Jacob's Dream

When Jacob laid on the stone at the place that became know as Bethel, he had a dream in which he saw God standing at the top of a stairway that led from earth to heaven, or rather heaven to earth.  This dream was an event that was to mark the rest of his life.  He would always remember and take heed in the turbulent years ahead of God's promises for him.  God chose Jacob not because he qualified based on the general first-born son tradition(which is not evil in and of itself), nor because God was a respecter of Jacob and not Esau.  God chose Jacob because he chose Jacob.  Plain and simple.  This would have the enmity of Esau towards Jacob during these years, especially after Jacob had cheated Esau out of his birthright by his cunning.  Jacob was a wrestler, not in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense.  He knew how to find ways to take what was promised to him.  The question is, did God endorse this?  Did God agree with him cheating Esau?  I think not.  I seriously do not believe that God intended for Jacob to cheat his brother.  After all, God's design for family was unity and love.  I believe that God wanted Esau to have a part in Jacob's inheritance.  That's just my opinion based on God's heart.  God promised to bless Ishmael and his decendents in spite of the fact that the (P)romise was to come through the natural born son of Abraham and Sarah - Isaac.  God obviously saw Ishmael, as was confirmed by Hagai's encounter with God where she called Him the God who Sees - even me!
Why did Jacob, then, who was promised the blessing, have to cheat his brother and drive a deeper wedge into his family than was already there just based on the fact that Esau wanted the birthright but was for some reason not promised it?  What I am about to converse on is an overview on an inherent belief in God's people that was exemplified in the life of Jacob.
Jacob was a homely young man.  He was clean-shaven and not the ruffian that his brother was.  I would daresay that most would pick Esau to be the one to carry-on the family inheritance.  He had the stout-hearted ability equal to the likes of Richard the Lion-Heart or Samson.  Yet God chose Jacob.  He said that the older would serve the younger.  Kind of like the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Everything about Jacob on the outside showed a lacking of ability to carry-on the dignity to the Promise that his fathers had been given.  Esau was the better man on the outside for a job. Yet Jacob, who had been given the promise, still saw the need to deceive and cheat his brother to gain what was rightfully his.  Now, I am all for fighting for what is ours - especially when there are those who would seek to steal it.  If we did not, then our Nation that we know and love would not be.  Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union and Communism would have taken over the world.  Or America would be like Canada and Australia - still distinctly tied to the identity of England's royal legacy.  America could not have been what it became by continuing as an underling of Britain.
But at what cost do we fight for our inheritance?  By cheating our loved ones?  By stirring up an already tense situation due to jealousy and lack of understanding as to why one was chosen over the other for the job(NOT loved more - there is a difference - Jacob was chosen for the job, God loved Esau also - just despised him in comparison to the mercy He chose to extend to Jacob).  Jacob left home on the run and scared to death.  He went to the land where his mother originated from and immediately went to work to try to gain the love of Rachel even if it took 7 years.  He went through countless cheatings and deceit from his Uncle Laban, something that was certainly not honorable - especially for the years of service and commitment that Jacob gave to Laban.  But what was Jacob after, really?  Was he after Rachel?  Or was he after something more?  Rachel certainly could not fill the void in his heart, and the Promise that God had given Him could not by itself fullfill Jacob either.  Jacob came out of the womb trying to grab Esau's heel and pull him back so that HE would be first.  He felt that only by being good enough could he obtain what was already his.  Being first was his life-mission up to this point.  If he could attain the first woman that he loved, Rachel, then he would have arrived.  But he was deceived and given the second choice, one that he did not want.  The years of understandable strife between the two sisters must have torn Jacob apart.  He probably wanted to at least acknowledge Leah since he was stuck with her, but his heart was with Rachel.  Yet Leah bore more children than Rachel.  His union with Leah was more fruitful than that with Rachel, though he loved Rachel more and viewed Leah as simply a squeeky third-wheel in comparison.  All these years Jacob was after one thing.  He knew, alright, that God had chosen him.  His encounter with God at Bethel was forever branded on his heart.  Yet still, there was a part deep inside Jacob that just could not believe that the Promise was enough.  I mean, after all, he did come out of Rebekah's womb last.  The fact that he could not meet the general guidelines as the first-born haunted him, though he could not put it into words.  His every action of striving against his brother and his uncle show a deep-seeded belief that his circumstances at birth disqualified him from God's promise.  He felt that he had to fight on his own to grasp onto what was right in front of him.
When his favor with Laban began to depart and it was time to leave, he deceived Laban once again and acquired great wealth.  All the way back to the land of his father and brother, Jacob still carried this cunning and craftiness to arrange things so that they would be in his favor.  When he heard that Esau was drawing near with an army, he sent his maid-servants and Leah in small bands ahead of him so as to appease Esau in hopes that these actions would imply good-will towards his affronted brother.  And finally, when all of his family had gone ahead of him and he was left alone, a Man came and wrestled with him until daybreak. What happened hear was more than simply a physical wrestling matching to see who could pin the other down into submission.  Jacob was confronted by the One that he had truly been striving against all this time.  Jacob felt that God's simple promise could not be enough to qualify him.  He had to be 'good enough'.  He had to arrange things so that God's promises for his inheritance would come to pass.  All of his wheeling and dealing, striving and deceiving, was driven by this inherent belief that he still had to do something extra on top of God's promise to qualify.  He was a victim of circumstance because of being second instead of first, and the cruel world of Esau and Laban would NEVER cooperate with God's promise.  This root of unbelief could only be thwarted and confronted by God Himself.  All these years Jacob had been striving and refusing to rest in God's promise because he felt that he wasn't worthy of God's best, and others' actions such as Laban appeared to confirm this inherent belief.  Yet God, in His mercy, was actually saving Jacob from himself.  God already knew that Jacob would struggle with insecurity over his own worth and qualifications due to his circumstances in life.  Jacob's hopes to qualify for the Promise by being first instead of last would ruin the Promise that God had given Jacob.  Jacob would not appreciate nor hold true endearment towards a fulfilled Promise if he had to earn it by means of self-preservation.  It would ruin him.  He would always have to be good enough for the next thing.  So God allowed Jacob to suffer and travail under intense disappointment and anguish, with a torn family of his own and his childhood home pierced through the heart.  God had to get the message across to Jacob that Jacob was fine just as he was, not because he could hit the game-winning home run.  That final encounter alone at the banks of the Jabbok was the confrontation with Jacob's destiny. God came to show Jacob His love, yet still Jacob felt that he had to do something first.  All God wanted was for Jacob to let go.  That, after all, is what true repentance is - letting go and letting God.  God finally broke Jacob's hip and forever changed Jacob's view on things.  For the first time, Jacob realized that all along the promise was always his and he did not need to cheat his brother or his uncle.  Jacob was for the first time at peace with himself.  He had laid down, after much struggling and restistance, the need to prove himself to be somebody that he already was. 
When Jacob finally encountered Esau, trying to appease or qualify for the love and forgiveness of others was no longer in the picture.  Jacob was at peace with himself, and for the first time possibly ever, he realized that he loved his brother Esau, and he was truly sorry for what he had done. 

