Yesterday was an interesting day.  Originally I was to help a family clean their yard along with several others.  However, on Wed. evening at our Celebrate Recovery, we’d met with a mom whose son is in jail.  The mom is deaf and I knew I was to go with her yesterday to assist getting help for her and the son.  The son is part of our group but has some disabilities complicating the case.  The mom was needing to go into Oregon for the meetings as the son was arrested there.  Since the mom is deaf it is next to impossible for her to work her way through a conversation using a notepad for them to respond to questions she asks–especially when the conversation topics are so private and critical.  It is equally difficult for them to want to take the time to write out their questions so she can respond to them.  Thus, my reason for going.

I had prayed yesterday morning knowing I didn’t know what to do except go.  I picked the mom up and listened to her talk for an hour while we drove to the destination.  When I pulled into town I asked a lady on the sidewalk who was putting out a sign for her store, where B street was.  She said I was only two blocks away and I’d see the courthouse as I reached it.  She didn’t even know that was exactly what I was looking for.  As we got into the courthouse it only took two stops to be at the exact window for our help.  The lady was so nice.  She printed out the details of the son’s case.  We thought we’d need to ask for an attorney but they’d already assigned one.  In fact, the lady said to turn around as the lawyer assigned was standing only a few feet from us.  I quickly walked to her, introduced the mom and me telling about the son.  She was pleasant and asked us to go to her office and set an appointment for the mom and her to meet.  We did this and the meeting is now set for next Friday–two weeks ahead of the hearing.

This morning I was thanking God for his intervention.  I was quickly reminded that I was joining Him yesterday.  He wasn’t joining me.  He’d already had these details in place.  I was only needing to obey His nudges so that the mom and lawyer could meet and His intent would be accomplished.  The timing was exactly what God had in mind.  I am sure learning that God is at work all the time in the details of our lives.  It isn’t until we open our eyes and ears and obey His nudges that we begin to recognize just how true this is.  It isn’t that He is waiting to work, but He waits for us to recognize His work and join it.  How Amazing God is.  I even told God this morning that He is Amazing and He said, “This is Who I Am.  It seems amazing because we are not use to working so routinely with Him.”  As I grow in my own awareness of God’s work I find it is truly AMAZING, but this is simply natural for God as this is WHO HE IS.

Last night was a critical meeting with the second project I’d mentioned a few days ago regarding trying to know if God is wanting me to continue with it.  It is a difficult commitment and has been almost from the start of working with it.  Last night’s meeting had much light shed on the issues blocking the project moving forward.  Another member had called me saying they were ready to pull out and I was feeling that way too.  However, in the meeting we were able to define the “elephant in the room” and begin to at least address some changes that must be made if we are to make any headway.  We are meeting again in a week.  In the meantime each member is to pray seeking God’s insights for our personal commitment to the work and what exactly God would want us doing for Him in the work.  We will come back and start the meeting with this going around the room for each member to tell what God has said to him/her.

In my own Bible reading this morning I am reading about Elijah being taken up to heaven in the chariot of fire, II Kings, chapter 2.  Before he is taken Elijah asks Elisha what he would like from him before He departs.  Elisha says he’d like a double portion of his spirit to be upon him.  Joyce Myers, who has authored this edition of the Amplified Bible I’m reading, writes an insert regarding this request of Elisha.  She says: “I have always felt that Elijah was saying, “If you stick with me until the very end, if you finish what you started many years ago–then you may have what you asked for….  We must be able to endure hardship, wait longer for results than we expected,…. Make a decision today that from now on, by God’s grace, you will always finish what you start…. God has a double portion blessing waiting for you, but you will find it at the finish line.”

With this message the morning after the meeting where my charge is to seek God’s message for me, I find this very insightful.  God is so good and I sure don’t want to be “under blessed” because of my selfishness.  Now I will keep listening to God to see just exactly what He wants me to be doing for Him with this team of God workers.

