Fight Devotional Day 10

“He must increase, but I must decrease,” -John 3:30.

“You are not your own for you were bought with a price,” -1 Corinthians 6:19-20.

“For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” – Philippians 1:21.

I hated those verses for most of my life.

I’m starting to wonder if I ever really was Christian in the first place before a couple of weeks ago. Why? Because when I think about it God was like a drug to me in my previous attempts at a spiritual life. Being the selfish person that I was, I often found myself depressed, hurt, and alone, much of which was due to decisions that I made. Granted there were some events and people in my past that were responsible for some of those feelings, but the vast majority of my wounds were/are self-inflicted.

So I would use God as a drug. A temporary fix to the pain and isolation of my life. I would feel better for a time and then relapse back into my selfish life.

I bring this up because, even when I was using God as a drug to get me high and escape the pain of my life, I resented and even despised verses like the ones above. Why? Because I wanted to be the star of my own life and I despised any thought that someone else might be. Even Jesus.

If you’ve read my previous posts, you saw where such an attitude led me. I wrote yesterday that I have had many Delilah’s in my life-  The strip club. The buffet. The pack of smokes. The bed. The chat room. The selfish need for adulation and power.”The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” (1 John 2:16- KJV).

Is it any wonder why I wound up where I did? Or why Samson wound up humiliated and chained between two pillars at a Philistine shindig with his eyes gouged out?

We went back, Jack, and did it again to paraphrase Steely Dan.

Yet, as Pastor Craig Groeschel wrote in day 10 of the Fight Devotional, God was not finished in Samson. Or me.

“If you’re a Christian, you have resurrection power within you. Tap into it. Don’t try just to ‘be a stronger man.’ Satan loves making strong men weak. God loves making weak men strong. Don’t try just to “be a better man.” Be God’s man. Stop trying to tell your story. Start telling his. It’s not about you. It’s about him. Push those pillars down. Die to yourself so you can live for him.”

I no longer cringe at the thought of dying to myself or living for Christ. I was the star of my own show for 38 years and I don’t have a whole lot to show for it except a life filled with mostly disappointment and heartache. I finally let Jesus have the throne of my life because I got sick of fighting for the power and prestige that only belongs to Him.

So did I recently become a Christian? I hesitate to say that. Perhaps when I accepted the Lord in my teenage years it was the beginning of a long and winding sanctification process. It took me over 20 years to wind up at the point where I let go and let Jesus have his way.

My life is no longer my story. It’s His. To be honest, while I am relieved, I am not sure what all that entails or where this journey with my Lord will lead. Samson’s moment of surrender to the Lord was in the last minutes of his life. As of now, I’ve lived about three weeks after my moment of surrender. Lord willing, I will have longer. But I don’t know where this faith journey will lead me.

And perhaps that is what faith in Jesus is: trusting Him enough to put your hand and your fate in His, letting him lead you trusting that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippines 1:6).

Fight Devotional-Day 9

Pastor Craig Groeschel’s study of Samson in the Fight Devotional arrived (for those of us who are reading it at Hope City Church) at Judges 16 where Samson has his infamous affair with Delilah. I had read Judges more than a decade ago but apparent

I had read Judges more than a decade ago but apparently not as closely as I should have. I was under the impression that Samson was an outstanding man of faith. A Biblical hero who made one dreadful mistake in his relationship with Delilah. In everything I’ve seen so far in these devotionals, the affair with Delilah was merely the logical end of a boundaryless, selfish, hedonistic, and arrogant lifestyle pursued by Samson.

While it seemed for most of his life that God was with Samson, Samson was not with God as evidenced by his pulling honey from the stomach of a dead lion or pursuing women that were not of his faith- both of which the Lord forbade him to do.

From the perspective of your faithful blogger, arrogance more than anything else led to Samson’s downfall. Perhaps I am of that opinion because I’ve seen my arrogance wreak havoc in my own life.Unfortunately, we live in a time and society where arrogance is celebrated. I am sure we as a society didn’t mean to do that, but we did it just the same.

As a child messages from parents, teachers, media, and other places told me that I was special. And I was. Still am, in fact. I believe God made us all special and we were put on this earth to do work for Him that only we can do. The problem is that somewhere along the way (at least for people such as myself) that messaged morphed into arrogance and entitlement.

I honestly didn’t believe the rules should’ve applied to me because I thought I was special.

