Free

I remember a time a year or two ago when I was invited to go to a large men's conference hosted in a Chicago suburb.  I went because I wanted to honor and try to grow my relationship with the man that invited me, even though I had very little interest in the conference itself.  I've been there, done that, and my life has always remained largely unchanged, thus making those type of events a waste of time to my mind.  I went anyway, because who knows.  Maybe this time it will be different I told myself.

It wasn't.  The whole experience only increased my growing distaste for and lack of ability to trust the institutional church in America.  I really did try to find God while I was there, but I was too busy trying not to throw up in my mouth from all of performance based freedom that was being preached.  If you just try harder, set better limits, and spend more time seeking the Lord for freedom you'll be the strong man that God has called you to be.  (Family Feud "X" popping across the screen right now)

So on the way home from the event, we stopped at an Applebee's with several other guys from the Michiana area who went also.  As the conversations progressed someone suggested we go around the table and share our testimonies.  My heart sank.  I still feel just as bound today as I ever have.  I've not been set free from anything.  What am I supposed to testify about?  I was one of the last people around the table, and when it came to be my turn I just said that I was still struggling with some stuff and didn't think it was appropriate for me to share when I could not pin point what God was doing in my life.  I have always struggled with this when it comes to testimonies.  Why share all the good God has done in my life in the past when I just keep ending up back in the pit of my own sin?

Several of the guys tried to encourage me to share, like they thought I was just being bashful, but I persisted on my pass.  One young man went so far as to tell me that I needed to get on my knees and seek Jesus right away because he thought that if I couldn't pin point something worthy of testifying about that I was not actually saved.

Let's fast forward to a couple of meetings into the new gathering God led me to.  We talked a lot about the book of Galatians one night and it struck home for the first time.  Any time in the past when someone would talk to me about Galatians 5:1 which says, "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." I always took it as a command to get free from sin in my life.  (Another huge "X" here)

This is where it gets good.  We talked about the enormity of God's love.  We talked about how it is only from God loving us first that we are even capable of responding with any kind of goodness at all.  Only by receiving the FREE GIFT of salvation and the Holy Spirit can we know God.  Only by knowing (experiencing!) Him, by a continual reception of this gift will any of us ever be able to walk by the Spirit.  After all, if any amount of keeping the law could have set us free, then Jesus would not have had to die for us.

The blood covering from Jesus' sacrifice is so complete that every sin ever committed past or future is already forgiven for those who believe in Him and choose to receive His gift.  I have heard it said that sin separates us from God, and while that is true of the unbeliever, Romans tells us that nothing can separate the believer from the love of God.  NOTHING!  It doesn't nothing except sin; it says nothing. His arms are always waiting to welcome us in, especially when we have blown it.  It is then that we most need Him, and He knows this.  Our sin does not scare Him.  Again I say it is only through letting Him fill us with His love that we will ever be able to turn our hearts away from sin.  Sure you may be able to change your behavior for a season, or maybe indefinitely, but God is not after your behavior.  He is after your heart!  If you stop doing whatever sin it is you love to commit, but you still love it and want to do it, have you really been changed?  Are you really free?  It is only after you can do whatever you want to and you choose Jesus anyway because you now see that there really is nothing better than being loved by Him that you are truly free.  You will never get to that point until you let Him love you in spite of the sins that you love.  It has to start with knowing that His love is so great that even on your worst and most sinful day His love for you will not change.  His arms will be just as open and ready to clean us up.  He is not angry with you.  He will not strike you down or turn you away.  The law has been fulfilled through Jesus.  All that is left now is for us to quit believing the deceptions that the enemy gets us to believe to keep us from turning to the only one who can fill us.  Receive the gift that can never be earned, then keep receiving it every day.  Don't ever try to earn it again!

His yoke really is easy and His burden really is light.  Never again will I try to be good enough for Him, because He has all the goodness that is needed for the both of us.  It is now my aim just to be with Him and let Him fill me with His love.  Fear will be progressively cast out, kindness and courage will become more and more of a natural response and hell won't stand a chance.

Affirmation

Life has really felt bad for a very long time.  Last night I went to a gathering of believers my wife told me about that was being led by someone who mentored me in the past.  I was (am) so hungry for an authentic gathering of believers.  Being me, I spent most of the drive up bracing myself for the discomfort of sitting in a room of people that would have to put up with the filthiness of my soul and whatever judgments they might rightly levy.

Lots of cool words from the Lord came forth last night.  Way too many for me to recount, but the two that were for me were much needed.  At one point, the man leading stopped what he was saying and looked right at me and said something like, "You need to stop worrying about how far you have been from God and stop grading yourself.  God says you are an A in His book."

