This morning as I got up and started into my devotional time I could not dispel the sense that I must get things done!  Winter is coming and I have lots of work to get things put away, cleaned, stored, and ready for the winter rest.  On the other hand, I had the sense that I need to get everyone involved in the recent conference, focused on their next steps so we profit all we can from what we learned.  Then, of course, I was quickly brought back to focus myself by that nudging reminder that I AM NOT IN CHARGE.  I am to respond to what God has given me to respond to.  The sense of urgency I always have about my own priorities is OK as long as the energy behind it is completing God’s timetable and not my own.  It starts with me sorting out with God what He is behind and what He isn’t yet ready to have done.  I’m always amazed how much God is intricately connected to all of my life if I only take the opportunity to stop, listen, communicate and listen more, and then obey.  Even this morning I felt God saying obedience looks like restraint on some projects while others need action now.  He is AMAZING.

In the middle of yesterday’s rest and regrouping from the weekend I had a couple calls regarding a man in crisis and a boy who needs help.  Two men are wanting to help the one in crisis and mom was wanting to know if I could meet with her son.  In all of this I couldn’t help but think how personal God becomes when we allow ourselves to be used by Him.  The two men helping the one are fairly new in their own recovery journey and now that they have a chance to reach into the life of one hurting, they were scared and nervous.  It was rewarding to simply remind them of the steps they’ve taken and help the one see his need to take his own.  God is so good at building His children to model Him and help them focus others on Him.  I love this about our Father!  He is worthy of all praise!

God is always right–does that surprise anyone?  What He’d told me yesterday about going into the morning with an open mind listening for His message rather than trying to get my hope for the message met, was exactly right.  The morning speakers were magnificent and completed the message we all needed to hear.  This was followed by workshops that were endlessly praised and thanked for the excellent materials and wisdom shared around their topics.  It was really good to hear folks that had put much time into this conference saying that they were wanting to begin work on having this again next year.  Not so many days ago the message was quite different.  God is so good at showing us what He does out of our obedience.

I came home from the conference wanting to get new recovery groups started today!  Of course I can’t because we have no structure for them or materials to support them.  As I was having my devotional time and talking to God about all of these next steps, He nicely reminded me to keep His timetable in place.  I only need to take the steps He has outlined at the moment.  That step was ordering a set of materials so I can see exactly what they are and how the teaching of them would need to look.  I’ll meet with the overseeing pastor sometime this next week about developing a plan for implementing these new groups.

We didn’t have very many folks showing up yesterday regarding their struggle with homosexuality or any sexual brokenness.  God reminded me this morning of His Work getting people to come out of their darkness into His Light.  If we get a door open with Light shining, people will start to come.  So, onward we go.  Praise God!

To God be All Glory!  As I was having my devotions this morning I read the small book of Joel.  It is doom with hope.  The doom is from the sins past and present and the hope is stated when we only turn from this sin back to the Father who wants so much to restore dignity to His Creation.  Last night started the Hope for Hurting People weekend event.  The speaker did a nice job stating his new message to people once God had brought him through the restoration needing to take place following his stepping into sin.

Today we have the workshops with the guest presenters.  I am eager to experience God at work today with them.  Last night I started to have feelings of disappointment about the message I was hearing.  It didn’t contain the depth of restoration I was wanting to be brought into the open.  This morning God quickly reminded me that the messages of last night and today are His messages given to these presenters.  I need to listen for God’s message through them, not the message I as man is expecting to hear.  That really set me straight!  I don’t want to set the expectations for today, I want the expectations for today to be God given and God presented.  So, today I go into the conference with open eyes, open ears and an open mind to receive all that God has in store.  To God be All Glory!

How amazing our God is when we only open our eyes to see Him, open our ears to hear Him and open ourselves to obey Him.  Last night our quartet with a larger group sang for a church in Boise.  It was a good event and it seemed God blessed them and He was blessed.  At the end of the evening a lady came up to me and shared with me about her increased intimacy with God.  Last June our quartet sang for this same group.  I was asked to share my story with them along with my book.  As I was talking about my journey with God I said I had been impressed to begin journaling to God.  In so doing God has been showing me what a loving, caring, devoted Father He truly is.  So, this lady last night began to share how she’d begun to journal to God and listen to Him respond to her.  She was finding this same truth about God as her Father just as I have been finding. She had done this because of my sharing with them.  I was so touched to know God is using our story for His Glory.  He is so intimate when we open ourselves up to complete the work He gives us.

Tonight begins our weekend focused on Help for Hurting People.  Satan is doing his best to destroy.  I know this just from my own tormenting times this week connecting to it.  I just finished talking about this with my brother-in-law.  It was good to take the anxiety of these attacks and talk them out.  I can easily see the Light of Heaven shining down.  I don’t want to put myself in the front of this.  I truly want to be an obedient servant of God completing what He wants done from me.  The team that God has brought to the weekend is complete.  I know God is nudging folks to step out of their “protective bubble” and risk coming tonight and tomorrow.  There is love, support and help available as I’ve found to be so true once I began to step out of what I thought was my protective bubble.

