountability partner and told him face to face about the struggles of telling and the pride behind it.  It was so interesting to hear him say he has the same.  All men struggle with temptation and then telling it to another man.  I suppose women struggle with this too but it does seem they are better about the telling or at least talking about it.

One of our Celebrate Recovery attendees died yesterday late afternoon.  His body had succumbed to the effects of a life of alcohol.  He was a trooper in that a few years ago he made things right with God and he even helped some others who struggled as he did.  He is not struggling anymore!  His body is free of the grips of sin’s effects.  Our pastor was able to pray with him and his family right before he passed on.  God is amazing in all ways. 

This morning I was journaling out all the things I’m anxious about.  When I was done I felt better and asked God what He wanted me to know about them?  He reminded me that it was now time to let Him take care of them.  He doesn’t see them as problems as I do.  They are opportunities for Him, His Holy Spirit and Christ Jesus to bring others to THEM.  This is done when I surrender all my control.  God wants a spiritual outcome from them which means each one involved would grow in their walk with Him.  I want a human outcome which may or may not have a spiritual growth.  God, being who he is, will take care of both.  He may or may not use me but I will let His nudges tell me when I’m to involve myself.  This is a big step of learning for me but God is a GREAT TEACHER and I do want to be a good student. 

The journey does continue all right.  Yesterday’s post told you about my pride not wanting to admit I have struggles common to man.  I said that I wanted to submit to The Holy Spirit’s leading in my life and I’d do that by telling when I had a temptation battle in my mind.  I did let my accountability partner know of this plan and that’s where it stopped.  As the day went on the temptations arrived and I told no one.  I kept telling myself they would go away, etc. 

This morning as I was talking to God and The Holy Spirit about this I realized an area of my life I needed to address.  As a young boy I was committed to never living my life looking like my dad.  I thought I would live above his ways.  Hiding temptations or acting on temptations, either one, was needed so I didn’t look like dad.  This is how I lived above dad’s ways (in my head).  This morning as I journaled I asked The Holy Spirit what I was missing from yesterday?  He simply spoke to my mind telling me I am human just like dad.  Dad acted on his anger temptations with his words and with his actions (beatings).  My temptations are different but the fact I have them doesn’t make me like dad.  I’m like dad because we are human.  I cannot rise above humanness until I die out of this life.  If I am to live in the new creation (spiritual being) Christ gave me, I need to obey the Holy Spirit’s message of yesterday and tell.  He reminded me of Christ’s words when He said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light”.  This is true only when we follow the simple step of telling.  The burden becomes light when I surrender it by telling.

Never, ever did I hear my dad say he had an anger problem.  I doubt he told that to anyone.  My lesson for today is to not be like dad by telling my temptation rather than hiding it or acting on it.  I truly want to live by The Holy Spirit’s lead in my life.  I guess making the commitment yesterday doesn’t mean the habit is in place the next day.  I have to work on the new habit by stop acting on the old one.  Today I tell and not hide.

Yesterday I said I’d write today about what The Holy Spirit and I discussed when I began to journal to Him.  Actually, it was about how to be strong in Him.  Notice how I wrote this sentence?  How “I” would be strong in Him was what I was was wanting to know.  It is a genuine character flaw of mine to continue to think at some point in time I will become strong in the Holy Spirit.  Instead, I am being awakened to my need to submit, surrender myself so The Holy Spirit can be strong in me.  I am a messanger for The Holy Spirit.  His strength is made strong when I am fully surrendered to this truth.

On Monday I’d had a day of temptations of “old me thinking”.  I was tired and coming off of a week of family.  Satan was trying to get me to submit to his temptations and beliefs.  I didn’t tell anyone, just battled it all day in my mind.  This is why yesterday’s message was so important to me.  God is wanting me to know I am not the one who is made strong.  I find strength through surrendering.  I surrender by telling the temptation.  When I tell I bring the temptation into God’s Light–The Holy Spirit’s presence.  It is there that the temptation has to flee for Satan cannot stand in the Holy Presence of God when his lies are being exposed. 

Telling is one of my hardest battles.  If I expose temptations to others I think I am weak.  The old commitment I had after I left home was that I would never be weak again after being raised to think I was nothing but weak.  I couldn’t do what dad did and I had to compensate for the failure I was by being as strong as possible.  I know this is all a big lie, but at the moment of telling a temptation, this old lie screams in my head.  My commitment for 2019 is to face this mountain with the “faith of a mustard seed”.  God’s Word tells us that the faith of a mustard seed will remove mountains.  I’ve found the truth in this too in other beliefs.  Now it is time for me to apply it in this area of my life. 