Later on my way out, he pulled me aside again and shared that God told him to tell me that He thinks I am a wonderful father and that I do a great job with my son.

I have been living under so much doubt, but there is just something amazing that happens when your ears get opened to hear what God is saying.  Faith rises from the ashes of that doubt and starts to breath life into destruction.  Nothing seems impossible.  For the first day in years I was actually excited to be alive.

All in My Head

So if you haven't noticed, when I created this blog I replaced the pursuit of happiness with the body of Christ.  Both clever and meaningful in my own mind.  Unfortunately, my mind is as far as I seem to be able to make this switch.  I know in my mind that there is nothing more important than Christ and dying to myself for His Bride.  I don't do any of the things in my daily life that accomplish this.

I don't share the gospel with the lost.

I don't pour over the scriptures in search of spiritual food and the nourishment of my soul.

I don't visit prisoners, listen to widows tell me stories about the good old days or do their yard work.

I don't spend time with fatherless boys showing them how to be a man.

I rarely even do the dishes for my wife or turn off the tv long enough to play a game with my son.

I do exactly what my stepdad always did.  I come home from an exhausting day at work and fall into a pattern of comforting myself.  Eat, watch tv, play games, listen to music, and basically anything that allows me to live according to how I feel and hide away from truth for one more day.

Not only is this driving me crazy, but I think I'm actually starting to kill myself slowly.  I always thought life would get better as I got older, but entropy is in full effect in my heart.  I care less about everything good just about every day.  I still have huge hurts in my heart that just won't go away.  I am as selfish of a man as there can be.  Everything I do is somehow motivated by escaping pain or comforting myself.  Everything!

When I think about what I could do to change my life, I just get paralyzed inside.  Get rid of your xbox and tv.  Get rid of the internet.  Get a phone that only has talk and text.  Put yourself out there and pursue a job that doesn't make you feel worthless.  Stop taking shortcuts and compromising your integrity at the job you have now.  It all just seems so hard because I think about what I will be left with.  Nothing.

No guaranteed way to feel something good anyway.  It will all be based on others to take care of my feelings, and I don't really trust anyone anymore.  I don't trust God. I don't trust my friends to care for me in any depth, and I don't even trust my wife.  My feelings and perceptions form my reality.  A reality that I know deep down is flawed and broken to the highest degree.  I just don't know how to lay it aside long enough for God to show me who He really is and I am scared that when I do, He just won't do anything.  The quietness of God when I look for Him is the worst feeling I know.  Instead of healing the wounds in my heart, it makes them worse.  I know that God can't be wrong and I must be.  I just can't seem to break past my feelings.

I can only hope that God is still working some unseen plan to set me free from all that blinds me, because if it just comes down to sink or swim, I think I'm going to sink.

Stake in the Ground

Life is full of simple choices that have far greater importance than they appear to at first.  It's really been on my heart to do something as a family to get and keep us on the same page.  I've been absolutely astounded at the internal resistance I experience to developing simple disciplines.  So today, as soon as I got home from work and the fam was home from school, we sat down to read two chapters in the Bible and pray together.

I explained to my son what devotions were and why being devoted to God was important.  He tracked as well as a boy his age can as far as I could tell.  When it came time to pray together, Maz got really bashful.  He had this immediate resistance when I told him that we were all going to take turns praying out loud.  I remembered being terrified of saying the wrong thing or somehow messing up when asked to pray when I was younger.  I don't think I got over this until my junior year in high school when I started attending a daily prayer meeting before school.  I don't want my son to live in fear of talking to God. I pray that he doesn't struggle with law and perfectionism the way I have.

So I pushed him.... gently.  

I told him prayer was just talking to God about what was on his heart and that the only thing that mattered was that his prayer came from his heart.  It could be short, the words didn't have to sound good, it just needed to be out loud and from his heart.

My son prayed for a kid at his school that has been mean and bossy to him lately.  He asked God to help this other child be nice to the other kids at school.

I stumbled into a motivation for reading my Bible everyday.  I look forward to many more of these simple moments with both my son and wife over the coming years.

May God have his rightful place of priority in my home.

Hate Male

DISCLAIMER:

My father-in-law recently asked me to write a letter containing what I would say to my biological father as if he would receive it.  This is what came out.  I was mostly concerned with the catharsis of the process and just let it all spill out.  I did not want to interrupt the flow of my thoughts for the sake of making them more polished or clean.  I want to share this with those that will read this and help pray me through my search for who I am in Christ not who I am in the flesh.  There are some curse words that I HAVE NOT edited.  If that offends you, don't read any more.  

