Addicted to Grace

When South is North and North is South

2011-08-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

I haven't visited or written on this blog in awhile. In fact it's been so long I had forgotten my password and had to reset it. Truthfully, there hasn't been anything inside to write. While gifted writers are able to birth a story out of pure imagination, I tend to stay with saying what I am inspired to say, what is in my heart to say. I have been wandering in a desert for a few months, thirsty for just a drop of inspiration.

It isn't that I have not been living life or reading or studying or storing information in the files of my brain, it's just I have been devoid of anything to say. Maybe some would diagnose a case of writer's block here. Perhaps that diagnosis contains a bit of truth, but it isn't all the truth.

I have examined my life in the past months and I haven't enjoyed the view much. While many my age can reflect on a jet plane ride of accomplishments, be it in business, or with family or church; my reflection on life resembles more a train wreck with damaged boxcars and twisted rails. While some have known from day one their destiny and have successfully followed it with a true north compass, I have lived in a world where south is north and north is south. The path I started was straight, then the road started to twist and turn, then it became a maze of confusion, heartbreak, disaster, bad decisions, hurt, and disappointments......a land where true north couldn't be pinpointed at all.

I work for an oilfield service company. Part of my job is delivering parts and tools to mechanics out in the field who ensure all the equipment necessary to do what we do is properly maintained and in good repair. A shut-down due to mechanical failure, even for a few hours, could literally cost our company millions of dollars. So in a sense I have an important job.

One night I was called to go to the field with tools mechanics needed to repair a piece of equipment. That particular piece of equipment was so crucial to the whole ensemble the job had to be temporarily shut down. Everyone from the top of the organizational flow chart down was screaming at me to get the tools there immediately. We were going into deficit spending by the minute. The location was only 20 minutes away.

It was dark, it was raining; raining so hard in fact the rain hitting the windshield sounded like tiny bits of hail. I had to pull off the road a couple of times because visibility was zero. In that torrent I got directions mixed up and when I should've turned south at one point, I turned north instead. For the next hour and a half I tried to drive to our field location with dismal failure. I was trying to navigate correctly in all the wrong directions. As sincere as I was in getting where I so desperately needed to be, it wasn't going to happen. That experience describes my life for the past 12 years or so.

See.....the fact is I am an addict, alcohol in specific. The moment I picked up a bottle is the moment I set my God-given compass down. I walked away from the vastness of His wide open country of grace and exchanged it for a small 6'x6' prison cell of pure hell. The worst of it? It also created a hell for the ones I love and hold dear. I don't care how you argue, addiction is never a private matter; and my "delicate condition" has wreaked havoc in the lives of many over the years. I have been reflecting on that life the past several months, and it hasn't been pretty. You might say, emotionally, it's been a difficult few months.

I have written rather candidly about my addiction on this blog. That was the purpose for creating this site in the first place. I know there may be many AA'ers out there who would cringe but the story must be told. It has always been my prayer that my experiences in addiction may help another addict find their true God-given compass again....so I write. No matter how far I get away from that last day I took a drink, I will always be an addict. No matter how far away I get from that last day I took a drink, there will be family and friends and former employers and only God knows who else who will see me as nothing more than an addict. No matter how I may succeed in life from that last day I took a drink, for many the only thing they will recognize is that I am an addict. I think the reason is mostly because the darkness of addiction permanently burns a brand in memory that can never be erased. It does damage to the psyche and the emotions that are difficult if not impossible to ever let go of. And an "I'm sorry", no matter how sincere, from me is not enough to heal it or remove it. There are many in my past who probably think of me and say, "Thanks for the memories", but not in the Bob Hope kind of way.

I think of my children here in particular. As I have suffered, so they have suffered and perhaps they have suffered more. A dad not present at crucial times in their lives, a dad not respondent, a dad who's word became untrustworthy, a dad who became a different man altogether because of alcohol, than the dad they knew when they were younger. Children have a tendency to absorb things as their fault when their surroundings fall apart even when it isn't. There are alot of children in this world today who shoulder the burden of that kind of hurt.

They are grown now, both following their true God-given compass. For that I am grateful. I am proud of them so much I get beside myself. I praise my God that because of His faithful love toward them, He has shielded them from so much more they could've been exposed to because of my drinking. I know because of life they will experience hurt, it just comes....some of the hurt they have experienced already is because of me....and it has taken a long, long time to come to terms with that.

You may be asking,"Where's the hope?!" I am pleased to say there is indeed hope. Were there not, I wouldn't be sharing this. Because of God's great love for us, even in our hopelessness, we are not hopeless. My journey back to sobriety started with the simple admission that I had a problem I couldn't fix in and of myself and I needed help. I was truly powerless to fix me. It is one of the steps in the twelve step program and a vital one. From there, I started going to meetings to hear others like me tell their stories of addiction and their sobriety. I got on the path of "one day at a time". I have been on that path for awhile now. I have no intention of veering to the left or the right. It may be difficult for one who doesn't have to live on that path to understand it but for me, it makes perfect sense. It isn't a forced journey I have to walk but one I want to travel....each step leads me to more freedom and hope.

I know there are some who have gotten sober without God, I personally know several who make that claim. I don't see how they did it. God bless them for their success. I couldn't. I was so beaten down and buried with a sense of failure and disappointment I needed the love of God to help me up. At one point, the only kind word I could find for me was in His Word. I would've have given up life to hear a kind word from another. Where some told me I was washed up and worthless, God told me in His Word that I was loved so much He was willing to make great sacrifice on my behalf so I could fellowship with Him. Where some shunned my friendship and didn't want me around, God invited me to His house to dine with Him. He fed me and filled me.

In His grace I fell into the arms of His endless love for me all over again....and I started that journey away from my last drink.....I haven't to this day looked back other than to be reminded and grateful I don't have to live in the clutches of addiction anymore. And I don't.

So what do I do now? Keep walking away from that last drink. Use God's Word as the source of my true compass, study it, live by it. Surround myself with people who have fallen, gotten back up, and overcome. Pray like life depended on it (for me it does). Work on damaged relationships by being present, sober, and available.....the best apology I can make to anyone, especially my precious children, is living a day at a time on a path that takes me further away from my last drink. Some will forgive completely, some will hold me at arms length, and some will continue to see me as nothing more than an addict. Today I can live with all of that and here's the reason......God sees me as His child through the shed blood of His Son....and I am totally His child. If the whole world quit on me...He never will. He sees me as much more than the things I've done and His forgiveness is never partial. If my focus is to be a good son to Him, (and I can't even do that apart from His grace), then I will be a better earthly father, husband, son, brother, friend, and employee.

The path I travel is one of hope. That path leads me back to the spacious place of His grace. Yes, I am addicted...today....it is to His matchless grace. For that I will ever be grateful. If you read this today and you struggle with any kind of addiction or hurt, my prayer is you will turn it to God through His perfect Son, Jesus Christ.

"I will rejoice and be glad in Your faithful love because You have seen my affliction. You have known the troubles of my life and have not handed me over to the enemy. You have set my feet in a spacious place." -Ps. 31:7,8 HCSB

Difficult Places

2011-03-09T08:28:00.001-08:00

It's been awhile since you've heard from me. I have been dealing....dealing with difficult places. The greatest therapy for me is writing, and that's the one thing I haven't done in some three months now. It's funny to me how the one thing we need most in a given situation is also the one thing we shy away from. More than writing, I need a sense of the ever present reality of God in my life. In the last three months I can honestly say that He hasn't left, He has sustained, He has encouraged, He has comforted, and He has opened doors that, for the longest time, seemed to be shut. For all of that I praise His holy name!!

The most difficult place in my life of late was the passing of my mother. She entered into God's presence on Dec. 8, 2010. She lived a life that was beautiful, full of the grace of God. She shared that grace with everyone she touched and she touched thousands. I had the privilege of watching this woman live life to the fullest. She always put God first, others second, and herself last. She encouraged her children and grandchildren to live the same. A stranger to no one, accepting of everyone, and always speaking a word of encouragement and life to others; that's how she lived.

I was determined to write something to pay honor and tribute to her life. I have stopped and started so many times I have literally lost count of how many attempts have been made. I got stuck every time. It wasn't that there wasn't anything to write about. The influence and impact she made on my life alone would fill the pages of a book, let alone an article on this feeble little blog of mine. I just would be overcome with grief, exactly the kind you experience when you lose someone whom you love so much and upon whom you depended to always be there for you. The tears would flow and I would have to walk away realizing that no matter what I wrote of my mother it would never do justice to all that she was to me. Discouraging in a very real sense....in some ways I thought I was letting her down after her death by being unable to express my love for her; in the same way I had let her down so many times while she was still here.

I'm not given much to over analyzing any dream I might dream. Most of the time, if I can even remember a dream the next morning, I smile and pass it off as the result of something I ate the night before. Not too long ago I had a dream about mom. It was vivid enough that I remember every nuance and detail. I was sitting on the loveseat in her den, she in her chair surrounded by the books she was reading....it was her 'spot'. She asked me why I wasn't writing. I told her I was trying to put together something to pay tribute and honor to her and found it difficult to finish. I told her I didn't think I could write about anything else until I finished that article. I thought I couldn't nail the last nail on the coffin of my grief until I did. I told her I felt paralyzed to move forward.

She looked at me and smiled, with her comforting, understanding, gracious, motherly smile, and said, "Son, honor me by writing what God has put in your heart to write. Encourage others who struggle like you with addictions and hurts that keep them from being God's best. You are overcoming; share honestly and openly how God's grace is helping you do that. Not only will that honor me, more importantly, it will honor God." I woke up and for a couple of weeks now I have been processing my dream. I think it was the result of something more than what I ate the night before. Whatever it was and wherever it came from; the result is clear....it's time to move forward. So I write, I am out of practice and this article may not mean anything to anyone who reads, but for me it is getting 'back on the saddle' and moving on, moving forward.

My life bears the scars of grace. Those scars were, at one point, open wounds that came as a direct result of the consequences of my addiction. So much shame and guilt, so beaten down, so many people hurt, so many jobs lost, so many bridges burned....all the result of addiction. I lost complete hope that my life would ever be any better than my addiction....it was a monster inside me, an idol I bowed to every day....it had taken me captive, put me in its prison, and threw away the key.....and worse, it laughed at me as it walked away looking for its next victim.....but....God.....in His relentless love of me, released grace. I found forgiveness, I found strength, I rediscovered hope....in His wonderful grace. My scars are reminders that there is no fall to far His grace can't reach..when I hit bottom it was His grace that caught me....when I strayed from Him, walked away from Him; His grace paced the porch, awaiting my arrival back. When I turned to Him and reached up....He reached down, picked me up, held me tight, and whispered in my ear words of hope. He set me free in His grace.

Not only have I been set free by His grace, I am defined by His grace. Alcohol addiction is not who I am....I am His child through His grace imparted to me when I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Even in the pit of addiction, that never changed. However, when you are drowning in a pit of any kind, such realities are quickly diluted. Nonetheless, I remained His child in that pit and He never left me while I lived there. I am thankful my occupancy was temporary.

So....how is it with you? Alcohol may not be your addiction; for that I praise God....I wouldn't wish that even on someone I may not like so much!! But...maybe you struggle with gambling, pornography, other addictive drugs, unresolved anger, a rebellious spirit, sex; perhaps you are addicted to pleasing others so much you don't know the real you anymore. Whatever your addiction, your 'ism', your hurt, your habit....whatever it is that hinders you from freedom in your Lord....the solution is a rediscovery of the power of God's grace.

In articles ahead, my prayer is that I may, through my journey in the country of God's grace, impart an encouraging word to you that will spark hope and a resolve to join me in this grand adventure. Please know I haven't overcome all....I am still overcoming....but today I am overcoming! I have confidence where I mis-step....God's grace will catch me. I praise God those mis-steps aren't so frequent.

My mother was a giver of God's grace to others. I pray I may be rich in the giving of the same. May that be your prayer as well. Blessings!

"But by God's grace I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not ineffective" -Apostle Paul -I Cor. 15:10 HCSB

Lyrics to a song I used to sing many years ago have very special meaning to me today...maybe they will you too:

"Through It All" -Andrae Crouch

I've had many tears and sorrows, I've had questions for tomorrow,
There've been times I didn't know right from wrong.
But in every situation, God gave me blessed consolation, that my trials come to only make me strong.

I've been alot of places, and I've seen millions of faces,
Yet there've been times I felt so all alone.
But in those lonely hours, yes, those precious lonely hours...Jesus let me know that I was His own.

So I thank Him for the mountains, and I thank Him for the valleys,
And I thank Him for the storms He's brought me through...
For if I'd never had a problem, I'd never know my God could solve them,
I'd never know what faith in His Word could do....that's the reason I sing that....

Through it all, Through it all
I've learned to trust in Jesus, I've learned to trust in God
Through it all, oh, Through it all
I've learned to depend upon His Word.

Saving You Rescues Me

2010-12-03T11:57:00.001-08:00

You've lived a life of wild abandon. Party, party, party. You've always been the 'baron of the ball'. You've always had the resources to ensure your "friends" had more than their fill. It didn't matter whether it was at your mansion, your condo, your summer home, or your yacht...you had the stuff parties were made of. Alcohol, drugs from A to Z, and "paid for" women kept them coming back! As the Eagles song states, " You threw outrageous parties, you paid heavenly bills". You didn't care....you just so wanted to be liked, appreciated, and accepted....and you loved being the center of attention, constantly under a barrage of praise.

When I met you, I found you in a bed among a row of beds. Everything you owned was stuffed in a musty smelling army duffel bag. Your body still twitched from withdrawal. No clothes to dress "to the nines" in, no wallet to carry your wad of Benjamins, no Benjamins. Still in a fog, you wondered where your friends had gone. Wealth was stolen from your accounts by a crashing stock market; assets were seized by the IRS to cover your losses. Your mode of transportation was via your two feet instead of the four high priced power cars stored in your lavish garages. You were no longer a man of substance, influence, and power. Instead, simply a broken shell with empty hands.

I couldn't relate to your massive amounts of wealth or your lavish lifestyle for I had never lived on that end of the financial spectrum. I could, however; relate to losses brought about by addiction. I could relate to the tyranny of shame you exposed in every fiber of your being. I knew firsthand the overwhelming oppression of hopelessness. From those points of experience we had something to talk about. And we did.

Initially our conversations were awkward, even forced...but at least consistent. Eventually they became freer and more revealing and open. You shared your life with me, I shared my life with you. Your addictions developed out of a sense of need to be liked and accepted . You went to any length and spared no expense to get it. You confessed that apart from your money, you were nothing but a nerd. You used your wealth to "buy" your entourage. At the time it completed you, or so you thought. I shared with you that my alcohol addiction developed from a deep sense of despair and pain. I went to any length to drink that despair and pain away knowing it would return with greater vengeance. I pointed out that even though our addictions developed for different reasons, the results were the same: we both ended up broken shells with empty hands.

I took you to support groups for people like us. You heard from others stories of overcoming incredible odds. You heard stories of fighting the good fight of sobriety. You saw living testimonies of lives restored; filled with purpose. You saw people who were whole, people who could laugh again, people who were truly free. I shared with you that I thought people in such rooms were some of the bravest most courageous people I've ever met. We both were encouraged through them. Their hope strengthened ours, their faith deepened ours, and we both wanted all that they had.

Then you asked me a crucial question..."Who is your Higher Power?" In a flash, days of ministering in the church as a pastor flooded my mind. That familiar ache felt in my heart of the longing I still had to return to the pulpit someday pounded me like a hammer on an anvil. I turned to you and shared that my Higher Power was Jesus Christ. I told you that I believed him to be the one true Higher Power and that as I continued to grow in him, I continued to stay sober and deepen in my love of him and others. His grace toward me continues to set me free and that this same grace he has given me is available for you. You wanted to know more and I shared with you some of the deep parts of my life as a pastor, as a failure, as one fallen without hope. I explained to you that I came to realize that regardless how far I had fallen in life, his grace was there waiting to redeem me, restore me, renew me when I hit bottom....and he did. You asked me what to do to receive this grace. I explained that it was a very simple act of faith and that you receive the love and grace of the Lord Jesus as a gift. You said, "That's for me!" We prayed and you got up from your knees free, truly free.

Today you live in a small apartment, drive a used car, buy your clothes at second hand stores and discount shops, work for an hourly wage, attend a small country church, and you are happier and more fulfilled than you have ever been in your life. It blesses me to see you sober, to see you serving others, to see you so in love with Jesus. What you don't know is how you have ministered to and helped me. You see, my friend, helping you in your time of need really did much to bolster the sobriety I have. Putting my life into yours and being there for you helped me remember the things in life that are truly important. Such things cannot be bought no matter how much money you have in the bank. I thank you for that and will never forget you.

As you go about the ministry God has called you to, I would ask you to remember this saying: "You can't keep what you don't give away." It is a true saying I think. We are never more like Christ than when we reach into the life of another one hurting and help them heal. Always remember where you came from and what our loving Savior has done for you....and pass that forward.

The Man in the Intersection

2010-11-22T04:10:00.000-08:00

As I approached a busy intersection in the city, I could see him holding a sign. I knew what he was doing and I thought, "Oh brother, another one!" I hoped, even prayed, that the light would stay green so I could punch on through without so much as even having to look at him. It was not to be....

His sign read, " Unemployed, Family of 5, 1 an infant, God Bless". The red light and the car in front stopped me directly parallel to this man. I looked at him, he at me. His eyes spoke of desperation, his cheeks were hollow and sunken in, his clothes were dirty, he looked much older than I'm sure he was. It was obvious to me he was suffering from the pains, uncertainties, and ravages of life. He was the representation of so many like him in our city. I couldn't take my eyes off his despair.

In an instant I heard the lyrics to Matthew West's song, "My Own Little World", play in my head...and I heard a still small voice say, "Give". The light stayed red it seemed for hours as I wrestled with the thought of giving to this man or going on by. Reluctantly, I pulled out my wallet, pulled out some money, hit the down switch on my window, and handed him what was in my hand. He looked at me and smiled and said, "Thank you, I pray you and your family have a Happy Thanksgiving." I couldn't fight back tears as I responded," You too. The Lord bless you."

The man driving the BMW in the lane next to me saw the exchange. He looked at me with eyes and a smirk that seemed to say, "You Sucker!" Perhaps I was. I had no idea the man in the intersection's motives; I don't know his heart. Was he just a panhandler living off welfare and making an extra buck standing in the intersection holding a sign? Was he deceitfully feeding off the generosity and sympathy of others? I don't have answers to such questions.

I do know this.....for the first time in a long time, I felt something that has been absent in my life for awhile.....compassion for another. For some reason, this man drew compassion out of me. I've driven by so many like him never entertaining the thought of giving anything. If I had a thought at all, it was probably a thought of judgment or disgust....but certainly not compassion. This compassion for him was so overwhelming, in that moment, I wept as I helped him. I woke up this morning with him and his family on my mind and again prayed for him. How can this be; to feel that strongly for someone I probably won't see again this side of heaven?

As the light remained endlessly red, several thoughts ran through my mind. I realized first and foremost how much I have and how much I have to be thankful for. While I am currently unemployed, there is enough financially coming in I make ends meet without having to ask for the help of others. I have never been late with a bill, I have never gone without a meal. There is always enough to get by. Yet, how often have I truly thanked God for that? Usually, I go to him wanting more and asking for more without appreciating what I already have.

I think we tend to be creatures of "always wanting more". We could punch through the envelope of our discontent to true happiness if we could clothe our bodies with wardrobes bought from Dillards or Macys instead of Wal-Mart or Target; if we could buy our food from gourmet grocery stores instead of rummaging through canned goods at Dollar General; if we could drive a late model car that doesn't have a cracked windshield and bald tires....if we just had an extra $5,000.00 in our checking account what a wonderful world it would be!

"Me-ism" is an affliction with me. I am an addict in recovery. While I have been sober for awhile, it is this affliction of "me-ism" that got me there in the first place. There is not an illness more selfish and inward than addiction...it doesn't matter what the addiction is....it is all about "me". It is a self-pitying, self-hating, self-destructive, isolating, and life-taking disease. I know this to be true from my own journey to recovery and from hearing the stories of others in recovery.

No, "me-ism" doesn't lead everyone to the bottle or to a needle or to pornographic websites or even to the casino. "Me-ism" in and of itself is an addiction. It robs us of helping others in need; it robs us of the blessing of pouring ourselves into the lives of others, enriching both ours and theirs; mostly, it robs us of a deeper relationship and closeness with God and his blessing. It leads us down a lonely pathetic path that only gorges our already growing discontent and dissatisfaction with life. It leaves us miserable, unsympathetic, cynical, hard-hearted, cold people. It eats us up from the inside out. It cripples our ability to live outside the prison of self; that prison that is dark, damp, and stagnant......and it just smells bad.

The man in the intersection I think ministered to me more than I did him. Because of him, I was reminded of the myriad of things for which to be thankful. Bear with me as I list a few.....

I'm sober today. For that I am truly thankful. I no longer have the desire to check in to "Blackout Hotel" when my little world doesn't rotate on its axis the way I think it should. I have many in my life today that have overcome their addictions who pour encouragement and hope into my life. Every day it is my habit to thank God for my sobriety and to ask his help to stay that way. I think this is a good habit.

My parents. They have both seen and endured me at my worst. They have never spoken anything but a firm belief that God is bigger than my addiction. They have poured into my life faith and hope and encouragement. Their very lives minister to mine and I draw strength from that. I adore my Dad and Mom!

My mother has MDS, a blood disorder. I don't know all the in's and out's of this disease, I simply know it is draining her of life. In her bed she still ministers to me; she ministers to all her family. Her life and witness of Christ is still impacting so many lives around her. Whether by phone or by sitting on her bed, holding her hand, and talking face to face.....she always speaks hope and love in her Lord. Her faith and my Dad's faith continue to teach me that life is about others.

My brothers and sister. They have stood by me. I know sometimes maybe bewildered, angry, frustrated, and feeling helpless to do anything to help me; yet, they have never given up or stopped praying and certainly haven't stopped loving. They minister to me in ways I can't express. I thank God for them. Their love and affirmation of me encourages me to continue to walk the path of sobriety.