I truly felt that I was immune to the law of cause and effect because I was special. It didn’t help that in many circumstances my parents shielded me from that law. This isn’t to knock them- they were doing what psychiatrists, educators, and “experts” told them to do in their hope that they would raise good children. They wanted to protect my self-esteem and were trying to be good parents. This was the same misguidedness that fueled the early years of parenting with my son.

So I grew up in arrogance that I have only recently started to shed as Jesus has taken His rightful place as head of my life.

I didn’t believe I should be corrected in anything because I thought I was special.

I thought I should buy this and that even when it made no financial sense to do so because I thought I was special.

I didn’t believe the rules should apply to me because I thought I was special, superior and somehow above it all.

I believed I should have been on the throne of my own life as God because I thought I was special.

The problem is that specialness didn’t exempt me from the real world as God set it up. I made bad choices and I wound up with bad results. I wasn’t taken away by Philistines in chains, stripped of power and dignity with my eyes gouged out, but I was, in the summer and fall of 2014, alone in a sub-par, mouse infested apartment, with no close friends, one inappropriate relationship with a woman, and virtually no money. I was in absolute despair and angry with Jesus for cursing my life.

It would be laughable to me now if it weren’t so pathetic.

You could say the Lord withdrew His hand from me, I suppose. But in the case of Samson, and in the case of me, how much would that be true? Did God curse us? Or did we curse ourselves with our terrible decision making? I can’t answer for Samson but I can answer for me. It was the latter. Jesus made me for him. And he made the world to run by cause and effect. I made bad decisions and got bad results- over and over and over again.

“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly,” – Proverbs 26:11.

I will be the last person to treat Samson as an idiot for repeatedly going back to Delilah despite it being obvious that she was going to bring him down. I’ve had many Delilah’s in my own life. Self-centeredness. Overeating. Porn. I could go on and on as there were many things. It should have been apparent (and it probably was) to everyone around me that these things were going to bring me down at some point. I should have been able to see it. But I was blind like Samson, who first was blinded by arrogance and then was blinded by Philistines.

“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” (Luke 8:17)

As Pastor Craig wrote today “Your sin will find you out.” And as Blind Willie Johnson and Led Zeppelin sang, It’s nobody’s fault but mine.

 

 

 

Fight Devotional Day 8

In today’s fight devotional by Pastor Craig Groeschel, hit on one of the biggest struggles that I have- trying to do everything myself and trying to take all of the glory for myself.

Oftentimes in doing that I would feel like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. Part of the problem I had when I was on the throne of my own life was that I placed myself in a condition where, as Pastor Craig said, you feel like you are the glue that is holding everyone’s life together. Not only that, I would not share the burdens I carried around with people until I was on the verge of absolute collapse.

“We may not say it out loud, but what our actions are communicating to others is: ‘I’m not letting you in. I won’t share what’s going on with me. Besides, even if I tried, you wouldn’t understand.’ That’s why we refuse to ask for directions! We don’t want to have to tell anyone we need help! I’m convinced the reason we do this is that most of us want to be the hero, the main character, the center of the story that we’re telling about ourselves. We want to make everything about us…instead of about God.”

As the Lord gently communicated to my soul a couple of weeks back: “You’re not God.”

The verses in today’s devotional reading spoke to my soul:

“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus,” -Philippians 4:19.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you,” -Matthew 6:33″

“casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you,” -1 Peter 5:7.

These verses are a relief to me. Especially today, which finds me in disagreement with someone from my personal life. Honestly, as I type this right now I am not happy at all. Usually, what I would do is sit here in the chair where I type these blogs and get steamed, feel sorry for myself, and think of ways to obstruct and get back at this person or that person. The more I that I thought about it, the angrier I’d get and that would result in most of the day being ruined.

But I’m not God and I can’t control what other people do. Since the Lord Jesus has taken His rightful place on the throne of my life, and since His Scriptures tell me He wishes to hear of my anxieties because He cares for me, I will tell Him about them. Then I will let Him sort out the details, even if that means me being the person in the wrong in this situation.

And, dear reader, if you wish to pray for your faithful blogger here, I certainly would love and appreciate that.

 

 

The Fight Devotional-Day 3

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a gigantic fan of the financial expert/ talk show host Dave Ramsey. Anyone who knows Dave Ramsey knows how much he HATES debt.

I couldn’t help but think of him when I read this Pastor Craig’s Fight Devotional.

“Lust makes us think, I want it. 

Entitlement is that little voice that takes “I want it” and adds “…and I deserve it”:

I work hard. I’ve earned some extra.