Dad,

I hate you.  I have nothing but utter contempt when I think of you.  I hate you for what you have done.  You entered into an adulterous relationship with my mother to please your flesh and bailed on us both when you found out she was pregnant.  You left us for your real family.  All my life has been spent bearing the scarred heart of a boy that was too worthless to be considered your son. 

I hate you for what you passed on to me.  All your cowardice and fear you gave to me.  You reproduced a coward.  All my life I’ve been afraid, and I never had anyone there to help me face my fears because your punk ass decided to run away like a little bitch.  I hate you for being a lustful pervert and for passing on the same legacy to me.  My only connection to you is that I am your bastard, born out of your sin.  I hate you for skipping out on the consequences of your choices and instead leaving me to suffer a lifetime of them for you.  How can you even call yourself a man? 

I hate you for the multitude of ways that you were never there.  You never tucked me in.  You never comforted my broken heart.  You never taught me how to fight or what was worth fighting for.  You never taught me how to respect a woman.  You never taught me how to seek God with my whole heart.  You never taught me how to be confident.  You never told that I could do anything I put my mind to.  You never told me that I was the apple of your eye.  Because of you, I have never known what it is to be the favored son.  I never adventured out as a cowboy.  I never fought as a warrior and I never loved with selflessness.  You never showed me how.  So how can I call myself a man when no one showed me how to be one?

I guess there is one thing you taught me, how to hate.  And just like you, I despise myself.  I can’t stand all of the you that I see in myself.  All of the ways that I just don’t measure up just about kill me some days.  How many days have there been where I just wanted to be dead rather than feel so worthless for one more day?  I hate you for not even caring how it would make me feel to be without you. 

For the debt that you left in your wake, for all that you owe me, I hate you. 

I FUCKING HATE YOU!!!!!!!!

Teth

This is where I want my heart to be.


Psalm 119:65-72

⁶⁵ You have dealt well with Your servant,

O Lord, according to Your word.

⁶⁶ Teach me good ^[z] discernment and knowledge,

For I believe in Your commandments.

⁶⁷ Before I was afflicted I went astray,

But now I keep Your word.

⁶⁸ You are good and do good;

Teach me Your statutes.

⁶⁹ The arrogant ^[aa]have forged a lie against me;

With all my heart I will observe Your precepts.

⁷⁰ Their heart is ^[ab] covered with fat,

But I delight in Your law.

⁷¹ It is good for me that I was afflicted,

That I may learn Your statutes.

⁷² The law of Your mouth is better to me

Than thousands of gold and silver pieces.

Back in the Saddle Again... or Maybe for the First Time

A couple weeks ago I started seeing a counselor for the third time in my life.  My motivation was to get some outside perspective on some of the open doors to the enemy's  activity in my soul.  We met at Culver's and talked for about an hour and a half.  Most of the conversation felt like I just met one more person who was concerned with my behavior and how simple it should be for me to just do better.  Awesome, more condemnation, just what I need.  I persisted to plead that all of the discipline in the world doesn't help you feel less rejected by God.  By the end of our time together he suggested that I just burn it all down and start over.  If I struggle so much with simple faith, maybe I just needed to approach God like a child and ask Him for it.  Ask for the gift of faith and know that it can only be received, never earned or "done right."

I spent a few times praying with this mindset.  I prayed the only real prayers I could muster and trying to ask God for what I needed without ordering Him around or treating Him like Santa Claus.  I read some in Romans this Saturday because I took on the responsibility of sharing the Word at my church gathering with a couple of my brothers.  It started that I only did it because I didn't want to let them down.  It ended up filling me up and strengthening my faith.  Did I mention that I nodded off several times while reading two chapters and ended up just going to sleep for two hours after I thought I read what I needed to,

Yesterday, while I was working, God spoke to me about receiving faith from Him as a gift.  He asked me if Maz could ever earn my love.  It hit me all at once that I have been trying to give God a reason to want me when he already birthed me.  I wanted to have a child before Maz was ever born and chose to follow the necessary steps to bring him into this world, because I wanted him.  I love him because he is mine.  No other reason.  My son can ask me for anything reasonable and I will get it for him or show him how to get it himself without even thinking.

This is the start of me believing for real that God is not like my earthly examples of fatherhood, but that I am in a poor way like He is perfectly.  He is all loving and kind, with nothing but my best in mind.  He will give me good gifts, not because I deserve them, but because I am His.

Holiness and faith are two of these gifts.  Holiness is a gift.  It cannot be earned, only received.

This is mind shattering for me.

I am holy because I am His.

His acceptance is not wavering or partial.

God has given me an amazing gift in my son in so many ways and now I have only to look at my love for him when I need assurance of God's love for me.   It's not even about me anymore, it's about my son.