My son and daughter. They continue to be a crown of joy upon my head. Because of my "me-ism", they too have suffered. I am grateful for their love. I am thankful that God is drawing us close again and making all things new between us. When I feel low and my head hangs, just the thought of them and the blessing they are to me lifts me again. They both show me what a life looks like when it's consumed and on fire with the love of Christ. I am so thankful to God for my children!

The one I love and my best friend. She has seen me at my worst as well. She has loved me through it and loves me deeper still. She has poured into my life countless whispers of, "I believe in you and so does God." She sees through my "me-ism" and cuts me no slack when I try to go there. She is relentless in her belief that I am more than the mess I made in my addiction. She reminds me that God feels the same way. I thank God for her, upon every thought of her!

My nieces. All a blessing to my life. I love them dearly. They have taken me as I am, warts and all, and loved me, prayed for me, encouraged me, and have stood by me with no intention of walking away. These girls breathe hope into my life and so much joy. I thank God for them!

My true friends. Two in particular, one that is close by and one that lives on eastern standard time. They know me from way back. They always pray for and encourage me. They love me as is. Never from either one of them has come a word of condemnation or judgment. The Bible says a true friend will stick closer than a brother....they have and they still do. I am thankful to God for them!

My God. When he said he would never leave me or forsake me, he meant it. Regardless of how far I have fallen or walked away, his grace and mercy and compassion has been there to meet me. Whether drunk or sober, beaten up by life or euphorically blissful; he has allowed me to crawl onto his lap and has never refused to wrap his arms around me. Sometimes when I can't hear him speak, his embrace and love speak volumes. He doesn't give up on me, he doesn't quit on me; in spite of the fact that I have done that very thing to him on several occasions in my life. I praise God for being in my life! He gave all that I might have a relationship with him and his presence encourages me to press forward toward doing his will in my life. I often question what that is for me; but one thing I know, it is his will for me to remain sober and for me to be available to help others like me get sober and stay that way. I am thankful for his unfailing love and his undying determination to see his best for me lived out in and through my life. Again, I praise God!!

The man in the intersection. You helped me get in touch again with what is truly important in life..... helping others. God has designs for each of us individually to be sure; but one reason we are here is to glorify him, and one way we do that is by helping others. You, my nameless friend, enabled me to see that again. The greatest deterrent, in fact, to the addiction of "me-ism" is helping others. Because of you, that spark of compassion I had yesterday and acted upon has grown a little more. I desire that it continue to grow. I will never forget you. I thank God for you!

We are days away from Thanksgiving. I fear this is often an overlooked observance that has been relegated down to football, overeating, and for some...a day off work. Sometimes I feel Thanksgiving passes by mostly unnoticed as we rush toward Black Friday sales and march toward the REAL holiday of the year....Christmas. My Thanksgiving is different this year. I don't want to miss a moment of it. God has blessed me with so much. Oh, I will enjoy the football, fellowship, and food like anyone else.....but this year, I want to reflect upon and express vocally to the ones I love and quietly to God how truly thankful I am for them.......

I'd like to start with the man in the intersection.....Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I Don't Understand

2010-08-31T04:29:00.000-07:00

Very rarely do I wake up late. Most mornings I get up in darkness. I get up so early in fact, the sun is still struggling to awake and rise. In those hours before dawn, I usually find myself in conversation with God. Those conversations usually come in the form of a series of "I don't understand." Let me expound....for instance, on events that have occurred in just the last few days......

God, I don't understand why I have to move out of my apartment. The manager said I couldn't be a full time student and live here. She actually encouraged me to lie about my student status on an affidavit. I wouldn't do that and was served with a notice to vacate by the end of October. I can live here unemployed, I can't live here as a student. I don't understand how being honest can be met with such a seemingly adverse consequence. I thought honesty was due some kind of reward or something....

God, I don't understand how my car can run fine one day and be totally broken the next. I didn't make it to school because when I started my car it sounded like it was running on 3 cylinders instead of 6. I drove from my apartment to the dealership garage down the street, left it there, and walked back home. Still awaiting the final verdict. Preliminary findings are that my car is literally running on 3 cylinders. One cylinder isn't working at all and two others aren't getting enough compression to work properly. "Internal engine problem" had the same slap in the face effect as "you have cancer" would. I don't understand how my car could be that sick when I have taken good care of it. The most devastating is the potential cost to repair it....possibly 3 to 4 thousand dollars. I don't understand how this could happen God when you know I don't have that kind of money. I just don't understand.....

I don't understand my season of alcohol abuse. I don't understand failed relationships. I don't understand my season of unemployment....over 300 resumes sent out, only two interviews, and I didn't make the grade. I don't understand why I'm not preaching and teaching from a pulpit in a church somewhere. I don't understand being a student at the age of 51. I don't understand much in the events that have transpired over the course of my life. And as the adage goes: The older I get the less I understand. Understanding fully the "why's" these things have happend is still a mystery and may remain a mystery for the rest of my life.

In the heat of progressively bad news yesterday, I wondered where God was. For awhile I was tempted to throw my hands up and say,"forget it."......a tendency I have had within me for a long time. I didn't go there, again, for reasons I don't understand. I stayed calm and inwardly uttered prayers to God in faith. The more I prayed the less I wanted to throw my hands up. The thought of a drink didn't enter my mind. Before, that would've have been the solution to everything...I would fall along this train of thought...well, the God in heaven isn't fixing this so I will turn to the god in the bottle who will.....and that god never does. It was like the worse the news got, the tighter my embrace of God.

This morning I got up before the sun as usual but my prayers were different. I found myself just being before the Lord and praying for those I know and love. The car wasn't foremost on my mind. Finding another place to live wasn't either. I really just wanted to enjoy the communion with the God I don't fully understand. And that's the thing I realized.....I don't fully understand God. There is a shroud of mystery about him, an aura of the unexplainable that surrounds him. This led me to some thinking.....

If I knew God as infallibly as he knows me, would I turn to him? Probably not. If I knew his thoughts before he thought them, would I worship him? Probably not. If I saw tomorrow as clearly as he does, would I praise him? Probably not. It is indeed the aura of the unexplainable that attracts me to him. The shroud of mystery about him reminds me that he indeed is God and I am not. I wouldn't need him if I could carry his title and completely fulfill his job description. This mystery of him causes me to run to him like a moth flies to a flame....but falling into his embrace is life, not death....and I want to live,....really, really live.

The moment I was adopted into his family through the shed blood and sacrifice of his son Jesus, he embraced me and called me son. He still calls me son, he has never let go his embrace of me, and his embrace has always been gentle. I wasn't alone yesterday, he was present, even when I didn't feel his presence. He promised to never leave me or forsake me....through the whole of my life, he has kept that promise. I have never out-offended his plan for my life. He has never thrown his hands up and said,"forget it." with me as I have done with him too many times to count. My vision is so small I can't even see beyond the front door of my apartment. He sees the whole of my life....and he is performing and working his will in it, and doing so for my good. The times I've felt least used of God in my life are probably the times I've been used most of God....I don't understand that either.

He is teaching me that he is God even in the storm. He is teaching me to trust him in the storm. I have always been a "praise God" kind of guy when things go my way and a "where is God" kind of guy when things don't. I am learning that he is God no matter what kind of day I am having and he has something to say to me in both the good and the bad that come my way. He controls it all. He was in control of my yesterday and he is in control of my today and even my tomorrow.

It comforts me today to know that he knows me infallibly, completely, and has designs on me that are for my benefit, not my demise. I find life in him and no other. I rest in that revelation. So, I embrace him, his mystery, and the aura of the unexplainable about him. He loves me dearly. He gets me. He understands me. He sees me. I may feel like the most unimportant person on the planet....he doesn't feel that way about me. Therefore, I praise him, I worship him, and I turn to him when skies are bright and when the storms come.....and in it all I discover joy and life beyond description. Blessings to one and all!!

"My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine, for just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." -God Isa. 55:8-9 NLT

Scabs

2010-08-20T06:20:00.000-07:00

It was a perfect day for performing death-defying, breath-taking feats of extreme daredevil biking. The sky was blue, the grass a rich green...early summer....August heat hadn't browned it yet, no wind, and just me and my buddy, Joel, preparing to jump the ramp we made with a 2x10 piece of lumber and a plastic milk crate. There were alot of perfect days that summer.

We had the perfect machines.....stingray bikes with banana seats, chopper handlebars, and baseball cards clothes pinned into the spokes of our wheels. What a menacing sound they made when we rode up the dirt road that ran between our houses! I'd like to think we were the prototype of the extreme biking you see today on ESPN....a bummer we never got credit for that.

For a sleepy, small, picturesque town in upper Northeastern Oklahoma, this was the most exciting thing of the summer to happen just shy of the 4th of July fireworks display; which was always done from the high school football field every year. And really....how can you compete with a fireworks display when there was also hot dogs, popcorn, cotton candy, and cokes involved? OK, OK...it might not have been the most exciting thing, and maybe there weren't alot of spectators, but Joel and I were intent on getting better and going faster and flying higher jumping that ramp with each run.

Along with the successes in our jumps, there were also the failures....or might I say, crashes. With the crashes came scrapes and bruises and a little inhaling of dirt and dust. I think my elbows stayed a constant scab from late May to early September.

This was my method of triage...If I crashed and scraped my elbow and no blood ran down my arm I got on my bike and rode the ramp again. If I crashed and scraped my elbow and blood did run down my arm; I took a break, went into the house and would yell something like, "Mom, I need a little help here!" She was a wonderful nurse and I think a nervous wreck! She just didn't get that an eight year old boy had to do what I was doing. It was for the greater good of the fraternity of eight year old boys the world over.

"Surgery" was a wet washcloth compress to stop the bleeding, a quick look to make sure I didn't need stitches, a spray or two with Bactine to ward off infection, and a Band-Aid. She then would lovingly scold me, tell me not to jump my ramp anymore, kiss me on the forehead, and send me outside again to play. But....like a moth drawn to a flame....I went to the ramp and made more runs to perfect my craft. Women!!....or maybe more appropriately....Moms!!!

There was never a scrape on the knees as I remember. It was probably because Mom dressed me in those Sears Tough-Skin jeans with the sewn in knee patches. More protection there than the knee and shin pads a hockey goalie suits up with. The elbows though....they were the appendages I used consistently to break my fall when I crashed. They were marked up all the time and I wore those wounds very proudly. However, I hated the scabs that formed after a day or two....they were ugly, so I picked them away when they appeared. In my infinite eight year old wisdom, I didn't realize the scabs were a part of the healing process. At the pleading of Mom and Dad to leave my wounds alone and let them heal....I would not....I could not...the sight of the scabs were hideous to me. They had to come off!!!

In the peeling away of a scab the blood rushes to the surface of the wounded area again. Sometimes it stops there and sometimes it leaks out. Associated with that there is also the twinge of a sting and once again the wound is tender, sensitive to touch, and fresh....like it just happened. The sting of that peeling away served as a reminder of my crash. It was like I relived the glory of my daredevil biking in the sting of peeling away my scab.

For an eight year old that's all well and good. As an adult it is a totally different matter. In my adulthood those wounds moved from my elbows to my heart. I have survived many wounds. Some wounds have been due to circumstances beyond my control, some have been self-inflicted, and some have been made by the actions and words of others. All of us have been wounded one way or another. Some say it is part of the ebb and flow of life....and there is a truth in that. At one point or another we all can relate to a wounded heart because at one point or another we have all had one.

I used to think very stoically about my wounds....that my wounds and hurts make me the sum total of who I am....that they play a role in my personality, my interaction with others, my view of God, and my own self-evaluation. And while there are elements of truth in that, I am no longer convinced that's the whole purpose of my experiences. If it is, then I fall victim to and become a slave of my hurts. It's like the perpetual peeling away of a scab....where the wound never heals, is always fresh, and a constant stinging reminder of my crashes.

God wants me to heal. It is not his purpose I remain in a constant state of wounded or hurt. Purpose in those things?....yes, if I truly believe he works all things together for my good....and I do. But to remain there, no. For the longest time I found my identity in my wounds, they defined me. I moved from one hurt to the next and lived there until the next hurt came along. At times the hurts were many, all at once, so I even learned to multi-task them. In that state I found ways to cope....mainly through the mind-numbing abuse of alcohol. Alcohol abuse became my remedy, my medicine. It was the Bactine to my scraped elbow. It didn't however, fix anything....it only made the wounds hurt all the more.

For me, I started healing when I realized my identity was wrongly placed. I am not the sum total of my sins, my failures, my wounds, or my hurts. They don't define me. So what does define me,....or better yet,.....who defines me? The answer is simple and I guess a little obvious....Jesus. Jesus defines me. His life, his ministry, what he brought about in his death, burial, and resurrection....all these work together in defining me. Ephesians, chapter 2, gives a very lucid and direct explanation of who I was before Christ, and who I became after Christ.

Before Christ I was lost, far away from God, estranged, dead in my sins...there was no life in me at all. After Christ I was saved (rescued), brought near to God, reunited in right relationship, made alive in Christ. My identity is found in Christ. I live my life in him and he lives his life through me. The Word of God goes on to say in other areas that I am a son, adopted by God through the saving work of Christ on the cross. Being a son also makes me royalty. I am seated with Christ in the heavenlies and I share in all his blessings. If I am the sum total of anything, I am the sum total of who he is in me. Grasping that helps me understand Jesus when he said his purpose was to give me a rich and satisfying life.

My wounds serve a purpose in that they point me to the healer of them. He who reigns in me and over me. My wounds serve a purpose in that from them I draw experience. strength, and hope in the one who has helped me overcome them. My wounds cause me to be filled with compassion for those who are wounded and create in me a desire to help them heal. But....praise God....my wounds don't define me. I am in my Lord Jesus, and he is in me....in him do I discover the "me" he made.

Living wounded is no life....surviving and enduring our wounds is no life. God doesn't want to do his work in spite of us or instead of us, he wants to do his work in and through us. We are his righteousness in Christ Jesus! I want to live that rich and satisfying life Jesus said he came to give! How about you? Let the wounds heal, quit picking at the scabs! I believe the Lord wants to see us ride up the ramp at break-neck speed and fly higher than ever before!

"The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life." -John 10:10 NLT

A Life Unlived, A Life Realized

2010-08-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

"For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. And he gave us this message of reconciliation...."
- 2 Cor. 5:19 NLT

He was nervous, trembling, pacing, and praying. He wasn't waiting for news of the outcome of a major surgery of a loved one, he was waiting to enter the pulpit and preach his first sermon in 15 years. Hundreds of things were shooting through his mind. Did he still have it? Was he prepared enough? Would God speak his grace and life through him? Would the hearers respond? Would he in some way honor God in the message? Who in the world wants to hear from a guy in his 50's who hasn't preached in 15 years?! And on and on his mind went....

It was by some miracle he found himself in this place. He had spent a good part of his life wandering, messing up, and surviving the consequences of him messing up. Most of the trouble he had lived through was frankly due to alcohol. It caused trouble in his relationships, all of his relationships. It caused trouble with the law as well. He new from firsthand experience what it was like to sober up in a jail cell. He lost jobs, friends, and the trust of many. In his mind he had been a disappointment to his God, himself, and a myriad of others. Who in the world would want to hear anything from a guy like that?! Especially anything spiritual!!

But here he was, getting ready to preach. Preach the glorious good news of Jesus Christ. Preach the wonders of the Word of God. To preach life, redemption, and grace. He was well acquainted with those things too. He knew what it was like to helplessly struggle with addiction and failure. He knew what it felt to be shunned and shamed. He was well acquainted with guilt. But from the garbage heap of his poor choices he had experienced the power of God's forgiveness. He knew personally of the power of the Holy Spirit to enable him to be an overcomer. He knew of a God who never gives up on His children....no matter how far away from Him they stray. He knew that what God had done in his life, God would do in the life of another.

He was aware too that every saint in that congregation was also a sinner saved by grace. And because of that they needed hope to carry on just for another day. An assurance of God's love overcame him,... God's love for him, God's love for those who would be listening to the sermon. And then a calm settled in...and he was ready....ready to be used however God chose to use him that day...he left his office and took his seat on the platform.

All the faces were new, he still didn't have a good handle on putting names to those faces. He scanned the congregation to find a reassuring look....he found one...in the eyes of his wife. She met him when he was just a burned out ex-preacher who believed he would never realize his call, that he would continue to live a life of existence, of survival, of just getting by. He was still struggling to stay sober, to keep sober....still had bouts with relapse. She saw the fighter in him, she believed in him, she encouraged him, and trusted God to show him His possibilities for his life. They connected immediately....she got him....he got her. She understood him....he understood her. They went through some rough tests in their relationship but by Gods' grace weathered them all. (Neither of them knew it then, but all the testing was preparation for the special ministry of helping addicts recover and find Christ that God would eventually lead them in.) She gave him that reassuring look that only he recognized and immediately in his heart, he praised God for her. He loved her so!

The song worship ended and now it was time to worship in the preaching. He quietly got up, went to the pulpit and said, "Please turn your Bibles to John, chapter 3, verse 16....". He was now in the reality of the life God had always intended him to live....an amazing journey of grace, forgiveness, renewing, and restoration culminating in that one moment....and his journey was just beginning!

Afterward: This fictional short tale testifies to a God who utterly forgives and completely restores those who have fallen in their walk with Him along the way. I can testify that there is no fall so far that God's grace can't reach and renew. He isn't done with us until He calls us home to be with Him. The dreaming isn't over until the breathing stops! Many in our churches hurt, they have fallen. They need a hand of understanding, of reconciliation, of love. May we be the church that is always faithful to that ministry and calling.

A Long Random Thought About Mercy

2010-08-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

"O my God, lean down and listen to me. Open your eyes and see our despair....We make this plea, not because we deserve help, but because of your mercy."
- Dan. 9:9, NLT

Mercy: compassion, forgiveness. From a legal standpoint this term indicates an act of pardon. The releasing of an offense to one totally undeserving. We find this in the acts of compassion and grace of God toward his children, and we see it in forms of compassion and grace extended from one human to another.

At some point in our lives we have been rendered the recipient of mercy, not because it was deserved but simply because it was given. That's what mercy is really....a gift. I could write a book on the merciful actions of God and others given on my behalf. You would think it would make me a better person, that it would somehow make me more merciful to others who have offended me....but it sometimes does not. What is it about an offense that makes me just want to get even? Why do I want to punish the offender...make them pay as it were? Why do I still tend to nurse an unforgiving heart when I have been shown so much mercy in my life?

What is wrong with me?!! It is a self-righteous spirit that rears its' ugly head when I'm wronged. I have a bent toward a..."See, I told you so" attitude. Yet, I know my own weaknesses, my own failings, my own dark secrets. I think it makes me feel superior to the one in request of my mercy. They wronged me, I lost sleep over it, so now I am going to dangle them over the fire a little bit and then forgive them later....make them sweat a little just so they know how much it hurts....is it just me that does this? Am I the only tainted saint out there? What to do about this?

First, I am in need of forgiveness for being like this. There's a heart problem, big time. I need God....I need God because I am sick. My disease is sin. I need God to live through me for it is not in my nature to be compassionate....I need his compassion. It is not in me to be forgiving, I need his forgiveness. I don't know how to be merciful....I need his mercy. My flesh screams for justice when I am hurt by another....but my sense of justice is a far cry from God's. I need God. Period!!

The other side is I also know what it means to dangle over the fire by anothers' resistance to be merciful to me. I have offended many. I have hurt many. Some may never forgive. I know what it's like to lose sleep over my sinning against God and others. Chances are you do to. Being unmerciful is such a burden to carry. It isn't God's way for us.

What if God responded to me as I have responded to others regarding being merciful? What if I prayed, asked him to lean near and hear my cry of despair, my plea for mercy and he said, "No"? A man most miserable you wouldn't find anywhere than that. But he doesn't. His forgiveness, his mercy is without limitations and without conditions. He extends to us what we absolutely don't deserve. Does he discipline? Yes. The Word of God says he disciplines those whom he loves. But even his discipline is an act of mercy. He fights for our attention through his mercy. He won't give up on us. Even when we are in the fires of our own bad choices, He purges us, cleanses us. What a loving God!

I need a God-like character. Only he can give that to me. I pray when I die one of the things said of me is that I was compassionate, that I was freely forgiving....without limitations and without conditions. It is my prayer that whether I am bumped by blessing or offense all that flows from my heart is the love of Christ.I have a way to go on learning this lesson. Maybe I am the only one who struggles with this. If I am, put me on your prayer list for I desperately need it!

The Raging War Within

2010-08-10T02:47:00.000-07:00

Rain, pouring rain....the palm leaves weren't enough to slow it down or provide any shelter. Waiting.....waiting for the first wave of attack. My buddy, Alan, and I were the first line of defense in protecting the perimeter of our camp......drowning in the pool of water we now crouched in. We were in blackout mode....attack was imminent. Question was...where were they going hit us first?

They hit! Came out of nowhere it seemed. Fire flashes from their M-16's lit up the night. For about ten minutes it was nothing but chaos! We dug in and did our best to stave off the enemy from penetrating our quadrant. We were successful, but Alan was hit in the process. How I dodged a bullet is beyond me!

So it is with war and war training. No one really got hit, or wounded, or died in the fire fight. It was military training. Our enemy was the Philippine National Army and they were teaching us Air Force guys how to defend an airfield under attack. They were good, very good. Even with equipment like night vision goggles, they still hit us out of nowhere! How could that happen? Needless to say, our commanding officer wasn't too pleased. So we did it again, and again, and again....until we got it right.

In my walk with God I have come to realize firsthand how relentless the enemy is in attacking my faith and hurting my relationship with the Lord. He comes, it seems, out of nowhere. A sneak attack that totally catches me off guard. Oh I have the equipment....the latest translation and study bible, the benefit of great preaching on Sunday, Christian friends who are an encouragement to me, a prayer life...all the latest equipment...and yet he still comes out of nowhere and makes my life a chaotic hell. How does that happen?

I mean, I do all the right things, go all the right places, study all the good things, hang out with good people...and still he attacks and murders me as if there were no preparation at all, no faith at all. And the worst of it.....I hear him laugh as he walks away.