2019 is going to be a year of living in freedom.  The new creation I am doesn’t mean I have no humanness left.  It means I’m learning to surrender this old human flaw rather than hide in its lies.     

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  My new devotional is titled:  Being Still With God.  It is written by the Blackaby brothers who had written the one I just finished yesterday.  I like their writings and I appreciate their walk with God and how they write about it.  Today they started with my needed message which is all about never letting your past dictate your present or future.  God has a plan for each of us which will use that past of ours for His purposes.  We need to be still, trust and then obey Him as He leads us.  This is exactly what He has been doing for me throughout my life and today I am ready to take whatever next step He wants taken.  However, He doesn’t want me taking them from my own initiative.  He wants me waiting (being still and listening for His Holy Spirit’s voice) to know when the timing is right. 

I also started the book of Acts from my Bible this morning.  Acts was written by Luke, the author of the book of Luke.  I found it interesting that both books are written approximately 2 years apart.  The book of Luke was written almost 30 years after Christ’s resurrection and Acts was written 2 years later.  Acts starts with the disciples being told right before Christ’s ascension to wait for the empowerment of The Holy Spirit–to pray and wait.  This is what they were doing too.  There wasn’t a timeframe around the wait–just the command to do so. 

As I was journaling I was asking God about His Holy Spirit when all of a sudden I felt the nudge to not talk to The Holy Spirit as though He were a third party in the conversation, I just started journaling to Him.  It was as though I’d just met my new best friend!  I smile even as I write this for the warmth of this reality is very real.  Tomorrow I will write what He and I talked about, but for now, I just want everyone to know that no matter what is in our past, it does not ever need to block our present walk with God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit.  One of Satan’s biggest lies is that our past makes us unworthy of this Holy Team.  Well, I stand here and write this message declaring Satan a liar for I know first hand just how much This Holy Team has done to create this new creation I am full of love for THEM.   

Today ends 2018.  I’ve already been to the airport and back taking my kids  so they can fly back to their home in Oklahoma.  The house is overly quiet right now especially compared to the last week.  I do love peace and quiet but I also have many fond memories to store from having all our kids and grandkids together for a week. 

As I’ve begun to reflect on this past year I start with the recovery classes being organized last January and the leadership potential being identified and trained.  Now that we are almost half way through our first year of conducting the classes I marvel how God has been working.  It is not with a large group of people, but the ones attending the classes are finding root causes for issues they’ve needed to address and they are addressing them!  Praise the Lord.  I myself am one of them–finding bits and pieces of lingering hurts and lingering habits which are being brought before God Himself.  This time it is God taking the lead in what to do with them.  No longer are these being hidden out of fear. 

I longed for the freedom I have today all of my life.  Little did I ever believe it would happen.  I longed for it and relented to the belief it would come when I died and found freedom in heaven.  Heaven on earth was something only sung about I thought.  Well, God is abundantly faithful to His Word for heaven on earth is possible when God is given the opportunity to lead our lives.  I have so much more to learn about this but I do love being where I am today with Him.  I’ve asked Him to show me what He wants me to know from Him about His Son Jesus and finding obedience like Jesus modeled.  I’ve also asked for God to awaken me to His Holy Spirit within so I can know God’s Will in each and every day.  How grateful I am for God my Father!

The Journey From Error To Heir is the title of my autobiography.  This is true.  However, this morning for the first time I saw the title as a statement of belief.  It was almost 4 years ago when I began to write the first sentences of this book.  Writing the title back then was a statement of truth about what God does for us.  I also, even then, believed that God did this work for me.  Four years later, what I now realize is that the depth of my belief was very shallow.  If one would have questioned me regarding the heir that I’d been granted I’d have told them God gave me a way to heaven through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus.

It is incredible how God simply continues to grow our relationship with Him.  I realize now that the heir that I am is one loved dearly by God and His Team:  Jesus and The Holy Spirit.  Being an heir does mean being given access to the inheritance.  I had thought the inheritance was heaven (as thought that weren’t enough), but having heaven on earth realizing the relationship we can have here with God is a miracle in and of itself. 