What does this have to do with us, or me, you may ask?  Well, we all struggle with this inherent need to be good enough.  Our own conciousness of sin combined with feelings of rejections and lack of love combine to feed this monster that rears it's ugly head every time we feel threatened by others' blessings, or imperfect relationships with family and friends, or are about to take that next big step in our careers.  Until we come to peace with the fact that God loves us just as we are, and that no matter what is happening in us or around us our value does not change, we will always manifest out of this some form of striving to be good enough.  For me, it has been to try to appease people so that I would be on good terms with them.  Instead of truly honoring people, I would give lip-service to avoid punishment but my heart would not be in it.  This is a form of passive rebellion. Always trying to stay on good terms with people but sacrificing true relationship and working things out with people. We become a house divided against itself when we try to attain what God wants for us by our own crafty ways.  Paul was doing this before his encounter with the Lord on the Damascus road.  King Saul was doing this when he became torn between obeying God and doing what was best for his people in the long run and folding to the fickle appetites of his people who could not see past their own temporary hunger.  He could not accept the fact that if he would just be himself and walk with God that what was best for his people would come forth, and he gave-in to their demands to hoard for themselves what God knew would cause massive repercussions in the years to come.  We HAVE to come to that place where we realize that all we are and all of our worth is a gift from God, and we just have to trust Him that He is faithful not only to us, but to others that this effects, such as our family and friends.  The Knowledge of Good and Evil is about OUR goodness, trying to be 'good enough'.  We already WERE good enough because God said so!!  The serpent got Adam and Eve to believe that God was holding out on them and they were on their own now to obtain the Life that God intended for them.  This is the nature of sin - self-preservation and the inherent desire to set-up our own system of checks and balances by which we may somehow arrive in the Promised Land - only to find that it's not enough if we do make it by our own means.  Everything that we are and are promised is wrapped in the fact that God chose us to bear His image and to cultivate this gratitude of His Sovereign Grace by loving others and fighting for the hearts of others.  It is His free gift, and we can do nothing to revoke this, other than walk away from it and try it on our own.
The story of Jacob is the story of all of us.  God gives a promise, we get excited, then we start to wonder why everything happening around us seems to be to the contrary.  God is after our hearts.  He wants us to believe without a doubt that His love is unconditional and the only thing we have to do is choose to believe it and walk in it.  He will allow whatever hell on earth that He can without actually killing us to bring to death this inherent root of unbelief.  This is what God has been doing with me these last four years.  His Promises have seemed unattainable because of circumstances and because of limits in the natural realm such as finances, transportation, dependency on parents, oppositition from family due to their own fear and them not understanding what's going on, etc. In this, however, He has been instilling in me an inherent testimony that He is faithful and He who begun a good work in me will be faithful to complete it, even until the day of Christ Jesus.  He has been teaching me that it is not my fault that others have rejected, I am not a victim of divorce, family splits, abuse, and fatherlessness(although they have effected me), and that I can trust that He has my best interest in mind, as well as those I love.  A few weeks ago I asked the Lord what His dream was for my family, and His response was 'Jacob, you are my dream for them'.  The picture is so much bigger than just me attaining the promise.  The picture is me learning to trust that God is a good Father and that He will never leave me nor forsake me and he WILL restore my family no matter how crappy things look right now.  My part is to learn to love with His love, trusting Him, forgiving others, and not compromising on His path for my life just because others may temporarily abandon me because their own fears and unbelief get hit by the Wisdom of God that is incomprehensible to mortal men.  God is faithful, and He chose me.  Jacob's dream, though interepretted by him as his means of arriving and finally being 'good enough', was actually God's dream to use what appeared to be a dashed and hopeless situation with the runt of the litter into the most breathtakingly beautiful story of a promise fulfilled and brothers truly reconciled.  Take heart, God's people!! For what appears to be the ruination of God's plans, purposes, and promises for you and your family may actually be the Valley where the necessary heart overhaul is done and the you who God created and wants to come out will be Forged(Valley Forge is where the character that the Colonial American Army under George Washington was developed- and this was what would prepare them for ultimate victory).

