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If you are struggling to believe..

I have shared this before but today is a new day, don’t harden your heart!

“What do ya want?” I asked as I opened the door. A young man and young woman stood there, smiling. Before they could speak I said, “I don’t want any, I don’t need saving, I already know all I want to know about Jesus. Just leave me alone.” But as I was about the slam the door, the young man said something that stopped me, “Sir, I have your life in my hands! You need to think about that!”

I opened the door a little wider and looked at him with a cold stare, “What are you talking about, are you threatening me?” He just smiled even broader and said, “No, no threats, just truth. I hold in my hand the book of life and I am sure that it could save yours! At this I just swore and slammed the door for good.

As I returned to the front room, passing by the stereo, I cranked it up. I had been listening to Bob Dylan’s new album, but not really paying a lot of attention. It had come with a few others in the mail from the Record Club of America. Now as I sat down, I heard lyrics saying:

“…Surrender your crown on the blood-stained ground, take off your mask. He sees your deeds even before you ask. How long can you falsely deny what is real?…”

I rummaged around to find the album cover, “Long Train Coming” turning it over, I saw that it was songs about God and Jesus. I shook my head and mumbled, “This ain’t right, no matter where I turn these days someone is trying to sell me their religion!” I got up and took the album off the turntable and sailed it across the room, hitting the wall it broke. Smiling, I said, “Now that is what I am talking about!” Looking through my albums I found Led Zeppelin and as it’s loud rhythms filled the room. I sank back in my chair, taking a pull from the whiskey bottle sitting next to it, I whispered “Peace at last!” and closed my eyes in a drunken stupor.

Man, most of my life I fought to keep the message of Jesus out. I really wanted no part of whatever He was all about. I cannot tell you how many times the incident above played out. Some one would come to the door offering to talk to me about Jesus. Most times they never got past the opening line, if that. This particular guy I remembered because he shocked me with the line he used, it was effective. But in the end, I shut him down too. Anytime I heard anyone or anything referring to the Savior, wham, I shut it out. Period.

I know there are a lot of people out there like me. Maybe not as hardcore but just as adamant about closing the door every time Jesus knocks. My friends, I get it. But all I can say today is, “Give Jesus a chance and listen to this from God’s Word: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts…” (Hebrews 3:15a) You can know that everyday God is giving you an opportunity to change the life you are living. I know if you are struggling with addictions or depression or just life in the pressure cooker that is our world today, life ain’t all that great. The question is what do you have to lose. And even more maybe it is time to think what you have got to gain!

When you get to know God, really know Him. You will find this amazing love. I know you have probably been told or have come to believe that He is some vindictive being that is waiting to smack you around every time you fail but I have come to know, He is not. He is a God that loved us so much, He did this, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Have you ever loved anyone that much? Do you have a child you would sacrifice for a complete stranger? Our God did that, for you and for me. How can you turn away from love like that? Even this old lush was changed when I saw and believed it.

I know, you have heard this all before. Just another guy who was ‘born again’ trying to convince the world to believe in a God who doesn’t exist. If you are feeling this way, I understand. I have been there. But I want to tell a story Jesus told about the love of God. It is a famous story to those who read the Bible, found in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15. Most people know it as the Prodigal Son. I will tell it in my own words, then I am done, and it is up to you. Here is how it goes.

There was a rich farmer who had two sons. His youngest was kind of wild and the oldest was not. One day the youngest tells his dad, “I can’t hang around here forever, this farm is boring. I know you have some money laid aside for me. Give it to me now and I am out of here.” The father knows better, but he also knows the only way his son will see truth is to be out in the world on his own. He gives him the money. Of course, the son goes out and blows it all on partying and soon is broke with no friends to his name especially since the money has run out. So, he gets a job cleaning up after pigs, for so little pay he can barely eat. One day he thinks, “I will go home and work for my dad as a hired hand. I know he pays them better than this.” He came far and finally as he is walking up the farm road, his father sees him from a long way off and comes running out to meet him. And even though he is dirty and smell even worse wraps his arms around him and hugs him hard. He tells his hired hands to get the best clothes and shoes, even puts a ring on his finger. The son tries to tell him that he is willing earn his keep now, but the father won’t even listen. All he knows is that this son who was lost is now found. Let the party begin! (paraphrase from Luke 15:11-24)

That is the God I have come to know. He allowed me for over 56 years to wallow in every pig sty I could. Still stinking of every kind of sin. Yet the moment I decided to come to Him, He was there with open arms and He is there waiting for you. Yes, His Son, Jesus, has already died for your and my sins. And that is love, my friends. Love I never knew or understood. But today I am blessed to share it with you. All you got to do is ask, His arms are open, nothing you have done can stop Him from loving you. Enough said… at least for now.

