Tag Archives: 4 Streams

Seeking the Counsel That We Need

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In this world we are filled with joys and sorrows.  We have things that happen to us through the years that seem to define who we become, whether right or wrong. We suffer from wounds that drive many of the choices we make and even the sin we live in.  Those wounds often get buried deep in our hearts for a long time.  We hide behind our fig leafs and those things never come to the surface.  We don’t let anyone in and then we let those wounds define a false self in us and for the world to see.  This could be wounds you suffered from your parents, siblings and other family, anyone else around you.  When they hit you as a kid they hurt.  You may not realize it, but they really begin to take hold of your life.

I’ve suffered through many of my own wounds.  Many I suppressed for a long time.  I bared a great deal of weight on my shoulders and tried so hard to prove myself in my family life and work life.  I realized I was missing a key part of it all.  God.  I came to believe in Christ long ago, but it was not until my 30s until my life really began to point more seriously toward him.  Now at 36, I’ve crossed a whole new bridge as I’ve come to realize that I really needed Jesus to get down deep into my heart to uncover those wounds so that they could be brought to the surface and nailed to Cross for good.  Jesus wants to restore our hearts.  He came to make our hearts new.  We have to be willing to let him though.  We have to open the door to let him in.  He opened the door to our salvation already now we have to let Him come in and heal us so we can walk through that door.

While I was in Colorado, Jesus dove way down deep in to my heart.  I had wounds in there I never wanted to admit or let out, but things that completely defined the false self I became for the first part of adulthood.  It hurt like I had never hurt before.  The thing was, this is exactly what I needed.  I needed the Lord to dig into my heart.  As I walked in communion with him I heard him initiating me into the man he new that I was. The man that I was meant to be all along.  I was never fully initiated into manhood and grew up faster than I should have.  Now I could hear the Father calling me HIS SON.  I was HIS SON and he called me out to be the warrior and the man I was meant to be.  Truly amazing the intimate counseling that He offers us.

Ephesians 4:23 says to “let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.”  I think I referenced this in my last post, but it is so true.  If you let the Holy Spirit in.  If you let God into your heart and into your wounds he will renew your thoughts and your attitudes. Verse 24 says, “Put on your new nature, created to be like God – truly righteous and holy.”  When we allow him fully into our lives to counsel and heal us, we come closer to the Father.  We are his image bearers and being renewed in him gives us our new and true nature.

This does not just stop with my trip out to Colorado though.  I now know I need to seek God’s counsel for so much more.  When wounds begin to resurface or when struggles come that seem to pull me down, I know I can walk with God and talk with him.  He will pull me from the struggles I find myself in.  None of us have to live in the dark places of our wounds.  Many choose to, but we don’t have to and Christ set us free from the enemies grip on us and our wounds.  We are told in Colossians 2, that Jesus disarmed the angels of darkness.  We don’t have to bound to them any longer or let them dwell in our wounds.  Christ won that battle.

God knows our hearts (Luke 16:15).  He knows exactly where we are in our life and Jesus came to restore our hearts.  In order to do so however, we must let him come to where we are and into our wounds.  He won’t leave us there if we trust him, though.  The pain will be temporary and you will come alive from that.  I’ve never felt as alive as I do right now and I’m fired up to where God is leading.  I needed his counseling first in order to come to where I am.

“God never said that the journey would be easy, but He did say that the arrival would be worthwhile.”  – Max Lucado

It’s A Daily Battle

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I have realized that we are a world at war, but this past weekend it really hit me that we are locked in battle not just occasionally, but every single day. It’s unrelenting. The enemy tries to take us out in ways you would not think about.  I know I have written about spiritual warfare a few times.  At Wild At Heart Boot Camp, it was definitely touched on significantly.  Spiritual Warfare is a part of our daily life and will find us no matter where we are.  A friend I met at Boot Camp who has been attending Ransomed Heart events for some time explained that what we retain about 20% while at Boot Camp and the remaining 80% comes after.  I have found that to be true so far as my heart continues to be filled with all I have learned and I immerse in Scripture and prayer each day.

The spiritual warfare and the issue with our daily battles came through and hit me hard this past weekend and in the most subtle way.  I began the day like normal with working out and then diving into Scripture.  I am currently studying through book of Ephesians.  There’s a story behind that, which I’ll get into another time, but God led me to dive into Ephesians.  I was a little rushed on Saturday morning to get out of the house as we had  a field workday for my son’s high school baseball team and then they had an inner-squad scrimmage.  Beautiful day and a great time with our baseball family.  Something lingered however.  Due to rushing, I did not make the time I wanted to journal and really dive into prayer like I try to each day.