I don't have all the answers for this. I do have a thought or two. First, the Word of God says that our enemy walks about like a ravenous lion seeking whom he may devour. When you get into the language there you realize that he wants to tear us to pieces! He wants to destroy us! He wants to murder us, kill us again and again!! See, he isn't just a little miffed about his situation, he is angry beyond angry about it. He's already lost...it isn't a question of if, but a matter of when. He hates God and he hates God's people. He will stop at nothing to ruin God's work here on earth by ruining God's people.

I don't think I fully get that sometimes. He wants to destroy me. Render me useless in the kingdom of God. He wants to destroy God given relationships in my life. He wants to disgrace me, humiliate me, shame me, guilt me, and kill me. Even with all the equipment I have to fight him with, I don't think I take his hate for me seriously enough and I get caught off guard. He comes out of nowhere and attacks me at my most vulnerable spot. He knows what my kryptonite is! I feel I take him too lightheartedly. And that is when he hits.

Second, Paul talked about the war on the inside with his two natures. He said something to the effect of,..."the things I shouldn't do, I do....and the things I should do, I don't." He understood that even with this new nature inside, the Jesus in us, there was still that bent toward sin, toward selfishness, toward evil, toward shaking a fist at God and going our own way. It's there, it's ever present, and it's ours for life. But the deal is, it doesn't have to live big in us. We have been given help and our help is more powerful than our enemy. Something I have to tell myself on a daily basis or I will stumble and fall on a daily basis.

For me, it is a constant raging war within. If you can live without that fight, more power to you. But also for me, that war assures me of whose side I'm on. When the enemy attacks with doubts of salvation, and he does, I look at the fight....I look at where I'm dug in, and whose camp I'm defending. I'm on the right side alright....so if I never get a break....I will go out fighting...and I will fight again, and again, and again....until I get it right....on the right side!

How about you? Done any fighting lately?

"We faithfully preach the truth. God's power is working within us. We use the weapons of righteousness in the right hand for attack and in the left hand for defense." -2 Cor. 6:7, NLT

The Wal-Mart Deli Counter

2010-07-31T08:21:00.000-07:00

How in the world did I get home with a pound of pickle loaf lunch meat and a half pound of baby Swiss cheese?! What a "delicious" combination! I know I ordered smoked turkey and Colby cheese. I know I did! I repeated my order twice to the lady behind the deli counter at Wal-Mart. Twice she repeated the order back to me. How did this snafu happen? How can a person look you in the eye, take an order, repeat it back to you twice, and still get it completely wrong? I would never order pickle loaf...I think I might be allergic....plus, it just looks gross. Maybe I'm just allergic to the way it looks. Yuck!

I'm not unique to this type of incident. Perhaps you've never had this experience at the Wal-Mart deli counter, but you've had an experience where you placed an order of some kind and the end result was totally wrong. This is why I'm still gun-shy about going through a fast food drive- thru! You know what they do to you in the drive-thru!!

I'm a former retail manager and one reason I know customers don't return for a second visit is because the first one was met with such inattentive service. We are an impatient lot; we want what we want when we want it and we want it right....the first time. Retail establishments who can't meet with that demand lose business!

When it comes to living a life that glorifies God, I'm a lot like the lady behind the deli counter at Wal-Mart. I know what God says through his Word but do I really listen to it?.... And by "listening" I'm talking about hearing with faith that results in obedience. It seems to me you can't separate faith and obedience. If you have faith it will shine through an obedient life. An obedient life that blesses God cannot be demonstrated apart from faith. It is our stubbornness, (of which I could write a book about my own), that keeps us from entering into the full life Christ said he came to give.

It's like God goes to the deli counter...gives his order... I look at him like I'm listening...I repeat his order back to him twice...and he still walks away with something from me totally different. Did he get his own order wrong? Hardly!... I just didn't listen. I fell short of his expectations. I just looked at him with that 'deer in headlights' glaze. I just went through the motions. I was inattentive to what he was really saying and as a result....I missed it...his blessing...his satisfaction...his walking away from my counter whistling a happy tune....his, "Well, done".

How many times in my life have I missed the true blessing of God because I had ears to hear, but didn't listen?! How many times have you?

"To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them." -Matt. 13:12 NLT

Here I Am!

2010-07-07T04:15:00.000-07:00

"Suddenly the Lord called out, "Samuel!" "Yes?" Samuel replied. "What is it?" He got up and ran to Eli, "Here I am. Did you call me?" - I Samuel 3: 4,5a NLT

As a young boy, I remember my mother telling me the story of Samuel. He was a special gift to Hannah, his mother,... an answered prayer. Hannah was childless and she bitterly wept before the Lord in His tabernacle over her condition. She made a vow to God that if He blessed her with a son, she would give him back to God for service to Him. God heard her prayer and Samuel was born. Samuel means, "I asked the Lord for him." Mom would then tell of the wonderful and powerful ways God used Samuel to judge Israel for 40 years. He annointed kings and was the voice of God to Israel.

Then she would tell me that when I was born, she and Dad dedicated me to the Lord's service, just in the same way Hannah did Samuel. Oh, they didn't dump me off at the church when I was three and leave me there, which I'm glad because that church building would have been a pretty scary place to live for a three year old!.... but in the same spirit they dedicated me to God's service.They prayed and believed God would use me in ministering to others, in whatever way that translated to reality. No pressure!

In many ways, as I reflect back on my life, I see a sensitivity that kept me close to God, always thinking in terms of helping others, always looking for the spiritual in things, and always seeing God's hand in everything. When I was younger, simple prayers of faith were easy to pray. When I was younger, a trusting zeal for the Lord was constantly present. When I was younger, I readily shared my faith regardless of how I would be received. When I was younger, loving others seemed almost natural and came without much effort. Oh, to have now what I had when I was younger!!

What happened to me? Where did I veer to the left when I should have veered to the right? How did I go from a hot heart for the Lord to a cold heart for the Lord?!....a lukewarm heart for the Lord at best. Life happened, bad decisions made, failed marriages, straying from the Lord repeatedly and returning to the Lord repeatedly. My life had become, it seemed, a piggy bank collection of sins and failures...the scars and wounds of which eventually kept me from feeling even worthy to say, "Here I am" when He called my name. Amazingly, I could still hear Him call my name. What could I offer from the rubble of my life that could possibly encourage another fellow struggler? So for a time I retreated from any kind of service to the Lord.....just went through the motions. I thought all that was left was to count the coins of sin and failure I had collected in my piggy bank. And life would not get any better, so I might as well deal with is as it was and live with it.

For the last month I have been wrestling with this. Hearing His call and arguing that He should call somebody else. How crippling a sense of unworthiness is! There truly is nothing worthy in and of myself to be used of God....to be used by Him. But He calls because of the Jesus in me who has redeemed me completely. He calls because He still has plans and a work for me to do. God just sees me differently than I see myself. He knows I am not the sum total of my sins and failures. They do not define who I am as far as God is concerned. I am defined by the Christ who shed His precious blood for my salvation...and God has vowed to continue to rescue me....from myself among others crippling entities. That's what the word salvation literally means, "to rescue." He has rescued me relentlessly all my life!

This morning I read again the account of little Samuel. Flooding in came memories of my childhood. Memories of a loving father and mother who faithfully prayed over their little boy and who still faithfully pray over their little boy....always believing the very best God has for me. Always seeing the potential in me when I am rock solid in my walk with the Lord. This morning, weeping, I said again to God....at the ripe old age of 51...."Here I Am!"

As we age we live long enough to experience both joy and disappointment, it is as certain as death and taxes. How we deal will determine the level of inner peace we all instinctively seek and desire. I am living testament that peace doesn't exist apart from God. Going my own way may sound brave and it may make for great song writing, but the reality is that path leads to just more crippling disappointment. And it keeps us from having a hot heart for the Lord.

Why write such a confession on this blog? Because I am convinced at least one out there who reads this will identify and relate to it. You have been where I have been. The pathway to Heaven is littered with fallen brothers and sisters who have once said, "Here I am." but now have lost hope. They need to know the relentless grace of God again. They need to know He still calls their name. They need to know they can smash that horrid piggy bank and start fresh regardless their age. We are called by God to help them....who more qualified than one who has been there in the ditch too? It is such a freeing thing to say, "Here I am!"

Letting Go

2010-06-05T05:58:00.000-07:00

So Joseph sent his brothers off, and as they left, he called after them,"Don't quarrel about all this along the way!" - Gen. 45:24 NLT

It had been decades since his brothers last saw him. And for decades they carried a deep, dark secret of deception. Now they stood before him, trembling with fear. No doubt wondering how they would be paid back for their crime against their brother. All the dramatic telling of how Joseph was reunited with his brothers and later with his father oozes with the theme of true forgiveness. In fact, it is one of the best demonstrations of forgiveness in the Bible.

Perhaps Joseph knew that his siblings may have the temptation to point fingers at one another on their way back home regarding who was really at fault in what they did to him. Maybe he was concerned they would argue as to how to explain Joseph's situation to Jacob. Would they have to tell Dad they actually sold their brother into slavery? Would they have to tell Dad the blood stained robe and the story that went with it was all a lie? So much time had passed that perhaps they actually believed the lie they told their Dad about Joseph's fate. But not anymore. The reality of their deception was slapping them full in the face. It was time to come clean.

If anyone in the Bible had the right to be vengeful, spiteful, and unforgiving it would've been Joseph. Sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused of trying to rape his master's wife, and thrown into prison, forgotten by all but God. I don't know if I would've come out of all that without feeling just a smidge bitter. But bitterness wasn't Joseph's first thought. His first thought was love. His first action was forgiveness. He saw the whole of his life and saw that in all that happened to him, it was intended for good by a sovereign God. Through him God preserved two nations, Egypt and Israel.

For Joseph, it wasn't a time of revenge. It was a time of letting go. It was time to reunite the family. To help them, to love them. With a word, Joseph could have put his brothers to death for what they had done. Instead, he forgave, he let it go....completely, without one twinge of grudge. Then he blessed them!

When others hurt me often my first thought is retaliation. I just want to get even, hurt them back so they can feel what they made me feel. I want to make them eat dirt! That path is so much easier than forgiving. Forgiving takes a literal act of the will. It is an unnatural act that requires supernatural empowerment. I can say, "I forgive you" all day long to someone who has offended me and still go around carrying anger and a "get even" spirit toward the offender. Is that true forgiveness? In a word, I don't think so. Perhaps it is the absence of that inner anger and "get even" spirit toward the offender that indicates real forgiveness has come home to stay.

Exercising forgiveness is often painful but always necessary if we are to grow in Christ. I have much growth ahead of me I'm afraid. Jesus taught that we should forgive our offenders so consistently that being forgiving defines us. When we are bumped hard by someone the first thing that spills out of us is forgiveness. I do that so consistently inconsistently! Yet, we are never more like our Lord than when we forgive those who have hurt us.

I have been offended and I have been the offender. I have been asked to forgive and have found it necessary to seek forgiveness. Such a position makes me a perfect pupil for the school of forgiveness. To learn more, to be more consistent in exercising it, to make it the theme of my life. Like Joseph, I want to, truly want to learn to let go! Man, there is so much freedom in that!!

Blessings!

"The only revenge which is essentially Christian is that of retaliating by forgiveness."
-F. W. Robertson

Remembering

2010-05-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

I am always honored and touched when I attend church on Memorial Day weekend because it never fails that Armed Forces Veterans are recognized for their contribution to the safekeeping of our Nation's freedoms that each American enjoys. I well up with tears and truly am proud that I had the privilege of serving my country in the United States Air Force from December 1984 to February 1990 with an added reserve commitment until December 1992. I obligated eight years of my life to military duty.

I experienced many events during those years from joyful to tragic, peaceful to violent, and secure to unsure. Some experiences I remember with fondness and still talk about them today. Some experiences to this day I find very difficult to talk about at all. But I am glad I can say I did my part. I gave some of my life to become part of a fraternity of men and women who made personal sacrifices for the good of the country they love.

I gave some of my life....there are some that gave all of their life. They are the ones who literally laid down their lives for our freedoms here in America.....it is to these that make Memorial Day a day for remembering. It is to these we honor their ultimate sacrifice. Because of them and what they gave up, Memorial Day is more than a family cookout and a day off from work. To those who gave all I offer my gratitude and tribute.

On this day I also remember another who gave all. My Lord Jesus when he sacrificed himself on a cross for my spiritual freedom. Ephesians 2:4 starts with, "But God, who is rich in mercy....that word rich can be exchanged with the word exhaustless. So it could be read, "But God, who is exhaustless in mercy....I could not out-sin the far reaches of his mercy no matter how hard I tried. When I run away from him, no matter how far....when I stop, his love is waiting for me there. No matter what I do and no matter how hideous to others my sin may be....God's mercy toward me is exhaustless. What a blessing, what a privilege, what a Saviour!

Jesus gave all, I gave none. The first three verses of Ephesians 2 tell us what we were before God intervened with his mercy in verse four. We weren't pretty and there was nothing in and of ourselves that was redeemable. In other words, nothing in us was good enough to merit and win God's favor. I had nothing to give God in exchange for my salvation. It was all of him. I couldn't work my way to heaven because even my good works were filthy to this holy God

God so loved us he gave his only son that we may have fellowship with him. It was all of him and none of us. So I remember also with gratitude that at the age of fourteen God called me out of my darkness and into his light. Jesus became my Saviour and I became a part of God's family. I received my spiritual freedom. I gained Christ and heaven.

Remember to take time and remember the sacrifices made for your personal freedoms and the freedom of the country in which you live from those who gave all to buy it. And remember your spiritual freedoms that came from the sacrifice of the One who gave all.

Memorial Day blessings to everyone!

The Uglies!

2010-05-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

They swarmed around him. Everywhere he went, they were there! The lame, the blind, the deaf, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, ....all the refuse of society, they seemed to surround him. And he seemed more comfortable with them than the church goers. He touched them. The church goers criticized him.

He spoke against the church goers. Said they had a religion that was empty. .....as he put it....full of dead men's bones. No heart, no soul. That made them mad! They plotted to kill him! Jesus, this is Jesus! This is the Son of God we're talking about. He accepted everyone as they were,....and loved them....got nailed for it. In fact, at points...the Word says he wept over them. Imagine, weeping over the refuse of society. He did it!

It amazes me how religion and faith get confused sometimes. You'd think they go together. They mix like oil and water most of the time. Especially when we talk about the Uglies! You know the uglies, all those people that don't measure up to our spiritual standards....hey, let's go further than that....even those people that don't "smell"acceptable. We look at them and immediately think of them as "lesser than".........I have, I know. It's the hierarchy of the "haves" and the "have nots".

I have said, "Amen" when the preacher has been at the zenith of his point! Sounded righteous too! Others have done the same. Just sounding righteous. Nothing wrong with saying Amen. Everything wrong with saying Amen when it's for show! I have been guilty of show. You know, sometimes the word spoken just doesn't move me. A reflection on my heart, I know, but it doesn't. I think I'm not listening or caring or something. I need Him to touch me, to take me in to that crowd of the uglies. I am an ugly.

He gave his life for me. When the world sees me as ugly....he doesn't. When I can't go to anyone else...He takes me as I am. Ugly as I am...and loves me anyway. Wow! How can that be?! In Him, I don't have to measure up to other's standards. I just need to look to His. His standards are so much more inviting. If I fall, He is there to pick me up. He never rejects me, never lets me go. When I totally blow it, He doesn't walk away....just says He hasn't forgotten His plan for my life.

I am an Ugly...and He loves me anyway. I haven't known a love like that. I don't deserve a love like that. But it's mine and I'm glad. How could the beautiful embrace the ugly. It's a God Thing....and only that. His embrace around my ugly makes me beautiful...and that pushes me to go embrace others who think they're ugly.

Only God, a loving God, can make the ugly beautiful. He does!

3:45am

2010-05-02T02:44:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say that when I woke up God had such an epiphany for me it would change the lives of millions. The truth is I woke up with scratchy eyes that are bloodshot simply because I woke up so early and couldn't go back to sleep. So...I'm up. There are many in my circle who would say,"Stupid, go back to sleep!".....I can't.

As I was showering I was thinking about a few things. In the shower I am either thinking about a few things or singing....this early in the morning I dared not sing lest neighbors think a drunk cat was outside their door! My "meows" are so slurred this early in the morning! So I left my brain on and my voice on pause.

I was thinking about size. The bigness and the smallness of things.....did I spell those two things right? Oh well....it's my blog....guess I can spell anything any way I want. Wow, that was a selfless statement! I was thinking about the size of God compared to the size of me. Man! I am so little!! Yet, so arrogant, I think I am so big!

And that's the thing....the parts of me that should be small are big. The things that cause me to stumble and fall are so HUGE! And the qualities that allow me to go outside myself to be a blessing to others are so small! Why does it seem to be all about me, me, me?! Why do I feel put upon to be involved in another life, to give of myself so another may be helped? What is it in me that causes me to feel that others are an interruption to me? Do you see the me, me, me here?

Sometimes I think I am more comfortable with stumbling and falling, getting back up, asking for forgiveness so I can stumble and fall again. I am sure I am unique.....NOT! We all have that tendency I think. We are comfortable with being one of God's "pet" projects....want to know why....we get all his attention....we are even selfish in that! And no one has worse problems than our own! Start telling me your life and I will tell you something in my own that is worse. You can't out miserable my misery!

I have lived long enough to be a disappointment to everyone I love the most. Sometimes I feel I wear that like a medal on my chest. Why? Because I want attention....sick as it may sound....that's what I want. If I can't get it by being good, I'll get it by being bad. But attention is what I want. Man! I need a support group!!.....and more!

In thinking about God's bigness....he looks beyond my selfishness, my need for attention and looks at the wonder of me....he made me...and he makes no mistakes. I am no mistake even though there are times I feel that way. He works his will to perform it in my life...he never gives up and never lets go of me. He is patient with me and with you. His compassion's and mercy are renewed toward us every day. Something to take advantage of? No! Something to be grateful for! That is the bigness of God....seeing in me something I don't see in myself. Seeing in me something worth redeeming, worth giving his only son for. And he did all that!

God is huge! I want him to live big in me....in spite of my failings....I want him to live big in me. I am small....maybe that epiphany is not so bad when put in the proper perspective.

Those of you who have this bigness and smallness thing down...please contact me and show me how to do it right. In the meantime, I will stumble and fall and get back up again and hope with each incident, I will allow God to live bigger in and through me than I did before.

From The Message:
"But you, O God, are both tender and kind, not easily angered, immense in love, and you never, never quit." -Psalm 86:15

Blessings!

P.S. It's 3:45am for crying out loud.....allow me a few random thoughts this early in the morning!

Bed Frames

2010-04-27T13:37:00.000-07:00

In my lifetime I have just about slept on everything. From the floor to army cots to air mattresses ( the ones that lose all their air throughout the night to the ones that hold air well ) to all sizes of beds from twin to California king to water beds. I have done my share of sleeping on couches too....especially when I've been in trouble. I had the opportunity to try a bed of nails in the Philippines once....I opted out of that experience.

If you have a bed, you need a bed frame....that is unless you like that "close to the floor feeling". Frames come in all types, from wood to metal to cement block, if you so choose...but you need one in order to have that "sleeping in a bed off the floor" feeling. I recently learned that you have to have the right kind of frame....if it's metal especially....to fit the right size of mattress. Metal frames are made of different strengths of material to properly hold the appropriate size mattress. Twin and full mattresses don't need a heavy duty bed frame as do queen and larger mattresses do.

I bought a queen mattress set with a light metal frame. It held pretty well for awhile. It squeaked, squawked, and moved a little when I turned over and such but it seemed OK....until two nights ago. Somewhere in the night the middle cross brace at the bottom broke in half and one of the legs buckled under itself putting one corner of my mattress completely to the floor.

This happened while I was asleep dreaming of sugar plums and buffet lines....Now I'm not necessarily a small man but I don't have the body density of the Incredible Hulk either.....
....and I learned something else while waking up face down on the carpeted floor....God never intended man to sleep on an incline! If you roll over, you're gonna keep going. You're gonna end up pulling carpet fibers from your molars because the floor will rudely stop your fall. It's called gravity and it is very unpleasant to experience from a dead sleep!

As I grabbed a pillow and moved to the couch I thought about the verse in Proverbs 16:18. It goes like this, from The Message:
"First pride, then the crash - the bigger the ego, the harder the fall."
Falling from my bed isn't the only crash I have experienced this past week. Lessons from a bed frame can be valuable, especially when we start thinking we're "all that and a bag of chips." Just when I think I have it all together is really the critical time for me to do a heart check, because there's probably a crash coming if I don't. I am putting my life on the right foundation again....hope yours is already there.

Ribs

2010-04-15T04:46:00.000-07:00

Sitting in church, squirming in my seat! If my mother were sitting beside me, she would've pinched my thigh to get me to sit still like she used to do when I was a little boy in church. I'm kind of glad she wasn't there....that hurt! I was listening, but I wasn't listening. I was participating, but I wasn't participating. It was like I was viewing everything close from a far off distance; like Sarah Palin who can see Russia from her house in Alaska. I had one thing on my mind.....ribs!!

Two pounds of beef ribs, marinated for 24 hours in spices and liquids sure to enhance their flavor to much higher euphoric qualities. Two pounds of beef ribs lovingly and gently placed in a 6-quart crock pot and slow cooked for 12 tenderizing hours. Ribs! That is what was on my mind as the pastor expounded upon the wonders and majesty of God's Word. I'm a spiritual giant alright!! I couldn't wait to get home....already tying a bib around my neck as I drove out of the church parking lot.

Breaking the speed limit to get home, I noticed that posted speed limit signs are more like suggestions when I'm hungry and on mission to eat. I would've broken the sound barrier if I could've pushed my 6-cylinder, 4-door sedan that fast. Fortunately, the law enforcement fraternity was evidently in coffee and donut shops getting their fill at the time of my travel because the interstate was void of them. Personally I think that was God's grand design....he wanted me to have those ribs too!!

Drooling so heavily at the thought of succulent, marinated, slow-cooked rib meat melting in my mouth, my pant legs were wet when I got out of the car. Bursting through the door of my apartment, I didn't walk up the stairs, I didn't run up the stairs; I cleared them all in one single bound....a feat only Superman could perform....until now. As the lovable canine in the bacon treat commercial keeps repeating, "Bacon, bacon, bacon!"...in his frantic search for the coveted morsels, I kept repeating, "Ribs, ribs, ribs!"