God is waiting to be known for each of us as our God the Father, Jesus as Savior and Lord, and Holy Spirit indwelling us.  In all of this He gives us new live as He has made us a new creation.  This new creation is not new to Him.  For the new creation is taking us on the journey to wholeness so we can be more like Him.  To God be all Glory!

Some amazing Light began to shine on darkness yesterday which came into full view this morning.  Yesterday morning I was meeting with one of our pastors starting a book study: Jesus The King.  The first chapter is entitled:  The Dance.  In it the author is talking about the relationship God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit have with one another.  He invites the reader to begin to understand that God is wanting us to know our own self in this same way.  To love ourselves as the creation God made us prior to sin and find in Him this love so we can dance too.  Well, taking this chapter and intermingling it with the trauma of the previous lesson from 7-Pillars seemed to conflictive.  I couldn’t make the leap.  It simply brought me to my knees–not in prayer, but in weakness.

As the pastor (Ryan) and I were meeting I began to see the deep connection I was missing was value–my value in my eyes.  I have always longed for value replacing the lack of value I felt from my childhood.  God was hitting me with the truth of my past with the truth of my present and my future.  My value had already been given to me in His creation of me.  The simple fact my dad never supported my value and my brother’s use of me seemed my only value growing up was what Satan wanted me believing so I’d stay crippled throughout life.

This morning I journaled all of this to God and to The Holy Spirit.  It seemed somewhat awkward at first but it soon became very easy.  I could quickly see that The Holy Spirit has been alive in me but I couldn’t see or sense Him because He is felt through value.  My word–The Holy Spirit is Christ’s gift to each of us as we accept Him into our lives.  This is Christ’s most valuable gift.  He enters into us giving us the same value if we only believe.  I couldn’t see this because I could never find the value of me.  I was looking for value in places my dad would define as so.  I was believing the lie Satan had planted in me very early in my life.  Today for the first time I am able to refocus my lens onto God’s Light seeing my value through Him and being a beacon of His Light.  Wow, what an awakening!  You are no different in value if you have struggled as I have.  Don’t quit until the miracle happens.  God is faithful to complete His Kingdom Work and today I can see this much more clearly.  Praise God from Whom All Blessings flow!

I said yesterday that I had arisen early and done the 7-Pillars lesson.  It was all about dealing with the trauma of life.  As we were processing it last night in class, it was as though I was in the midst of my childhood trauma all over again.  My whole self simply went numb sensing this.  I know this “numb” well.  The paradoxical part of this was a statement in the book saying the Holy Spirit has a gracious aggression as He intercedes for us in this.  I was to respond to this.  I could only say that I never knew any gracious aggression during these times in my life.  I had only thought the “numb” I would feel was the Holy Spirit’s gift.  With the numb I could not feel the pain of dad’s words, abuse or Rich’s sexual abuse.

This morning I had to get to the core of this with God and with The Holy Spirit.  I knew there was a huge missing piece and I needed to know what it is/was.  As I began to process this I was feeling numb again.  In the narrative portion of the class it said to stay in tune with your body’s responses to the pain of the past.  Last night I felt it in my gut.  I was almost sick.  This morning I began to relive this again.  This time I was able to identity this sickness as my helplessness to stand up to dad.  To tell him that fighting my younger brother as entertainment was sickening to me.  I hated this with a passion.  I realized my hurt and anger needed to be told to dad.  I also needed to tell him that his bullying of me throughout my childhood was so disrespectful.  I wasn’t like him but that didn’t make me a girl.  Then I sensed The Holy Spirit telling me He would put this helplessness into the safe place we created when I was in therapy not so many years ago.

It was amazing to experience this healing moment this morning.  For the first time I can actually “think” about this instead of freeze up about it.  The Holy Spirit is now able to work with me in this realm of my past.  I’m so grateful!  As I face what use to be helplessness in my life, I think I will be better equipped to let the Holy Spirit’s gracious aggression take hold.  I’m most grateful for this.  I know this is the wake up.  There will be much more to grow through, but now I can get started.  The seed is planted.  To God be all Glory!