Aspirations for the coming summer

o I'm thinking about the possibilities of what I can do this summer. The things I want to do are travel to Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, the Black Hills, and Colorado as well as visit my dad in Washington State. I also would like to have my own time to write, camp, explore, and just 'be' in the American West(which is what I'm wanting in visiting the previously mentioned places). The logistics issues are funding and a vehicle. The vehicle I am currently driving has over 346,000 miles and is a gas guzzler. It has been faithful, however, I need a more economical one. I also am going to either be able to save up by worker extra hard in Texas for a bit before embarking or finding a unique way to get funding by means of social blogging, travel writing, or just asking for support from people I know for a trip.

The point of the summer that I'm seeing is the possibility of researching into the history of the American West and visiting historical as well as scenic sites and writing about the natural and spiritual history of the regions. I see a picture being painted of complete perspective of what God sees and what the Adversary has done to deceive and attempt to train-wreck what God wanted for the regions and peoples involved. I believe that healing of the land will come through this sort of thing. Also, I want to visit my father and spend some more time with him, letting God heal up our relationship and give me more opportunities to show him the love of God that we all need. God is serious when He says to honor our parents, and I feel His heart on this for me to honor and spend more time with my dad.

Lord, please open the right doors and bring the right connections and bring clarity on what You would have me do! I know that You are faithful and Your plans for me will clearly lay themselves out. Thank You, that I don't have to worry about getting this wrong, because You never fail me!

When it seems God doesn't care

So many of the posts that I remember posting from years past really show how much unbelief and bitterness I carry. Yes, they were real and I was expressing how I felt and thought about what was going on in my life. So much of it now I realize was me trying to process things through a paradigm of hopelessness and unbelief that God is going to come through for me. How I received(and still struggle to receive things currently) was out of an offended heart and spirit that was trying to cope with a hostile world. God has allowed a lot of suffering that at the time I felt was because I was doing something wrong. The only thing 'wrong' was I need to be conformed to the image of the One who created me, not anybody else's image of me, including my own!! The tension between others'/my own developed image of me and God's image of me create a lot of uncomfortable seasons and things that at the time I am perplexed about. It's a process of that old way of doing things that is centered on self-goodness(the Knowledge of Good & Evil), and trying to be good enough, trying to earn salvation by dead works, being two-faced to gain acceptance, conjuring up spirituality, HAS to die so that HIS nature may flow unobstructed in me. Paul says the problem is not him, it's sin in him. It's about the Knowledge of God, and the journey to work that out in every fabric of our being is where the tension between the old and the new comes to a head. The time for pointing my finger at others and always worrying about the opposition I'm going to have to deal with and the confusing voices that try to come in and dissuade me from the path that is set before me has past. It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me! Lord, let it be so. And thank You for the pain and loving me enough to kill me! He knows that during it that is not the posture of my heart, but oh the sweetness when those walls finally come crashing down and the healing is finally about to seep through.
By the way, I have not arrived by any means!! I struggle with so many things!! Some of the issues that can be read about in earlier posts I still deal with difficulty and frustration, but He's changing how I view and how I carry myself through it. My dreams are going to come into fruition this year!