Rushing around the corner of my living room into the kitchen, I stopped briefly to appreciate what seemed to be a heavenly glow around that 6-quart container that was gently caressing "my precious"! It was a sacred pause, a sacred moment. The container "called" to me and I responded by lifting the lid with such force, had I not had a firm grip, it would have flown through my balcony door window like a Frisbee!

Wide-eyed with excitement, still drooling everywhere, I peered inside the pot anticipating a culinary treasure even Emeril would envy. To my horror, I found my ribs in such a state I had to turn my head in utter disgust. All of those succulent morsels of flavor had become encased in the translucent goo of the fat that surrounded them. As the Man of War jellyfish ensnares its prey, so this repulsive fat had ensnared the morsels of meat I was greedily getting ready to devour.

There was a sudden loss of appetite and a fighting back of the gag reflex that so desperately wanted to take control. Looking at rancid hamburger would've been more palatable than this offensive conglomeration of YUCK! After the shock and disappointment wore off, I put an oven mitt on one hand and wrapped the other in a towel. I lifted the hot clay pot out of its cooking element and slowly walked down the stairs to discard the contents of "my precious" in the trash. I felt like a dead man walking and I fought back tears with each step.

After discarding the inedible ribs in the dumpster, a thought from scripture popped into my head...

"We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like Autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind." - Isa. 64:6 NLT

For all the hours of thawing, marinating, and slow-cooking....those ribs ended up on the dumpster floor, a feast for flies, worms, and other unmentionable creepy crawlers. My best efforts weren't enough to keep the end result from disaster and disappointment.

Then I thought of my life....for all the things I do, the people I help, and the difference I attempt to make in this world for good....those things are no better than the inedible ribs on a dumpster floor when done on my own. My righteous acts the Bible says are as filthy rags. I realized just in the thought of that verse, I needed a righteousness that went far beyond me, a righteousness not my own. With gratitude, I also realized that I have that....for I have the righteousness of Christ. It is his righteousness in me that makes my deeds top-shelf.... What he does in and through me is the only righteousness that counts and the Bible teaches when we come to him, he clothes us in it. All of him, none of me. What eternal good I do, he does through me. It is to his credit, not to mine.
It is to his glory, not to mine.

Even though I didn't listen much in church; and even though I settled for a tuna fish sandwich and potato chips, God was still teaching me....through ribs!

Shipwrecked

2010-04-08T05:50:00.001-07:00

"Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences, as a result their faith has been shipwrecked." -I Tim. 1:19 NLT

"People never crumble in a day....it's a slow fade."
Phrase from the song, "Slow Fade", as sung by Casting Crowns

Adrift! Floating in the middle of the ocean at the mercy of wherever the waves and tide carry me. It seems the more I kick in one direction, the waves carry me in another. No land in sight. Nothing but horizons of waves in all directions. Hungry....thirsty....exhausted....weak....fighting giving up, fighting hopelessness....fighting letting go and letting the ocean carry me to the bottom.

I don't remember how I got here. Everything prior to the crash is a blur. Even the crash itself is absent of specific details. All I know is that at one moment I was sunning by the pool, drinking a nice cold glass of fruity tea, and the next moment I am desperately hanging on to a piece of the ship to stay above water. Looking around I see no one else. Am I the only survivor? I scream out for help in vain effort to hear a reply from another living life. My screams are returned with a discouraging echo of my own voice. I hear nothing but the sound of turning waves.

Waves are getting bigger as the wind blows harder. They hit me ever more violently, determined to free me from my only hope of staying afloat. I can't go on, I can't hold on. One more hit, one final blow. As the last stone drops a martyr to his knees, I am shaken free from my lifeline. Arms too tired to tread the choppy sea....I sink...gulping down ocean water with each descending meter toward bottom....I am lost, hopelessly lost!

A dream!...no, a nightmare!! I shoot straight up in bed to discover I had been swimming in a pool of my own sweat. No ocean, no violent waves, no brutal wind, no wreckage, no death at the bottom. Just a nightmare. On the one hand, I breathe a sigh of relief; on the other hand, I immediately, almost instinctively, start taking an inventory of my life. I don't like what I find.

My conscience, that internal GPS, if you will, was broken. When it broke, I have no idea. One small compromise after another eventually prohibited my GPS being useful as I navigated between the territories of Right and Wrong. No longer effective, the lines between these two lands became blurred....so blurred in fact, I could no longer see them. I eventually traveled between the two with ease, without passport or visa. Because my GPS was not functioning, I could no longer tell which land I was in. I crashed and didn't know it. How tragic! The only sure vision I had was what I saw looking back....nothing but a string of wreckage. Some was repairable, some wasn't...but it was wreckage and it was massive.

I had become the frog boiled to death under a low heat. Happily swimming around at first, then lethargic...just floating....no movement, then death at the bottom....bloated and weighted from massive intakes of water. Like the frog, I didn't know a crash was coming. It came. The fallout from my nightmare shook me awake....truly awake! Perhaps it wasn't too late for me to go in for repair...perhaps it wasn't too late for me to change.

The only prayer I could pray was: "Jesus, help me!"....the prayer of a desperate man sinking to the bottom of the ocean of his own compromise. No one but Jesus Christ could help me...no one but him could pull me from this death. I did come to realize that a life of compromise is no life at all. Jesus was willing to rescue and praise God he did! When he rescued, he did so completely. Apart from him, nothing else would have worked.

The verse above says to "cling to your faith in Christ". The word "cling" conjures up the mental picture of hanging onto something or someone for dear life, as if your life depended on it. That's what we must do, cling to Christ in faith if we are to navigate successfully between the territories of Right and Wrong. It is the surest way, the only way, we can keep our consciences clear....our GPS's working properly.

If you're adrift....cling to him...he is sure to rescue! Only he can fix what is broken in your life. What he did for me, he will do for you!! Blessings!

Aftermath

2010-04-05T05:29:00.001-07:00

Preface
Some of this story is me. Some of it is not me, it's fiction. My hope and prayer is that it will meld together to demonstrate the power of God when He invades a life with His mercy and grace. I hope it will encourage just one to believe that God wants to, can, and will change a dead life to a new life no matter how despicable that life has become. The cross and empty tomb point the way...they point the way to Jesus Christ....He and He alone.

Aftermath
Peering in and steaming up the small windows in the doors that led to the sanctuary, I nervously wrung my sweating hands....waiting....asking myself what on God's earth was I doing in such a place! I didn't go in until after everyone was finished greeting each other with handshakes, hugs, and smiles. I didn't want to be touched by anyone for fear the dirt, filth, and yuck of my miserable life would rub off. To keep them away I wondered if I should enter shouting, "Unclean! Unclean!" like the lepers had to do in biblical times as they navigated through the masses. I felt as a single drop of black, polluted oil in a pool of pure, clean water....as a convicted criminal on the run hiding in a crowd of people with squeaky clean records....feeling severely out of my element. And would my dismal presence contaminate what was going on inside that holy place?

I sat in the very back, in the far corner of a pew that no one else was in. I didn't want to be noticed and I certainly didn't want to be recognized. In that room full of people I sat there in my isolation. And I sat with my head down, staring at the patterns in the carpet so hard they began to move. I dared not even look up, make eye contact. My hands, still sweating, were now shaking almost uncontrollably. I clasped them together with such a grip it looked as if my knuckles would burst through the skin. I didn't belong there....but then I didn't belong anywhere. At one point I almost got up to leave and in that instant was strangely drawn to stay. What could it hurt anyway? Perhaps I could get some reprieve from the thoughts that constantly tormented me. Yes, just some rest, if just but a brief escape from a life littered with losses, shame, regrets, and hopelessness. I sat there....still...motionless.....staring at the moving patterns of the carpet.

I never intended my life to end up as it did. As a young boy my dreams for myself were lofty, noble, respectable, and had purpose. My upbringing wasn't harsh. My parents were good parents. They showed me love at every turn, even in their discipline. I lacked for nothing. I was supported and encouraged to go conquer whatever corner of the world I was placed. I was taught to consider others before myself, to love the unlovable, to be merciful, kind-hearted, and caring toward my fellow man.

I grew up in church. I wasn't a total stranger to places like the one I was sitting in. At one time, I even felt comfortable in such places. I knew the bible. I learned it from my Sunday School and pastor at church and from my parents at home. I saw my mom and dad live out in daily life what they confessed they believed. I had such deep respect for them because of that. In crisis their first thought was always prayer to and faith in a God who cared and acted on their behalf. I had good friends...some of my closest friends went to the church I did. I remember a better past with more pleasant memories....they were faint memories....but I remembered them.

I grew up....life happened....circumstances I didn't want or ask for happened to me. I got angry and then bitter....and what was once a life headed for success became a downward spiral of bad decisions. I didn't want to hear from anyone...not from my parents, siblings, children, friends, and certainly not from God. I ignored all those caring voices until I could no longer hear them at all. To cope....I drank. The more difficulty I invited into my life....the more I drank to cope. I lost all. On the outside it was job after job, driving privileges, apartments, marriages, financial stability, upward mobility, and tragically...friends. That network of love and support was gone. On the inside it was self-respect, vision, hope, contentment, peace, joy, and even the will to live. I became the shame and embarrassment of family and friends. No one wanted me around. I had successfully managed to remove myself from any hope of recovery. When the bottle was no longer enough to numb my depression, sense of failure, self judgment, and other hellish torments in my mind, the last answer of true escape was death.

That is where I found myself...sitting in that pew with my head down....a dead man walking. My life had sunk so low I saw death as my only hope. Death was the only way to be truly released of this excruciating misery. Imagine the irony....my only hope being death. There I was sitting in that pew with all hell breaking loose on the inside of me.

I noticed though, even with my head down, I was listening. Listening to what was being said and what was being sung. I didn't realize until it was mentioned.....I entered that sanctuary on Easter Sunday. That revelation made me think of last Easter....I was so drunk I couldn't get myself dressed to go anywhere. Last Easter I sat in my Lazy Boy, drinking vodka and Coke, trying to numb the overwhelming hopelessness that had invaded my life and taken control. It was like I was drinking to get the hopelessness drunk so it would loosen its grip on me for just a little while and give my weary brain some rest.

The pastor, an elderly, distinguished looking gentleman with the kindest eyes, walked forward and read from the bible these verses: "...But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God's grace that you have been saved!)" -Eph. 2:4,5 When I heard those words I raised my head and really started listening. Hearing that I was dead, which I was....or at least felt like I was, but could be given life again intrigued me. This wonderful preacher began to tell of Gods' grace and mercy that spanned the centuries starting in the Garden of Eden and culminating in the death, burial, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. He said God did what he did though history to establish again relationship with his creation that was broken in the Garden. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, his death, and resurrection ushered in a means whereby we might be restored completely in relationship with God once and for all.

I began wondering how this could be done. What did I have to do? I was desperate, my whole being cried out for relief. Suddenly within me was a thirst for something more. I actually was beginning to hope for something more.....not an assured hope, but a "hope so"; that somehow what was being said could happen to me. Perhaps the downward spiral of my life could be turned around. The preacher continued to say that my sins were nailed to the cross of Christ . He took upon himself my sin that I might live in a new life. He spoke of the hideousness of the cross. He painted such a picture of Christs' blood soaked body being broken for me that I could see him hanging there, dying, staining the cross with his blood and covering the cross with my sin. It moved me someone could love so much. It moved me deeper still someone could love me so much. Lastly, the preacher spoke of Jesus' victory over death and that because of that victory death no longer had a choke hold on those whose faith is in him. Wow!.. death no longer my only hope of escape? Instead of that dead man walking I was seeing hope in a dead man coming alive through this life preached about. But how?

The preacher sat down and the choir stood up. Music started playing and the choir started singing the words to the song, "Hallelujah! Praise the Lamb". Intently I listened....still wondering how....how can I go from walking death to life? As that little country choir sang in that little country church, I became overwhelmed with such a deep appreciation of Gods' great love for me! I bristled because I felt the words of that song were speaking directly to me:

From the moment man first disobeyed the Father
We were then held captured by our sin
The law of God demanded a sacrifice
Restoring to himself His own again

So the Lamb, His Son so freely offered,
Atonement for our sins forever made.
The innocent and holy still God and God only
Would ransom and redeem us back again

So to the cross they carried Him
With all our guilt and all our sin
The Lamb of God was slain for our transgressions
And on the cross those nail pierced hands

Reached up to God and now to man
And just as if I'd never sinned
He took me in His arms
Embracing me he willingly forgave

For mercy, grace, and love that knows no bounds
Though guilty and condemned I now am free
Forever I'm forgiven for Christ the Lord has risen
And risen with Him we shall one day be

Hallelujah praise the Lamb
Hallelujah praise the Lamb
My heart sings His praise again
Hallelujah praise the Lamb

I began to weep as I saw all that Christ did....for me. Me-the three time loser in love; Me-the failure as a son, brother, father, and friend; Me-the loser of jobs; Me-the drunk. His great love for me moved him to leave eternity and enter time and history. He left riches, royalty, and majesty and took upon himself the weakness and frailty of human flesh. For me-he bore my sin that I might be clean and have relationship. Me-this outcast was drawn near and made a son because of him. Me-once homeless, living out of my car, he gave a home in heaven.

My miserable life was flooded with hope! I was still wondering how to leave this death I was living and move into that new life, when that wise and loving pastor got up again. He answered my question with two other verses from the bible: "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved." -Rom. 10:9,10 That was it?! No training? No college work? No special certifications? No written recommendations from city officials? No elaborate monetary gifts to the church? No installment payments? No pain? It seemed so easy it couldn't be true! Surely after what Christ did on the cross, I would have to go through some suffering of my own in order to qualify even becoming a candidate for this new life! The pastor said this new life was a gift simply to be received. Nothing in me that I could offer would make a worthy trade for this life. God gave it because he loved me and for no other reason. So I confessed and I believed. I prayed right there in that pew....and his grace and mercy through Christ's love overtook me as a tidal wave!

The aftermath of a tidal wave usually is remembered for the vast amounts of damage, the millions of dollars required to repair the damage, and sometimes the tragic loss of life. This tidal wave was different. My life was already damaged; my life was already tragic. This tidal wave swept over me and transformed my sense of worthlessness into something of value. I may not have been a person of worth in the eyes of many, or even in my own eyes, but in God's eyes I was....I was worth redeeming to him....and he spared no expense to make that happen.

In the aftermath of this tidal wave hopelessness was turned to hope, and not just a "hope so" like I thought earlier....but an assured hope. Hope in him, a knowing that he had invaded the deepest parts of me and eradicated the last bastion of hopelessness....his great love for me routed that life taker completely. And how can a man truly live without a real hope, a right hope....how can man truly live without God?

Isolation was replaced with the hunger for fellowship. I now wanted to receive the handshakes, hugs, and smiles I adamantly avoided in the beginning....I wanted to give them too! I wanted to forgive those who hurt me and I wanted to seek forgiveness from those I hurt. I wanted to love again....everyone! I who had become unlovable wanted to love again!! I was amazed at these things....all happening inside me the moment I confessed and believed....I was new instantly....there was no waiting period. When Christ became mine and I became his, everything that made me...me....changed! I left that holy place different than when I entered it. I still didn't know how my life would turn out, but I knew the Author of my life hadn't finished writing my story....there were still many chapters ahead for me. I had an assured hope of a happy ending. I didn't have to be a slave any longer to hurts, addictions, and failures. I was free....truly free!! I found that freedom in Christ and him alone. All because of Jesus....what a wonderful Savior....praise to his glorious name!!!

Bunnies and Eggs

2010-04-02T14:47:00.001-07:00

The season of spring enters our lives in March....on the calendar anyway. But for many, spring isn't officially realized until the "season" of Easter is upon us.....that's in early April for those who may be date challenged. The chains of a cold winter are shaken loose and we walk into the freedom and pleasure of a warmer sun and brighter skies. We transition from hibernating in our caves to stepping outside to enjoy greening grass, budding trees, blooming flowers, and we marvel at a sleeping earth waking up to a newness of life once more.
Easter, as I have observed, is celebrated by the masses much in the same manner as Christmas is celebrated. At least there are parallels. Christmas trees with all their decorated splendor of brightly colored ornaments and flickering lights transition to Easter trees filled with brightly colored eggs, bunnies, and chicks.....and flickering lights. Gifts under the Christmas tree transition to Easter baskets filled with goodies, toys, and often an eclectic special treasure or two. I know of a loving wife who thoughtfully made an Easter basket for her husband that contained a Braun cordless shaver.....among other things....it was the one thing he requested for Christmas and didn't get.
At my house these gift and goodie laden baskets were set at the foot of my children's beds the night before Easter Sunday morning. They would wake up in excitement and anticipation of what the Easter Bunny brought them just in the same way they would wake up Christmas morning to see what Santa Claus brought them. And didn't I relish the bright smiles on their faces and the happiness in their eyes as they tore through those baskets "oohing and awing" at each item discovered....just like Christmas, as I would watch them tear open each gift with the same "oohs and awes".
The music of the holiday transitions from "Here Comes Santa Claus" to "Here Comes Peter Cottontail". The colors of our dress transition from the deep reds and greens of the "Holley and the Ivy" to the light and bright pastels of newly blooming flowers, the colors of spring. Even that classic Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon transitions to an Easter theme entitled "The Easter Beagle". In fact, animated Christmas specials about Santa and Rudolph transition to animated Easter specials about Peter Rabbit.
Easter does have a few frivolous traditions of its own however. I should like to point out two. We don't color eggs at Christmas, nor do we hunt them at Christmas...we do that only at Easter. I remember, as a boy growing up in a pastor's house, sitting at the table with wild-eyed joy as my mom prepared all the colors in the Paas egg coloring kit so me and my siblings could color the eggs for the hunt the following day. Preparing the eggs in many ways was more fun than hunting them ....and what makes it memorable for me today is the laughter, love, and togetherness of it all. My brothers and sister all making a wonderful mess of color at the table having the time of our lives....such memories are priceless....and I treasure them. My older brother and I were always given the honor of hiding the eggs for my two younger siblings. They would stay in the house as we tried our best to position each egg in an impossible to find place....but baby brother and sis found them....maybe with a little help...but they found them. Ah, such wonderful memories!
In a more somber vein, Easter brings with it the same gnawing question Christmas does. To quote that beloved Charlie Brown, disillusioned by the Christmas holiday being so commercialized, he cries out from his anguished heart, "Can someone tell me what Christmas is all about?!". Easter cries out with the same question,"Can someone tell me what Easter is all about?!". A relevant question I think. Like Christmas, Easter has gotten commercialized. Retailers market Easter Sunday attire on their racks well before Valentines Day merchandise has a chance to sell. We hunt for that one unique dress that will set off a flurry of compliments from others who participated in the same hunt. Sometimes I wonder if Easter Sunday worship is more about comparing and contrasting what each is wearing and pridefully answering questions like, "Wherever did you find such a beautiful dress?" or "Your kids (or grand kids) just look adorable in their Easter clothes." Other questions asked at church on Easter Sunday may include,"What are you doing after, going out to eat somewhere special or staying home?" "We're having brunch at such and such, you know those tickets were $50.00 a piece!" "Hello Mr. so and so, haven't seen you here since the Christmas musical."
If the true meaning of Easter were nothing but bunnies and eggs, there wouldn't be a point redeemable in any of it. Easter would be just an excuse to dress up and look our best, provide fun and entertainment for our children, and gather with family members after church for an Easter feast. I am glad Easter is so much more than that.....

"But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die

for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made

right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save

us from God's condemnation. For since our friendship with God

was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies,

we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son." -Rom.5:8-10 NLT

As Linus, that wise old sage and friend of Charlie Browns', quoted from the book of Luke to explain the true meaning of Christmas, here, in the book of Romans...Paul summarizes the true meaning of Easter. Easter has two distinctive parts that make up one miraculous whole. One: Christ died on a cross....that cross was stained with his blood and covered with our sin. Two: Christ rose again from the dead....revealed by an empty tomb and verified by many witnesses who saw and conversed with him after.

In considering these facts, I wonder what it means for us.....here are a few thoughts:

1. God had to take initiative to restore a relationship with us that was broken in the Garden. He sent his Son to dwell among us. God pitched his tent through Jesus smack in the middle of all humanity.

2. This initiative speaks of God's desire for that relationship with us. He spared no expense to close the gap between him and us. Sparing not even his only Son.

3. There is nothing in us that merits his friendship. Paul even says that while we were God's enemies, he provided a means by which we could relate rightly to and with him.

4. It speaks of his deep love for us....in that while we were still sinners (separated from him), Christ died for us..a death we deserved to die...the bible says.

5. Christ became our sin on the cross and suffered God's rejection at the moment he did. No greater love in all of history has ever been demonstrated, nor ever will be.

6. Jesus' victory over death is our assurance of the same victory. We have hope of something so much more than just the ups and downs of this life.

7. Because of his death, burial, and resurrection, temporary life becomes eternal and death no longer carries any finality but ushers in a new beginning.

Standing on my own good deeds is not enough.....even my good deeds are dirty in the sight of a holy God. However, clothed in Christ's blood, that robe of righteousness (Christs' righteousness, not mine), I can stand before this holy God who now has become Father and he sees me as a child, his child. I come to him with nothing to offer that earns me an audience....I come to him with Christ's clothes on and become family. This strips me of my tendency to want to earn my own way, chart my own course. All I can do is receive in faith this wonderful gift. And that is all that is required. In Christ and Christ alone do I find a peace that goes beyond my own understanding.

Easter is a time to rejoice in these things, and Easter is so much more. I write this feeling inadequate to do so. Who am I to expound upon the glories of Gods rich and deep love for us and the grace he demonstrated toward us through his Son? I simply know I have life eternal because of this wonderful God who spared no expense for my redemption. I weep with gratitude and awe that all of this was done for the likes of us.

May you and yours discover the real Easter, the one that goes way beyond bunnies and eggs!

