DIRTY WATER

Dirty Water

When I was a child I used to get thirsty when I was playing outside. And as much as I wanted to go inside and get some water or juice the hose connected to the  water spicket outside was much more inviting and accommodating to me. I was lazy.  The one thing I remember about that darn hose or any hose for that matter even though systematically I was full my thirst was quenched for the moment the water though never was very satisfying in fact it was bitter. I was a child and like any child I had no clue what was in the water that I had been ingesting.  Any number of things could have spawned from this ..dysentery,  the runs, hepatitis, shoot maybe even good ole fashion e coli. As I got older and learned of the junk that is in spiket water I made an educated change of strategy and begin drinking good water straight from the facet. Hehehehe . Then I graduated to bottled water and filtered water.

How does someone change their culture their confession their perception from negative to positive.. Well just like the water I used to drink that was in some cases only meant to be used for irrigation …I have discovered it is vitally important for me to spend a lot of time considering the words I ingest the images my brain gets exposed to and the conversations I allow my self to listen too. You can take a perfectly clean cup right out of your cabinet and if you fill it with nasty toilet water it is going to be dirty as well. The same concept applies to us as people we can be perfectly cleansed forgive and set free from many strongholds and bondage but by the things we examine and allow our selves to listen to we can by proxy or directly become re infected again. How powerful are words anyways one might ask? Well words are so Powerful God chose to use words to create all things.

I have seen this played out in my life. If I am honest usually before every fall or every set back for me it is preceded with a conversation that is just complete junk. I allowed words to settle into my earls flow into my brain like a seed they take root and without fail I am all screwed up in most cases in worse shape then the day I first accepted Christ. And if people took notice they would never know I was a Christian. Proverbs says to guard your heart with all diligence because out of it springs the issues of life.  I don’t believe that proverb is referring to sharing things that we love or care about with others. I believe it is referring to an outside attack that can and will take place. It is spoken in a defense mode to guard is never referred to in any language or in any text in an offensive manner only in defensive portrayals. Well to begin to do this we must set up boundaries with our ears and eyes. Not let anything that could take root in our heart negative enter.

If we drink bitter water eventually we will become bitter. So if we continuously take in bitter communication we will become bitter. In all the reading I have done in all the sermons I have heard I have never in one passage or one sermon ever heard or read where Jesus entertained any kind of gossip or negative talk. Jesus took dominion over it. He guarded his heart by setting healthy boundaries.. He even once called peter the devil. Hehehe.

So much of my recent entries have been based on healthy outward communication. Yet to have healthy outward communication and expression of love we first must not just be a clean cup that will receive any kind of water. We must be the cup the refuses water that has not been filtered by the Holy Spirit. Because like a clean cup once dirty water gets in it the only thing we can do is contaminate other cups. Eventually all of our cups do over flow but its what were overflowing with that really matters. Hence the phrase garbage in garbage out.  Lets today decide that we are nolonger going to drink dirty water. Lets drink only living water.

UNLEASHED LOVE

Unleashed Love

The wealthiest people in life, the most successful people in life, the most sought after people in life, and the greatest innovators of life are all problem solvers. Not problem finders.

It needs to be stated that anyone with a pulse can walk into any room and situation and any circumstance and find problem and fault. There is absolutely nothing special about that.  The skill and gift of solving the problem is rare.

How many times have you called out to a friend. How many times have you had a situation you needed to talk about so you call a friend or go meet with someone. You pour your heart out you spill your insides out to them and without even a pause your friend is reinforcing all the negatives that you just shared. Or they pull their bible out and read scriptures to you and begin a venture of showing you how unspiritual you are.  We have a problem in the Body of Christ.  We have an issue. One that has been drilling my heart for some months now but I have not bothered to share because I am not a problem finder I am a problem solver.  But to get to the solution we have got to understand the totality of the problem we have to see this thing and the damage it is doing.

There is no shortage of books and Christian motivational speakers. And Mens ministry is on the rise which on the outside looking in or to the surface observer you would think that the Body of Christ is filled with a multitude of strong God fearing people loving men. And I will give you the bennifift of the doubt. I am not trying to be over critical hear. But there is a growing segment of men in our Body and locol fellowships that are hurting. They are wounded. And we have begun retreating we have stopped sharing our burdens with eachother and we no longer cofess our sins to one another the way the bible says to.  I believe its because we as a body have lost the art of just listening and loving.  We all want to be the solution minded people God created us to be and we all want to be the person with the golden nugget of truth that unveils sin exposes it and heals it all in one fail swoop. We read the books take the seminars sit in the front row take notes and get all fired up then when John from such and such church reaches out to us we hear the headlines of the stuff then we begin quoting him all the TBN footstomping good doctrine we just learned and show this man how spiritual we have become through all the books we have read…What happens next is crazy. John hurting recognizes that something is not right can’t place his finger on it exactly but doesn’t respond with oh my goodness your so right response. So what we do is throw a coleism at him or tell him to just man up.

