Today is Sunday and it is a day of sharing God’s love, grace and mercy.  Today we start a new step study for men who are struggling with hurts, hang-ups and habits.  I co-lead it with a new leader to our Celebrate Recovery ministry.  After this is done I’m staying at church to share about Celebrate Recovery with the newcomers who will be attending a luncheon acquainting them with our churches’ ministries.  Following this our quartet is singing for a group in Eagle/Meridian area where I will be sharing my story and book.  All this has me filled with fear/nervousness.  Yet, I know why I’m doing all of this so I do it with humility and honor thanking God for His love, grace and mercy to me.  I pray that the one/s who need to hear this will find the strength to take their own step towards freedom that they fear didn’t know existed for them.

I Samuel 3:13 tells about a man of God who came to Eli the prophet and denounced him and his two sons.  Eli’s sons were abusing their positions.  Eli knew this and didn’t restrain them.  God was announcing their eventual doom.  When I read this I knew God’s nudge regarding a talk I’m having next week with a new leader who is leading but not leading with love, grace and mercy.  I will be obedient and talk with him.  I pray God will be the One seen in the message so it is not interpreted as a man with man battle.  I know I need to pass the clarity of the message to him and I want to model God’s clarity in the same love, grace and mercy he needs to also show in his own leading.  God’s commands are not always easy but they are supported by Him when we are obedient.  I do want to be a good and faithful servant.

Yesterday’s foreboding slipped away as the day continued.  A tough conversation I need to have with an adult leader is set for next Tuesday.  He called me yesterday morning most unexpectedly.  He said he was returning the two calls I’d made to him.  I hadn’t made any calls to him and my phone didn’t register that I had.  I was questioning whether God wanted me to talk with him at this unexpected time.  I simply said the calls were a mystery and we’d talk next week.  Today I’m convinced that Satan is trying to manipulate God’s timing.

God is driving home for me the critical importance of relationships starting with His and mine.  I’ve always had a natural sense of family and relationship innate in me.  However, my past abuse taught me to not trust the emotions tied to them and to dismiss them when I have them.  I have learned this lack of trust is a character defect resulting from childhood.  God is helping me restore them and replace the defect.  I was rather touched yesterday when my own daughter called me to say she hopes our own family can be as strong as she sees mine is with my siblings.  The love and care she saw all of us giving Bonnie during her recent loss is awakening in her this importance.  This would be such an answer to prayer.  I love seeing God work and being part of it as He shows me my part.  Praise be to God my Father.

This morning as I completed my devotions I had this foreboding sense.  I could not dispel it no matter what I journaled with God or read in devotions or in scripture.  One of the guys called me with accountability.  He was doing well and asked how I was doing.  I told him about this sense.  His words were interesting–“Don’t worry about that.  You and God seem to have a way of working them out.”  I thought it was nice to know that someone else thought that even though I didn’t at the moment.

I went into my lesson I’m working through in the Experiencing God handbook.  Wouldn’t you know it was about  how God speaks to us.  It describes well that my relationship with God is utmost.  In the relationship God teaches me to trust His voice and to act on what His message is.  When the message is not clear, wait.  It is wrong to simply act and hope it is what God wants me to do.  I deeply appreciated God making this clear.  With this the sense of forebode left.

The other thing that has hit me this morning has been from Wednesday night’s Celebrate Recovery lesson.  It ended with the person being quoted saying: “I’ve learned to grieve appropriately.”  This was connected to grieving without running to our addiction and handling our past appropriately.  All of this is rooted in the step we take making amends for wrongs of our past.  My brother Rich and my dad both died long before I had the help of Celebrate Recovery and my last years of therapy/counseling.  At the time of their passing my only grief was the burden I was left with.  Now that the burden is replaced I wish I could tell them what God is doing with “our story”.  I wish I could hug them and let them know I truly have forgiven them.  I know they are aware and someday we will talk face to face.  For that, I am very grateful.  God is always so good.

My journey of late seems to have many loose ends which are not being finalized.  I tend to be somewhat of a tidy person.  I like to stay with something until it is done and my system doesn’t find rest until it is finished.  So, all these things being left unfinished haunt me.  This morning I took all of them to God and asked why this is so?  He reminded me once again Who is in control.  If I am to be a servant of the Almighty, I cannot have things my way.  Letting go of my needs allowing God to work these situations through to His perfection is what I’d truly want anyway.  I did need to refocus.

