Forty-three years ago today I met Kathy and we had our first date. It was a blind date set up by a teacher who taught for me and her husband. This started my journaling this morning as I began to thank God for His wonderful blessing having placed Kathy in my life for all of these past 43 years. She has been the voice of God so often to me helping me see steps I needed to take and to also have the trust and courage to take them. How grateful I am for this gift of God to me.

I had intended for this above message to be my focus of the morning’s journaling. However, God had something else He wanted me to also focus on. Today is Christ’s last day to be with his disciples. It was the Last Supper and His time in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was the day when he was taken away never to return for the following day he would be crucified. Believers know this and many non-believers know this message. However, what God was pointing out to me was something He wanted me to know and do this day. He wanted me to emphasize the truth that for everyone I meet with today needs to know He did all of this for them. Each one of us is worthy of this price in spite of what we have believed about ourselves.

I brought this up to a man I was meeting with yesterday and he cried saying he really needed to hear this. The immensity of what Christ did for all of us is so critical for us to know and believe. What we so often miss is the intimacy Christ wants to have with each one of us as we accept this Gift of sacrifice He paid. The Power of the Resurrection is ours if we only believe. This Power will raise us out of the pits of our sinfulness and bondage if we will only believe as we receive. This Power is best seen and known once we open ourselves fully to Christ spending intimate time with Him and listening to His Holy Spirit speak to us through God’s Word and our prayers. This message is what God wanted me to hear this morning and to give to those I’m with this day both in counseling and in Celebrate Recovery tonight. All I can say is Thank You God for not so long ago I was one who wished all of this could be true for me.

These past several days have been a whirlwind which I’ve written each and every day. The past two days I’ve addressed the spiritual warfare and what I’ve learned from this realization. Last night was the night when I counsel through the evening. As I got home and was warming my supper my phone rang. It was my brother whose son was recently diagnosed with brain cancer. His daughter and son-in-law had flown in yesterday morning to spend a couple of days with the family and to pray over her brother (she and her husband co-pastor a church in California). Ron, my brother, called to tell me when his son and his wife arrived, their demeanor was changed from the sadness of their recent news. He quickly began to share with them the following news:

Matt, my nephew, had shared his diagnosis with his boss who said he would be supporting him all the way. This boss had called his own who lives in California. (This boss owns the company Matt works for). His boss told him that he would share this with his very good friend who was a world-renown neurologist who is doing brain cancer research in West Virginia. In his doing this, he told Matt’s boss to let him know his friend wanted Matt to fly back and let him be part of his most recent research trials where some success is being found. I don’t know more than this, but I do know that Matt and his wife, along with us family members, just can’t thank God enough for giving a glimmer of HOPE!

John 1:4-9 tells of John the Baptist telling how Jesus is the Light that penetrates darkness. This present darkness of the past few days has been given this Light of Jesus–HOPE. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions except that God does really care for each and everyone of His kids! How much I thank Him for this!

This morning I came to the last page of my journal. As I concluded filling this last page I took a moment to reflect on the spiritual awakenings that took place during the months of filling the pages in it. The greatest awakening for me has been recognizing this amazing importance of worship as I start my day. I have always for years started my day with my devotional time always loving the silence of the morning for then I could think clearly and hear God clearly (I thought). I had no idea what a great chasm I still had not including my spirit. As I have added the worship music in the background of each morning it instantly awakens me to my spirit and God’s Holy Spirit. I then instantly want my spirit to be in total submission to God’s Holy Spirit. My big discovery in this is that before this time I would know God is present. By adding this worship element, I now not just know, I BELIEVE and I’m free. I’m free to believe fully any doubt I might have. I’m free to give to Jesus all of the weights/struggles/concerns given during counseling sessions. The beautiful part in this is that every single time, God takes them and I can believe HE will be the answer for each one of them.

