From victory, not for victory!

Admittedly this is not a saying I came up with.  It is actually a saying a friend of my wife's said to her.  BUT, it’s too good to not blog about it and I asked my wife first, so… there.

Here’s what she told my wife (and it’s something I wish more Christians understood)…

“As Christians, we need to know that we fight from victory, not for victory.”

Stinking WOW!  Do you get that?  As we fight the forces which come against us (the enemy, the world, our flesh), we already stand on victory.  We fight from a place already secured by victory.  We’re not fighting to achieve victory, because it’s already been won!

1 Corinthians 15:57 tells us,

“But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It doesn't say " He’s GOING to give us victory", it says "He GIVES us victory over sin"!  It drives me to the edge of insanity when I hear Christians say stuff like, “It’s our nature, we’re always going to sin.” Or “I’ll never have victory over this.  I’ll always struggle with it.”  That’s CRAP!  While it is true it’s in our nature to sin and there will be areas of our life more difficult to overcome than others, we already have victory over sin.  Which means, many time (and I would say most) we are able to chose whether we sin or not.  Now, there are sins considered “sins of ignorance” or “unknown sin” (See Psalm 19:12, Leviticus 4:2 & Leviticus 5:17).  In those cases we seek God for forgiveness the way David did in Psalm 19:12.  There are even those moments of uncontrolled frustration where your sin nature grabs a hold of us and we slip (maybe you curse or say something you don’t mean), and I’m not even talking about those sins.  Although, as Jesus transforms you the fruit of The Spirit should be more prevalent and those uncontrolled outbursts should be less and less (it’s called sanctification).

I’m talking about those blatant and willful sins, we typically label with the belittling and obscure excuse “I fell”.  That’s ridiculous.  I’m talking about the sins requiring a conscious act of disobedience and a willful decision to participate in.  Things like sexual immorality, drunkenness, gossip and the like (this is not an all inclusive list, mind you).  These are sins we don’t “accidently” fall into.  These are sins which at some point in our approaching them, we decide, “I’m going to do this.”

Let me say this, I’m not calling anyone out without realizing the plank in my eye.  I know, without a doubt, there are things Christ is still perfecting in me.  Things He aims to destroy for the sake of my holiness.  And I’m fully aware there is a process Christ takes us through to weed out and get rid of the things which draw us away and keep us from Him.  The process is difficult, no doubt, and often a struggle, and I don’t mean to take away from the work we put into it or the work Christ does in us to overcome those struggles.  But we need to realize the truth that we’re not fighting FOR victory, it’s already been won!  We are not slaves to sin anymore (Romans 6:18) and it’s time we realize that and start acting as slaves to righteousness (right living).  That’s what we’re bound to… the righteousness of Christ.  There are so many times WE get to chose if we sin or not.  In the instances when it becomes difficult to resist, we rely on Christ being strong in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).  Coincidentally, that is part of why He calls us into fellowship with other believers... accountability.  The truth is, when we act like victory hasn’t been achieved, we disregard the work of Christ on the cross.  He won it for us, so we don’t need to.

Rest in His victory. Fight from His victory.

Victorious,

Bruce

My Son the Teacher

This kind of goes along my post from the other day, You Feed Them, but it's been the thing that God has been trying to get across to me.

A few day ago my youngest son, Andrew, told me about a kid in his class that is so desperate for friends that he brought $100 in $20 bills and began handing them out to other kids to be his friend.  I asked my son if he took it, he said no and that all the money was retrieved, the Dad was called and given the money.  But I asked Andrew why couldn't he just be the kids friend and he said, "Well, I tried but all he does is walk around the playground.  He won't play anything."  So I said, "Maybe you could just walk with him.  Then once he sees you're willing to just do that and really be his friend, then maybe he'll play." Andrew replied, "Yeah, I don't have to play all the time.  I could just walk with him."

The thing is, that's all people want.  They want you to walk with them.  As The Church it isn't our job to wait for people to come to us, nor is it our job to drag people to where we want them or think they should be.  People want us to walk with them and we have to be willing to go to where they are and just be with them.  Once they see that our agenda involves no other item then to love them, then they will trust that we actually love and care about them.  We are called to bring Christ and be Christ to them.  Jesus told us to seek out the lost sheep and bring them home, but he wasn't saying to just make sure they made it through the church doors.  He also told us to care for and feed His sheep and that must be done where they're at.  If people don't recognize His voice, they won't follow Him. It's our job to introduce Him to them, where they are at, so they begin to recognize and find comfort in His voice.  Then, and only then, will they follow us to the foot of His throne.  If we know the way, we HAVE to share it with others and that can only be done through loving them to Christ.  As Christ walks with us, so we should walk with them.  They just want you to walk with them.  Will you?