Seasons

2010-03-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

We are just on the threshold of Spring, roughly more than a week into it. The weather in that time ( a little more than a week mind you), has produced everything from a late snow to "sitting on your balcony and smoking pipes, or writing, or both" warmth. The seasons of nature....you gotta love them! They are a quartet of wild and crazy guys...and prove to be very unpredictable.
In my part of the country, sometimes some of the seasons don't show up. Summer all of a sudden changes to Winter. It's blistering hot one day and teeth chattering cold the next and you're scrambling to find that one box in the attic you packed your sweaters and coats in so you won't freeze to death. Unpacking that box wasn't penciled in your Daytimer "To Do" list for at least another two or three weeks. Leaving Fall out of the loop even throws the best laid plans and forecasts out of their proper symmetry.....And furthermore what happened to Fall anyway? Did Fall take the short bus to nowhere? Did he show up twice in another state? Did he forget to set his alarm clock? Maybe Fall went on a bender and was just too hungover to show up...if that's true, I know of some great support groups Fall should attend....
Another thing about these guys....you can't figure them out no matter how much you study them. I had a good friend I was stationed with in the Philippines. He was the commanding officer of the meteorological station there. He invited me to go with him one day to help him and his team launch a series of weather balloons. Along the way he gave me a "Meteorology For Dummies" lesson.....and being the "dummy" I was, I still didn't understand what he was trying to teach me about the purpose of the balloons....but I kept nodding my head with a "yes" motion and saying, "Uh huh" and "I see" as if I did. All I know is that the balloons had these transmitter devices attached to them and some measured wind currents, some measured temperatures, some measured pressures, and others measured moisture in the air, and so on and so forth. All worked together to help the experts forecast future weather patterns for the area.
I only knew one thing about weather in the Philippines, it was either hot and dry, or hot and wet. The findings of this particular launch indicated that the island of Luzon would probably not fall victim to any typhoon activity that particular season. Three weeks later the air base got hammered with one of the worst typhoons in base history and it took about seven weeks to clean up and recover in the aftermath. As I said earlier, you just can't figure these guys out! They almost come off as the mischievous imps and sprites you read about in fairy tales. How they love to confound and confuse!....and these once sharp, talented, analytical, brilliant, scientific meteorologists are broken down to wearing wrap-around white tuxedos and placed in rooms that are padded and have no sharp corners. They are to be pitied and understood, but we can do neither because we're too busy complaining about how "they" got it wrong again. Sometimes I think trying to predict what these guys are gonna do when they show up is nothing more than a crap shoot.
Seasons, they come and go, sometimes they don't show up, and sometimes I think they do what they do just to push our buttons and give us something to talk about around the water cooler at work. They break into our lives with an unpredictability that shatters our otherwise fairly ordered world.....and in the spirit of one of my personal heroes, Forrest Gump, they are like a box of chocolates....you never know what you're going to get....
In life, we go through seasons. In fact, life is nothing but a constant flow of changing seasons. Solomon agrees with that. In Ecclesiastes 3:1 he states, "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven."-NLT Some seasons in life bring rejoicing, laughter, dancing, riches, and joy....other seasons bring grief, death, hardship, poverty, tears, and sadness. All of these seasons work together to make up the whole of our life....the whole of our existence....and these seasons of life, like the seasons of nature, are unpredictable. No matter how much we plan in one season of our life, another season shows up and destroys what we've carefully thought through.
Solomon is touted as being the wisest man who ever lived. Kings and Queens from other nations all over the known world would come and sit at his feet to hear his teaching. Yet, for all his God-given wisdom, he didn't have the ability to forecast life. He knew of its seasons and he knew the God in control of them, but he couldn't tell another how their life would turn out. He could only teach that life would happen and it would happen for a season. He knew that at times life would be easy and light, and he also knew that life would hit hard and with an unforgiving vengeance at other times.
If you have lived for awhile you have already experienced several seasons in your life both good and bad. If you are reading this, you have to this point, survived them. I don't know why but it seems for me the good seasons are shorter than the bad ones. I can only figure the reason is because in the good seasons I have a tendency to forget Who they come from. At times I have taken sole credit for the good seasons in my life as if I had something to do with it, as if in my own "brilliance" I laid an invulnerable plan that got me there, a plan so perfect even God Himself would dare not interrupt it. Perhaps this is one reason our Lord spoke of the difficulty the rich (successful) had in following Him. When it's good for me I have the foolish whim that I created that good. I want to take credit for the blessing that I made for myself. It is not only foolish thinking; it is arrogant and prideful thinking....and we all know the end result of pride.....that's right.....a fall is coming.
Bad seasons are longer for me. They are miserable and at times seem hopeless. A bad season is like living in a pit with no ladders or ropes. When the season of bad came to my doorstep, life hit hard from the blind side and my response was not turning to God, but rather to a bottle of escape. I was knocked in the pit through no desire of mine and was stuck. The only thing worse than being in a pit for a season is being in a pit for a season with a bottle of escape thinking that will help make the pit more comfortable. No matter how many L-shaped couches or Lazy Boy recliners you outfit the pit with....it doesn't stop being a pit.
I lived in a season of alcohol abuse, numb to the fact that there were lessons to be learned while going through a difficult season in my life. School was in session and I was too drunk to show up. The more I drank the deeper the pit. People got hurt, people I dearly love. I lost any sense of self-respect, there was an absence of dignity. I had a self-loathing and even for a season, a death wish I think. No hope for me, no peace, no joy, no dancing, no love, no help, nothing....it was all gone and I felt I no longer deserved those things anymore anyway. The more I despaired, the more I drank....the more I drank, the longer the season of bad. I got to the point that I was convinced I had entered a harsh winter in my life and it was here to stay.
However, when I truly came to the end of me....and you know, that's what we have to do, come to the end of us....before we can move on into the healing God offers. I came to the end of me and found God present. He was with me in the pit....in fact, He never left when I fell into it....He was always there. I take comfort in the fact that the Bible promises God never leaves us nor forsakes us. He is present always whether we feel His presence or not. In that season of bad, that pit....I found Him to be the one constant I could depend on.....he is the only constant in my life when I think about it. Circumstances change, seasons change....some are good, others are difficult; people change...some walk away, others stay; but God never leaves....whether we're up or down! He is in control too. Our seasons never blind side Him like they do us and He always knows what to do. Afterall, He's seen it all before.
I am not saying I now live in a constant state of blissful seasons. I still endure seasons in my life that bring difficulty and tests....I just don't drink over them anymore. I trust my Constant, I can count on Him...and I learn and grow....and I have clear eyes and a clear head....even living through a difficult season. Life happens, life is great at times and life sucks at other times...you can't count on life....however, you can count on God.....He never changes....He is the Constant. This is the reason the Psalmist refers to Him as a rock....He is unmovable....and when typhoons in life hit us....we can go to that Rock for shelter. You won't find that kind of security in a bottle, a needle, or from a conversation with even the best of psychologists...only in Him and Him alone.
Blessings!

That Elusive "High-Life"

2010-03-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

If you, like me, have walked with the Lord for any length of time, you no doubt know firsthand what it is like to revel in His glory. We truly enter into a high-life that compares to nothing else we've known before. It isn't that we enter into a "pie in the sky" life, but into a relationship that is so overwhelming it has the ability to change how we view our world, our problems, and those around us.
And....if you've walked with the Lord for any length of time, you also know what it's like to walk away. I don't know what it is about me but I have a tendency to want to create a "high-life" of my own. Every time I do, I always end up in a place I never intended to be. That place is always worse and I end up getting hurt and hurting others. It is like exchanging the freedom I have in Christ for the chain, muzzle, and leash ensemble of enslavement. My pursuit of a "high-life" of my own making turns me into a low-life every time.
I often wonder why I have a bent toward chains. Christ went through so much, endured so much, and conquered so much for my complete freedom. He wants me to experience the reality of a high-life only He can offer and I still want to create one of my own. Perhaps it's because I lived in chains so long they became habit....sometimes it's easier to deal with what you know than change everything you think about or do. Maybe His freedom just simply scares me. I don't understand it and I certainly don't deserve it. Why is it we humans always feel that the good we receive we have to earn? Maybe I simply tend to shy away from something freely given because the skeptic in me always thinks there's a catch, a fine print, a hook.
There is one thing about me I know. I'm selfish. I want to be in control of my own destiny. From that I think perhaps my leaning toward creating my own "high-life".
Paul addressed this in his letter to the church in Galatia. After coming into Christ's freedom, they were being duped into following the law. So they placed the Christ, who utterly saves, in a cage in order to follow the law that had no power to save at all. Paul, in a word, called this crazy! I identify with the church in Galatia though.....following Christ and walking in his unmerited freedom was less familiar than living out a faith they could control by observing and attempting to keep the law.
If you have never strayed from your beloved freedom in Christ in pursuit of going your own way; if you have never selfishly and foolishly attempted to create your own "high-life", the following is not for you. If you identify with what I am referring to here, then read on.
This is my first stab at rhyme. After reading, you may ask me to never "busta' rhyme" again. I do hope you get the message....I simply thank my God He never leaves or gives up on me, even when I try to put Him in a cage so I may trail off and ultimately fail in creating my own "high-life".

Lion in a Cage

Placed Him in a cage deep within,

Had to walk my own way, live in sin again.

A life of separation, isolation, and despair,

Thinking of the "high-life" being just around the corner, but always there.

I have a Lion in a cage deep inside of me,

Pacing the floor, wants to take control and break free.

Pushing and pressing against the bars,

He weeps over my selfish stupor, wants to overtake and heal my scars.

Now neck deep in the stench of my choices,

The "high-life" is still around the corner, I can hear its voices.

Blind to my situation, in a pit, unaware of my desperation,

Pressing forward to selling myself away,

wrapped in chains never again to see a free day.

I have a Lion in a cage deep inside of me,

Pacing the floor, wants to take control and break free.

Pushing and pressing against the bars,

He weeps over my selfish stupor, wants to overtake and heal my scars.

Captive now to what I hate, never dreamed of such a fate.

A puppet on a string, a slave to everything.

No freedom, no joy, no power,

Losing myself to the "high-life" by the minute, by the hour.

I have a Lion in a cage deep inside of me,

Pacing the floor, wants to take control and break free.

Pushing and pressing against the bars,

He weeps over my selfish stupor, wants to overtake and heal my scars.

Where am I?, Who am I?...wanted life on the high,

Exchanged His truth for a lie and the life around the corner has passed me by.

Stuck in the mud at the bottom of this pit I'm in,

How could I walk away and choose a life of sin again?

I have a Lion in a cage deep inside of me,

Pacing the floor, wants to take control and break free.

Pushing and pressing against the bars,

He weeps over my selfish stupor, wants to overtake and heal my scars.

Gonna set this Lion loose inside of me, free to roam every part,

even into the dark corners of my heart.

Gonna set this Lion loose, from around my neck remove this noose.

Make me the me He wants me to be,

Fill me with His power and roar, to go my own way again nevermore.

I have a Lion in a cage deep inside of me,

Pacing the floor, wants to take control and break free.

Pushing and pressing against the bars,

He weeps over my selfish stupor, wants to overtake and heal my scars.

Well...hope and pray you will choose to live His high-life. It is the only one that's real. Blessings....Richard

A Day in the Sun

2010-03-23T16:57:00.000-07:00

I love spring. It seems the sun shines brighter in spring. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because with spring there is newness of life breathed into the earth. Dead, brown grass begins to wake up after its long winter slumber and becomes green. Maybe the grass thinks the sun shines brighter in spring too...and turning green is its way of saying thank you. Naked trees that lost their clothes of leaves start to bud and new clothes of leaves begin to grow. It must be embarrassing for the trees to be out in front of God and everybody naked all winter. I would be if I had to stand outside all winter naked in front of God and everybody. I wonder if the trees, while their buds are popping through their branches, whisper to the sun and say, "You know, I'd like something in a pastel plaid this season."....or, "Sun, it doesn't matter; outfit me in something new and different! Surprise me!"
Spring is like a "do-over". All the bright and beautiful colors and hues break forth in spring. Most of them carry on through the summer. Nature seems to celebrate the burning warmth of the sun in spring. All the colors that come out is its way of tanning I suppose. I almost envy that because I don't tan well, I just turn a darker shade of white when I attempt tanning. When I tan too long at one time, I go from white to lobster red in a blink. Lobster red is a bad look. My kids tan well. Thank God they got their pigmentation from their mother! Anyway....what was once dead and stripped bare becomes alive with activity and excitement. This resurrection, if you will, in nature affirms the tenacity of life in its fight to overcome death. And overcome it does!
All of humanity comes alive as well. We come out of our homes, condos, and apartments....our cocoons...and take flight in the freedom of warmer days and brighter skies. I don't know of anyone who ever got "cabin fever" in spring. That disease is usually epidemic in the dead and cold of winter. I like to observe how life outside seems to crescendo from us being trapped inside during winter, protected from the cold, sometimes bitterly cold, elements to venturing out on a warmer day to walk, or work in the yard, or play catch with our children, or whatever we do outside. A trickle at first, then days get consistently warmer and longer and more go outside to explore their freedom until it seems no one is inside anymore. That's the beauty of the coming of spring.
Winter on the other hand is just the opposite. It almost seems winter has no heart. It steals away the beauty of changing colors and the Indian summers we enjoy in fall and springs on us with a vengence. It pounces on us like an unseen mountain lion. No matter how we prepare for the harshness of winter, when it comes it is as if we didn't prepare enough. When it hits, it kills everything in sight like a nuclear explosion.
I love snow when its falling. It's beautiful really. I like how it quiets the earth, how it seems to make everything still. But there is an ugly and nasty side to snow that has fallen. We have to plow it away from our sidewalks and driveways so we can maneuver in and through it. We have to clear it from our vehicles so we can travel to work or the local market. Work crews contaminate the roadways with salt and sand in order to melt it away. Snow melts and turns to slush, slush sticks and freezes to our fender wells and builds to the point it rubs against the tires. Regardless of the color of your vehicle, chances are your vehicle endures a layer of brown, salty yuck throughout significant periods of winters' grip.
I survived a blizzard this past season. Drifts as high as the eaves of the roofs of my apartment complex in some places. We were all trapped in our caves for days in the aftermath. Thank God I went to the grocery store just before the onslaught of the storm. That's how winter can be...unpredictable, relentless, vicious, and well....heartless. No respecter of persons or landscape this sometimes wicked and cruel season is.
The contrast of these seasons help me to reflect on my journey in life. I lived a harsh winter when I was in the grip of alcohol abuse. Those were dark, cold nights that went on forever. They were unpredictable...sometimes I would have a few belts and be done, sometimes I got hit with a blizzard of one after another....waking up the next morning wondering what happened the night before and questioning who I hurt during the white-out. There were many I hurt while enduring that season of winter in my life. Those who wanted to help were pushed away. I wanted to be left alone in my cocoon with my bottle....hibernating away from the world around me.....and I felt alone. Nobody really cared, nobody understood.....I floated in an icy river of self-pity and shame. I felt winter had come to stay. I felt I would die in its grip and I felt I deserved nothing more than death. My winter, the hell and cruelty of it, was that there would never ever be any spring and I would never spend a day in the warmth of the sun again. I was buried under an avalanche of hopelessness.
But I didn't die. And while I hurt many, there were still those who never left, never quit believing, and never stopped praying that my winter would turn to spring. At my ugliest, they held on in faith that the God, who they knew was bigger than my drinking affliction, could and would melt away winters' choke hold on my life and resurrect me to a newness of life found only in spring. That transition came through a series of incidents both negative and positive. Painful this transition. Spring didn't suddenly appear for me like it does in the part of the country I live. Where I live it seems there's winter snow on the ground one day and the blooms of spring the next day. Spring comes suddenly here....but not for me. Spring came slowly, in spurts, but it built steam and force with each little burst.
The hardest part was coming to terms with my responsibility for my own winter, admitting I created it and admitting it was my choice to live there. I had spent so much time blaming others and life circumstances for the winter in my life it took awhile for me to realize it was all me, and only me. I think many like me do the same. Who truly thinks it natural to take sole responsibility for the darkness of their self-inflicted winter? That first confession though started the process of spring overcoming my winter. Little by little color started replacing the brown, greys, and blackness in my life. The sun started shining brighter and clouds gave way to bluer skies. A step at a time, a day at a time. With each step and each day came more color. Shame started to give way to respect. Dying fell to the will to live. Hopelessness surrendered to a calm assurance that tomorrow would be different and worth living. Isolation died at the hands of needing others and wanting others around.....until finally I was able to step completely out and enjoy a full day in the life-giving warmth of a spring sun.
"Is it always spring?",you may ask. It isn't. I still fight to keep winter at bay. The difference is I choose to fight and I am doing what I need to make sure I am equipped to fight successfully. Those I hurt during my season of winter? Some have forgiven me completely, some haven't at all, and some sit watching to see if winter will return or if I will live consistently in spring. Regardless, I love them all. For now I will bask in the sun and revel in the colors God has brought back to my life. One aside, I think I enjoy this season of spring, this do-over in my life, after having fought for it and after having taken ownership of the winter I made for myself.
If your season is winter, regardless your addiction, affliction, habit, issue, or hurt....there is a spring for you ahead. It really is your choice what season you live in. Living in a season of spring is so much more satisfying. There are those who haven't left. Even if you feel alone, you're not. Take the "do-over" waiting for you and come with me for a full day in the sun of springtime!

Living a Less Than Life

2010-03-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

I recently viewed a movie about a man who traveled the country holding seminars on grief and the grief process. He helped other people navigate through their grief positively and successfully. His seminars developed on the heels of a book he'd written based on the subject. It was a national best seller. He was a popular author and much in demand. He wrote the book from his own experiences as a result of losing his wife in a fatal car accident.
I bought this movie for $9.99 plus tax. I thought it was going to be a romantic comedy. After all Jennifer Aniston starred in it. She doesn't do anything but comedy and the television show Friends right? I was expecting witty dialogue that made you laugh out loud, comedic tension between the two main characters (hereafter, Burke and Eloise), and the effect on others their relationship impacted. I was expecting to see myself in the movie....mostly due to the fact that some of my romances from the past played like comedies....or rather I should say, played like tragic comedies. Initially I simply thought my better half would enjoy it....I'm more an action movie guy myself....so I got the movie.
The plot was much more dramatic than comedic, much to my surprise and initial disappointment. I immediately apologized to my significant other and offered an optional viewing of Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween. She declined that option....still trying to figure out why.
The subject I thought was handled with gentleness and dignity. I mean it was about grieving the loss of a loved one. Not exactly a topic to make a romantic comedy of. The twist came when we realized that Burke, doing all these grief recovery seminars, was also still grieving his loss because he lied about one small detail of the incident. In his book and testimony in the seminars he shares that his wife was alone in the car and lost control when she tried to avoid hitting a dog standing in the middle of the road. The car slammed into a tree on the drivers' side killing her instantly. In actuality, he was driving the car, and it slammed into the tree on the passenger side. For years he blamed himself for her death. The irony was, while he was helping others heal, he hadn't experienced any healing for himself....he hadn't moved one step beyond the battered car and the broken body of his wife....due to the denial of this one specific fact. From that point forward he covered it up, lied about it, wrote a book about grief, went on a book tour, then a seminar tour and still carried that spec of denial with him. It haunted him like a spectre. And all his success couldn't fix him.
Denial is debilitating, it paralyzes....keeps us from moving forward, keeps us from coming clean. It keeps us stuck....in a rut.....of living a life we were never intended to live. It sticks us with a "less than life". Denial tells us what we want to hear and shields us from reality. I drank alcohol; denial told me I didn't have an alcohol problem....that I was fine, that I could hold my licquor, that nobody could even tell I was drinking when I did. Even when I lost jobs, relationships, respect, and driving privileges.... denial kept telling me I didn't have a drinking problem. I believed that. It was easier to believe I didn't have a drinking problem than it was to face it and fight it. Facing and fighting just seemed too strenuous and exhausting. I was stuck in a "less than life" and even denied that!
When my world shattered it was everyone's fault but my own. Denial, you see, will lull you into thinking your problems are because of someone else or something else. Denial is an expert at conning you into placing the responsibility for your issues, addictions, and faults on circumstances or people. "If it weren't for the promotion I didn't get...", "if my wife hadn't left me....".......these are the kinds of things denial teaches us to say. And we stay stuck in that "less than life".
I didn't want to live a "less than life". I hated living at that address. In the deepest part of me I knew the truth, I just didn't want anyone else to. My problem was a shameful one. I was ashamed every time I drank to drunkeness. I buried that shame and kept on drinking. I was afraid of coming clean, of confessing my problem. I just wanted to keep it to myself. I did this mostly because I feared what everyone else would think of me. It was like I was living two separate lives or something. The fact is everyone around me already knew. Isn't that a pip? They already knew! My children knew, my parents knew, my siblings knew, my co-workers knew, my friends knew, and even people I went to church with knew. I was the only one who didn't think anyone else knew. Denial is a very strong deceiver.
Denial went out of its way to keep me from coming clean...convinced me that coming clean would be much harder than drinking. Denial also lies. After a horrible incident with one of my children, happened when I was drunk of course, and with strong encouragement from my best friend, I came clean. I admitted my problem, that I needed help. In that confession the weight of the world fell from my shoulders. We make confession out to be the bad guy. You know, like when we confess something we've done that isn't positive; we think everyone is gonna walk out of our lives and we will be alone to face the music of our mistakes. I am finding most people walk away from us when we deny our problem and continue to live at the address of a "less than life." They walk away because they are exhausted from trying to show us and help us through the problem we swear we don't have. When I confessed my problem and started getting help, God surrounded me with a host of people, angels, that brought encouragement and friendship. They drove the U-Haul to my address of a "less than life" and helped me pack up and move to the right side of the tracks.....to the address of "the life God intended me to live". I like living there. The sky is bluer, the air is fresher, and the lawn is greener. It isn't always utopia, but it is living in the Land of Oz compared to that "less than life".
"What about Burke in the movie?", you ask. "What happened to him?" Well, he met a girl, Eloise. She had a way of making him look at his reality of denial, of seeing into the parts of him he made unavailable and that were dark.....and she stayed, like true friends do, as he struggled to come clean. He did, publicly, at one of his seminars. It was his beginning in freedom. He kisses the girl at the end...... coming clean you see, sets you free to move forward with your life...and you get to kiss the girl. Happy endings always make me cry!
We have choices, we always have choices in life. If you are in denial and deep inside you know it, as I did....come clean....it will free you to see your tomorrows differently and you'll be amazed to find that many in your world are praying to come alongside you and help you move to the right side of the tracks to "the life God intended you to live."