5 Steps of Neurocycle

From Celebrate Life Cafe 3-13-23

Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess – 5 Steps – More in Depth

1. Gather.

Become aware of your emotional warning signals, such as bitterness, rage, anxiety, worry, self-pity, envy, pride, jealousy, cynicism, or hopelessness. Gather awareness of any associated physical warning signals like headaches, heart palpitations or GI issues.

2. Reflect.

This is what I call the “mental autopsy” step, where you capture these emotional and physical warning signals and ask yourself questions to find the informational warning signals, that is, the information contained within the dendrites of this thought.

Here are some questions to guide your thinking:

  • Do you struggle to find your meaning and passion?
  • Why are you feeling this way?
  • What has happened in your life to affect your identity?
  • What are you good at?
  • What have you developed in terms of your skill set?
  • Has your identity been affected by social media?
  • Do you battle with envy and jealousy?
  • Are you spending more time on worrying about what others are doing with their life instead of focusing on and enjoying your own?

Here is an example: say you notice feeling a lot of jealousy in a certain situation. Because you are aware of this feeling, and you know and have heard certain things about envy and jealousy, you also feel guilt. With mind-management, you can use this complicated emotion to your advantage by asking yourself questions like: “What exactly am I jealous of? Why? What can I learn from that person I am jealous of? Why did this particular person/situation trigger my jealousy? How can I use this to inform my future decisions?” By doing this, you shift from comparison to curiosity.

3. Write.

Write down what you have reflected on above. You can do the Reflect and Write steps simultaneously if you wish. This is a useful way to organize your thinking and get to the heart of the matter and the root of your thinking!

4. Recheck.

This step a great place to start identifying and analyzing patterns in your thinking and behavior that could help you further define and shape your identity. Is there something you are proud of and want to see yourself doing more of?

It is also a useful step to start identifying flaws and common mistakes you may be making that are part of your identity issues. This is not a shaming exercise; rather, you are getting to know yourself better! Remember, our biggest flaws are simply our greatest strengths channeled in the wrong direction. You may have identified a recurring problem in your life, such as becoming impatient too quickly with others and reacting in an irritable way because you feel your time was wasted. Looking closer at this, you may notice that you are deeply driven by a desire for efficiency and effectiveness, and your strength could reside in your incredible ability to strategically think and direct people and resources. So, by noticing this, you can learn to channel this strength in a more positive direction, perhaps by creating schedules, for example. This is reconceptualization in action!

Not sure where to start? A good place is how you answered the question, “Why am I feeling this way?”. Perhaps you discovered you were triggered by something someone said at work that you tracked back to a thought you built as a child (a core belief you developed) when someone at school laughed at you and called you a name. Rechecking this would look something like: “What that person said to me was their perception, which was based on their assumptions and not the truth. The truth is that I do have value in the area of…”.

5. Active Reach.

What simple action or phrase can you say or do that encapsulates the work you did in the Recheck step? Once you have figured this out, create a reminder to prompt yourself to say it aloud at least seven times today, which will help you practice the new thought.

An identity Active Reach for day 1 can be as simple as “I am aware that looking at other people’s Instagram profiles makes me feel like I am not achieving my goals.” By day 2, this can progress into, “I actually feel quite paralyzed by looking at other people’s Instagram profiles, so I am going to not look for a week and see how I feel”, and so on.

These are progressive, daily growth reminders to help drive your changing brain in the right direction, and in doing so, clean up the mental mess!

An early Christmas gift…

In this season of thanksgiving, it is often easy for me to see how blessed my life is. After all I have more worldly comfort than I could ask for or in my mind, have earned. A warm comfortable home that I share not only with my loving wife but am also blessed to share with our son and daughter-in-law. Yes, there are times when this is troublesome because we live different lives, but the blessings far outweigh the struggles. Also, I have had extended health in the cancer battle of over 16 years. I truly can say, “God is good!”

If this is true, I wonder why I sometimes find myself still lost because I cannot seem to see what I would want ‘God’s will’ for my life to be. Leading me to complain and often be so discouraged that I become frozen in what I do each day. Wasting of much of the precious gift of life that I have been granted.

The amazing thing is that the God we serve is so good that He is willing to overlook my selfish behavior and actually find ways to encourage and allow me to see that in so many ways I am living out His true will, if I am just willing to see it. Yesterday I was given one of those moments of encouragement that was so humbling it brought me to tears.

