Choice or circumstances?

I am personally faced with a question in my life.  Am I where I am today because of my circumstances or choices?  What do you think?  Today I am blogging a little differently.  I have picked out some pictures that talk about this question from some different perspectives.  Please comment your thoughts below.  Thanks!

"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

Extraordinary?  Am I someone who is extraordinary?  Well...the truth is yes and no.  What do I mean?  I am not someone who is making world-wide changes or has tremendous influence or has any superpowers.  But I am extra-ordinary in a different sense of the term.  I am a person who is loved by God and has come to realize that increasingly day after day.

I have always been a fan of watching Robin Williams movies.  The one that really caught me when I was younger and then rebirthed interest when I was in college was "Dead Poet's Society" where he played a younger teacher who captivates the imaginations of his class and at one time has them all standing on their desks quoting "Oh Captain, my Captain."  At another point in the movie, he teaches the meaning of carpe diem.  He says to them in the hallway by the trophies and pictures of those in the past, "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

We are so influenced by the teachers and the encouragement we have has as we grew up.  In fact, I was talking with a long-time best friend this morning about how our kids have been affected by the teachers that they have had.  Both of us had a child with a terrible first-grade experience and watched smart kids take a major hit.  But then both kids have had great teaching following that and we have both been blessed by a rejuvenation of teaching that re-equipped them to enjoy school and learning!  Way to go to all awesome teachers out there, who recognize differences and take steps to help all the kids in their classes.

So what are the bad influences in your life?  Anyone can be a significant influence on your life.  Parents are a definite influence.  So are teachers and other authority figures in your life. Friends alter and change who you are as you live in the world.  Even people you don't like or even don't really know can be a significant influence on you.  For me, there was one boy I knew since kindergarten that made a comment about me in high school that has persisted in how I think about myself to this day.  But, I have since been able to teach myself how to deal with that.

So, how did I deal with these influences in our lives? First, I need to recognize that my life is being impacted by those influences.  Second, I also need to understand that you are the one responsible for the choices I have made then and even now.  Third, I need an awesome mentor or friend to help me retrain yourself.

But what does that mean to me?  I have friends, don't I?  Probably yes, but perhaps not a real friend though.  Not in the close, awesome, kind of friend I mentioned earlier.  A real friend or mentor is someone that I have come to find that I can share anything with and know that they will listen honestly to me, accept me as a person, and tell me the truth when all is said and done.  Someone I can call at 1 a.m. Christmas Eve if you need to.  Someone you share anything and everything with.  I am not referring to my spouse: she is my number one friend that I can share anything with but there are things I don't necessarily want to talk through with her when I am thinking through them because she is more directly involved with the consequences of my actions and has a win/lose position in my choices.

I do need a friend that I can share this kind of relationship with on a regular basis.  I have friends here and there that I can call and talk to about anything.  But they are far from where I live.  One is an hour plus drive from my house and the other will soon be living on the other side of the country.  So that is still someone that I am looking for.

However, whether or not I have an awesome friend there is one that I can trust to help me through and give me the strength and answer that I need regardless of the situation: God. 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take.  (Proverbs 3:5-6 NCV)

I have found that no matter what I do, no matter what I think makes the most sense, and no matter what other people say to me,  God's way is always the right way.  I have thrown myself against His way for long enough to know that He always knows which way is right.  It may not seem just, or fair, or loving at the time, but His way has always been shown to be the best and most loving way in my life.  He has shown me his mercy and extravagance at the right times.  He has celebrated with me and cherished me.  He has given me blessings and corrections.  He has walked on the "mountaintops" in my life and has walked with me through the "valleys."  I have found that friends always help us through, whether that would be Jesus or someone else that is extra-ordinary.

My Story... (Part 2)

So, continuing my story from last time, I had given my life to Jesus in high school and expected things to change for me.  And a lot of things did!  But all my life previous to that I had learned to look like the "good boy" despite having things about me that would say otherwise.  I had learned to hide the yucky things that I did.