I’ve spent a lot of money at this place over the years. I deserve a little payback.

I’m not getting my needs met at home. And sometimes a guy’s just gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.”

A common call to The Dave Ramsey Show usually involves a spouse who wants desperately to get the family finances on the right track. The other spouse is not interested and even though the couple is in debt up to their eyeballs (six-figure debt is not uncommon) the spouse still wants to buy something that will plunge the family further into debt. The conversation between Ramsey and the caller usually goes something like this:

“So he wants to buy a new truck even though you are this far into debt?”

“Yes,” the spouse responded. “He said he works hard and thinks he deserves it.”

“Why don’t you tell him to call the ‘waaahhhhmbulance?'” Ramsey would reply caustically. “Tell him to grow up. We’re all working hard out here.”

America in the 21st Century is rife with entitlement. It’s part of what is fueling things like credit card debt, student loan debt, and the widespread misery in our culture. Lest you think this is going to turn into an anti-Capitalist screed, let me assure you that’s not the case. I love capitalism. it results in prosperous nations and, as I heard Dave Ramsey comment on one of his legendary rants, it gives little guys (like your faithful blogger here) and girls the best chance to elevate themselves into a state of prosperity.

But, as with anything else, Capitalism has its setbacks. Mainly in terms of greed. Take the barely-clothed women on the TV set that the Pastor wrote of yesterday. Unless those women are on a Public Television special, they are on a TV show that is designed to sell you something. “Sex sells” as they say and anyone in advertising will tell you that the TV show is merely the thing that occupies the space in between the commercials.

And if the TV show has a demographic that doesn’t respond well to sexed-up fare, you can bet there will be images of products specifically placed, lighted, located and presented in a way that will appeal to get you to buy it.

NOW.

That is the key word.

Last year, given the usual promises and demands between presidential hopefuls and the voting public, combined with the fact that the beloved actor Gene Wilder (star of the dark family comedy “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”) died led me to coin the term “Veruca Salt Nation” to describe the current state of affairs. Veruca Salt being the spoiled little girl in the above-mentioned movie. 

But chances are pretty good that we can’t have what we want right now. In generations prior to the 1950s that usually meant we would have to save our money to get the things we wanted. But with commercials getting us hot and bothered and leaving us with a sense of unfulfillment unless we get the product advertised, we look for other ways to get it.

Financial institutions, given the fact they are full of perfectly intelligent men and women, began to peddle credit cards and loans to people desperately searching to scratch their itches. And those of us who thought a sheepskin from a university was the way to the prosperity we saw advertised on TV decided to take out student loans to get there instead of working, planning, and saving to get the job done.

And the results are just as disgusting as when Samson stuck his fist in the carcass of the dead animal to obtain honey in the Book of Judges, as Pastor Craig wrote in today’s devotional.

Currently, your faithful blogger is $86,000+ in the hole for student loans. It is a sickening thought that my family might not get an inheritance from me or have niceties like a college fund because my money was tied up in the mess that I chose to make by taking out loans. It frustrates me to no end that, due to the fact that I am cleaning my financial affairs up, I cannot marry the wonderful woman that God has sent me in a more timely manner. I hate being the live-in boyfriend. I want to be her husband. Not to mention the fact that I believe people are better and families are on surer footing when the couple makes a written, legal contract with and for themselves- let alone the spiritual component. Only recently have I begun the biblical practice of tithing the full amount, yet it frustrates me that, for the most part, I can’t give offerings like I want to. And that hurts. Because one of the things I believe the Lord Jesus has brought out to me recently is that, despite my previous greed, in my heart, I am a giver or at the very least I want to give.

It’s also sickening to hear of the marriages and lives destroyed because the financial stress and strain finally caused the walls to cave-in. One example from a Dave Ramsey book I read was two college students in Oklahoma committed suicide together after getting in over their heads on credit cards that were aggressively marketed on their college campus. Next to their dead bodies were their credit card statements.

And these things we lust after, whether it’s the porn I wrote about yesterday or the finances that I write about now, the results could be fatal as the Apostle James wrote in his epistle:

“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

I do not believe it’s unbiblical to try to better our financial situation in life. But as I sit here, I cannot help but wonder what Samson’s life, and my life, would have looked like up until this point if we, while working toward better our station in life, remained for the time being content in what God gave us in the first place.

Perhaps that honey would not have been sauteed with the rotting carcass of a lions innards.