Again, did not think too much of this at the time, but as the day wore on I kept getting thoughts in my head about not doing so.  I was constantly having to deflect agreements with the enemy about my commitment to God and to my spiritual growth.  I kept hearing thoughts like, “see, you don’t have the endurance for this race. You’re not committed.”  I had to fight that and it bothered me.  I had to step back from that and renounce those agreements.  It hurt to hear those thoughts.  When you get those negative feelings, it’s easy to just agree and say yes, that’s right.

On Sunday morning, I took more time to dive into this thought in my Scripture reading and thinking about the spiritual warfare we face.  The enemy is literally trying to take us out every single day.  There is no hiding from this. Think about it.  Jesus had to encounter spiritual warfare consistently.  Look at Matthew 4 and his time in the wilderness and being tempted by Satan.  It was a relentless battle.  I was listening to a audio session from John Eldredge and he referenced this and the fact that this was Jesus’s private battle.  No body was with Him.  However, God felt it important enough to share.  Part of the reason would seem to be that this is a serious issue we all face and even Jesus had to face this.  Being taunted and tempted for being the Son of God.  Jesus warned us about the enemy coming like a thief coming steal, kill, and destroy.  It is very real.

So in dealing with this daily battle, what do we do.  First, we need to readily recognize that it exists.  We cannot live in our own little worlds where nothing happens.  Simply does not work that way.  We have to be immersed in prayer and in God’s Word to be ready to deal with each days battle.  In Ephesians 4:23, Paul says, “Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.”  We have to allow the Holy Spirit to empower us and prepare for the onslaught to come. In Ephesians 6:11-12 he says, “Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against the strategies of the devil.  For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies,  but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against might powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”

It’s all right there.  Spiritual warfare is a daily part of our life.  This past Saturday, was probably my first real bought with it since Wild At Heart and really recognizing it for what it was.  On Monday, it hit me even harder and it was a unrelenting battle.  Amber and I are making some changes to our room to give us an area to sit and read or pray or what have you, which I am all about.  On Monday, while I was working she began the process of moving stuff and cleaning the space.  Then it hit me out of nowhere.  I was filled with this resentment and anger for some reason about it and it just kept on for a few hours.  The enemy was digging at me and it was all total B.S. and I had to fight that back.  I know this won’t be the last time either.

We have to arm ourselves everyday.  We have to lean to God and keep our hope and faith in the promise of Christ Jesus.  A.W. Tozer said, “Christ in you, the hope of glory. I’m not afraid of the devil. The devil can handle me – he’s got judo I never heard of. But he can’t handle the One to whom I’m joined; he can’t handle the One to whom I’m united; he can’t handle the One whose nature dwells in my nature. “

Satan cannot handle the One whose nature dwells in us.  By that, I’d say we are victorious already in Him.  We need need to resist the devil and choose God first always.  The victory is in choosing to resist and the outcome is up to God.  There are unseen spiritual forces and if don’t resist, who will.  If we turn from our faith and let evil win, just imagine where you would be.  We are victorious in Christ, so it’s in him our hope rests.  Recognize the battles for what they are every day. Don’t deny they exist or you will be taken out quickly.  Choose to resist and let the Holy Spirit arm you with the armor of God that comes through faith in Christ.

What Are You Chasing?

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We all have heard people talking about finding their calling.  Many people are spending their life trying to search for the calling they have and a lot of times it is their career choices.  I know I have been down this path quite a bit in recent years, myself.  There often comes that point in your life where you find that this is just not me.  I am not where I know I should be.  This is not my calling.  So when those moments of realization happen a number of different things happen.  The individual can leave what they’re doing and jump into something that speaks to them in that moment.  They can just accept the security they are in, whether it’s life sucking or not and just deal with their circumstances.  They can seek God and see where He leads them.  Follow me here.

God is calling all of us into something bigger than ourselves.  He is calling us to a larger story.  The problem is that too many people themselves chasing their calling first.  They see the next new thing to jump at, a lot of times, it is with career choices, and just make the leap.  Only problem is, later on they find it was a mistake and move on to the next or they just don’t have the commitment to stick with their choices and jump around never fully finding their full calling in life.

On the flip side, many people, and I have been in this boat myself, find that they are just unwilling to accept any risk in life and enjoy the benefits of security in working in that stable corporate environment or just meaningless work. They accept the hand that the world’s dealt to them and where the world told them they should be.  This circumstance will often times suck the life right out of someone.  They find themselves isolated.  They are miserable in what they do even though they are good at it.  Even if they are not miserable, they just accept the ride. I know I’m not the only one here.

So what to do instead?  We feel called, but we don’t know what to.  Here’s the plain solution.  Seek God first.  Don’t chase a calling, chase God.  Seek Him everyday in prayer on your own.  Find time to just get by yourself in silence and just talk to Him.  Ask Him where He wants you go.  Ask Him what assignments He has for you.  Give Him all glory and honor no matter where you are in life.  You seek Him first and watch Him work.  He will move you in incredible ways and bring you to what it is that will make your soul just come alive.  Let God guide you first and reveal that calling to you.  I’ve been growing tremendously in my spiritual and prayer life and seeking where God wants me to be and it is absolutely amazing to see Him responding.  He’s transforming my heart and moving me to something new.