We failed to listen …we failed to love this person. We failed to respond with the heart and mind of  Christ in compassion. Now John is not just wounded by the original thing but now has another burden to carry because we as his brothers did not sit silent and listen.

Listening to someone is loving them in a very intimate way. Not just hearing them. Right now I have my tv on in the background I hear it loud and clear but I am not listening to it. The art of listening is gone….It breaks my heart.  Now guyes like that fictitious John don’t share they keep their burdens bottled up they don’t confess their sins to eachother because we spend more time condemning the actions and judging the situation then we do seeing and loving the people in them. Jesus came and concerned himself not with the surrounding circumstances time and again. We read so often the verbal responses that Jesus shared but we gloss over the times he remained silent.  He listened. He did not just hear.

I want to get back to listening in my life so I can do a better job of loving the people I am around.  The solution is actually not more words they have already been spoken we have heard them all. The solution is not more books they have all been written.  The solution is more listening. I am so greatful that I have people in my life who care enough about me to just listen at times. I am so greatful that I am loved.

Mountain Climbing

Mountain Climbing

Fear is the deadliest thing to give into. There is never a moment in my life where fear has a place. Yet so often I bow to it and give into fear. Why doesn’t a hiker begin to climb a mountain. most of the time the hiker will tell you he is not scared he will die on the hike. Its because what if he begins the journey and can’t make it to the top. Life so much like that. Who wants to begin a journey in life and not complete it. Nobody.

Recovery is similar to mountain climbing. In fact its like climbing the steepest mountain. What is scary about this mountain is that there is truth in what fear is trying to tell me. Today I wake up at the bottom of the mountain. because daily I wake up at the bottom. I never ever fully reach the top and each day begins the new journey to a destination I can never reach. Painful memories creep in on this journey daily. There are reminders constantly everywhere of my sin and my old life of sin. Temptations on every corner. Temptations at every new level of the hike. There are the people who sometimes we are even hiking with who tell us we can’t make it. It is impossible and that nobody has ever climbed this mountain successfully. Yet each day I twirl my self out of this bed and thrust myself into this climb. Why? Because fear will not control my destiny. Fear will not prevent me from attempting what is impossible.

When fear is entertained depression and anxiety set in. I have seen fear steel to much of my journey and too many good lives.  Today I wake up and I am no longer living in fear of not making it to the the top of this mountain because I embrace my failure and know that my success in life is not based on climbing to the top of this mountain. My success in life is simply defined by my attempting to do so without fear or precaution.  We all have our mountain to climb we all have our journey to take and man I am so glad to be in this climb today and doing my journey with the people God gave me to do this with. 

This journey we take on a daily basis that we know we will never reach this end point is how Gods power is displayed the greatest. Its in the endurance of the circumstance and the love and grace we display in them that perplexes the world.  Get in the climb today!!! WE need more climbers!!!  

Winning the Race Through Grace

Winning the Race Through Grace

I have already beaten the odds. I have already come so far. Statistically speaking I should be dead in the Hospital dying or in a prison somewhere trading my sleeping pills for honey buns or visa versa. I can honestly tell you this much . This much I know for certain. It is nothing good I have done that has gotten my life in somewhat order. In fact there are a lot of times I go to bed with the knowledge and wakeup the next morning with the understanding that the worse I have been the better God has been towards me.

Unless you have been a homeless drug addict like I have been you probably won’t understand where I am coming from. But If you are or have been you probably can relate to what I am about to write and I hope this helps you. If your not I pray this gives you a unique insight into the bizarre paradox that exists for the person in recovery…