You've Got a Friend

2010-03-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

"There are "friends" who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother." -Proverbs 18:24 NLT

I have always been a huge follower of James Taylor. To this day I still get lost in all of the work he recorded decades ago. In 1971 he released an album,..... (yes....they were actual albums (vinyl) back then, real discs, huge discs requiring a turntable to play)....., entitled Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon. It was the first James Taylor album I ever purchased. On that album was the song, You've Got a Friend. It swept the nation. A simple melody with endearing lyrics and sung in Taylor's laid back, easy-going, unforgettable style. You felt he was actually singing the song to you and if you had trouble and his phone number, you could call him up and he'd be right over!
I was in the 7th or 8th grade when that song released. I was also discovering and developing a singing style of my own. I loved that song and wanted to sing it so badly....but I wanted more importantly my voice to sound like James Taylor when I did. Sadly, my young voice was probably at least 2 octaves higher and I would have sounded more like Carole King, who actually wrote the song, than James Taylor. I didn't want to sound like Carole King singing, so I never sang You've Got a Friend....ever....well, maybe in the shower or my car, but never in front of an audience.
I think about what that song says and it actually reflects the central meaning of Proverbs 18:24... ..."There is a friend that sticks closer than a brother". The first part of 18:24 speaks of so called "friends" who dawn the mask of pretense. They appear to be "friends" but really aren't at all. When the party is on they are there with their arms around you, especially if you're the one buying. Such "friends" usually seek to take what they can get from you, not what they can do for you. Their pretentious masks are deceiving. They prey on the knowledge that as humans we all want and desire friendship, it truly is one of our basic needs. They will do what they can to take advantage of that before they are found out. They lull us to the point of complete trust and after we are spent, and there's nothing left to give, they disappear under the cover of night and we don't even know they're gone until the sun rises.
I look at the last part of 18:24, the main thought of the verse, and ask," How does one determine the false friend from the true friend?" My only answer is this: real friends can be discovered by how they respond when our circumstances are less than positive. When my world is caving in, falling apart, shattered, when all hell is breaking loose in my life.....real friends show up, they stand with me, sit with me, pick me up when I've fallen, clean me up when I'm dirty. They feed me if I'm hungry, pour in the oil and the wine of healing when I'm sick, encourage me when I'm so depressed the only thing I look forward to is death. Regardless of how adverse the circumstances in my life or how ugly my life has become, real friends stay...they don't run away....they stay.
My best friend, (I will call The One Who Should Have Always Been) has been with me when my circumstances were dismal, hopeless.... she has seen loved ones and others walk out of my life because of the ugliness of it....and yet has stayed. At my very worst and lowest, The One Who Should Have Always Been has done nothing but love without the expectation of anything in return. She believed in me when no one else would, when no one else could. She poured her life into mine when it seemed I had no life at all. She looked beneath that turbulent layer of my life and saw a heart that beat for God....just like God! That's what best friends do....they see beyond the crap and focus on the real in your life, the good in your life, and they stay! She has become my significant other, a rock, a shelter where I can run and find acceptance, peace, and rest. Forever grateful to a merciful God I am for her!
I am also re-discovering friends from days gone by. I am remembering the bond then and finding that bond is still as strong today. Decades have passed and it amazes me how you can just pick up where you left off with a true friend. I know now that it has to be a God thing. I am facing uncertainty because of a layoff from work in February. About that same time I started re-connecting with these old friends....they were coming at me out of nowhere on facebook and I wondered why. It strangely makes sense in one way.....at the point where I was in need of a word of encouragement, where I needed significant someones to stand with me, pray for me, hold me up....God started bringing them in. It was like he was sending angels to minister to me. These are friends who, if I called, would come running...... just like James Taylor...if I had his phone number.
The sidebar here is I have been less consumed with and grinding my teeth to powder over finding a job. The encouragement I have received from these significant others has made me realize I don't go it alone. They are there walking with me and they will see to it I come through. That's what true friends do, they get you through. I am discovering how rich I truly am. I am grateful. I have true friends, real friends, and there are a host of them.
To all my true friends, old and new, thank you for selflessly pouring your life into mine, for making a bumpy trail smooth, for making me laugh when it would be so easy to cry, for pushing me forward when it would be so easy to quit. Thank you for believing in me! Thank you for not giving up on me!! May God find me as faithful a friend to you as you have been and continue to be to me. To you all, I love you!

Getting Stuck in Dreams

2010-03-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

I am a writer. At least I think I am. This blog is where I have an opportunity to express myself about the things I'm passionate for. I think I am a writer because I love to write,(good or bad, if it's written...the person writing it is a writer). However, sometimes when I look back on some of the articles here, I see nothing but crap...."Who would want to read this?", I ask myself. "What end of the crack pipe were you smoking Skaggs when you typed that jewel?!" I have been told my random thinking is a plus in the expression of what concerns me. Sometimes my randomness is too random even for me...it's those crap articles I delete so some poor soul won't have to endure a bad read and waste 10 minutes of his life......I mean, taking a trip on LSD and seeing a purple rabbit riding a unicycle through a maze of rainbow colored mushrooms makes more since than some of the fiasco ramblings I've posted here!! Nonetheless, I'm a writer!
One of my fav authors, Donald Miller, talks about being a writer. He makes the point that a writer doesn't have to experience anything in real life in order to write a story. A writer can create a story in his or her head and pen it without actually experiencing what he or she is writing about. Why? Because writers, for the most part, are dreamers and anything dreamed of can be written about. How well it's written determines whether there will be a paycheck for the effort.
I am a dreamer. I have always been a dreamer. I can create all kinds of worlds in my head. Oddly, I've never written about any of them. I've just dreamed them. Nothing wrong with dreaming in and of itself. Dreams are often the springboard toward achieving greatness. Would we be able to fly across the entire world to any point of destination imaginable had Orville and Wilbur Wright not dreamed of flight to start with? Would we still burn candles today had Edison not dreamed of light made through the channel of electricity? Would we enjoy the comfort of staying warm and covered up while still being able to handle the remote control or drink a can of Coke had that guy not thought of a blanket with arms?.....hence the Snuggie. Personally, I've dreamed of creating a breathable trashbag so every time you throw trash in, you don't have to bleed the air out that collects between the bag and the can....or does such a trashbag already exist? Dreams can be good and positive and can end in beneficial realities. The advancements in technology, medicine, transportation, and the better quality of life we enjoy today all started with a dream.
The dark side is that dreams can be debilitating in that they can keep us from engaging in the real life God created around us to live. Living life to the fullest means for me to be actively involved in and aware of what is going on in my world. Circumstances, whether they are positive or less than positive, keep us alive, moving,...in action. These real life circumstances keep us from becoming stagnant and placid. Navigating successfully and courageously through the circumstances of life is, in part, what puts the exclamation point on living.
Sometimes the dreamer gets stuck in the dream and never moves out of it. I know from personal experience what it is like to get stuck in a dream. Getting stuck and staying there becomes an escape in dealing with reality. Life is tough and the world is cruel. Living in a dream where there is always a happy ending is so much more attractive than dealing with the harsh reality of a less than mediocre life. I thought I had a less than mediocre life..... so I dreamed up worlds where I was always the hero, the man most respected, most successful, most loved, most likely to win an Oscar and I'm not even a professional actor. I am more of what you might call a character. Some would say I'm just a mess.
Eventually being stuck in dreams led to being stuck in a bottle. Dreaming wasn't enough to escape my less than mediocre life....I needed the aid of numbing alcohol to keep my dreams in my head and keep them my realities. I disengaged from real life and with the help of alcohol, watched the loftiest of my dreams become nightmares. Circumstances were never positive, always negative. It took a long time for me to realize that these circumstances were mostly created by my own hand and the more I drank the worse the circumstances. I lost much, the most tragic of which were relationships to those I loved most. Boy! Was I ever stuck!
My turnaround came when I simply had no one but God to turn to and nowhere to look but up. In the lowest part of my ditch and in the middle of my worst nightmare, God through a significant other said, "Richard, you matter to me. I died for you. I want you to live not a less than mediocre life but an extraordinary one. Wake up! Engage in real life and live! Engage in the life I designed for you!"
Today I'm still a dreamer but I am living life also. If I dream of feeding the hungry around the world, my reality says I can go to the local soup kitchen and actually serve the hungry. This is, in a small way, what I mean by being a part of the bigger solution to feeding the hungry around the world. This is plugging in to the world around me and truly living. When I am involved in the reality around me and partaking of my role in it rather than escaping in some lofty dream....I truly am alive. This kind of life keeps me from imploding and drowning in a bottle.
Many today are stuck in dreams (nightmares) and drowning in a bottle or drugs or depression or whatever affliction. They are not living the extraordinary life God designed for them. They need help, love, understanding, a word of encouragement, a push to move them to real living. They need people like you and I.
I don't know how it is with you.....but like a phrase from one of my favorite songs says...."I wanna spend the rest of my life alive!"

Angels and Demons

2010-03-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

I usually write with some humor mixed in to make the topic lighter, this topic is not funny. Pray for those afflicted and help those crying out:

It is a truth that most of us have issues of one kind or another. Some of those issues are not major and we go on with life fairly happily and content in spite of them because they aren't debilitating. Other issues we have may be monstrous afflictions that cause life to come to a screeching halt for a time until some recovery and peace can be accomplished. These I would call demons that beset us and several of us have them. For those that say they have no issues or demons at all, I would suggest they, at very least, suffer from the issue of denial. For those to admit to have them is to also admit the need for help.....when the honest admission for help is acknowledged, true recovery and healing can begin. I would say just about every human on the planet deals with an issue or demon in one form or another whether it is an issue of a loose tongue and gossip or the demon of drug addiction.
I believe most of us want to be whole and healthy. We want to live productive and successful lives. We want purpose, love, joy, happiness, fulfilling relationships, and peace within ourselves and with others. I have yet to meet a person who confessed they started out in life to become a failure and outcast...that this was their goal and ambition from the beginning. Most of us have lofty dreams....some of us achieve them and some of us don't. Some of us just get by, we just go through life and our insides yearn of something more.
One demon in particular afflicts millions of people around the world. A demon I am personally well acquainted with. This demon is alcohol. He, once in his grip, will steal your integrity, your honesty, your sense of humor, your laughter, your hope, your ambition, your friends, your finances, your family, and your health, to name a few. He will eventually steal your life if he can. He will convince you he can help you cope when life situations are harsh, and he will convince you that he will help the celebration be livelier when life situations are happy and achievements are made. He lies, he always lies. All he does is take and he leaves us empty and alone. We become embarrassments to our spouses, our children, our families, our friends. We are ashamed because of his grip on our lives and we become a shame to those around us. We feel misunderstood and incapable of seeing our lives as anything different than it has become. We lose jobs, marriages, houses, and some of us become acquainted with the inside of a jail cell. This demon is cruel, ruthless, and seeks only to destroy our lives and the ones we love. The road to forgiveness and restoration of relationships with those we've hurt is a long, rocky trail with many winding turns. Sadly, some of those relationships are never restored no matter how badly we want them to be....but....the story doesn't end here.
No matter how far the fall from grace with people, we never fall from the grace of God. He loves us no matter what we do. I heard a definition of God's grace once and it stuck: " There's nothing you can do to make God love you more and there's nothing you can do to make God love you less....He just loves you, He can't help Himself." That should give us afflicted ones hope. In His grace He strategically places angels in our lives who reach out to help us when we are at the lowest points in our lives, in our deepest ditch. They may be family members who never stop believing in us, who won't let go, who see the real "us" deep within the turbulence we have created for ourselves. They may be faithful wives or husbands who stand with us even when the storm is blowing hardest and all hell is breaking loose. Perhaps a pastor or a friend, who when all the other friends have left...stays..... and pours in the oil and the wine of encouragement. It could be the testimony of a fellow struggler who is winning the fight and moving on to achieving the lofty dreams he or she dreamed as a child.
For me it was my best friend who told me she wouldn't leave me, she wouldn't give up on me no matter if everyone in my life did....Someone understood me and accepted me and loved me right where I was. It was freeing. With the power of just a few words of encouragement, I knew tomorrow was going to be different. My tomorrow's have been different since. I got my hope back, my vision back. I knew God wasn't finished with me, His plan for me hadn't been ruin by the attack of this monster on my life. If He would flood such hope in me, He will do the same for my fellow strugglers'. His plan is simple: He wants us to overcome every day, He wants us to win every day. Why can we do that? Because He has overcome the world and all that is in it. I in faith stand on that one day at a time!
To those who read and are acquainted with this demon, I pray you find encouragement in this article, I pray that perhaps God can use this to flood your life with hope and vision. I love you that struggle in a very heartfelt way....because I too struggle....don't give up the fight. I stand with you, along side you....always.

I Can't Figure God

2010-02-10T01:56:00.000-08:00

People who have God all figured out scare me. I have been around many of them and the truth is when they tell me about Him, He seems so small after their description. I have trouble serving and bending a knee in worship to their description of God. I don't know what's wrong with me. Most bible believing Christians have God all figured out....I don't. Maybe I took the short bus to discipleship class...I don't know. He is such a mystery to me, He confuses me sometimes. I get frustrated that I don't have all the answers to the questions that some ask me about Him. I look stupid and that makes me mad at Him.
I was reading about Jonah recently and I feel his pain. He was called by God to go preach to the Ninevites. They were a bad lot, about 120,000 of them, and Jonah likened them to the riff raff you would possibly find in a biker bar. To him they were worthless. When he got the call, he ran the other direction. He didn't feel they deserved a message of repentance. I wonder how many times I have looked on someone and said to myself, "You made your bed, now lie in it!" Jonah, I guess, felt kind of the same way about the city of Nineveh. They weren't worth saving, they deserved judgment, they deserved to die and go to hell.
He ran..... God prepared a big fish to have him for lunch.... he was in the fishes belly for 3 days.... he repentented.... went to Nineveh.... preached the message of repentance.... they repented...wow! And he went away pissed because they repentented. Even when angry at God, God took care of him...and I ask why? Shouldn't God have said to Jonah, "You made your bed, now lie in it?" ...then left him to himself?....but that wouldn't be God, huh.
Here's where I don't figure God. He knew....because He knows everything, even before it happens...that Jonah was gonna do all he did, yet he chose Jonah to go do the preaching anyway. Why couldn't He have chosen someone else more compliant, more willing, someone less likely to give argument? I don't get God here....He had other prophets running around that could speak as well as Jonah. They could have done the job and God wouldn't have had to conjure up some big fish as a lesson teacher.
To me those 4 chapters in the Old Testament aren't so much about Jonah as they are about God. I learn that God is hard-headed, yes, that's right....I said it....God is hard-headed. He calls and then doesn't back down. He has already counted the cost too...when He calls, He calls...end of story. So many that totally know Him tell me that God puts those on a shelf who don't do His will.....really? Maybe He just delays their productivity until they go to enough support groups to be in the game again. Jonah did what he did and God still used him for His purposes....He never let go of Jonah. He took, in fact, extreme measures and actions to ensure Jonah fulfilled His call. That gives me hope because I am one of the "called". Haven't felt too much in the game lately but He hasn't quit on me either...because He's hard-headed.....as we have biblically proven...(smirk).
I also learn from these 4 chapters in the Old Testament that no matter how hard I study the 66 books of the bible...no matter how much scripture I can quote....no matter how well I can teach and preach it....I will never fully figure God. There is a part, huge part, of His person I will never fully understand, at least, not in this life. His greatness is beyond my comprehension. Sometimes I have to just throw my hands up and say,"OK, You're being You, I'm not You, so be You and show me where I fit in."
I think the people who personally know and have God figured out are people who also like to have control. Jonah teaches me that I am not in control...He is. He always is in control, even when I think I am. He remains a mystery to me. And yet...that is one of the biggest reasons I worship Him. If I had Him figured out like one of my friends, why would I bend a knee to Him in submission and worship. I don't have a friend yet that I would worship!....although there are a few of them that want me to.
I NEED to worship One who is beyond my strength, my intellect, my will, my circumstances....I bend my knee to Him because He is beyond my little world....and in control of my little world...and worshipping Him gives me hope....and I need hope to live. He uses me....even when I don't think He is....and like Jonah, I get mad when He uses me and I don't want Him to....He uses me anyway.... I need a God like that...who sees beyond me and achieves His purposes...and I have one...and He is the only one...and I'm grateful

The Emptiness of Loss

2010-01-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

My life has been a combination of wins and losses. Maybe that isn't how most view life but I do. Perhaps the reason is because I have had so many of both. The wins have been sweet, as most wins are; the losses have been bitter, painful, and unforgettable. I might have said the wins have been unforgettable too, but the truth is, I am the only one who remembers the wins in my life. Most people may celebrate a win with you but they quickly forget them. They are too busy remembering the wins in their own lives....because they are the only ones who do. They are the only ones who can keep their wins alive.
Losses however are different. They are unforgettable because in many ways, they affect the lives of other people. The innocent become recipients of pain they didn't ask for or deserve. In my case: lost jobs, DUI's, failed marriages, loss of reputation, of dignity, of self-esteem, estrangements from people close and dear to me. By God's grace, some of those relationships are healing; some of them are gone forever. The only thing I can do is pray healing can continue and will take its course. I see the highway of my life littered with losses.....funny how the wins pale in comparison. That to me is why losses are different.
The biggest result is the emptiness loss creates. It's like walking around with a hole in your heart all the time. The regret only makes the hole seem larger. Nothing it seems can fill it. It's an emptiness that goes beyond empty. This emptiness is accompanied by deep sadness and many tears. The worst....is the hopeless feeling that no one else can possibly understand the pain.....you feel totally alone, all alone. You desperately desire to be understood but being misunderstood is your only reality. Charcoals and greys and blacks are the only colors to your life. Rainbows of color bursting through in your life aren't even imagined, you can't wrap your mind around that possibility. What a sad, bleak existence. And many in this world live in that world every day.
Some losses are temporary. Loss of finances can eventually be turned around. The loss of a state championship game is replaced by the hope of a winning season the coming fall. A lost job can be replaced with a new, more exciting, and higher paying one. Other losses, on the other hand, are longer lasting. In the area of love for instance, when a boy meets the one who should have always been....and because of fear pushes her away and loses her, or circumstances keep them apart.....that loss is difficult to walk through. It is a loss that stays with you for a long time, perhaps forever. Regardless, losses affect all involved.
But I can't end this article on such a dark note. Losses bring something else to light. They bring out the tenacious spirit that God put in us all. Losses given to God do and will make us stronger people. They help us plan ahead more intelligently, if lessons are learned. I am not satisfied with staying down when I fall. There is something deep within me that keeps me hoping that the day ahead will be better than the current one. I fight, I always fight...I won't lie down and die, I can't. This spirit of a fighter is what carries me into tomorrow, and His hope within me keeps me moving. He knows my heart...... perfectly. When others around me see failure, He doesn't give up or in. He is crazy about me and wants me to overcome in and through Him. I must admit, at times I simply make a faith statement of overcoming because I'm not sure I can do it......but I continue to hope in Him. You know, sometimes there is nowhere else to go.....and that often is the best place to be....nowhere to go but to Him.
Romans 8:28, a familiar verse to us all...... "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them." -NLT. I have to take that verse on faith most of the time, because I don't believe it sometimes, and certainly don't live it. Yet.... I look at my life and see that verse portrayed again and again. I am grateful, even when I don't always see Him working, He is.....in my life....working....always. He is working in yours as well. Wins or losses.....He works to give a future and a hope.
My prayer is that you can look at my hurts, hang-ups, and habits.....and see hope....It is there...always.

I'm No Superman

2009-12-26T06:51:00.000-08:00

One of my earliest childhood memories is me in a Superman suit "flying around" saving damsels in distress and the world from impending destruction. I think I may have been around four or five. I may have been twenty-five because I've had so many tell me I never grew up...that may be true....Anyway, I loved pretending to be the "big guy"! And only one who could save the day better than him was me.
To this day I love Superman and wish I had just a touch of his invulnerability. Because the "S" on his chest is also the beginning letter of my last name, I always thought of him as a relative from a distant planet. Believe me if you met some of my relatives you would think they came from a distant planet or two!....so Superman wouldn't be any different....just more sane. I'm sure some of my relatives would fall into the bizarro category.
Superman is the ultimate superhero. Always fighting for truth, justice, and the American way (that's because his rocket ship landed in America, if it landed in say...Korea, would he fight for the Korean way?....just asking). Everything he does is right and with just cause. His motivation is without prejudice, and it isn't tainted by selfish gain. His first thought is others....their well being, their safety, their quality of life. There are no grey areas in his thinking when it comes to decerning right from wrong. I always wondered how he pulled that off. Maybe his thinking is as invulnerable as his strength.
He is a figure that is recognized the world over. A super-icon if you will. And what he represents is known the world over as well. Superman is the ultimate perfect man in a totally imperfect world. The world needs a man like that, a superman if you will.
At age 6, after I jumped off a chicken barn in Arkansas thinking I could fly like Superman, I fell head first into a cow patty below.....at that point, I began to re-think growing up and becoming the next Superman. I discovered, and painfully so, that I couldn't defy gravity. Reality is this.....if you jump off the roof of a chicken barn in Arkansas, the only direction you go is down....all the way to the ground....and that could cover you in cow crap. So with that reality, I also discovered that I wasn't invulnerable...if you cut me with a knife I bleed.
As an adult I know first hand that I am flawed. Invulnerability is not a word you could use to describe me at all. I have so many grey areas in my thinking and lifestyle it is difficult to see any color. I am weak, frail, and proned to stumble when I try to walk the straight and narrow. Sometimes my world crumbles and I crumble with it. I know I can't do life on my own. I need something to give me hope, to keep pressing on, to get up when I fall, to rebuild my world when it falls apart.
Left to myself, I make bad decisions, I rebel against the rules, I go my own way and fall away from the path that brings life. What is it I need? Superman draws his strength from the yellow sun. If he is exposed to his only weakness, kryptonite; all he has to do is fly toward the sun and his strength returns. All I ever got from the sun was a sunburn, so I know that won't work for me.
I need something in my life that doesn't condemn me when I fail. Something that whispers encouragement to get up and keep going when I fall. Something that spares me from what I truly deserve and perhaps lavishes on me what I don't deserve. I know what that something is.....it's called grace. I need grace. All imperfect people need grace. It is the only way as I see it, to get by, to keep going. It is the thing that keeps me from throwing in the towel when I want to quit, when I want to scream,"I'm done!"
The purest grace, the only grace worth experiencing comes from just one source: God. He sent His son, only son, to do for us what we could not ever attempt to do for ourselves....forgive our sin and allow us entrance into the presence of God. It took a divine grace to accomplish that. For God to look on his rebellious creation and love them anyway and then go out of his way to restore relationship with them is grace, it is all of grace. Him giving us what we don't deserve and sparing us from what we do.
I'm no superman. I'm just a guy that tries to get through each day with some sense of purpose and accomplish what I believe I need to do. His grace in me allows for the possibility of doing that. If I stumble, His grace encourages me to keep going. If I succeed, it is because of His grace. It is all Him and none of me. I kind of like it like that....takes the pressure off a little bit.
I pray that this grace I have experienced will spill out of me and onto others around me. I am selfish so I have to be aware of others. But there are others around me who haven't experienced the grace of God I have. They need to know. They need to be shown. The best way for them to discover God's grace for them is to see it demonstrated in me.
How about you? Not feeling like superman? No worries. God has provided something for us normal humans to get by.....His grace. Experienced it? Demonstrated it? Given it away? The only ones who can spread it around are the ones who've got it. Start sharing.....