Now that does not mean we all just need to quit what we’re doing today.  For many, God may want you right where you are.  For others, He may be wanting you to move.  He may want you to take risks.  He led many people through scripture along through risky situations, but it was all for His glory.  Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, and of course Jesus.  All of their situations involved risk, but they sought God through it all and wanted to carry out His will.  We’ve also seen the peril of what will happen when God was not chosen first and being passive sets in.  The fall of creation was due to Adam sitting idle and choosing Eve over God.  He was right their by Eve, and allowed her to sin and then made the choice to follow suit.

We have to be willing to take that risk in our lives.  If you feel that God is ready to move you, don’t sit idle and not act.  Be conscious about what He’s telling you. Continue to seek His council through it and also seek the council of people you trust to be honest with you about it.  When God reveals this calling to you and you act, you will come alive like never before.  Chase and choose God first, not calling and then watch Him work in your life and around you in His larger story.

Unplug…It’s A Must

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Have you ever stopped to just realize how dependent we are on technology now.  Do you even remember what life was like before you had a cell phone?  It’s amazing how our society has changed so much in the last 15-20 years.  We have become a society that is absolutely addicted to technology, particularly our cell phones and tablets.  Yes, they provide a great way to stay in contact with each other, but have you ever just stopped and thought about just how much they run your life.  And with that, it can begin to take you away from things that God wants you to experience with Him or with those around you.   We’ve been guilty of this sometimes in my house, where we just spend too much time in our phones and less time communicating with each other or just spending time.

Hear’s an example of how addicted we are and it did not hit me until the Wild at Heart Boot Camp.  The very first night, we were asked to turn our cell phones off. Now no body said anything, but John pointed to something there.  Inside us, and I know I felt it, our hearts almost gasped.  It’s like our minds are telling us….Noooooo!  That’s how addicted we have become.  Our lives are ran by our technology.  We see it on the road with people constantly on their phones driving…guilty here!  Walking around a store or in the office, people are always in their phones.  We just cannot let go, there is always something to connect to; a meeting or what have you.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love technology.  It has enabled me to share my thoughts with so many people though this blog.  It enables me to stay connected with friends and family all over the world. It can, however get very dangerous though if we let it run our lives.  If we just spend our time obsessed with social media, email, internet, and apps, we miss so much in this world.  We forget how to relate and connect with people on a personal level and not just through text or status updates.

Simple solution y’all….Unplug!  That’s all there is to it.  Take some time and just unplug from the world.  My 4 days unplugged in Colorado was something truly amazing.  Something I desperately needed for my heart and my sanity.  Take some time, whether it’s a day or a weekend.  Turn off the phones, tablets, and computers and get away.  Go somewhere.  May go camping, hiking, fishing, or hunting.  If you don’t care for the outdoors, go stay in a hotel away from everything.  Get in the car and just hit the road.  Do something disconnected from everything.

You will be surprised at the clarity you get when you do.  Take in the world around you.  Spend time with God in complete quite and solitude.  It’s unreal how much you’ll realize that time was needed.  I don’t get enough of these moments, but I will be making more of these moments.  We all need it.  Get away and refuel.  It will do your soul a lot of good.

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Healing the Broken

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We are all broken people.  We all have lives that are filled with wounds and jacked up places that when you get down to the deep core of your heart will break you down.  I don’t care who you are.  If you have never allowed those things to come to surface to reconcile and renounce them, then you can never fully come alive and break away from that struggle.  Your heart can never be set free.  If you sit in your daily life and just let things be, one day, it will either all blow up in your face in some way.

There is one answer to your brokenness.  That answer is God.  He wants nothing more than to restore you and pull you out of that struggle.  He will go right into the heart of it all to pull you from the fire.  He is orchestrating and rescue of your heart.  We have to be willing to repent, let go, and forgive.  Find it in ourselves to let it all come to light and drive forward from that. Psalm 147:3 says, “He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.”  Job 5:18 says, “For though he wounds , he also bandages. He strikes, but his hands also heal.”

Now you may read that last verse if you’ve never heard it and think, whoa! God wounds us and strikes us?  That sounds like a double edged sword.  Why would he want to wound and strike us.  Well, I’ll tell you why.  Sometimes we need to return to our wounds in order to be bandaged and healed.  At Wild At Heart, John Eldredge shared that God is raising the fatherless place so He can heal and restore us to Him.  When we have been wounded in our lives, sometimes it takes the need to go back to that place in your heart.  To feel that pain again, in order to bring it out and be able to truly renounce it and be healed from it.  It’s not easy to do by any stretch but often it may be necessary if we are just filled with junk that just will not come to the surface and we continue to make our agreements with the evil one there.