My Testimony – "The Snake Bite"

I fully intend this to be my last super long post. But the way this one played out and with everything that has happened, this one could've been WAY longer.

So in part one titled “My Testimony – The Shipwreck” (can be read HERE), I talked about all the stuff that had happened in my life and marriage up to September 9, 2008. That was the date that my entire world changed. Just to recap on the person I was…I had been a “Christian” for 20ish years. Probably more accurate to just say I knew who Jesus was and what I had to do to spend eternity with him, but I chose not to live that way. I presented the public image of Christianity very well (I thought), but didn’t live it that way in my family or private life.

Now, understanding that from 2000 to 2005, I had been continually trying to “make up” for my earlier betrayal (2000). I knew that I had to prove that I deserved to have Dana and her love back, so my focus (at least I had convinced myself) was making sure I gave her the life she asked for. At the time I equated that to being the same as giving her the love and attention she deserved (I know now, that is NEVER the same thing). When I realized, in 2005, how severely I had and continued to betray my family (mainly my wife), I set out to change that. I turned ALL my focus on pleasing Dana. I gave her what she asked for, I told her I loved her all the time (and I really did mean it deeply), I made sure to tell her how beautiful she was, I tried to be romantic, all of it. But my focus was still wrong; it wasn’t on God. I know now, had I focused on my relationship with Christ, put God first in my marriage and been the spiritual leader I was meant to be in my home things probably would have turned out very different. That is not to say Dana would have never left (she has free will and had to be willing to accept Christ in our marriage too), but I truly believe the likelihood would have been far less. Had I done that, God would have made sure I was the husband and father my family and He needed me to be and He would have covered the rest. Hindsight, right? These are the character building moments you can never plan (maybe never want to plan).

So, September 10, 2008, SHIPWRECKED! With everything Dana told me that night, I just knew the probability of us coming back from it was slim. Although slim, at that point all was not lost. I tried to convince Dana we could survive. No dice, that night Dana did some stuff that landed her in the Behavioral Health Hospital. That was the catalyst for the most difficult, hurtful, emotional, life changing, enlightening, oddly wonderful and exciting (I know it sounds weird, but you’ll understand shortly) time of my life. That hospital admission was the beginning of my snake bite.

Up to this point, I had only visited Element Church once. We got here in July ‘08, but I avoided going. I tried three other churches and was actually kind of scared at a couple. So, I finally decided to check Element out and I loved it instantly. After my first and only visit to Element, all that crap with Dana happened. I was so angry at God. I had busted my butt making sure that my wife had everything she wanted and at being a “good” husband, how could he take that away from me? We had a plan, we had it all figured out and we were happy…I thought. I was so confused, angry, hurt, you name it. Because I was angry I decided I didn’t need to go to church anymore (that’s genius right – running farther from God would absolutely fix it, right?)

Then my kids asked if we were going back to church. Out of the mouths of babes. I couldn’t set that example for my boys, so I told them we would. When all this heartache began, I truly thought it would take FOREVER, to get past it. I knew I had to “deal” with it and be strong for my boys, but I didn’t understand why this happened and I definitely did not trust that God had a plan that would make any of this ok. I continued to go to church and prayed for months for God to bring her home, to make it better. Then in the middle of his “Heart – It’s What We Bleed” series, our Lead Pastor, Jeff (Blog love HERE) called an audible and delivered a sermon on “A World of Uncertainty”. With that sermon I realized that I had been praying for the wrong thing. I realized that I was praying and going to church, but I was simply trying to convince God I was a “Good” Christian in hopes that he would make it all better. I didn’t really believe that he would fix it or that he could pull anything good out of it. That day I stopped praying for him to fix it and bring her home and started praying for him to take control and gave him my marriage. I also began praying for strength and healing for Dana. I wish I could say that I began reading my bible and praying every day, but I didn’t. But he was just getting started… Soon after that I joined a Life/Small Group and that became a source of great strength. I found myself hungering for this relationship with Jesus that I saw everyone else had. I had been a “Christian” for twenty years and I never remember having “that” relationship. So I started praying and reading his word a little more, still not consistently, but more. That’s when I realized the whole thing about not putting God first in my marriage.