God is so faithful in the little things of life and the big ones.  I call the big ones those which affect the personal walk of someone with God.  The little ones are simply projects I have going but don’t impact people–just the project and me.  That phrase from The Serenity Prayer:  “living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace” resonates during a time like today.  I’ll keep my lens focused on God and today and will enjoy the moments of the day.  Any hardships are being chiseled out developing a pathway of peace to God The Almighty.

How I love Him.

Yesterday’s admission/confession was painful and yet healing.  How many times does one have to go through this process to finally be free?  Is it something like 70×7?  This seems to be the number of times I have to forgive myself for being who I am.  Along with talking to the men last night in our 7-Pillars class, part of the assignment was to identify the masks we hide behind.  My most powerful mask has been “I’m OK”.  As all of last night did unfold I found that in spite of my need to tell all of this: gay thoughts, fears of being like my brother or dad, and more, I was still OK without the mask.  The shame I thought would overwhelm me was not present and instead, I was OK with no mask.  I know God wanted me to find this out.  Had I kept it hidden behind the mask I would still be tormented with the fears which have kept me paralyzed so much of my life.  God is so faithful and good–especially when we take the steps He outlines for us to take.  It was interesting to hear the other men tell their vulnerability and not hide behind their own mask/s.

Today is a new day.  I still feel raw from yesterday but I’m not needing to withdraw.  These feelings are hard for me to simply live with.  I’ve always steeled myself from them rather than allowing them to be felt and allowed in my present state.  The defect of hiding and stuffing must not return.  I’ll need to see how this all plays out during the day.  God is good–ALL THE TIME!

Yesterday I said God wanted me to know Him and trust Him.  He is putting this to the test.  I had done my lessons for tonight’s 7-Pillars class yesterday morning.  In it you tell how well your week went and if temptations came and how they were handled, etc.  I did all of that dismissing many thoughts I’d stuffed.  Yesterday I was troubled with temptations of a gay nature.  These are always haunting for me and I usually try to deal with them by getting busy and stuffing them and saying several panicked prayers.

I awoke a little before 2:00 am this morning unable to sleep and all of this was on my mind.  I got up and read through some very relevant materials in the book which accompanies the 7-Pillars curriculum.  So much of the struggle I have is that the gay thoughts make me think I am less of a man than others.  It makes me think I’m an abuser like my brother.  It goes to the core of what I believe a man is or should be.  I know this is also driven by my earthly father’s behaviors and actions towards me.  I have to bring this out in the open with the guys in our group tonight.  I have to know that men are ok with me being who I am.  The biggest thing is I have to be ok with who I am.  God led me this morning to think He is fine with me as He wants to use me to help others with similar struggles.  I want that too but I despise it and would change it in a heartbeat if possible.

I know God is wanting me to work through this character defect and not run from it this time.  I’m facing this giant and doing so with Jesus Christ.  I didn’t want this new creation that I am to have temptations like this, but, since I do I want to face them knowing Christ died for them too.  I’m not done processing this but I am convinced I have to face it this time.  To God be all Glory!

God is so amazing and consistently so.  This morning while having my devotions I was journaling that I am not good at discerning man.  I tend to take man at face value and then I’m shocked when man doesn’t do what he said he would or he does what he says and then does something inconsistent with it.  God’s response to this was simple.  “I am not interested in you discerning man, I want you discerning Me.”  In my Experiencing God manual yesterday I did the assignment:  God Invites You to Join Him.  In it you come to realize that God invites you to have an intimate relationship with Him.  In this relationship He will show you His Ways.  This morning I awoke to the realization that this is exactly what God wants with me–an intimate relationship.  I want that too and I know He and I are working on this.  In this I realize I will be better able to discern God’s leadership in my life and how He wants me connected to His work.  This is exciting and confirming.  I don’t need to discern man.  I need to know that I am connecting with God’s plan for me through our relationship one with another.  What I do for man will be done through what God shows me rather than discerning myself what man might want/need.

It was 10 months ago that God told me He wanted me journaling to Him and not to His Son Jesus.  He also told me a couple days later that He gave Jesus to us not to replace Him but to lead me to Him.  In these 10 months I’ve begun to trust and believe in God my Father as I’ve never been able to before.  I humbly thank Him for His persistence with me and building a relationship with me that is intimate.  I have begun to know that even in my older years I can be made new.  Praise be to God my Father.