Deep calls unto deep

Deep calls unto deep, at the sound of Your waterfalls. I read that verse and that chapter in the Psalms a few weeks ago, and that seems to be the crux of this season I'm in. He is taking me deeper into His love, especially His Father heart, something that I have honestly longed for but not truly trusted in my heart. I have been getting frustrated with myself and my time lately to the point that things that normally are just an irritation bring up an anger that I couldn't explain, and it only made me more frustrated because I began to think about all the things I must not have right in my life or not have been doing right to have brought this on myself. Truthfully, there are probably lots of things that I was sowing that causes these kinds of emotions. The frustration mainly comes from feeling inefficient with my time management or even with what I bring to the table to give away, whether that's interning at ministry school or at my job. It always seems like I get in situation where something gets screwed up that I didn't even mean to screw up or didn't cause at all, and I'm left to try to figure it out. At my job I am always on edge with customers, bracing for a false/unfair accusation, all the while judging them that that's their heart and setting myself up for offense. God has shown me just how much of my relating to people comes from offenses(some very justifiable in that they were blatent sins against me) from my past. I have been offended ALOT by customers who were impatient or not in the mood to have even one little thing inconvenience them, only I find that when I'm a customer I do the exact same thing!! This means that the problem is not so much what's going on in them(which there is, and I cannot endorse that) but what's going on in me. I have a strong habit of self-protection that most of the time I don't even notice it for what it really is. It's born out of fear of rejection and failure, fear that I will fail people once again or myself, fear that I will be hurt because I'm vulnerable to attack due to the fact that I don't do good enough for them.
I first had to recognize my own sin for what it was. I've noticed a pattern that the deepest changes in me have come after some form of repentance. God did not convict me and give me grace to forgive my father and be healed until after I repented of my godless self-preservation schemes and allowed access to my heart 4 years ago. It was no different this time. I had to see what was going on with me, the plank in MY eye. I had no idea that I was being just as critical(although not in open words-passive aggressive) of people as they were of me. I had opened the door to it and no matter how much rebuking my Adversary or worshipping and thanking God and trying to shift my focus in my heart towards Him, that didn't take away the fact that I had chosen in my heart in so many ways to take the bait of offense(sometimes that offense was even towards myself). Satan has had legal access to this part of me and all he has to do is find a person that's had a bad day or themselves have a hard time dealing with conflict with others and he can then pull those strings that he had attached to me and my soul of course is going to immediately react without my spirit ever gettting a chance to process it and take precedence over my reactionary soul. But how deep does the offense go? How much of it is areas that cannot be dealt with by learning to love people in the present? I began writing down people I have held offense or even may think I have held offense against them - a relatively long list, then God tells me that I've held offense against HIM! I've always known that I've not been happy with Him and the way I've felt He has allowed my relations with my family to not be what they could given His restoration capabilities. So I was a park a week ago today writing all this down, and I go back to my truck to leave and I look over to a tennis court that I'm right beside and see a teenage boy playing tennis with his parents - both of them. And I just broke down. When God shines light on something, it goes from us being aware of it but unable to move out from under it to us truly being able to let ourselves off the hook. I have been so hurt and disappointed and even disillusioned because I have not seen my father restored, I have not seen significant changes in my step father that show God working in his life. I don't know why it seems that since I forgave my father it's been my relationship with my step father and the grief over his own retreat into himself that has torn my heart apart more.
Then God has begun to show me the deeper roots of my insecurities and tendencies toward going into self-preservation that always seem to trip me up. There is always that fear underneath all of our self-centered control attempts that we will not be loved. We all have been given by God the need to be accepted and loved unconditionally because He meant for us to bask in His love for us every second of our being, so that means that we've all had probably years of believing and experiencing the exact opposite, and that's just before we came to Jesus!!! Now I still have to deal with that tendency while knowing Him. There is a deep part of me that dose not know how to trust God and His love for me because situations that leave me very vulnerable to criticism, open rebuke, and blame have been happening to me at an increasing level and I feel full-force that fear that is present with that. It's unnerving. I know that the real issue is so much of my heart has never had a place in a father's heart, or experienced it to some degree only to have that dashed at an age that I needed it most. There is a little boy in me just wanting to know if I'm going to be loved even though I don't do everything perfectly and can be messy in my procedures(which is quite often either because i'm feeling self-concious and don't know how to focus or because I need time to process things and feel like i'm expected to do something at a speed or tempo that is not me and fear of rejection for not being good enough comes up). And he wants to know if his dad is going to be okay, and if he did something to cause all the rages and temper tantrums that he witnessed, and he wants to know if his step dad will ever come out of hiding or if God even intends to go find him and rescue him.
This is what I'm going through right now, all the while going through transition during my internship from being an orphan to a son and from a son to a father. God is up to something big, and I welcome all the fire and floods of testing that are coming my way because I know they are exposing things that are hindering intimacy with Him and my ability to truly love myself and others as myself. I have asked Him to make me as vulnerable as He wants to unjust accusation or criticism, not out of a selfish desire to be seen as pious but because I know that this is the only way I will learn to let go of those things and learn to rest in Him and love others with His heart. It's easy to love the hurting and broken that are not doing anything to hurt us, but are helpless and stir compassion in us. That's good and I love that, but loving somebody who berates you because you didn't cooperate with their own flimsy self-preservation system is no easy task, especially since I have a hard time putting down boundaries and being firm with people. The truth is I can't put down boundaries or rebuke somebody if I'm not free to, and the godly, biblical way to deal with conflict that Jesus taught requires an open heart, not a self-defensive, self-justifying one!!
Father, continue saving me from myself! Undo me and break me of my own selfishness and my own lack of trust in You!

Moving on

It was so good to go back and really think about my testimony. Where my heart has been. I never really sat down and just in my heart recalled all of what has taken place: the sin and iniquity, the shame and void, the disappointments and heartbreaks, the tragedies and triumphs. The human heart undergoes such excruciating circumstances. I want my heart to go through what God has, without Satan's junk that he tries to get me under by putting his spin.
I don't want to look back at what transpired 3-4 years ago, meaning focus on it. By going back over my testimony, for the first time I truly see where my heart was, how I was wrestling against a God who was calling me out of hiding into repentance and restoration. Most importantly, Salvation is both a finished work done by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ AND a process to walk into by faith all that this entails, which is our inheritance. The most significant thing I have to remember is that I am a friend of God and because of Jesus I can walk with my Father in the cool of the day and just be his friend. When I'm really honest with myself, that is still so much theory. Oh, it makes sense theologically considering that Scripture points to sin being what separates us and if the veil was torn, then that separation must have been dealt with. But in my life, I still tend to think more along the screwed-up lines of 'I must be doing something wrong', and I see unreal expectations that I have on God that breed disappointment. It's about knowing Him. What a priviledge to know that Christianity is about more than getting the foundational doctrines down, altough they are significant and heresys lead to deception and false conversions, etc., it is truly about KNOWING our Creator in a real and tangible way. I no longer get irritated about churches that are stuck in the theology or going through the motions stuff. God will deal with that and draw them back to the reality and whatever they've been clinging to will have a new savour because it will be out of Knowing Him! I believe that in the coming years, God is going to deal with the religious and pagan, the Jew and Greek, the Pharissee and the Sorcerer, the slave to sin and the slave to law, on what is really in their hearts and what they really believe about God.

My testimony

This is a synopsis of how I came to know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. A long journey through despair and darkness, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So much of my life has been lived out of fear. I don't want to be rejected. I don't want people to think ill of me. I don't want people that I'm not comfortable around to make a pre-conceived judgement. My decisions revolved around appeasing others and trying to earn a faithful, nice guy persona. I never grew in doing this, I only grew hopeless when I thought it wouldn't work out, until the cycle went back around saying if I just buckle down and try harder I will be good enough, I will arrive.