Hold Me Jesus

2009-11-09T04:01:00.001-08:00

I have always been one resistant to following a checklist of rules. I don't like others telling me how to live my life......(I think the reason I don't like others telling me how to live my life is because most who "help" me could use a little help themselves.) I haven't always gone the way of the crowd and there have been times I have paid dearly for it. There have also been times when going the other way has paid off handsomely. I am not talking money (like most do), but I'm talking about keeping the "me" God created in tact. There are myriad of victories and defeats logged on the pages of my life. Some of them I understand and some I won't ever understand this side of Heaven. But they are there and they have all contributed to making me the "me" I am.

I am not terminally unique though...many reading this can say the same of themselves. I think what I am talking about here is learning to live life in a state of surrender. And I hate the word surrender. Makes me feel I am giving in; conceding to something less than I thought I would live. Makes me feel I am trying to live up to someone else's ideal of how I should live, (God help the poor soul who vocally "helps" me with my life)......and I rebel.

There are probably some in my world who look at me as a bit of a black sheep. "Every family has one", they think. Maybe they are right. Nonetheless, I am here and I am resistant to change and I still hate the word surrender. What is God to do?! Do I make Him so mad His hair hurts?! Am I one step away from being zapped into infinity? Is God looking to "do me in"? I don't think so. Here's why:

I live a life in a transparent bubble...at least as far as God is concerned. The bubble keeps me from ever hiding from God. He sees me perfectly, He knows me perfectly, He acts perfectly in my life. He knows my thoughts before I think them. He knows what I am going to do before I do it. He knows the results after the fact. This really makes resistance futile with God. But still, I do play games with Him like I play games with everyone else.....kind of dumb when you think about it. I should have been a masquerade king. Never been to one of those parties; but could have fit in easily. I can change masks at the snap of a finger. I promise you....no one could ever figure who I am. I am a master at wearing masks. Guess I never have done those parties because for me, they seem boring. .... I have a short attention span and on top of that, it is all about me. I am sure no one else is cursed with that.....you know, being all about you.

With all the mask wearing and all the effort to cover up...I get lost in me and I get lost with others. Sadly, I get lost with God. The last thing I want to do is get lost with God and with those who care about me. But I still have this tendency to isolate and hide from everyone. A surrendered lifestyle is offensive to me. I want to be in control, I want to call my own shots. Yet I know when I allow Him to call the shots, He knows best and all works for the best. So why do I resist so much? Because I am a fighter. Life has trained me to be so and yet; He wants me to surrender. His plan is perfect and giving myself to that is the least path of resistance, but yet, I fight. Hard to let go of control even when you know you are guiding a sinking ship.

How has He dealt with me? With love and patience. I think of my daughter when she was an infant. She had colic. Never understood colic just knew the result. I would hold her in my arms as she writhed in pain and cried and screamed in pain. Tears would roll down my face because I wished it was me in pain and not her.....yet, I held her and that is all I could do.

When I get resistant to God, He does the same.....He holds me as I writhe against the pain I am feeling...even though I don't understand it. I realize He does. That's why He continues to hold me, patiently and lovingly. And I kick and scream and He holds me tight. He understands when no one else could. He doesn't give up when others would.....He just holds me....and I am grateful. What a mess I would truly be if God ever stopped holding me.

Perhaps you feel the same....you are resistant to change, you are a rebel, you don't like others telling you how to live your life....you hate the word: surrender. Let me assure you....He holds you, even when you writhe and wiggle to get loose of His grasp. He never lets go. You are precious to Him, and at your worst.....He holds on tighter.

So "hold me Jesus cause I'm shaking like a leaf....You have been King of my Glory, won't you be my Prince of Peace". (words borrowed from Rich Mullins' Hold Me Jesus)

Loving Brilliantly

2009-11-02T17:04:00.001-08:00

I have always loved to color. Something about a book with outlines and a box of 64, or 120, or 9,000 crayons to choose from to make that special picture....priceless!!! OK, I lied about the 9,000 crayons...I don't think Wal-Mart carries those; maybe they don't exist. I am not sure, haven't colored in awhile. But I did color...when I was younger, and I loved it. And younger was like last year or something. Did I tell you I was 51? OK, so for a guy like me you may consider that therapy...maybe it was....I'm not saying.....I still enjoyed it!!

I got to thinking tonight about color. All the hues,.. some light,.. some dark,.. and some in-between. All of them are used to paint a picture; to tell a story. They reflect what we are thinking when we use them to fill in the lines. If we are thinking dark,... we may color a picture of say....Dracula in blacks, charcoals, and greys. If we are thinking light,... we may color a picture of say.....Snow White in bright blues, reds, and yellows....and,... why would we do that if her name is Snow White? Oh well, I think you get the point.

So I am thinking when Jesus was a boy...he had a coloring book. When he wasn't working in the shop with his dad, he would pull this coloring book out. And he would color. He would flip pages, and would stop.... and there would be an outline of... ME on the page. He would look and smile.....and start to color. Never would he use a dull pastel or any shade of grey or charcoal or even black; just color me in brilliant bright hues of color... he does this because he sees his children only in bright color.

These brilliant colors reflect his great love for me and what he knew he was going to for me and through me. He saw me in brilliant colors before he died for me! How does that happen?! Amazing, that's what that is!

My very best friend told me of a man who lived his life in greys, charcoals, and blacks. That was all he knew. He was miserable. He was at the end of his rope, he was hopeless.

Then Jesus came by. He had his coloring book. He flipped through the pages and found the outline of this man. Excitedly, he started rummaging through all the brilliant colors in his crayon box. Carefully he chose them one by one and then started to paint this dark mans' picture. He got so excited he colored outside the lines......and then started to laugh with joy! He flipped the picture over to the man and the man saw what he had never seen before. A NEW HIM!!

That's what Jesus does.....creates a new person with his coloring book and crayons. He never sees greys, charcoals, or blacks.....just brilliant hues of color that require sunglasses to view!!

He has given us a coloring book too...., and crayons. The box doesn't have any greys, charcoals, or blacks....just brilliant hues of color!! He says to us to go color the world with love.... brilliantly!!....enjoy.

My Car Got Attacked By a Goose!

2009-10-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

I have seen enough Animal Planet shows to know the difference between an animal that can hurt you and an animal that doesn't even notice your presence when you're sharing the same neck of the woods. I have watched Shark Week and know the difference between a great white and a flounder . One can bite your head off with little effort and the other makes a good meal when cooked with just the right spices....ask me later and I will get you a great recipe..... But I am a little taken aback when the "harmless" ones turn violent and into predators.

My car got attacked by a goose! Let me elaborate.....

If you've read any previous posts you know I travel quite a bit. I was in El Reno, OK the other day and discovered El Reno lake. I had never been there before. I had some planning to do so I thought I would do it there and enjoy the scenery. I wasn't disappointed...a pretty little spot. The wind was nil so the lake was very tranquil, not so much as a ripple or wake. There were all kinds of different water fowl flying about and sporadically swooping down for a swim and something to eat. If I were an avid bird watcher, I am sure I would have cataloged (in that special notebook stuffed under the driver seat)... all the varieties of fowl with rabid excitement.

Then THEY came in for a landing.....a gaggle of Canadian geese,..... no,.... I mean a GAGGLE of Canadian geese; 40 to 50 I bet!

I had never seen synchronized anything much, except synchronized swimming on the Olympics and I was never very interested in that. It just always looked like a sport that wasn't really a sport to me..... and how do you judge that stuff anyway?! But on this day I witnessed synchronized flying; they all came down at once and landed in the water at the same time. I witnessed synchronized swimming (gaggle style).....they even shook the water off their tails at the same time and in the same direction. This would have won a gold in the Olympics I am sure. It was amazing. I witnessed an attempt at synchronized fishing but the gaggle was a little off on that.....more practice needed but still impressive all the same. Needless to say I was awed and intrigued at the whole display.

After a brief swim and a little food, they started moving toward shore to get out of the water..... and coming toward my car parked about fifteen feet from the bank. One in the rear must have had a motor tied to its tail because it passed all the others like they weren't swimming at all. It seemed to have a bead toward me! It never moved its head to the left or the right, just stared me down and came at my car!! I noticed too that this goose wasn't as good looking as the others. In fact, it was pretty homely looking....large but homely. This one wasn't like the ugly duckling that transformed into the beautiful and graceful swan. This one was born ugly and stayed that way. Perhaps that was the reason for the nasty disposition. Whatever the real reason for the attitude, it came out of the water emphatically weird and seemingly pissed off. And did I say it already? It was coming at my car!!

This one defiant goose waddled right up to my front tire and proceeded to peck at and bludgeon my hubcap. It wielded its beak like Thor's hammer. You could almost see it gritting its teeth as it pounded away....well, if a goose had teeth you could almost see that. And if it truly had teeth, I am sure there would have been bits and pieces of the rubber of my tire flying everywhere. It would have gnawed at my tire like a crocodile on a water buffalo.

And what would that thing have done to me, particularly my shins, had I not been inside the car? More importantly, had I been outside the car, would it have chased me around? Most importantly, if I had been outside the car and it chased me around, would I have screamed like a little girl? How emasculating would that have been?! The thought of that scenario makes me want to breathe in a paper bag to keep from hyperventilating!

Why was this goose so angry? Rough childhood? Dysfunctional family upbringing? Teased a lot at school? Always given "hand me downs", never bought anything new? Turned down one too many times by the ladies of the gaggle? Not allowed seconds at the dinner table? Full moon? I didn't really know about that one because this traumatizing incident happened in broad daylight. Definitely couldn't have been "little man syndrome" because this honker was huge! This goose most assuredly needed anger management classes and a support group!

What did I do? Absolutely nothing! I just sat there wishing my personal nurse was with me taking my blood pressure and heart rate to ensure my pulmonary muscle wasn't going to explode out of my chest! And as soon as that thought entered and cleared my mind, the pounding quit and it got eerily quiet. I crushed my face as hard as I could against the side window and looked down to see what the waddler was up to. Imagine my relief when all I saw was its rear end waddling away from my car. Had it arms instead of wings, it would have been beating its chest as it left; maybe with a few marine grunts thrown in for emphasis.

I waited until it was well out of view and then proceeded out of the car to assess the destruction. Surprisingly the damage was minimal. The hubcap was covered in goose spit mixed with half eaten berries and pieces of underwater plant life. My hubcap survived the ruthless beating and gave new meaning to the phrase, "Ford Tough"......I drive a Taurus.

So much for tranquil beauty and peaceful planning. I started my quivering vehicle and drove off. It was time to move on anyway.....So tell me.....how was your day?

I usually try to envision some kind of anecdote to go along with what I write and the only thing I can come up with here is: Never park your car near an angry goose.

(This might make acceptable copy if it were word for word totally true, but there may have been an embellishment or two added....however, I have hopes to get it published in Liar's Monthly)

Sucker for a Sappy Love Song

2009-10-12T04:17:00.000-07:00

I love music. I have always loved music....love to listen to it and love to sing it; whether it be to the radio, in the shower, or behind a microphone at church or karaoke. Karaoke is cool because you can sing a rock song and be popular for about five minutes....if you sing on key.

I listen to many genres of music: pop, rock, christian.....which today has every other category of music just with the word christian in front of it; but I am not sure about christian classical?....., blues, classical, R&B, country....well, I think I have one country cd in my collection and listened to it once just so I can say I listen to country...., and JAZZ...the music of cool. Jazz music is sophisticated...the kind of music you read to, write to, wear a cardigan with and smoke a pipe to....jazz expresses what cool is....you may disagree but then you would be wrong.

But one type of song (in any genre) I have always been a sucker for is a sappy love song. They conjure up the gamut of emotions that often accompany being in love with someone. If you are happy in your relationship you might listen to Jason Mraz sing "Lucky", if you are sad you may listen to Toni Braxton sing "Another Sad Love Song". Just broke up with someone? Phil Collins' "Separate Lives" or Chicago's "Look Away" will make you cry. At whatever stage you are in your relationship with your significant other you can find a love song that relates. And somehow that song in that moment has powerful meaning; almost a life of its own.

I wonder if Jesus were here today would he listen to the radio? I think he would be a music lover. If his first love, the church, is going to be his bride in heaven, would that make the church his fiance while here on earth? I don't doubt that the church has put him through the myriad of emotions that love puts us through. She has been poignant, uplifting to many, used as an instrument of hope and love, and yet; has also been divided, has erred in faithfulness, and has put undue chains on people trying to break free from chains they already carry.

So perhaps there are songs he would hear that would touch him regarding his first love. Natalie Cole's "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" or Lionel Richie's "Endless Love" would remind him of his commitment to her. Should she ever feel abandoned, Lady Antebellum's "Never Alone" would underscore his promise to be constantly present with her. When she questions her commitment to him, he might get emotional when he hears Anita Baker's "You Belong to Me" or Sade's "Nothing Can Come Between Us".

When he hears The Fray sing "She Is" he taps his thumb to the beat against the steering wheel, smiles, and thinks how he can't wait to make her his bride....

When he hears Hootie and the Blowfish sing "Let Her Cry" , he remembers when she has stumbled and fallen; yet, he still loves her. He hears Casting Crowns sing "Somewhere in the Middle" and thinks of when she is complacent. Foolish Things sing "Find Your Way Back" or Building 429 sings " The Space In Between Us"and he ponders on all the times she has strayed from him. When Big Daddy Weave sings Rich Mullins' "Hold Me Jesus"...he just wants to wrap his arms around her again and again and again.....my, my how Jesus is so in love with his bride to be!

For all her faults, imperfections, triumphs, and failures he is head over heels in love with her and perhaps music would remind him of that just as music moves most of us emotionally.

Then.... he finds a jazz station.....no words, just music.....but it touches him the most in thinking of his love. Why? you may ask.... Simply because of the way jazz is built. Jazz is but a simple melodious tune played over and over in all kinds of variations. If you stacked one variation of the original tune on top of another, the song would have no ending.....it would just keep playing. It gives him repose to think of all the things his forthcoming bride is to him....he loved her enough to die for her....she has tested him over and over and yet his love for her never stops....just like an endless jazz tune....

At the end of the day he talks with his Father....I can almost hear him quietly whisper, "Dad, I know you have the time appointed for us to wed. No pressure....but I am so in love with her....make it soon Dad, please make it soon.....I am in a hurry"....

Random Thoughts About Anything, About Nothing

2009-10-07T04:41:00.000-07:00

I heard a long time ago, and it recently was reiterated, that if you want to be a writer you need to practice your craft every day. Well, believe it or not, I aspire to be a writer; so in pursuit of that dream I am constantly thinking about stuff to write. Sometimes an idea gets stuck in my head and goes nowhere and serves no purpose except to give me a headache or kill off another brain cell which, truthfully, I can't afford to lose at my age. So this post is more for the purposes of eliminating the excess leftover junk in my brain so I can move on.....maybe some of it will be worth reading.....or not.

Success
I recently heard an author speak on his newest book. He was pleasently self-deprecating, almost comedic. It was endearing and made him human. Then I thought: It's easy to be self-deprecating when you're successful. Being self-deprecating when you are not successful may just be the sad, sad truth.

Money
My very best friend and I often have conversations about money..it's place, it's purpose, the corruption often tied with it, and the impossibility of living without it. These conversations are stimulating to me, perhaps because we come from two ends of the slide rule in terms of financial stability and yet have simular views on the need and usage of the green stuff.
It seems to me that anytime Jesus was around a rich person he was telling them to go sell their stuff and give the money to the poor and walk with him. He also pointed out the difference between giving out of our excess and out of our need. I don't think he was opposed to money. I think he was getting at a heart attachment, an attitude. He himself said that where our treasure is, that is where we would find our heart.
I have dear friends who believe that if they are not rolling in the dough they somehow are not living it right as far as Jesus is concerned. After all doesn't the abundant life involve a healthy checking account? I get confused with this thinking because everywhere I see Jesus himself talking about money, it's in terms of giving it away not accquiring it.
I often think if I had alot of money, I wouldn't have alot of money because I would give it all away. I think this is a noble and good thought and it is easy to say when you don't have alot of money. If I actually had alot of money would I really be that generous? I like to think I would be, but that won't be known until I cross the bridge of wealth.....so far I haven't truly been tested in that area.
I stick with the heart attachment thing. Not a sin to be rich or poor, may be a sin to be so money driven or anything else driven that one has no place for God in their life. This is what I think Jesus was trying to teach. Lastly, I don't think Jesus would have made a very good accountant.

Jesus and Politics
I know people who actually believe that if Jesus were here today and a part of the American voting public, he would be Republican right down the line. Putting "Jesus" and the "American voting public" in the same sentence makes me a touch uncomfortable; add the word Republican and I start to shake and I am a Republican.
I am not sure Jesus would be affiliated with any political party. If I were Jesus, I would have an aversion to politics anyway.....wasn't it really politics that got him crucified? I don't think Jesus would be concerned with any party agenda either. If he did vote for anything, he would probably write in on the ballot everything he voted for. I think this because he knows everything and he knows we don't know what we need. He would write in the right things that need to be voted for because he knows exactly what we need.
This would disappoint many on the righteous right and he would probably be labeled a flaming liberal.

Christianity vs. Spirituality
I am not very good at following rules. I try to follow but I either misread or misunderstand them and eventually fall short. Alot of people of faith that I know seem to see their testimony wrapped up in how well they follow all the rules. Christianity is a series of codes and ethics and as long as they are adhered to, they are right with God and Jesus loves them. The problem I have with that is I don't think following any rule is what makes us righteous before God...I am pretty sure that being righteous centers on Jesus in us....period. The old saying, "Rules were made to be broken", is true. All rules do is point out the impossibility of following them to the letter.
Sometimes I think when the world sees Christianity they see a series of rules. I am sure what they need to see is Jesus. Being spiritual to me means showing the face of Jesus to the world, not proving I can follow rules. People need Jesus, not another list of "do's" and "don't's".
My sister went to a christian concert and told me the lead guy made a statement something like this: "The world doesn't mind when a christian sins, the world minds when a christian sins but doesn't think he does." Holier than thou and self-righteousness seem to get caught up alot in christianity, therefore; I would rather just be human, honest with my shortcomings, and testify that Jesus, for all my faults, still likes me and that he loves the rest of the world just the same. To me, this is showing the world the face of Jesus.

Thanks for letting me clear out the cobwebs in the recesses of my mind. Now there is room for more clutter.....

Crazy Love...

2009-10-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

There is absolutely nothing more invigorating, more exciting, more affirming, or more rejuvenating in life than being in love. I am not talking about a love where "I Love You" is whispered, kept quiet and private....I am talking about a full blown shout it from the mountaintop kind of love that gets the attention of the whole world, with random acts of PDA to go with it....an ecstatic love, a bold love, a loud love......a crazy love.....the kind you want to experience every day, the kind you want everyone around you to know about and, truth be known, perhaps be even a touch envious of. Yes, we do have a tendency to rub it in a little when we've got the groovy kind of love I am speaking of. This kind of love isn't just for the young either; everyone of every age group desires to be loved like this... I am sure of it.
Even those of us "real men" who wince painfully when our ladies want to see the latest romantic "chick flick" comedy, usually sit back and at some point during the film say to ourselves, "yea, I want to love and be loved like that." We all want it....a crazy love...the one kind of love that defies definition, that goes against any grain of logic, that is understood more clearly by demonstration than by explanation.
Sadly, many in this life never ever experience a love like this. Oh, the love in the beginning of the relationship may look a little crazy but life happens and the first thing to wane under the stress of circumstances is the fairy tale we all hoped would outlast life itself. Next, the virus of disillusionment sets in and things never seem quite the same. Crazy love becomes downgraded to something "less than" and for most, a reluctant surrender is made to the fact that crazy love is gone... never to show up again. So we settle and make peace with having a love no different than anyone else and yet, we miss the crazy love we once knew....and life goes on anyway.
I can't answer the question of a lasting crazy love when it comes to humans because, well.... we're human. Being human means being flawed and being flawed means sometimes falling short of even those things we desire to attain that are good and worth chasing after. This is simply the consequence of our humanity. However I do know of a crazy love that transcends our human condition...
...."But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners." -Rom.5:8 NLT
God has a crazy love...just think about it for a moment. We (his human creation) are selfish, we love control, and on our own we don't have the inclination to do the right thing because it is much easier to do what is natural...which is the wrong thing. All of these things came to play in the ruination of the garden of Eden and our place in right standing with God. We rebelliously separated ourselves from the crazy love of God.
Knowing all that.... God still pursued us, wooed us, sent us flowers and candy, and compelled us to turn to him again. We remained the object of his desire regardless of all we had done to destroy this union with him. I have pondered on this through my years and have sometimes wondered if his is a crazy love or just plain crazy. Most of us, when we get burned, have an inclination to insure we don't ever get burned again....but God keeps coming back again and again and again.....why?
Because he is crazy head over heels in love with us. His love for us is great ( I usually replace this word in the verse with crazy), boundless, far-reaching, endless, and rock solid. He looks beyond our fraility and our sin, he peers into our deepest parts and sees the emptiness that only his love can fill. He does not want us to be lacking so he demonstrates his love toward us, shouts his love for us from the mountaintop by giving the apple of his eye to us. His crowning jewel becomes our possession so we might in turn become his. We are his pearl of great price and he pays dearly, sparing nothing. We don't deserve it, can't earn it, and are too bankrupt to buy it. All we can do is freely receive it in the manner it is freely given......and it is given freely because of this crazy love of God. Go ahead and try to explain that....you can't. It just is.
Desire crazy love in your life? Turn to him because he truly does..... love you like crazy....