Then came the sermon series Jeff called “Dirty Santa”. One of the installments of that series dealt with forgiveness when a family member hurts you. That broke my heart. It was like Jeff was talking right to me – all of it. I wanted to forgive Dana (I didn’t want that hate in my heart), I even wanted to tell her. But then Jeff said treat her undeservedly. All I could think was, “How dare you”. I kept telling myself that he had no idea what I was going through. Before the end of the message, I realized that it wasn’t Jeff Maness’ message, it was God’s and He knew exactly what I was going through. I got up, wrote “Dana, My Wife” on the paper and put it in the bowl. That day I walked out of Element and decided I was going to forgive her. Since then I have done everything I can to treat her undeservedly. I have gone out of my way to be kind to her. I’ll tell you that you can say you forgive, but without the action associated with it, you can’t even convince yourself you have. Since then I have an unimaginable amount of peace (that’s not to say I’m not hurt, I still hurt and there’s still some anger there), but I’ve started feeling that calm I longed for. It’s amazing how God puts thing in order, it seems like all the sermons I needed to hear were delivered in a very specific order (weird, right? That God, so organized.). The next step was Jeff’s “21” sermon series, specifically the Devotion sermon. After Dirty Santa, I continued to pray for healing and protection for Dana and my boys, but my prayers for me turned to asking God’s direction for me. I was pretty much past the “Why did this happen?” part and had gotten to the “Now what?”

In that sermon, Jeff had talked about making time for intentional, consistent (and the right) connection with God every day. He said through that devotional time God will reveal his direction. That was exactly what I’d been asking for so I figured I’d give it a shot. I started that Sunday afternoon. I sat in a Burger King, while Dana visited with the boys, and began to read. The results were immediate. That Sunday afternoon, I opened to Philippians (my book mark was there because the last thing I read was Ephesians). Imagine my surprise when I read 3:13-14, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

I had been praying for direction and I heard loud and clear where God wanted me to go…FORWARD! Seemed like a good direction to go, so I kept on. I read Monday and Tuesday morning. Then it happened, after devotional time on Tuesday, I was in the shower shaving and I felt completely over whelmed. I actually had to sit down and actually started crying. Then I heard a voice in my head and this feeling in my heart that I never had before. The voice asked, “When are you going into ministry?” I actually sat there and had an out loud argument about why I couldn’t and why it was nonsense. I argued in my head all day Tuesday. I had felt like God was calling me for the last 5 or 6 years, but I constantly had an excuse why I couldn’t. “Dana doesn’t even like church, she can’t be a pastor’s wife”; “I don’t live good enough to minister”, etc. (there were hundreds). But that Tuesday, I had literally run out of every excuse, I had NONE. So I asked God to confirm it to me, if that is what he wanted me to do.

Wednesday morning I got up, put on a pot of coffee, prayed and began to read 1 Thessalonians. Four verses in I read, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.” That was it! God gave me EXACTLY what I asked for because I made intentional, consistent and the right connection with him. I could have just read my bible and not really ever connected with God. It’s not about how long you’ve been reading your bible, or doing devotionals. It’s 100% about REALLY, TRULY and DEEPLY seeking God’s face. I have NEVER had a relationship with Jesus like I do today. That day in the shower, I got my WOW moment and the Holy Spirit finally got ALL of me. I cannot imagine EVER going back to a place where I do not have this kind of relationship with Jesus. When God told me ministry was his plan for me, it didn’t make sense. Me? Why? I never gave it any consideration, because it was not what I wanted to do, but now I can’t imagine doing ANYTHING else.

It took all of that for me to realize some very important truths. My number one relationship is and has to be with Christ. As long as I have that, all my other relationships will be right. I am a COMPLETELY different person than I was 7 months ago; emotionally, spiritually and physically (all the stress caused me to drop nearly 45 lbs in 5 months - unhealthy I know!). We really do serve an AWESOME and WONDERFUL God. He really does shine a light of hope and blessing into the darkest pit of despair and sadness. God took my shipwreck and snakebite and set up the divine appointments in the exact order and with the exact people He needed to orchestrate the incredible change He had in store for my life.

Never Going Back,
Bruce