I’ll share something from my own experience here.  I’ve gone through some ordeals in my life.  Junk in my early years that lead me to seeking validation from my wife as opposed to God and then with the loss of my Dad 5 years ago, to be in a world of just utter brokenness.  When I was unplugged from the world and sitting in total prayer and communion with God, He brought it all out.  Things I never thought would come to the surface, I never even thought about in my story, or would never admit to even myself came to light.  God reached right in and pulled it out and said “here you go.  This is what you need to deal with.  This is what has made your false self.”

But then He said, “this is not who you are, though.  You are more than this.  You are a son ready to come alive, you are a son ready to do battle.  You are a son…You are MY SON. ”

God reached right into me.  He broke me down to my core like I never had been before, but then allowed me to be healed.  He pulled me from where I was and where I had been in my life.  He brought me to life like I had never been before.  He brought me into sonship and showed me that He wants to Father me the rest of the way.  To let go of all the junk and let Him Father me now.  Let Him be my Dad.  He is my true Dad after all just as He is for all of you.

In his book “Waking the Dead,” John Eldredge shares that “The work of Christ in healing the soul is a deep mystery, more amazing than open-heart surgery.”  It is absolutely amazing.  Something we can never fully understand in our own fallen wisdom, but it is most definitely true.  The Lord has many ways that He will reach into lives and heal us.  He takes our heart in pieces and puts it all back together again.  It’s quite amazing to see and be a part of.  To know that we are loved that much as God’s children.  He will will pull us from wherever we are and makes us new.  We just have to be willing to say to God, “Yes Father, I will let you heal me.”

The Realness of The War We Live In

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It’s been a couple of days since I returned home from the Wild At Heart Boot Camp.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a powerful experience while in Colorado  The challenge faced, however is what next.  It can be very easy in this world to go back to life as normal and not put a thought again to the experience.  I could put aside all that God showed me and move back to my work life and not do anything further.  I didn’t get a chance to meet everybody, and I would hate it, but I am certain this happens for guys.  You get back to the world and everything begins to revert.  I pray that this is not the case, but this world and the enemy are vicious.

When we are back to our normal lives it can be very easy to make agreements with what the enemy and the world tells us.  Most men are taken out because they make agreements with the enemy.  These agreements can be very simple or more complex.  You may think you just don’t have it in you to pursue what you feel called to.  You may just think you’re not good enough or don’t have the strength.  These are agreements the the enemy may throw at you and if you agree it can take you out. Once you make those agreements, everything begins to filter through them and the enemy will setup shop right there.

We are constantly at war in this world.  Coming back from an event as powerful as the Wild At Heart Boot Camp, the enemy is going to throw whatever he can at you to pull you back down.  I can hear him trying to pull me back.  I know it’s only been a couple of days, but the battle begins now with even more relentlessness.  I have to arm myself each day in prayer and the Word in order keep myself from falling back to the old man or my false self.

1 Peter 5 says that we must stand firm against the enemy and be strong.  He prowls around like a like looking for someone to devour.  In John 10:10, Jesus tells us that “the thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.”  Jesus had to encounter this battle everyday.  Spiritual warfare is very real and we have to be armed and ready to deal with anything the enemy will throw at us.  Jesus did not mean for us to come along and stand by and take it like good little Christians.  No…Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34).  He came to do battle.  God is a warrior. Exodus 15:3, “The Lord is a warrior; The Lord is His name.”  Man is a warrior; Man is his name.  We are made to fight and fight we must.

As John told us at Boot Camp, denial of the heart is the heart of human struggle.  Many in this world, even in churches are like the Hobbits in The Lord of The Rings.  Naive, clueless, or in flat out denial of how ugly the battle actually is.  Look at our brothers and sisters in the faith getting martyred around the world because they refuse to renounce their faith.  The enemy is out to destroy our faith.  When Satan was cast out of Heaven, he decided to go after God’s heart by destroying the thing He really loved.  That’s His image bearers…us.

For me, this is a time for resolve.  To stand firm in my faith and where God has taken me.  To arm myself everyday and everything under my authority in Christ.  I know I am trouble for the enemy now as is anyone who will stand strong in their faith.  We cannot skate along singing kumbaya pretending nothing is happening.  Call evil for what it is.  Just like the Islamic evil that is faced everyday in the Middle East.  It is the enemy at work.  We have to stop sitting in our little small world and stand firm.

So arm yourself.  Don’t sit back waiting for things to happen.  Don’t let the enemy sink his claws into you.  Don’t walk through life alone and let the enemy push you deeper or back into your wounds and agreements.  Stand firm in your faith in Christ.  Ephesians 6 says be strong in the Lord…put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be ready to resist the enemy.  I’m no longer going to be partially in.  I am all in now for good.