The Gaze of God

2009-09-20T05:22:00.000-07:00

"Then Andrew brought Simon to meet Jesus. Looking intently at Simon, Jesus said,"Your name is Simon son of John-but you will be called Cephas (which means Peter)."

-John 1:42 NLT

I love Peter! He is probably known as much, if not more, for his failures than he is for his successes. I identify with Peter in that way. If I were to write a book about my life and I divided it in two sections (section one being my failures and section two being my successes), I have often thought section one would be thicker than section two.

Andrew brought his brother Simon to Jesus. Isn't that awesome? Andrew met Jesus and after that meeting his first thought was his brother. He wanted his brother to meet Jesus too. We meet Jesus and that's what happens, we want others to meet him too, especially those close to us.

Jesus......"looking intently at Simon".....that phrase got me to thinking about some things:

a. Jesus, being God, can look on any man and know his every thought.

b. Jesus, being God, can look on any man and see his life from beginning to end.

c. Jesus, being God, can look on any man and see the blackness or light in his heart and soul.

Looking at Peter, Jesus saw every impulsive moment, heard every awkward word, knew every act of cowardice and every failure. Jesus saw Peter return to the nets after his death. Jesus could hear Peter's words of denial before they were spoken, he could hear them before they even entered into Peter's mind to speak. Jesus saw Peter bitterly weeping over his lack of faith and his inability to make a stand when he said he would. Jesus saw all of that when he looked "intently at Simon"....yet, he called him to be his disciple anyway. His love for Peter was immediate and eternal. His love was bigger than all of Peter's failures; past, present, and future. Jesus also saw the mighty way Peter would rise up and lead the early church to solid ministry after Jesus' return to glory.

When Jesus looked at my life, He saw beginning to end. He saw all my failures, He saw my battle with alcohol, He saw my failed relationships, He saw my financial struggles, He saw my hopelessness and my guilt.......yet, He called me to be His disciple anyway. His love for me was immediate and eternal. He also saw me coming back home to Him and being in a place where He could use me again. For all that He has seen in me, He has never let go...He has always believed....and He continues on with me in my walk with Him.

Perhaps today you are in that spot where you have just about given up. Your hurts, hang-ups, and habits have a choke hold around your neck and you see no way out. Stand firm and grasp tightly to the hand of Jesus, your deliverance is near. Don't let go and don't give up. Your breakthrough is just around the corner. He sees your life from start to finish...He has it under control....lay it all before Him and let Him do His work in you. The possibilities are limitless.

Coming Home

2009-09-16T04:38:00.000-07:00

"So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him."
-Lk. 15:20 NLT

For me, this is the sweetest verse in all of scripture. Oh, I have a lot of favorites but this one has very special meaning. I have lived this verse, I have experienced first hand and I know it is so very true. My post today is going to be more revealing and intimate personally than posts prior. Bear with me, it needs telling....

I am a believer who struggles with alcohol. I didn't start out with that struggle but through adverse circumstances, alcohol became a regular part of my life for several years. Rather than choose to turn to the God who loves me and comforts me in difficult times, I chose instead the comfort of a drunken state. Alcohol numbed me to what I thought was the worthlessness of my life. I didn't deserve a father's love because I was a failure. I never reached any goal I had ever set for myself and I could hear the "whispers" of what I thought were criticisms and disgust from friends and family behind my back. I felt useless and just wanted to self-destruct. I thought my life was over. I was just a heart beating in a shell of a man with absolutely no purpose, no future, and no hope. The kicker: I was a child of God.

The more I drank, the more jobs I lost, the more traffic records I acquired, strained relationships, frustrated family members, hurt after hurt after hurt....just an endless cycle of despair, shame, and guilt. I was in the pig pen fighting the hogs for husks to eat. The problem is at the time I didn't see where I was very clearly. I was too proud to admit I needed help, too ashamed to lean on anyone else, and so miserable...that happiness was something I thought would never be experienced in my life....I was a man without hope.

One morning I woke to find myself handcuffed to a metal bench in the psych ward of a Texas panhandle hospital. A counselor was going to determine if I needed to be admitted and forced into rehab. There was something different about him....he was a child of God. I poured my life's story out to him, my dreams, my goals, my hopes, my failures, my shame, my guilt,....to the point that after I finished talking and crying, I felt just empty of all the junk I had been carrying. He told the police to take me home after we prayed together. It was that day I decided to get out of the pig pen and make my journey home.

The journey was very long, it wasn't my last bout with alcohol but I was on the way. There were friends and family along the way who helped and with each step toward home a chain here and there would drop. There were times along the way I would think I couldn't make it, how would I be received when I got there, what about all the debris I created of my life and in the lives of those I hurt...I was still filled with fear but I was still walking toward home. I started reading the word again, going to celebrate recovery meetings, praying, attending church, getting involved in the lives of other hurting people, and I was healing....

Then my Father, who was waiting and watching on the front porch saw me coming and before I could get there....I saw Him running to me. There was no whip in his hand, only arms outstretched....and when He got to me, He took me into His powerful and loving embrace and kissed me.....how powerful the act of forgiveness is and how cleansing! Yes, this is the sweetest verse in all of scripture.

I am grateful for a mom and dad who always believed, for brothers and a sister who never stopped praying, for a son and daughter who never gave up on me, and for dear friends who, when I stumbled, helped me get back up. Make no mistake I still struggle, I still stumble but I am home surrounded with a host of help. Praise God.

People often ask me why I get so emotional when I share my story and I always respond: "Because I know the places I've been, the things I've done, and the people I've hurt and He has forgiven me anyway." How great and endless is His mercy! How vast is the sea of His forgiveness! How high and how deep is His compassion!

If you are in the pig pen today fighting for husks to eat, come home.....the calf is fattened, the robe is pressed, the rings are polished and there are a host of people and a loving Father waiting for you. Come home today....

A World Without Compassion

2009-09-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

In Luke chapter 7, Luke records that as Jesus and his diciples were passing through the village of Nain, they came upon a funeral procession. A boy had died, the only son of a poor widow. Luke writes that when Jesus saw this....."his heart overflowed with compassion". He looked at the woman and said,"Don't cry."; then walked over and raised the boy from the dead and returned him to his mother. -Lk. 7:11-15

I walk out the door of my apartment every day and there are many whom I greet before even getting to my car. Very seldom do I think in ways of compassion toward them. Jesus' compassion for others was a driving force of his ministry. I am so caught in what I have to do, I fail to think of how God might use me to compassionately minister even to the stranger next door. Isn't it sad that I would have to use...."stranger" and "next door" in the same sentence?

We all were built, formed, with a need to be loved and to love, a need to relate to others. Can you imagine for a moment if our world was void of compassion? Who would man our hospitals, who would forge a path to feed the hungry, or house the homeless? Who would fight for those who are simply helpless to help themselves?

What would a lack of compassion be like in your corner of the world? No one to care for you when you were sick, to comfort you when you were grieving, to encourage you when you were down? How sad it would be to live in such a world.

God made us to relate to others just as he made us to relate to him. It is necessary for our well being. It goes against the nature of our need when we choose to go it alone. When we go against that grain we are people most miserable. We are most alive when we care for others and we act on that concern. Being involved in the lives of others is one primary reason our lives have purpose and meaning.

Many in my life I love dearly, many that I love I have failed......for years living as if I was the only one who existed. But praise God regardless of the past, every day can be a new beginning. I am praying and asking him for the gift of a compassionate heart....so filled that when I see a person in need, that compassion overflows out of me just as it did out of Jesus.

How is it with you? Need to pray that same prayer? Know anyone around you that needs to be shown some compassion. For us in recovery, expressing compassion to others is a powerful weapon against the selfishness we often fight. I support you in making your world a world filled with compassion.

My Heart Condition

2009-09-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

I have a heart condition. It was diagnosed almost immediately at birth and I have lived with it for all my 50 years of life. Sometimes it has affected me so strongly that it has been crippling. The results of the pain created by this condition has been unbearable at times. There have been times when I saw no hope for healing and as a result suffered from severe depression and discouragement.

This heart condition has affected those around me as well. Family and friends at times have been at a loss as to what to do for me. They feel the sting of my pain simply because they love me, yet; all they can do is watch silently and sadly. They know they are helpless in helping me.

I am in need of a miracle. In fact a miracle and nothing shy of a miracle is my only hope. Where do I go? The Mayo Clinic? No, but I do need a physician, someone who understands my condition much better than I ever could. Where do I find such a Dr.? Where do I find this Great Specialist?
The heart condition I speak of is first of all spiritual. If it was physical, believe me, I would spare no expense in finding the best specialist to address my physical need. When I became aware of my spiritual heart condition at the age of 17 I turned to the ONLY Specialist who could help.....Jesus Christ. Inviting him into my live changed my heart, when he became saviour and lord.....my want to's changed. My self -destructive attitudes transformed into attitudes toward others.

I still am in need of his constant care. I have to call on him all the time and it seems I constantly go to him for check-ups. I still have a tendency to fall down, to self-destruct, to do the wrong thing. But it's ok, because this weakness I live with keeps me in constant contact with my Dr. and I am getting to know him better and better all the time. I like that. I realize that if I could do it all myself I never would have gotten to know this wonderful Physician, I would never had known my condition and my need for him.

According to the Bible, you, like me, have a heart condition....why not give your heart to the only Dr. who can help. Give your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ today. The first and most important step of recovery.

"Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear, 'All of you listen,' he said, 'and try to understand. It's not what goes into your body that defiles you, you are defiled by what comes out of your heart'.........for from within, out of a person's heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within, they are what defile you."
-Mk. 7:14,15,20-23 NLT

We All Fall Down

2009-08-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

"Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble......three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken." Ecc. 4:9,10,12b NLT

I am a fallen man with a fallen nature. I have a natural tendency to do the wrong things. A holy lifestyle for me almost has to be planned out in my Daytimer or I will forget who I am and end up where I don't want to be. This is especially true when I try to go it alone. When I get to thinking I've got the bull by the horns and I am good and not in need of anyone....I am one dangerous slip away from getting gored by the bull I have hold of.

At the darkest times of my life, when I was in my most hopeless state.... I realize looking back that I was alone. I wasn't alone because I had friends who didn't care. I wasn't alone because I had family who didn't care. I was alone by choice...."bravely" going it alone. Whatever my reasons for not getting help: pride, shame, embarassment; I lived in the shadows and darkness of my pain...... alone.

I am learning how debilitating it is to go it alone....God never intended it that way. I praise God for His constant presence in my life, whether I am in the darkness of my habit or in the light of His love.....He is always with me.

I cried out for help this week, I was struggling and I wasn't in a good place.....I turned to a friend, as difficult as that was; I knew I couldn't deal with my struggle alone. I praise God for friends and family who have willingly reached into the dirt of my life in effort to see me cleansed and whole. And as I write I weep with gratitude. I am thankful for a God who loves me no matter what and who is always present. I have a long way to go. I still fall down. Other than our Lord Jesus, show me someone who doesn't fall down.Thank God for those who are there to help us up when we do.

Two are better than one...there is always that one to encourage you. If you are alone and discouraged who's going to help you along? You gonna encourage yourself? Usually that doesn't work because you end up talking to yourself and when others see that, they think you're crazy.... ok..... a little humor....but the point is made.

How is it with you? Still "bravely" going it alone? This world seems to admire those who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But, honestly, the truly brave thing is to open up to a friend or family member who knows you, loves you, and will do what is necessary to help you. And by the way.....all those "self-made" people out there.....have hurts, hang-ups, and habits they need recovery from as well. Come out of the shadows and face your giants in the open and know you don't have to do it alone.

The Atrocity of Appearances

2009-08-25T04:29:00.000-07:00

"Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness." -Matt. 23:28 NLT

We live in a day where appearances are everything. We spend hundreds, even thousands annually in keeping our washboard abs, our french nails, and "20-something" looking skin well into our 50's. The right hairstyle, smile, handshake, and suit does more to close a business deal today than the business plan itself. Meet a group of people for the first time and after you leave they will probably talk about how you looked more than anything else.

Matthew 23:28 finds Jesus in the middle of a sharp discourse of reprimand toward the religious leaders of his day. He cried out against their need for attention and honor. He called them righteous looking hypocrites...and he did so over and over.

You can almost see the disgust on his face and hear the comtempt in his voice. He was pointing out the atrocity of appearances....he was pointing out that these "religious" leaders were missing the point altogether....and leading others astray with them.

Look in our churches today, most are filled with what look like righteous people. I wonder though how some of those "righteous" people fair behind the closed doors of their homes after church.....Does neglected Dad retire to the bedroom with a bottle of vodka (his only true friend) to watch a ball game alone? Does self-centered Mom rush to the mall after lunch to grab those shoes she's just got to have?....has to have them so bad in fact she uses grocery money to acquire them.....and what of unloved teenage Sam? Does he sneek to his room to view the latest porn downloads?.....

Oh my.....time for evening services,.. already?! Back to church, back to looking like righteous people......Everywhere you go you will find people who hurt;... they need help, they need mercy, they need hope....some of them sit next to you in church and look like righteous people.....

Why does Jesus cry out against appearances?....Because he knows appearances kill those for whom he died. It is no different today...

Do You Really Hear Me?

2009-08-24T04:17:00.000-07:00

I cry out for help - none is offered.

I beg for peace - I feel only turmoil.

I desire to be clean - I see only dirt.

I want deliverance - I hear the chains rattle.

How did I get here? Wasn't my life blessed, charmed? Wasn't I the one most likely to succeed? Wasn't I the one everyone wanted to be?

Failure, disappointment, hurt, addiction, betrayal, loneliness, torment, faithlessness....are all words and experiences interwoven into the fabric of my life. It seems I'll never again know what it means to be happy, joyful. It appears that the remainder of my life is destined to be littered with losses.

I am encouraged to turn my life and will over to One who is constantly present. At times He seems to be deaf to my cries for help and callous to my tears. God do You really hear me? God, do You truly desire better for me than what I have settled for? Can you save me from this pit I have fallen in?

I hear of those who have courageously praised Him and trusted Him even in the pit. I desire a faith like that. Some need a tough love, others a tough faith....I am in need of both.

Regardless, I will NOT QUIT, I will not run. He is my only hope. I will trust whether He hears or not! I have nowhere else to go....

Written when my faith was as thin as a frayed piece of thread and about as strong.....God is faithful and ever present no matter what our situation and no matter whether we think He hears or not. Keep fighting, keep hoping, keep trusting, and keep praising....the storm makes you stronger and for all your experiences, good or bad, God never wastes them.....Rom.8:28

Being Me - Becoming Myself

2009-08-17T16:41:00.000-07:00

Reading from the Psalms comforts me because the writers of the book wrote honestly about how they felt. They were honest with themselves and with God. In many cases their prayers were more like complaints than anything else. Their honesty shines through however. I am learning to be honest.

Open confession is healthy; it cleanses the heart and the spirit. I had difficulty with it because I worried what someone may think. Worrying what others think of me is how I got here to start with....well, it is one of the reasons anyway. There is going to be inner conflict and turmoil anytime an imperfect person (such as myself) dawns the mask of perfection.

God is teaching me to confront my imperfections and short-comings with brutal honesty. This is a hard lesson but I am making progress. It is simply a "one day at a time process" like everything else in my life. I am ok with that.

"Being me" involved the mask wearing. I didn't want anyone to see the real Richard, I didn't even know who that was. I wore one mask after another; so much so I lost any hope of becoming the real person God designed me to be.

How did the transformation start? Time, patience, and faith...taking a ruthless look at myself in the mirror every day and seeing the work needing to still be done.....and doing it! The process of "becoming myself" involved throwing away the masks and learning to see the same things in myself that God says about me. The bible says he loved me so much he sent his son to die for me that I might have life, everlasting and abundant. How liberating that is!

Today I am not so concerned with whether others will approve of me or not....I am confident God does. Becoming the fulfillment of his design for my life is what matters. I hate cliches' but it is true, God doesn't make mistakes...and he doesn't make junk either! I am simply a diamond in the rough!...and as noted in an earlier post.....I press on.

"Now, with God's help, I shall become myself." -Soren Kierkegaard

Fear?!

2009-08-12T01:20:00.000-07:00

"How fully can you surrender and not be afraid?"-Frank Laubach

To the degree fear sets in determines the degree of surrender to our Lord; yet, isn't partial surrender really no surrender at all? But fear IS the factor...in my life anyway. I want to fully surrender but fear sets in and I pull back...then I wonder...fear of what?....of being used mightily of the Lord?....fear of being selfless?...fear of not being my own man?...fear of a joyful heart, a compassionate heart?.....and then I identify the fear....it is fear of not being in control.
Ah, there's the rub....you see, I want to serve God but I want to serve Him my way. I want to be used of God, but only in the things I want to do...and I truly don't want to be totally selfless because my ego needs to feast on the food of recognition for the things I have done in Jesus' Name.
My fear of losing control hinders complete surrender, at minimum makes it difficult.
That I would learn and choose to live in total abandon of self, that Christ might live big in me is my one great prayer, my one great pursuit.
I have been chasing this my whole life, pressing toward it and it is ever before me...still. So for me it is bite sized portions instead of a full meal and baby steps instead of great strides.
My prayer is reduced to this: Father, help me this day turn complete control of my life over to you. In Jesus'Name.....and perhaps that little prayer is much bigger than it seems...at any rate, I keep pressing on.

Forgiven

2009-08-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

The first step in recovery of any kind is saying we need recovery, we need help. I remember the old Saturday Night Live show...you know the original members? Chevy Chase would say, "Hi, I am Chevy Chase, and you're not!"
Those of us in real recovery would never deny God being who He is...yet, we love to play Him don't we?....Playing God allows us to cover our fears....no one has to know who we really are as long as we call the shots...we think we can play God better than He can be God. It would be a revelation if we heard Him actually say, "Hi, I am God, and you're not"...in fact for many of us that would be a relief...... but instead we press ahead making the same old mistakes....God watching...and the mistakes we make lead us to the mess of our lives.
Wow....we end up doing the same old things, make the same old mistakes, and people get hurt just like before and we wonder why.
This blog is about getting honest with ourselves and God....I am going to tell my story....some out of my journal....thoughts about recovery...thoughts about God...thoughts about life...thoughts about relationships....and just thoughts in general about living....it may not get you sober...but it did me....and I hope my candor will help you take even a first step toward healing.
If you want to listen, then do so....if you don't...then this blog is not for you.
It is from a biblical and spiritual nature....I didn't get sober without God...hence, the addiction to Grace....I will speak to that along the way....just sit back and read..... it is unashamedly biblical....so the Bible will be quoted much.....with no apology....
My demon has been alcohol....to be sure....but we all are in recovery from something.....sin in general....so whatever your"demon"....perhaps you will find hope here. In Jesus' name all demons are defeated....so let's go to war together! I stand with you in your battle and will fight with you!!

Getting Better.....

2009-08-11T16:16:00.000-07:00

I am new to this blogging thing, but I do have something to say....I hope you will overlook my lack of IT experience and see through to my heart. I AM an addict to Grace....the Grace of God. That is because I am in recovery from being addicted to alcohol.....You might wonder how I could be both....Alcohol gave me "privilege" to be or do anything I wanted to do...God's grace covered me, and still does, from my stupidity and also from the judgment of others (which wasn't necessarily unjustified).
I hurt people, I hurt myself, I hurt my family, I lost jobs, I lost friends.... I made bad choices both under the influence and as a result of alcohol.....I have paid dearly...physically, spiritually, emotionally....and worse......but don't think this blog is about crying, it's about getting back up and fighting to overcome.....it's about winning after you have lost everything...and I am not talking about things....I am talking about regaining on the inside what your "ailment" has cost you.
You know, my "ailment" was alcohol...maybe yours is anger, verbal abuse, gossip, sex, co-dependency, unforgiveness, bitterness, self-reliance, judgmental spirit, hypocricy, or whatever....here's the bottom line....
We all are in recovery for something...in other words we all need deliverence from something...recovery from that one thing that keeps us from experiencing the abundant life we all were promised from God.....
Alas, we blamed Him for falling short too, didn't we. He let us down....He didn't follow through...or follow up....He went to sleep when He should have stayed awake and because of that we fell down.....SHAME ON GOD....and the truth is, He didn't have a thing to do with it. Inside we know that...we just need someone to blame...just so we can sleep at night.
I don't know where this blog is headed, but one thing I do know....God isn't at fault, He is the answer....and His overwhelming grace gives us time and opportunity to make adjustments, confessions, and corrections in our lives that lead to healthy and holy living. Thank God for new beginnings....and that happens the moment we turn back to Him. I am 50! and I am beginning all over again...and what an adventure...yes, there are still amends to make and relationships to re-build...but what an adventure...know why? The overwhelming presence of God....when you get on His path, you can't see anything else but Him...the more you see Him, the more you want Him and all else has a way of falling in to place where it is supposed to...
I will share openly my journey with you...some of you may not want to be my friends after hearing me....that's ok...you will still be mine.
If you know someone who has an addiction of any kind....show them this....I will be non-threatening, and will try to just be honest. I will take a hard look at me too...and I am sure as a result will become more....Addicted to GRACE
Thanks for reading....I will post more as I am led... hope you will stay in touch.
Richard