Some of you know that I spent most of this last year completing two books that have been on my heart for years. One is the testimony I have struggled to write since 2017. It is my story of salvation and the miracle of Jesus in my life after years of addiction and degradation. I was excited when it was finally published but became discouraged when so few copies of it were sold. No, not because of the money I would earn from sales but because I so wanted it to be read. I got lost again in the idea of what my will and God’s will are. This leads me back to yesterday.

It started as a routine day. Which seems too often now includes a doctor’s visit for either RuthAnn or me. This day it would be RuthAnn who was going to have to endure a cardiac stress test. This meant long hours for her being poked and prodded, also tests and treadmill. For me it meant hours of waiting and filling my time with useless reading of news and trivia. This was until RuthAnn sent me an interesting text, telling that a friend and pastor from my days at the Grants Pass, Oregon church had gotten a hold of a copy of my book. I felt blessed by this but thought little more about it until my phone rang. It was my pastor friend and what he had to share with me changed my day!

Without going into too much of our history together, I will just say that Pastor Tony was in my life in the year after my wife Dianne’s death and his intervention and love opened doors to a closer walk with Jesus. So much came out of that time including my need to share the miracle testimony I was blessed with. Yesterday, Tony would share again in a way that showed me why we are in each other’s lives. No accidents or coincidences, but God’s ordained will to serve others.

As Tony began to share, he startled me by telling me two things I was so humbled by that I really struggled to comprehend. The first was that he believed one of the reasons that he had been called to serve the Grants Pass church as a pastor was because of me. That our relationship which has led to so much was central to his time in that church. Of course, I was blown away by this and it would have been enough to encourage me, but he had more. As his conversation continued, he also spoke that as he read my book and he now knew that our paths had crossed years before in Livermore, California where I was working, and he was giving Bible studies that it was no coincidence. Again, this was powerful as I thought how amazing God’s timing and works are. Thinking that was all he had to share I began to tell him how blessed I felt by it. He stopped me and said there was more. The remainder of his story is where I felt that the hand of God is so beyond me that I was brought to tears.

As Tony shared it was a simple story of his being open to see divine appointments, those moments where the Holy Spirit leads us to be in the right place at the right time to share God’s absolute love with another. In this case it was on a flight from Las Vegas to Memphis. As Tony told it, he had prepared himself for this long flight by stocking up on a wholesome meal and prepare himself time to settle in and read my book. He had no assigned seat but allowed God to find him a place and that place was in a middle seat next to a young man sitting at the window next to him. Striking up a conversation, Tony asked why the young man had been in Las Vegas and was told it was a birthday that had brought him to the city and as they spoke Tony could tell he still was inebriated from his time of partying. The conversation slowed and Tony finally settled in to read. This continued until he reached the part of my story where the miracle of God’s grace began to change my life. As he read this, Tony knew that the Holy Spirit was telling him that he needed to speak to the young man next to him further.

Now there was no more small talk. Tony was led to ask what the young man was doing with his life, and did he know that there is a God who loves him and wants only the best for him. The answer was that there was a time when he believed this to be true but now was not sure. Again, the conversation slowed but this time due to the young man now growing ill from the alcohol he had consumed. Tony knew that he was going to be violently sick and tried to offer him his food bad to allow him to do what he needed to do without making a mess, but it did not work. As the young man was sick Tony sat next to him rubbing his back and just being there as a loving presence.

Once the plane landed Tony waited until he could have a moment with the stewardess to explain what had happened and to tell some extra cleaning would need to be done. Exiting the plane and as he waited for his luggage Tony waited to see if the young man would be there. They met once again at the baggage kiosk. The young man thanked Tony for his kindness and as they parted Tony was able to give him his card and open the door to further conversation. Now it will be the Holy Spirit’s work to open more doors for this young man, but I am sure He will!

As Tony finished this story, I knew once again that none of what I too often think about when I consider my writings is important. It does not matter how many books I sell just into whose hands each book goes. I was tearfully humbled to know that a life had been touched ignited by the words I was given to write. What a precious gift that is for me and how thankful should I be? The answer to that is still reverberating in my heart as I write this.

All I know as Tony prayed for us as we were parting that I had been changed again. That I knew my transformation was still ongoing and I realized how blessed I am. Before we hung up, I also knew another miracle had occurred and I could say with a full heart is God is good all the time and all the time God is good! To that I say a humble, Amen!