The prayer Jesus gave before being arrested is all about God continuing His love and protection to those who believe.  I know I have much more to learn in this arena, but I am so very grateful to have this belief taking root in me knowing it was God’s intent from the beginning.  This is not different for you.  God wants each of us to know we are given far more than a path to heaven by accepting His Son Jesus as our Lord and Savior.  God’s rich love being manifested each day in our lives is amazing!

Having a house full of family is fun even though the den where I do my devotions is taken with our year old grandkid.  I got the computer out yesterday but forgot to get my bible and other devotional tools.  I read my bible for the first time on my phone.  I have a bible app but never used it.  It was rather fun to do this. 

I’ll be better organized as I do my blog tomorrow!

The book of John has always been called the one book in the Bible that emphasizes Christ’s love.  I’ve been told to start reading the Bible with this book as it best describes Christ and God and The Holy Spirit.  I’ve told this to many people over my life span too.  As I’m reading this book of present I find myself reaping a new awakening about Christ’s love for us (me) and also His new command He gives us when He tells the disciples in John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another.  Just as I have loved you so you too should love one another.”

All my life I’ve been a doer.  It is easy for me to show love for someone by doing for them.  God, on the other hand, has been holding fast to the discipline of learning to “be”–be who I created you to be.  Don’t try to hide who I made you to be by doing things, take all the time necessary to learn to love who I made you to be so you can love others by “being” the very person I created you to be. 

As I’m reading John I am checked.  First God is showing me that a new creation He has made in me is to “believe”.  Now He is showing me that I’m to “be”.  I am to believe who He created me to be. I am not to believe He created me to do.  When I asked this morning what God wanted me to know for today I got this simple message.  It was to be still and not try to know the outcome for the day.  Just be still and be what I am as I go through the day with my family.  I can hardly wrap my mind around this thought but I am going to do my best in today’s journey to simply “be”. 

I can only be amazed at God our Father.  His Word to us in the Bible is alive just as John tells in the beginning of his book.  This morning in my reading I came across the word chafed.  It was connected to Lazarus dying.  Lazarus was sick and his sisters Mary and Martha had sent word to Jesus that his dear friend was ill knowing Jesus could heal this sickness.  Instead, Jesus waited two days before coming.  When he did come Martha first greeted him and then told Mary Christ had arrived.  When Mary came to him several mourners came with her.  All of them were wailing over the loss of this loved one named Lazarus.  The scripture read that Jesus’ spirit was chafed.  It was then that the scripture says, “Jesus wept.”

I knew the word chafed but it seemed out of context being used here.  When I looked it up the meaning was:  being rubbed raw.  It was Jesus spirit that had been rubbed raw by the emotional out crying of love and support for Mary & Martha and the loss of their brother.  In this Jesus wept.  I’ve known for years that Jesus wept for this.  It was today however that God showed me Jesus didn’t just weep over this one close friend.  Christ has wept over and over as His spirit has been chafed by the gross hurt of sin and death His children suffer.  It is for this very reason God sent His Son to die and rise again so that our death would not be the end–however, it would be the beginning of life eternal with God our Father, His Son Jesus and His Holy Spirit who already dwells within us. 

I’m so touched by this amazing love God has for us (me)!  I want only for this new creation I am to believe each and every day and to act on each and every nudge God gives me. 

BELIEVE–In the two chapters of John for this morning’s Bible reading, chapters 8 & 9, I continuously found the word believe.  Each time the word was being used it was connected to a miracle that took place.  Each time the miracle took place there were those who chose not to believe.  Jesus even told the blind man that he had come to judge the world and to separate the believers from the unbelievers.  Times are different for today as far as the culture of our nation goes, but what is still the same is the opportunity to believe what we know about Jesus Christ.  If we believe exactly what the Bible says, “He is the Savior of the world,” we will be saved.  If we choose to not believe this, we remain in the darkness He continues to identify in the Word. 

I have been a believer “in part” my entire life, starting at a young age.  But I have never until of late been a believe “in whole”.  I find myself being challenged as I read God’s Word these days to trust so many things around me which seem impossible.  God assures me they are impossible in the hands of man, however, He is God, not man, and nothing is impossible with Him.  Even as I write this I think of things which at the moment I need to release to Him for if I continue to dwell on them I will get discouraged.  I only see them through the lens of man’s work.  As I do release them into God’s Hands I see HOPE rising within.  I truly want to grow this discipline within me or better said, let God grow this discipline in me as I release my grip on things I cannot control. 

God is Amazing and He continues to be the Miracle Worker as I (each of us) surrender what we cannot control over to Him.