In the workbook study I’m doing of Experiencing God, there are steps identified which God takes us through as we truly experience Him.  As we build an intimate relationship with God we naturally go through these steps at various times.  I am seeing this quite clearly of late for myself.  I said yesterday that I had a couple decisions I’m needing to make about involvement in some projects.  The one which I so wanted to do has been in the forefront of thinking of late.  I’ve had three phone conversations about it in the past two days.  It involves educational work similar to the consulting I’ve done in the years since leaving the school district in 2007.  I had pulled away from the consulting when I joined the Nampa School Dist. in 2013 to assist with their financial crisis–that became full-time work for 2.5 years.  Recently I’ve been asked to rejoin the work that is now being adjusted to better fit schools/districts in crisis.  My own crisis has been how to choose what God truly wants?  In my mind I’ve thought God wants me in church type ministry because “that is God work”.  However, this morning, God made it very clear that secular work doesn’t remove Him from working.  He said to me that He wants me to take part so the work He is doing can be called out as His work.  In doing so it helps man to get his eyes off of himself and onto the Greater Power of God Almighty.  This probably seems vague to a reader, but it has been very clear to me.

I’ve loved working the past 45 years in education.  As I’ve spent the last year getting to know God and journaling to Him, I’ve felt like He wanted me to eliminate all the secular related work I’ve done to only do ministry work related to church.  This way I knew for sure I was joining His work.  I’ve wondered if my work all these years in education has been more out of my own selfish desires than truly pleasing God.  This morning God has made it very clear to me that only man calls His work church related or secular related.  He calls His Work–His Work.  I categorize it, not Him.  He wants me working where He points me and provides the clarity of purpose.

One other item of importance that has come out of the past couple days has to do with “a heart of stone vs a heart of flesh”.  In Ezekiel 36:26 God’s word says: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”  When I was going through my years of counseling God gave me this promise.  I thought when God gave me a clean heart He polished the heart I had–He made it shiny.  How He wanted me to unlearn that lie.  What I didn’t then understand about a heart of flesh is that flesh feels.  He wanted my heart to feel.  My past had hardened my heart so it didn’t feel the hurt of the past.  Today, God wants me feeling with my heart.  An incident of last night at Celebrate Recovery showed this to me.  A hardened heart judges man when he hears a man’s story.  A heart of flesh feels a man’s need and discerns how to support because he is led by The Holy Spirit’s nudge.

So, these are my lessons of late.  God is always Good!

I don’t know how much you know about Elijah, but he was the main topic in today’s Bible reading.  I love how God spoke to him and how he would instantly obey no matter how difficult the circumstances were.  He confronted the king and queen ( as evil as she was) and God was glorified.  Yet, he would then let his emotions get the best of him and he’d flee.  God didn’t seem to be offended by his fleeing.  Elijah would question God, God would guide him, comfort him at times, but then God would give him commands and Elijah would obey.  This is found in I Kings 17-19.

I’ve never been one to trust emotions.  I’ve always thought I learned to be this way from my dad’s emotional outbursts which only damaged us kids physically and emotionally.  I’ve presently learned to respect emotions and know that they are not sin as I thought when I was much younger.  They are actually a natural part of us and of God.  I know that emotion is fuel.  It ignites us to act on whatever is before us.  It is the substance of passion.  Emotion is important in sustaining us as we do our work particularly when we know we are doing it with God.  However, I struggle about decision making during emotional times.  In my life I’ve made decisions that were not the best when they were driven only by emotions.  I  know that decisions must align with God’s Word, prayer, circumstances and our church.  This comes directly from working with Experiencing God.

Last night Kathy and I joined a songfest which was housed by a couple in our church.  It was joyously emotional and good.  I worshiped during this time and God was glorified.  I have a couple decisions I’m needing to face.  I do not want them to be done from emotions only.  However, if they were, I’d have already done it for one is very enticing and the other is a “labor of love”.  God keeps telling me to see where He is working for that is what He is wanting me doing.  I’m seeking to see with spiritual eyes and listen with spiritual ears.  I’ll keep you posted.

Summer begins today and it has begun.  The heat has come.  Yesterday was a rough day to work through.  I had a couple of appointments, one with Kathy about our investments and one for the Aslan project where we are looking to purchase property.  I was having trouble focusing in both meetings because I was troubled by phone calls from ones who are personally struggling.  The meetings were fine and productive, I just felt I wasn’t .