My father at first gave me a legacy to be proud of. We went to baseball games, camping, hiking, and traveled to more places in the Pacific Northwest than most people who have lived there their entire life have been to. I had a place in my father's heart, in spite of only seeing him two months out of the year. When he began taking things out on me at about the age of 9, I thought it was my fault. If I only picked up the right tool, or looked harder to find the tool that was obviously not in the place that he said it was, if I only had spoken up a split second sooner when he wasn't paying attention and hit his dog as we drove from the house to go to town. A legacy of shame, pain, and blame came in, distorting the meaning of being a part of a father's story. I associated things that required responsibility - required something noble of me - as something I could never be. So why try? After all, I was never good enough. There was always something that made him unleash his hot anger and I couldn't fix it. I couldn't fix him. It must have been my fault.

School years centered around being liked by everyone, but never feeling respected or fully valued. I had friends, mind you, but I was always the weak one, almost always the last to be picked for a playground two-below football game. I had no idea back then that a true man lays down his life for others, uses his strength for fight for the hearts of those around him, gives his all because that's who he is. That is who Jesus is! The only real example I had was my grandad, but I felt wronged during those years because I was moved two thousand miles from my father, and my grandparents could not understand why I would be depressed for a month after I would return from my summer visit. They never had to deal with divorced parents.

Warren came in the picture when I was 9, and suddenly there was someone else who saw things in me that made me feel like I had a place in a father's heart. He saw and encouraged my strengths and handled adversity so much differently that my father. He became the father that I never had. Grandad and grandma never understood me and I pointed mostly to narrow-mindedness on their part. I now see that some was just the usual benign generational differences and some was not either parties fault, just difficulty working out differences.

When I reached my junior high/high school years I was scared and felt I was a wimpy nerd. That's what people said about me, and my timidity and the way I looked fed to that image. I never participated in any sport in high school for fear of rejection and humiliation. My face would turn beat-red when my name would be called in class. I had such social anxiety, just waiting to be called out as being an nobody, that I would be in a fear-driven daze when walking down the hall between classes. Junior year was the year when things began to change. I began to forge an identity with Warren at the drag strip. I was proud to be his son, and I could possibly become a great racer myself. During this period, though, he had begun to be more critical of me, feeling that I would only become a man when I learned to take ownership and responsibility. I remind myself that I had shame and blame for an identity from my father. Learning to do so with that as a foundation is like expecting an unregenerate sinner to display God's character. They can't - the foundation is made of sand!

Even after I won the Division 4 High School Championship at the beginning of my senior year, I still felt like I was never good enough. No matter how good I did or what feats I accomplished, that was wiped away by the impossibility of holding the weight of my world the next day. I could never be a man.

Then my mother and Warren became distant and almost divorced. I felt a divorce in my heart from the warm home that I had. Increasingly, I felt that I had to have everything right, yet even when I did try I never felt like it was good enough. Along with this was the guilt of my own lack of interest in being faithful to the chores and tasks of living in a home, and the shame for the constant cycle of rebellion and remorse. I had trouble balancing between friends and home, knowing that family is important, but friends just accepted me and never required any growing up in my life. Increasingly during my last two years of high school and Hill College years, I turned to friends. I had physically matured, and I no longer felt like the wimp. I could breathe into life this macho Jacob that had come out of nowhere. All the while using the excuse that I never got this chance in high school because I largely spent my time looking after my widowed grandmother, and distancing myself from my home even though I lived there. By the time of 2006, I was a popular college guy who knew lots of girls, drove his mom's truck, worked for his step dad, and finally achieved the ideal guy that I wasn't in high school....or so I thought.

Things at home between my mom and step father at least came to a terms of armistice, some reconciliation and agreement to at least tolerate their differences, but there was still a deep tension there. I worked for Warren, but I did my share of taking advantage of my privileged state and used him. I was dishonoring my mom by not being faithful toward helping out with whatever she needed help with around the house. I only did things for them when they specifically asked me to, and quite often I would put things off until they got tired of me hoo-hawing around and said this needs to be done.

By now I had become an ego-tistical young man who was not wanting to go back to the home-body that I was in high school. I had found a story to live in at community college. I still had the same habits as in high school, and the same shame/blame tugging that left me clueless as to how I could change and believing it was hopeless that I could. I was popular with the girls(a plus in the becoming a man arena) as well as gaining muscular fitness(another plus). I did not want to give that up and take up my rightful place in the home that I had - no matter how fragmented Satan had left it, I was still needed there. I saw their constant criticism for things they saw that were hindering me in growing up as them trying to destroy what I had attained and was so secure in. In truth, they saw that my priorities in life were want before need, the typical immature person's paradigm. It was godless, and as friendships that I so effortlessly built began to shake, my identity in this 'popular guy' ego was beginning to sever. This was all firmly in place in 2006.

Then I met a girl named Jennifer at a coffee shop called Java Lounge. I met her through a friend Ross, who remains one of my best friends even though we rarely communicate now. At first, I though it was just a curiosity of Ross' because she had lived in England, and it did not feed my carnivorous desire for friendship based on popularity. As we got too know each other, the Lord became an increasing topic, and I was honestly weirded out that she talked about God as if He was somebody she talked to face to face everyday. I had been comfortable with the 'believe in God and try to be a good person' scheme, so this seemed impossible to me. I began to meet other people that she was connected with such as the Rayburns, the Barnes, her brother Michael, the Giles, Rebecca Fogarty, and eventually, Jennifer's church which was then called Church at the Park. All of these people assumed by their own testimonies that God is actively involved in peoples' lives and can be known like a physical person you see everyday. The Christianity I had assumed to be normal was actually more on the lines of Deism! My mom also during this time would slip me an encouraging tract that she would find, planting seeds the only way a caring mother can, although at the time I didn't understand that I needed God.

