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.

I said no, but they said yes 100 times... 🎎 🖌

I love this video. It inspires jokes and cracks at home about things that we don't want to do or things that our kids are whining about doing.  I found this first in a Facebook post, which I followed to its place on YouTube.  Today I found this article about it.  Basically, though, the video is her explaining the "Why?" question by blaming it on her doll.  Very cute!

The funny part of the situation is that we all do this ourselves.  Our issues may not be an improper use of nail polish.  But we are all good at making excuses for them and ignoring the consequences.  I did a little search to find out how often certain things happen to be discussed in the Bible.

What?	Times?
Kill	1083
Money	249
Sex	212
Sabbath	134
Other Gods	84
Drunk	70
Lying	70
Greed	21
Stealing	13
Covet	11

But my question now is, how often do I think of these things?  How often do I encounter them in my own life?  Do I really think about really killing people?  Or fear being killed?  Rarely, if ever.  But I am reminded of the scripture found in Matthew 5:21-22, where it talks about how anger harbored towards someone, is the same as murder.  I have frequently been angry at other people.  Or what about other things?  Do I worry about or am concerned about money?  Yes!  I may not go out thinking about how I could rob banks, but I find myself jealous of some of the things that others have.  All the things on the above list I have to say at one time or another I was guilty of to some degree.  

I hate lists of things I am not supposed to do.  So I have redefined them in my mind:

• Kill = Support and encourage life and growth which God has designed (i.e., everything!)
• Money = Be good with what God has given me and treat it like I am just a caretaker.  When I see a need, then I get the opportunity to go and meet it if I  am able to.
• Sex = Honor the gifts God has given to others, guard what he has given me and leave the gifts of others alone.
• Sabbath = Honor God with rest.  Even He rested after creating everything.  I need to follow His lead and do the same.
• Other Gods = God is first and foremost in our world.  He created everything, including me!  And He loves me.  Looking elsewhere for inspiration, love, and hope would be like me plugging my laptop into a pile of dirt and expect it to work.

I could go on, but you see that I needed to re-understand what God has for me.  The point for me is to not walk around saying "no" to everything.   But see God's handiwork and learn what He says yes to.  If I look around the world around me I can say that God has said "yes" in so many different ways and so many different places that He overshadows what else might be trying to attract my attention.  I just need to choose to listen.

Ruined *sick!* Vacations!?!? 😰

Have you ever planned a vacation and then had it spoiled by someone getting sick?  I know that I have!  In fact this last Winter Break we had some free time that we were hoping to use productively around town.  However...my wife and I both got pretty sick.  Like five minutes up, and then back to bed for a couple hours more.  Yikes!

There was the "at least we got sick on vacation and didn't have to call in sick" line that we mentioned every now and then to each other.  But what am I supposed to do when I have other plans but then find myself in a place where I cannot participate?  Ideally, do what I can do and do my best to make myself better.  If I can help others I will do that, but I need to ultimately be better to serve better.

Have I ever experienced something similar to this in my personal faith?  ABSOLUTELY!  There have been many times throughout my life where I didn't get it and I chose to do things that were contrary to God's will for my life.  Some of those were either because I didn't realize what I was doing, or I wasn't in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  But there have been more times of spiritual sickness that I have experienced because of things I have chosen to do--since becoming a Christian.

I could create a long laundry list of things that I had done, ways that I found to sin.  But the point for me is that when I stop having good, solid relationships with other people in addition to my relationship with Jesus is the time when I am most apt to choose self-enjoyment, to choose sin in order to make myself feel "better."

During these times I have regretted my choices and then prayed to God, "Please forgive my sins and help me change, amen."  But I had not confessed these mistakes to another human being.

"Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so God can heal you. When a believing person prays, great things happen." James 5:16 (NCV)

It is in having these other relationships with that we truly get to express what God has already given to us: love.  I can be forgiven, but if I have not loved others, then I have never shared what Christ has done for me. When I get into a place where I feel sick and am hurting spiritually then I need to find people to share with.  Open and honestly.  My only caution for myself when doing this is to make sure I am sharing deeply only with trusted people.  I know I can share past pain with others, without really worrying about their trustworthiness.  But when I am struggling, sick, emotionally unsure, then I need guys around me that I trust and can share with.  How am I doing with that?  I have a couple friends that I can share with, but I need more to be truly open and honest on a regular basis.

God be with us and help us make good friends.

Too much honesty?

How honest do we have to be, really?

Last night in the car my wife and I were talking about how easy it would be to permanently ruin a person's reputation these days.  How many news stories have we heard recently where a woman accuses a man (correctly or not) of sexually assaulting her?  Even if he proves himself clear, he'll never rid himself of that accusation.  Yikes!  As a father of a son, I worry about possible future ramifications for him.  What if some girl tries to accuse him wrongfully?  He'll always have that taint about him. However, as a father of daughters, I would want to be able to crush anyone that mistreated one of them in the wrong way.   Such a knife's edge we have to tread these days!

It wouldn't be an issue if we could just trust what people have to say these days.  If we lived in a culture where no one lied then that wouldn't be something to worry about.  But I guess it would be fair to say the same about the other things we struggle with.  I know that I personally have lied before.  I cannot say, "I will never lie again" either.

How do we lie?  We can outright lie.  We can tell "white lies." We can shift people's attention away from the truth.  We say everything except that one part that would be a lie and stop there.  We can share nothing at all.  We can make excuses for what we did.  We can be downright crooked in everything that we say, or even just a little false once in a while.  But either way, I know that I am still a lier. 

Does it really matter if we lie to people?  They don't really have an eternal impact on my life, do they?  But they do.  I have become really convinced in the last couple of years with how important relationships with others is.  How I treat the world around me affects what my kids will have to deal with when they are adults.  How I treat the people I interact with affects how they feel about me and my effect on my family, my friends, and the world.  How I treat myself forms what I even think is truth and where I am really at in life.  (I know that I can lie even to myself!)  I can pray to God and lie there, but regardless of what my mouth says He knows the truth even better than I do.

So what do I do?  I know that I have lied in my past.  I know that even today I don't have a 100% accurate picture of where I really am at.  I know that I will lie in the future.  But the Bible speaks against lying.  It's even one of the Ten Commandments!

Luckily, I have continued to read through the Bible, not just ending there.  Paul writes to the Romans the following:

“21So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:21-25a, NIV)

Jesus Christ has done what the rest of us are not able to do: He lived a sinless life and then died on the cross so that I would have my sins paid for with His sacrifice.  He then rose from the dead so that I could instead have a relationship with him and live an abundant life!  So regardless of what I have done in my life, regardless of what I fail to do today, and regardless of how I sin in the future, I know that His love and grace cover me!  His love then moves me to seek to be honest in my life, but I don't have to worry about failing.

Let me use a circus example.  Honesty often feels like doing the high wire in a circus show.  I can fall off of the high wire stretched above and I know that God will save me.  He asks me to climb back up and try again, but he is the safety net that keeps me from death.  He is the trainer that offers words of encouragement and correction.  He is the roaring group of spectators that encourages me and celebrates when I succeed and moans when I fail.

The answer to lying?  God very much does not want me to lie.  He desires my honesty in all things at all times.  But he has also recognized that we are very self-centered most of the time.  He has taken care of the consequences as we build our relationship with Him.  I try to not lie in any amount.  But I still do.  God knows because he knows everything--and because in my spiritual life I confess to him (and a mentor) what I do.  I find it so much better to not be perfect but to be real.  Be real too.