This morning I was lamenting with God about the helplessness I feel when the struggles expressed are simply beyond anything one can do except listen, acknowledge and somewhat grieve with the one hurting.  God was quick to remind me that this is His Work, not mine.  My role is to support and support doesn’t need to look like fixing.  Writing this makes me quickly think of one of Celebrate Recovery guidelines.  It reads:  “…we are to support one another and not try to fix each other.”  I know this well but when someone is hurting badly, I do feel the need to at least put some salve on the wound. Then, as I write this, I’m reminded that expressing a hurt to someone you trust is allowing salve to be put on it.  It can start to heal once the wound has been opened.  This is the clarity God is wanting me to see.  This is how I am to support while He alone does the healing.

Now I can go into today ready to live through the events of it.  God is so good.  I do want to be a good listener and a good responder to His leadership in my life.

Last night my grandson who lives with us came home from being with his siblings and dad.  He told me his girlfriend and he had broken up.  As he started to talk about it he wept. The circumstances have been hurtful and painful.  In the last three years our grandson has lived over 2 of them with us.  Prior to moving in with us the beginning of his senior year in high school, he had lived with his mom, his dad, and in and out of friends and his aunt’s home over about 16 months.  After his parents split, he couldn’t decide where he should live.  There was much hurt he experienced during that time and he had no place to express it.  It ended being expressed in many unhealthy ways.  Over time, after he moved in, we talked much regarding the lessons he learned during this ragged time.  He even went to a counselor recently who is helping him continue the learning from hurts.

Last night I began to see the character defects he is beginning to develop about himself–the lies that unexpressed hurts cause us to believe about ourselves.  When they go unexpressed/unprocessed, we begin to turn the hurt into beliefs.

I write all of this because I, for the first time, saw how my own character defects were fed and groomed during my own adolescent years.  They continued into my first marriage and by the time my wife left me when I was 29, they had begun to have deep taproots into my belief system of me:  who I am, what I meant to God, and how God couldn’t trust me.  It helps to see this in someone else to better understand how this happened to me.  Satan is so deceptive.  He wants to manipulate life so the beauty in God’s creation is destroyed and then we start losing our trust in God.  All of this helps me better know how to talk with my grandson and others who are being beat up by the life they are living–many times by their own choices, they just don’t see it that way as of yet.

God is so good.  I cannot thank Him enough for the clarity He provides when we stay in communication with Him.  To God be all Glory!

It is Father’s Day.  That doesn’t mean the journey stops.  It just has a focus within it.  I started I Kings today in my scripture reading having completed the Samuel’s yesterday.  Of course they go into the kings following David.  I Kings is primarily the closing out of David’s reign and then describing Solomon’s reign.  There is so much focus on what good leadership is like and what hinders and stops it from being good.  The surprising (but shouldn’t be surprising) thing is that man is not in control of his leadership like he thinks he is.  God is in control in the background.  When a good leader realizes this and submits to it, he then is in control in man’s eyes.  Part of a good leader’s responsibility is to keep the observing man aware that God is the ultimate one controlling the outcomes.  When we begin to think we are the ones in control is when we falter.

I’m starting a new step study for The Journey Begins today with lesson 1–Denial.  What is standing out to me in this lesson, even though I’ve done them 8 times, is Light.  Denial is darkness to the truth.  God is Light.  So when we step out of denial we are allowing the Light of Truth to penetrate the darkness of what we have wanted to keep hidden.  There aren’t too many things any longer I’m in denial about, but there are somethings I’ve been avoiding which I believe is the start of denial.  I’ve not known how to deal with them without conflict so I’ve kept them on a back burner.  Today, I’m challenged to look at them through the lens of God’s Light.  He showed me that I can use His Light to penetrate my avoidance.  I can simply step into them one day at a time, one moment at a time.  It is then I will begin to see what next steps ought to be taken.  That is so simple, yet until I allow God’s Light to permeate what I’ve kept hidden, I stay in avoidance and soon turn it into denial–saying something like, “Well, it just has to be that way.”  I don’t want to do that any longer.

Can you tell I’m avoiding Father’s Day?  It hurts somehow.  I’ve always endured it as a discipline.  When dad was alive I’d honor him out of obedience to God’s command.  It is God my Father that I truly honor today.  I also want to be an honorable dad and grandpa.  In fact yesterday I was taking two of my grandkids shopping for bikes.  I told them it seemed odd that it was almost Father’s Day and I was buying them gifts instead of vise versa.  The one said, “Isn’t Father’s Day about feeling good about what you are doing?”  Well, I was feeling really good getting the chance to see them so happy.  So, that took care of that question!