All the while, my issues of desiring the approval of man led to an increasing double life in which I could be a genuinely nice, compassionate young man but disconnected and absent when I needed to be. My friends had become my parents and I had virtually disowned my parents in my heart. After all, they couldn't meet my needs for affirmation, and I truly never gave them a chance. I didn't want to face all of the disappointment from years past. It was a self-made attempt to save myself from my shame, sin, and brokenness by living out a hollow self(a fig leaf) in front of those that I was comfortable with while practically disowning those who also needed me and loved me the best way they knew how(including my father).

I worked for Airmasters A/C in Cleburne that summer, and spent about 80% of the time that I was not on the job working out and going out with friends, spending lavishly the money that I made and stubbornly refusing to take heed of my parents' warnings to spend wisely and with purpose. In my mind, they were trying to ruin the best thing that had happened to me. During this time, I went through a trail of infatuations with a series of girls that I felt would be the one to take away all of my problems. The feeling that I got from the attention fed the part of me that wanted to be seen as a valid grown man who could eventually be a good husband and father. My time and money revolved even more around them, as well as my desire to gain notoriety in the church circles. The second casualty in this chain of unrequited emotional attachment told me that she was not the one for me and left it at that. I was very disappointed but I at least cared enough to not let it ruin a friendship. One night shortly afterward I cried out to Jesus to help me in my disappointed, downcast shape, and He came through, taking away those strangling emotional ties that bound me to a person that I didn't know I was looking to to find redemption.

Around this time, my lavish spending caught up with me. As the summer ended and I went back to Hill College and worked only part time, the early fall that came suddenly put me out of work. I had worn out my welcome in my step dad's business the previous spring, as my disinterest in being present in my heart to my step dad and his mission led me to not show up on time to do something that I was supposed to do and went instead to an after-school student government meeting that I was not required to go to - I was only interested in what was going on, not even a member. I actually went because I wanted to be around a girl, the first in my line of casualties. So here I was jobless, going to college, and over $1000 in credit card debt. I was receiving VA benefits through my father's status as a disable vet, but that was not enough to knock any chips in my debt due to other expenses such as cell phone and vehicle upkeep and fuel. My parents enforced an ultimatum that I must cut off all leisure spending including time with friends and my gym membership. The two things that I looked to find an identity as a man were being pulled out from under me. I felt completely isolated and wronged, not seeing that they wanted me to learn to walk out of my situation and overcome. They had bailed me out of overdrafts a few times before, but continuing to do so would only cripple me in the long run. My relationship with the second girl had become a solid friendship, but panic at the thought of losing it due to distance made me cling to it with everything I had. I continued to run up my text messages, and hang out with her at the coffee shop when I needed to be studying or looking for a job.

God has often been called by His children as the Divine Thwarter, where He seems to be set against us in our attempts for find Life outside of Him. It feels like it will kill us, but the only thing it kills is that Knowledge of Good and Evil that is our carnal nature - determined to set up our world with us on the throne and trying to arrange everything in life to our favor. It's just not possible. Eventually, the weight of this burden will leaving us teetering on the edge of a knife. God indeed began to thwart my desires for this friendship that I thought would be a redemption. First through conflict with another friend who began to appear in the picture, as God put them together for a season and I began to feel abandoned. All the while an increasing feeling of hopelessness and disappointment began to take over in it, as it began to not seem to be what I had intended. Then He specifically told her that our relationship was wrong. We needed to halt our contact so that it would not be so self-absorbed. I thought that my life during this time was being compressed in a wine press, being squeezed of everything that I felt meant value to me. I learned to cope with it, and during this time began to develop friendships with godly young men, namely the brothers of the two friends involved. A good start, but I was still completely determined to salvage what little I could hold onto of the identity that was not panning out. I still did not trust my parents, and I refused to see the damage I was doing by being their son in existence but not in action.

I still held my father, and now my step father as well, accountable in my own self-justified eyes as the cause of all of my hurt and lack of meaning in life. Granted, their actions did plant more seeds of an orphan who will never live at home at rest in a father's heart. But I did not know how to loose my grip from them and let God deal with them while choosing to love them where they were. My identity of self-pity was forged on a platform of the verdicts I felt they had cursed me to. During those times of feeling hopeless and isoloated, pornography was an easy escape, offering five minutes of feeling like being 'the man' and quick fix to my need for intimacy while not even requiring the pursuit of a woman. Godless! By November 2006, I finally got a job at Cinemark Cinema 6 and was very successful there, becoming an assistant manager. My money-spending habits had been reigned it, mainly because of the debt that was staring me in the face. In early 2007 I began to develop a relationship with a younger girl who went to my church. She was the younger sister to one of my new friends that I had become close to. After a few months, our fondness developed into mutual attraction and we voiced it to each other. I thought that now, finally, I maybe had found the one. I had not been accustomed to hearing God's voice, really I didn't know how to decipher what He was trying to tell me due to insecurity in His love for me and my walk with Him and those conflicting tormentors that wrapped me up in it. I now know that He told me then that before he would allow me to marry I had to make things right with my parents. I had been exhorted by now countless people to honor and submit to my parents and lay down all of me before God and let Him hold my life together. It was still at this time only an idea to me, not a revelation. I still felt that living right with my parents meant letting go of what was life to me - my egos.