I found out yesterday afternoon that my nephew has a brain tumor. This morning he is having a biopsy done to determine if it is malignant. That will not be known until the first of next week. My brother called me to say spirits are good. This morning as I’ve prayed and believed, I saw God, the GREAT HEALER, touching Matt with the assurance HE is at work in this. How I love our FATHER GOD!

Sometimes in my devotional time God shows up like no other time. Today has been one of them. I had thought last night I might oversleep this morning since we lost an hour of sleep. Instead, I awoke an hour earlier than usual. It seemed there would be no more sleep so I got up. As I began with the worship music playing, I journaled about yesterday’s counseling time to start. The small group of guys did the next to last lesson in our curriculum. It was one taking a look at the ugliness of sinful porn and its effect on our personal lives as well as our marital lives. One walked away from this lesson wondering why would I ever step into such sinfulness?

As I continued my journaling I lamented with God about my own sinfulness. In so doing and asking Jesus what He wanted me to know for today, I heard this message. He said, “I know the weight of sin and its temptations for I was flesh as you. What I did have that you didn’t was a direct contact with my DAD–Father God. My earthly parents made sure of this. Even though you had access to our God, you didn’t have an earthly father who kept you in touch with your Heavenly Father. I quickly learned to rely on my Father God and Trust Him. As I faced all temptations I had my Heavenly arsonal in place–God’s Word, the Armor of God and a firm belief. I knew my purpose for being here on earth. You have learned this in your later adult years while I was born into this learning.” There is more He said, but all of this just brought me to tears of JOY.

This God we get to serve never gives up on us and I never want to quit serving Him for HE IS WORTHY!

Yesterday our choir sang the song “Refiner’s Fire” in our morning worship. When I was in my 30’s and 40’s I sang it as a solo. At the time a singer Steve Green had made it well known. I only sang it a couple of times for the message it had was just too great for me to convey through my own singing. I wanted so much for the message to be true for me, but the weight of my past was still in possession of me.

From the church service I went to the class our counseling group is leading for married couples. The topic of the class for yesterday was intimacy. The message was brought out that intimacy best starts if we can be intimate with God Himself. If our trust is strong in Him, we can also then have strong intimacy with our spouse. I mentioned to the class my struggle with intimacy in the earlier years I wrote in the first paragraph. At that point in my life I only wanted to trust God. I deeply wanted to serve Him, but it was too great of a risk having my past and letting it be known.

God’s refining fire wants to cleanse us as He has been doing for me. This refining fire destroys the fear of people knowing and replaces it with a trust that longs for others to know this intimacy for themselves. This trust is a foundational point for intimacy with God and with our spouse or anyone else we want to have as significant in our lives. If this is you, battling as I did, to trust God, I challenge you to take this first step of sharing/telling someone your deep secret/s. God so wants to free you as He has me!

I keep bringing up (actually God just is not letting me go beyond what He has given me in this new curriculum–Every Man a Pure Warrior) the changes God wants me to make. In the small group yesterday morning I spoke of the phone call I had with the author of this material. This is the group I’ve worked with the longest on the material. They are fully invested in wanting to be thorough in their obedience to God’s changes in their lives.

As we talked it became very clear: The Holy Spirit speaks to us when temptation hits; we have the choice to obey Him or allow the temptation to manifest itself. If we choose to allow the temptation to continue, whether we know it or not, we have opened the door for the evil oppression to enter. The Armor of God and its protection is removed. We get to choose which way we are going to go. Allowing the temptation entrance is giving our flesh the voice and disallowing The Holy Spirit to have His.

As I was journaling this morning and asked Jesus what He wanted me to know from Him for today, His first response was to reread what He had said to me yesterday. In so doing I was brought face to face with the message in the previous paragraph. He wants this anchored in me just as God wants it anchored in each of His believers. The still small voice of His Holy Spirit is to be sought, listened to and then obeyed. This allows His Armor to work for us and it allows The Sword of the Spirit to penetrate the evil/darkness that wants to enter us–God’s temple He made us to be when we accepted Christ into our lives. We have the choice. Lets keep our temple holy.