Yesterday I said that God is teaching me how to stand before Him and man as a new creation.  As I was journaling this morning I saw how this was demonstrated yesterday by living through the day.  I was needing to confront an issue with our recovery ministries at church and I finished it.  I was wanting to do more with it but God told me this morning that I needed to now leave it with Him.  He is the one to be glorified in this work–not me.  If I were to take the issue any further it would bring the lens onto me rather than Him.  In so doing the grace of the work will be removed and it would be a battle of man.  This I surely don’t want.

Secondly, a dear friend was sharing that his son’s struggle is not turning around.  My friend knows he is to praise God even in the uncertainties of life trusting God and he was struggling to do this.  We prayed for God to complete the verse Mark 9:24:  “I believe, help thou my unbelief!”

As a new creation in God I am presently learning that God sees everything through His spiritual eyes, hears through spiritual ears, and more.  Each one of us humans do all of this through our fleshly eyes and ears.  If we don’t see and hear results we think nothing is taking place.  The characteristics of human growth are so different than spiritual growth.  Also, we humans can’t grow spiritual growth for someone else.  We can only support the growth.  Spiritual growth must come from personal efforts.  As a parent it is extremely hard to learn this once and for all as our kids grow into adulthood.  I for one know this full well.  God is teaching me that trusting, believing, surrendering are all spiritual verbs which we are to act on in human flesh.  This is part of praising God knowing He will complete the work He starts.  How I want to do this well as I grow more into the new creation God is making in me.

This morning I finished the book of Joshua in my Bible reading.  In the last chapter, ch. 24, Joshua is reminding the Israelites of all God has done for them.  Their part in this was keeping God as their God and not turning to the gods of the foreigners living in the land promised to them.  The battles that were won with these foreigners had to be fought but in reality, most of the battle was won by God’s work.  The Israelites simply needed to show up for the battle and watch God do His part.

There is such a direct connection of this work of God then to the work God is doing in my life today and is doing in each of our lives as we keep Him as our God.  The gods of the world around me have been replacing God.  I can so easily see now how Satan has been working on this with me from my very childhood.  The choices of my brother and my dad were used by Satan to destroy the spirit of belief God had given me at birth.  Now that I see God fully as my God and I am working to live in the new creation He gave me so long ago, He is restoring my spirit with His Holy Spirit.  He is showing me that I am His adopted son and that He sees His very own Son, Jesus Christ, in me as I grow more and more into the likeness of Jesus through the new creation He gave.

The Israelites claiming their Promise Land was done physically.  We claim our Promise Land spiritually.  Joshua told the Israelites to choose today whom they will serve.  They chose God.  We are asked today whom we will serve?  I have chosen God and in so doing I am giving up the idols (gods) I’ve fled to in my past–porn, isolation, self doubt, identity issues and more.  I choose God and I stand before Him and man as a new creation.  I am learning more and more how to do this just as the Israelites needed to learn to claim what was theirs and trust their God.

Yesterday’s journey was an adventure which would have taken me into a cave in my times past.  It started simply doing some yard work at home that all went well.  As I headed to a friends to do some work for them I encountered problems with their equipment.  I simply said I’d return today with my own so I could do the work.  On the way home I got a troubling call from one of our men in recovery.  A decision was being made in leadership which would have implications throughout our recovery ministry.  I knew I needed to step into it and I did.  During this time I had one more call from another man in our recovery group who is deeply struggling with his addiction.  He has been deeply bruised by his childhood abuse and his belief system about himself is weak.  We talked much about the new creation God is making in him and this takes time.  A baby doesn’t quickly learn to walk, talk, make decisions, etc. without much guidance and nurture.  One would never expect a baby coming from the birth canal to walk out of the room.  Why would anyone expect a new creation to be strong enough to walk in this world without much help. This is what we are to do with one another helping us to keep our new creation in front of us and not our old haunting habits.

The day didn’t end with this but my point in writing this is that these issues in my past, even though I’d deal with them as a leader, would take me into my own isolation feeling I wasn’t good enough or the right person to make them.  I’d beat myself up and let the voices in my head rule.  I realized this morning that this isn’t so true anymore.  I’m very grateful for this growth and healing God is giving me.  Growing into the belief that I am made new is truly a healing and gift.  Each one of us must ultimately find this truth within us, but we sure need to help others struggling see that God didn’t leave them out like I thought He had with me for so long.  God is so good!