Once again, the Divine Thwarter told this girl that it wasn't right. Period. Bam! Disappointment number 3. I was completely blind-sided by this, and it left me confused about God's intentions for my life and also ashamed that I didn't 'have it together'. After all, if I had it all together, none of this would have happened. I continued to go to church with an increasing sense of God but also an increasing void that left me uncomfortable during sermons and too afraid to fully bring out into the light what was plaguing me. There were numerous times where somebody in church would sense that 'somebody' there needed to lay down unforgiveness, or thought that things in their life were right but really weren't. I was so paranoid that I would be found out as a fraud, naked and ashamed. I clung to my fig leafs with increasing stubbornness. If I had only known then that God was doing to me what He did with Adam and Eve after they fell and immediately ran and hid - crying out 'where are you'?! to them.

It had been decided that I should further my education at the University of North Texas in Denton in the Fall of 2007. I wanted to go mainly to get out of the house. I knew that God has something bigger in my life, but my refusal to come forward kept me pinned down, and my parents wanted me to move forward in my life. They felt college was the best way. No matter where you are, paralysis only feeds to the situation. I left for UNT that fall not knowing how things would go. Was still recovering from the denial that I was in that the third girl was not right for me. I was scared that my lack of spiritual transparency and boldness and weakness towards timidity would lead me to giving in to the peer pressures of the college life. I left, having been filled with the Holy Spirit, but I brought all of my issues with me.

I was resentful towards my mother for wanting me to do what she felt was best for me, and I blamed her and my father for my confusion. My feelings towards the third girl slowly dissipated with distance, and I kept my guard from being absorbed into the Vanity Fair lifestyle that so many young believers get sucked into at college. However, because I did not know for sure if UNT was the place for me, and because I was still running from issues with my parents, I neglected my studies and skipped weeks worth of class, feeling justified that once again I was doing it for my mom, not me. I would come home almost every weekend but spend most of it with friends, staying Sunday nights at a friends house and missing class on Monday. My mom had no idea that I was doing this. As my mom began to ask me how I was doing in school, I tried to play it off with the 'it's fine' white lie. I knew that it was not right, but I still was afraid to come forward and admit that I couldn't make a go at life my own way. I was only willing to be honest when the cards were stacked in my favor. The turning point came one weekend when my mom again asked me how I was doing, and I slipped up and told the partial truth that I was struggling in a math class because I could not understand his Indian accent. This was a frustrating factor, but I rarely went to class and didn't try tutoring to have a chance at passing. My mom continued what I felt was prodding me by voicing that things weren't adding up. If I couldn't understand the instructor, why didn't I get notes from a classmate, or ask to meet with a classmate to help me out. I knew alot of classmates, so I certainly could have. I just didn't care. This was the point were the mountain of a monster that I had built began to reveal itself. My mom would eventually find out that I failed the class anyway at the end of the semester, so there was no faking it saying I was simply struggling. Trying to cover it up and play it off would only serve to cause even more distrust in the long-run than if I just came clean. The following Sunday morning I had already come to a place in my heart that I knew I had to stop making life work, because it obviously wasn't. I told my mom that I probably was going to fail, and that night I went to an Ivan Tait meeting at Eastern Heights church in Cleburne. His selfless service to God gives him a powerful annointing that makes it hard for people who are ready for change in their life from not changing. A huge shift in me took place, and for the first time I began to really desire the things of God in my life like never before. I wanted to be right with Him and with others. The end of that semester, I entered what I call my 'First Love Season' in which I felt His presence and His peace like never before.

During this whole time, the underlying rumblings of anger towards my father had never been dealt with. Everytime I felt like my mom or step dad only found wrong things with me, my immediate anger was towards my father. He had left a lasting imprint of anger, shame, self-reproach, woundedness, and confusion that I did not know how to deal with. Most importantly, it left that orphan heart even more empty and weighed down, feeling that it would never have a home. No matter how hard I tried, I could never be good enough. This contributed directly to my dysfunction in my relationship with my step father, especially after issues in his heart led to his own retreat into shame and hiding. I would totally ignore my dad when he would call, feeling justified that he was trying to exert his influence in my life. The bitterness and slavery to unforgiveness made me feel like it was the only way to deal with the hurt and protect myself from being continually being hurt again. What I did not see is that if left the issue unresolved and made me powerless to deal effectively and lovingly with any influence that he may have been trying to exert over me that would not be healthy to yield to. He actually wants to be a part of my life, but attached to it is this image of me as his own scape-goat to redeem his problems. I am still having difficulty in dealing with this in love, not wanting to crush him or make him feel rejected, but that is beyond what happened during that season. The Holy Spirit finally was able to draw me to repentance of my unforgiveness so He could forgive me. I forgave my father, and for two weeks, whenever I was taking a shower or alone in my dorm room, I grieved(in purity, not self-pity) away years of feeling rejected, never enough, and like I was my father's scape-goat. I even was able for the first time to feel his pain, and I grieved even more to think of the decades of sadness, emptiness, rejection, and orphan heart that he himself has carried. Whatever baggage that we choose to carry, they become entangled in our identity. We treat others like we treat ourselves. No matter how hard we try, that baggage will eventually be projected to those around us. He passed this on to me, not knowing that he was doing this, angry at his own father(who I recently learned lost his father when he was 9 years old, probably a major seed of anger and confusion and loneliness that he passed down to my father and his siblings, thus down to myself and my cousins). We have to choose to break away from this identity and take on our redeemed identity in our true Father, if we just let go!