Today started as one of those when sleep wouldn’t come once the clock struck 3:30 am.  I hadn’t done my lesson for tonight’s 7-Pillars class so I got up and finished it.  This was enough to ensure I wouldn’t go back to sleep.  The entire lesson was on the trauma of childhood and its deep entanglements in your body and mind.  Here we are in the 6th of 7 pillars and only now are we addressing the root of trauma.  There was a check list one was to complete.  I did it not giving too much thought to the end results.  I already knew trauma had riddled my childhood.  However, when I finished I was asked to count how many “yes” boxes I’d checked.  If it was more than 4 one had trauma in their childhood.  If there were 8 or more the trauma was clinically significant.  Well, I had 15 boxes marked yes and 2 that I needed to talk with someone about before checking them.  I have never wanted to be bluntly honest about the impact of my childhood on me.  I’d like to think, “I’m normal.”  Well, I’m coming out of denial more and more so this did surprise me, but not nearly as much so as it would only a few years back.  What I won’t do is hide these results, but see them as my next steps to overcoming anything that is revealed from the lesson.

A significant issue in the lesson of tonight is addressing where God, Christ and The Holy Spirit were in the course of childhood.  I don’t have any cut and dried answers as of now, but I do know they were with me and they hurt with me.  I don’t have any strong emotional connections with this as of yet, but I look forward to this part of healing as I move forward in this arena.

This weekend of Hope for Hurting People is needing continuous prayer.  Last night one person talked to me overly discouraged.  I know this is another attack of Satan on her specifically.  As I awoke in the middle of the night I was lamenting some of the concerns she said to me but I eventually began to thank God for what He is going to do in spite of any spiritual attacks.  God is ultimately in charge of this.  This is being done to glorify God and show man that even in our crisis, God is right there with us and has tools to help us unravel the ugliest parts of our past and present.  These do not need to foretell our future.  Please pray with me during this week. God is going to be glorified!

Today begins the countdown for this weekend.  I believe I’ve mentioned our church is hosting a Friday night and Saturday conference entitled: Hope for the Hurting.  We are tackling some major issues of entanglement Satan uses to entrap mankind into thinking there is no hope for me.  Already yesterday I was told of one of our men in Celebrate Recovery who had found sobriety and now has fallen, I talked to parents of a 16 year old son who is struggling with his sexual identity, and last night I got a call from another of our CR men whose wife had passed out from her drinking and he didn’t know what to do.  This was just the start I know of Satan’s attacks for the week.

I’ve begun reading the book of Daniel in my devotional time.  If you don’t know of him, take time soon and read of his courage and that of his three friends:  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.  These men faced the fiery furnace and came out unscathed.  Daniel faced the lion’s den and came out untouched.  No matter what Satan is throwing into our lives, pathways, God is bigger, stronger and He is Mighty to Save.  I know the fear, the hopeless, helpless thinking that “I must do this all on my own” which Satan feeds into our minds.  But, praise be to God, Satan is defeated if we declare God’s Victory over him.

Pray for this coming weekend.  Our keynote speakers Friday night are a couple who have won the battle over sin and now use their story to glorify the Name of Jesus.  If you are local and reading this, come yourself and send anyone who is hurting.  God is going to be glorified–I am waiting in great anticipation!  To God be all Glory Great Things He has done and is going to do!

Thirty-five years ago today I was a nervous wreck–I was marrying Kathy!  Yes, today is our 35th anniversary.  I got over the nervousness and it has been replaced with a desire for us to be together to the end.  God brought her into my life through friends at a time when I knew I was never going to be worthy of a wife.  Yet, He knew something I didn’t–He wanted us together.  Through the years I have found so many reasons why Kathy was given to me by God our Father.  I love both of them for this!  Thank you God my Father for the gift of Kathy and thank you for giving yourself to me–Kathy my wife!

Yesterday was a day of “getting things done”.  I had a laundry list starting in the morning with work for my consulting and then to get tires on my car, meet up with a Celebrate Recovery young man, get my pickup from my daughter for today’s use, and finally spending the evening with my grandson for his birthday.  It was our evening for dinner and a movie.  He and I love superheroes so we got to be one for about 4 hours.  That should hold us over for a little while.

It seems the lessons of the greenhouse and its subsequent lessons are coming to a close.  This morning I was able to reflect on the past week and see some big steps God has brought me through.  It seems I’ve been able to let go of the need to “be like my brothers or like my dad,” to help others as they do or did, and that I don’t need to be like them in order to be worthwhile to man and God.  This is something man has told me for many years, but I now know telling rarely teaches the lesson.  (I know this in a school setting and a life setting is no different).  We have to walk through the learning in order for the learning to finally take hold and become owned.  This is what God has done for me this week.  That yearning/longing to be something I’m not is gone and the peace of being who I am is present.  I’d like to think this is permanent but I know I’m still a man so the journey may still have some hiccups with this–however, for the present, I’m truly grateful that God has brought me to this point of understanding and peace.

So, today I get to go to a 3 hour choir rehearsal preparing for Christmas and the rest of the day is mine.  It’ll be a grandpa day taking pumpkins to the grandkids and squash to the mom’s for winter feeding.  I enjoy this.  It’s one of the many pleasures I get from gardening.  God is so good!