I think that when I was a junior in high school I was on an awesome retreat called Chrysalis.  It was a pretty extreme retreat where we weren't allowed to know what time it was or communicate with anyone outside.  Not for everybody.  On this retreat, we spent some time in prayer and fasting and God surprised me.  He gave me an idea that I was called to become a pastor.  Wow!  Both incredibly cool and wonderfully scary.  I wasn't sure what this meant for me at the time.  I knew I had a lot of work to get done.

In my senior year of high school, I started a Bible study as an official school club.  I was pretty proud of that because I went to a public high school in Seattle and had to prove that that would be okay.  We met regularly all year and the four or five of us that attended together really enjoyed it.  And also this year I applied to SPU for my college education with a degree in Christian Theology.  It seemed like everything was building up to what I needed to do to become a pastor.  But there were some things in my "closet" that still needed the grace of Jesus.

When does a person know that they are saved and headed to Heaven?  When I first consciously gave my life to Christ, prayed the "Prayer" of salvation, I thought that I was prayed and done.  God would make things better for me and I would be living in the comfort of Heaven from then on.  That's how it works, right?  One and done?  The answer was: nope!  False expectations can twist your thinking around in so many directions that you are dizzy like when you step off that carnival ride that spins around and around by the time it's all done.  But what I'd expected from Jesus was a false expectation.

Despite getting married to an absolutely amazing woman, despite going through a tough process and getting ordained in the church, despite having success in my work and my life, I had trouble following me.  I personally fought with an addiction for most of my life: I was addicted to sex.  I can't count the number of times I wanted to be free from it and prayed to God to take that temptation out of my life.  But He didn't.  I thought I was stuck.  I had found ways to indulge myself since I was young.  I had thought that marriage would fix me.  It didn't.  I had thought that becoming ordained would fix me.  It didn't.  I had thought that reading the right books on becoming pure would help.  They didn't.

My problem was that I had expected God to remove the temptation from my life, but instead, He wants us to have the chance to say "yes" or "no" to it.  His strength would enable me to find a way through but I still would have that temptation in my life.  It seems that my answer was a combination of 1 Corinthians 10:13 and James 5:16.  Not only did I need to pray, but I needed to seek the prayers and help of another lover of Christ.  I needed people in my life that I could be honest with.  But I had isolated myself in my shame that I had no one that was keeping me spiritually honest.  So, in the end, I needed to join a sex addicts' group.

What a change I have experienced through this pile of crap I had gathered and piled up in my life and coming out of it with the help of other people!  I learned that living on my own without other Christians in my life meant I was pointed at hell.  Jesus came to this world not only to pay the price for my sins but to start a relationship with me.  Feeling the love of God and sharing that with others means that I have to be a person in the world who has good relationships with real people.  Love is not a feeling, but an action.  I could pray constantly throughout my life, but if I don't love (share the grace and goodness God gives me) the people around me, I gain nothing (1 Cor 13).

So, did that fix me?  No.  I am still a broken person that makes mistakes in the world around me.  But I am a broken person that gets his strength from Christ.  I am a broken person that follows the path that God has put me on.  I am a broken person that is loved by the other broken people around me.  I am a broken person that has the choice to love those around me too.  The point is not that I will get "fixed" but that I will learn to lean on Christ for help in my life.  No matter what I will face or go through in my life.  My relationship with Christ has been growing by leaps and bounds these last several years--and it encourages me to seek to love those around me too.

Yes, that means that though I have faced times of poverty and have no idea where the money to pay bills will come from I still am loved by Christ.  That means that though I have experienced brain cancer and the prospect of a drastically shortened life I am still loved by Christ.  Though I struggle in my relationships to be present and worthwhile I am still loved by Christ.  No matter where what choices I make in my life, I still have the love God gives to me.  And it is through the love I experience from Christ that I can love others.