Since 2007, I have had my returns to the old me, mainly from not knowing how to handle the intense opposition that I felt towards this new identity and the journey I knew God was wanting to take me on. Fear has still effected me in such a way that I have retreated into isolation and a more passive person that refuses to rock the boat by being me and instead choose the more 'safe' status quo. God, however, has proven faithful time and time again to come find me in my hiding places and draw me back out. I recently apologized to my mother and step father for the years of dishonor that I inflicted on them in those teenage/early 20's years. I thought that I should approach my step father for over a year and a half because there was this brick wall that satan came in and errected that caused me to mistrust him accepting my vulnerability. When God re-affirmed this desire to me to approach him this past May-Mother's Day actually-I tarried for a couple of months. Actually it came about when my mom pointed out that I did not need to take my truck to a shop to get the oil changed or checked out when I still had home to bring it to. I felt that I needed to break off from my dependence of my parents, but God convicted me that I was actually not going back home because I was refusing to open up and be vulnerable with my step father out of fear of being disapproved of. In doing so I wasn't even giving him a chance! I had closed off part of myself. I finally told him this past Sunday, and he accepted it and respected me for it. Healing is coming.

I recently left a job that was a trap of working to utter exhaustion, being so run down from having constant expection from more than one people constantly expecting me to do something for them, dumping everything on me. Now, I know that Jesus says that if somebody asks you to go one mile, go two. Notice the wording. He says if somebody asks. He did not say that if somebody manipulates/guilt trips/tries to intimidate you into doing something that you should yield. That creates a slave to expectation - not from God! We can't be free to serve others and meet their needs if we are slavishly being their milk cow! I know this sounds harsh and can be twisted into a selfish justification that can actually be pride, but we must have understanding and disernment. I did not know how to handle the overwhelming weight of expectations of being expected to bottle feed people so that they don't have to do anything. I lived in shame and confusion because I did not know how to turn the other cheek without running from confrontation. Notice that He does not say run from an issue, we're supposed to turn the other cheek, meaning not to try to redeem ourselves out of pride like what most violent men do. We still remain facing the issue, and certainly don't yield and compromise to their demands. This was leaving me confused as to who truly was my supervisor because several people thought that they could just get me to do something because I'm 'nice' and it left me falling behind on the specific job responsibilities that I had. I was already having to deal with having to unload every truck that came in with stock and dropping what I was doing and having more piled on me, then I was always having other people expecting me to do their stuff for them as well. I was running from my issue of timidity and not knowing how to simply say 'no'. I felt like I had to carry the entire weight of the warehouse, and alot of mistakes happened at my hand simply because I could not focus on my job. I felt ashamed for struggling with this and weak that I should want to leave the job for something different. A spirit of intimidation has plagued me for years, trying to make me feel like passivity and conformity is the only path to safety. I was afraid that if I left I wouldn't have an income and would have to move back home. I was also retreating into isolation outside of work because I didn't want to deal with anybody having expectations on me, and I skipped church for six months! That sounds more like a trap than a place where God's grace is in my life! There is no scripture that says 'He leads me to utter exhaustion'! He doesn't promise us a rose garden by any means on this Earth and there are situations that stretch us and may make us feel drained, but that is temporarily. The Enemy's stretching of us is to keep us trapped in fear and intimidation and feeling like there's no way out and we should be ashamed for wanting more out of life. We have to be honest with where our heart is. If the situation cannot be reconciled to where we return to His feet in those circumstances, then we have to walk away. And He told me that despite of the defeats and feeling emasculated and confused, I won because I walked away. I was honest with myself and accepted that this place is not where my heart is and even though it may appear from the outside to be compromise, being honest with yourself and where your heart is in reference to where it could be - where God's grace is completely covering your life - is not compromise.

I have gone through years of fatherlessness, shame, self-protection and justification, and confusion about who I am and my purpose. I don't have an answer on how to deal with confusion in any given situation. We have our pride side of the flesh that refuses self-denial and to give of ourselves, and we have the shame side that compromises and submits to godless expectations and slavish pursuits to win others' approval. I'm learning that if I'm not myself in a given situation, and choose to try to give something that I think will please others, I'm compromising who I am and who God has called me to be. I also know that God expects me to give myself away freely in selfless acts of service to display His unconditional love towards them. Jesus says that whoever seeks to save their life will lose it. I think that this means something much deeper than just trying to save our physical life, or ducking away from martyrdom and persecution. To have Life, we must repent of our fallen nature's desire to redeem ourselves(in order for a seed to be planted, it must first fall to the ground and die), and put our entire meaning and center of identity in God. This does mean denying self, if we lose our life for His sake we will gain it. I think that denying self also means putting to death the self-reproach and false piety that our flesh tends to operate in out of shame in which we get into a state of ascetism(like the old priests that used to try to discipline themselves by torturing their bodies). Die to self does not mean kill yourself. Suicide is just as much looking for a way out as dishonoring somebody to try to cover up our own problems.

Anyways, I believe with that verse, Jesus was stating what the entire human race is trying to do, to save their life- to redeem themselves and find their own way back to Eden. My testimony of how my Daddy came looking for me, asking 'where are you?!' - which is continually growing and molding and changing - is a testament to that.

Thinking

About to go to sleep, so I will expound more on this at a later time. I was wrong in my perspective on my parents in many ways. They are not trying to wreck my destiny. I left home with unresolved issues, but being away from home has made me realize that the home that I thought I didn't have was there all along. I want my memories of all of my past to be good. If it's hurt, I want to see God with me thru that, as well as the root hurt in the offending party that decieved them into acting like they did. If there's sin, I want to see Gods redemptionand grace that never for a second stopped pursuing me. The only way we can regret is because we run from something and refuse to take that to God, no matter how much it hurts.