Let me start off by saying this I am clean and sober and in my right mind. However I have learned recently it does not matter who good life is going or how smooth the road is that I am still subject to a craving periodically. To the reader who has never used meth amphetamine  you might read this and say so what who cares. But to the addict and men and women in recovery they know all to well that these cravings are intense painfully reality. When I first made a decision to seek sobriety and recovery in 2007 I said this …”God if you just give me a home to live in and a place in society I know I can stay off drugs” guess what? God gave me a home and place and a good one too. But the cravings came and I caved in and used and lost my home and place gave up my new identity and for a moment exchanged it back for the false one …I just wanted the craving to stop. I got back up regained my foothold on life and began to push through and said something like this….”God you have given me a place in society and a home now if you could just restore my life back to my children I know for certain I would never do drugs again.” God looked down at me and did exactly what I asked him to do…and guess what a craving came and eventually after a short brief wimped out battle I caved in and used drugs. Then after once again getting a foothold back on life and climbing back into the fight I said a prayer and it went something like this…” God you have given me a home and a place in society again…and you have restored my children back into my life …now if you just give me a wife someone who loves me and I love her so I am not so alone I know without a doubt my life will now be complete and I will never have a need to use drugs again….God looked down at me and did just that ..in fact he gave me a beautiful wife who loves Him more then she loves me. He gave me a wife who embodies Proverbs 31  and yet the cravings have come a couple of times and I have used drugs each time.  Then came this last prayer…Lord I know the stress now that comes with having the family the wife the bills are adding up…and man God these jobs are just not making ends meet and my bosses are idiots…and I said God if you could just give me a good job…where I make enough money to pay my child support ..where I can pay my bills support my new wife and our children here and Lord if you could make that near my house…I know without a doubt I will never use drugs again….and wow to my amazement the cravings come….but they go too.

It wasn’t until this last craving that I realized that in my mess when I am week that it actually doesn’t matter how many good things I have in my life when I am craving meth amphetamine its nothing personal towards anyone that is in my life that I love or a slight against a great job but If I don’t learn to stand I will use drugs again.

I think the point I am trying to make here tonight is this…my whole life God has been hearing my prayers and answering them and I finally get it ..yes He wants me to be happy but I think what he is trying to show me finally is that I won’t find that peace that completeness that ahhhh feeling and I won’t find that rest in anything outside of Him. He wants me to be complete in him ….not in my home my place in society not in my job not in my marriage…though he wants me to have those things …they won’t keep me clean..but He will.

I think the mixed message that we in recovery have trouble wrapping our mind around especially charismatic Christian people in recovery is this. We see Gods hand move mountains We see people who are definitely set free and completely delivered from hellacious situations….and we get discouraged because we think wow that could be me. God can remove this craving from me. God can take this addiction from me. …..and we are right God can and He does for some…but for those of us who are left to endure He says to us MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR THEE. What was Paul thinking when he read the words he wrote that day…cause you know he read them. I think he felt like I do sometimes kind of a sinking feeling inside a resignation…We all want our recovery and we want to believe it is instantaneous and for some it is…but for some of us it is anything but pretty. For some of us recovery is kind of ugly and we don’t like to talk about it because we haven’t completely wrapped our mind around this concept of enduring the race and winning the race through grace….

It has been some time now since my last use of meth amphetamines and I have everything going for me in fact I have the  most amazing life any one person could have ..I mean that too. I have a great wife I have five count em five of the most amazing children…I am great at my job and well respected for it and very well compensated for it …and yet evil still entices me evil still tempts me and in my mind I have used several times…despite knowing it would cost me all of that…That is not to devalue anyone of those individual things it is just being honest that we sometimes get through the storm but still get a little dirty.

I wish that we could smash this idea in recovery that everyone in recovery gets to celebrate not using drugs like it is some kind of big deal…common me not getting high is actually me just not committing a felony and possibly not committing suicide. There is nothing to celebrate in that. The minute I stand up and accept a round of applause because I haven’t stuck my arm with a needle I have lost the battle….Its not that easy. Recovery has to be fought for contended for in the wee hours of the morning when nobody is around seeing us struggle when we get woke up with a dream that we were getting high and were pissed it aint real…society doesn’t get it even people you go to church with are confused …but we can stay clean despite the cravings despite the sweats that still come despite the mental breakdowns that were scared to talk about.

We have to allow Gods grace to cover us in these days. and use them as a tool to provoke us to draw unto HIM> not seek things from HIM but to just seek HIM for HIM> Because the job one day believe it or not will can you…the wife you love and adore is human and she will hurt you …and the home you live in and the place in society you sought can be removed like that…but Gods love and grace is never subject to mans free will….and it endures for ever …all we have to do is accept it. Winning this race through Grace means accepting the fact that I am screwed up from head to toe…on my best days my offering is more like a cain offering then an able offering…and my best deeds can and should lead me to hell…it’s a good thing God looks down at me and does not see David Freeman but He sees Jesus Christ. And blesses me richly because of it…I will take grace any day …..any day and any night especially nights like tonight.