In this morning’s Bible reading I finished the last 3 chapters of II Samuel.  It is incredible and disheartening at the same time to realize how self-centered man is .  God brought the Israelites out of Egypt to give them their own Promised Land.  Yet, who did they see–Moses.  All through the judges following Moses and Joshua the people continued to see the man–the judge.  As God finally told Samuel it was OK to appoint a king for them, God said the people hadn’t abandoned Samuel, they had abandoned Him as their King.  Today in wrapping up David’s leadership for Israel, the chapters tell over and over how God used David and his mighty men to conquer Israel’s enemies.  Yet, who did the people see–David and the men.  Are we different today?  Not at all.  The nature of man is man.  The spirit of man is God but we still want to make it man.

I’ve been in leadership most of my life in one form or another.  I never allowed myself to move too high in rank because I would be too visible and people might learn of my past and then I’d be shunned and shut out.  I am fully awake to the “man thinking” of this now.  In all our leadership, great or small, God wants us to give Him the credit by pointing people to Him.  Whether it is secular or ministry leadership, it is not difficult to direct purposeful leadership to Godly ways helping people to see that in following God’s ways we are empowered by His Spirit.

More and more I’m realizing that God’s Light which is seen when we give Him the “charge” of our work, will illuminate people to Him.  Before Celebrate Recovery and my counseling the Light shed shone only on my past to me.  When that happened I allowed the voices of my past to take charge of how I responded to God.  I would only do as much as I felt safe doing–even as a leader I did this.  However, as I awakened to just how much God wanted to take all I feared and turn it into His Kingdom Work, I have been able to surrender more completely.  I’m sure I have a long way to go yet, but I know now that letting God’s Light shine through me is one thing, helping the listener find safety in having that same Light focus on God’s desire to help them deal with their “hurts, hang-ups and habits” is yet another.  God’s Light does illuminate our past but in so doing He has a plan already in place to replace the past with purpose and overcoming.  Praise His Holy Name!

Today’s devotions in all arenas has been about praising God in the midst of any and all storms.  Surrendering to Him always so His strength can become yours.  Examples of Paul saying he was glad when he was weak for then God can be strong and David proclaiming that in all his weakness God’s strength was seen.  These are excellent examples of who God wants us to be–God wants me to be.

Because of Mother’s Day being so close to Father’s Day and having had many years of enjoying those days with my kids and grandkids makes my heart ache when they come.  The present state of my own kids’ relationship with one another makes these days lonely.  Yet, what does God say to do in times like these?  “Praise Him.”  He says to believe, to trust, to have faith.  I needed these reminders this morning.

As I had journaled earlier this morning I asked God what He wanted me to know from Him today?  His message was precise and simple:  “Be still and know that I am God.”  He has been telling me this the past few days and reminding me that these issues are His garden plots.  He is working the soil so they can be fruitful.  My role needs to be still and know that God is at work.  My role is also to believe, trust and have faith in the very One who took my garden plot (me) and turned it from a mess of weeds to a fruitful garden He uses to feed hungry, hurting souls lost in their own hurts, hang-ups and habits.

God is truly faithful.  I needed this reminder today.  Thank you Father.

God is so faithful!  Yesterday as our quartet was singing and I was getting close to the time for sharing, I found myself far more in touch with the group’s response to the messages of the songs.  I had not seen this to the extent I did yesterday.  I found myself noticing individuals and connecting with them as the hour was progressing.  When I told our story of my recovery the same battle of trying to talk without breaking down was present.  I had to pause and regroup and then continue.  All this time I remained connected.  It seems so odd trying now to articulate this time in words.  It was no longer hard to tell because of fear of judgement, but hard to tell because it is a story of hurt and shame that I know very well.  The glorious freedom God gives us is the finale replacing what had been the fear of judgement with a genuine passion to share so that others can know this freedom too.

Afterwards, there were so many that wanted to talk.  I didn’t have to regroup like I’ve always needed to do before, stepping out of fear into listening and sharing.  I found myself relating without the anxiousness.  I now know what God has been wanting me to find in Him and trusting in Him during these times of doing His Kingdom work.  Yes, when I got home and had a moment to relax, I was exhausted.  I needed a nap!  This was a good thing and not an escape–for the first time.

Today is a new day and there is work to be done.  But, I needed to reflect and thank God before I begin today’s assignments.  To God be all glory!