In July’s LifeChurch Men’s Mentoring group we read Wild At Heart by John Eldredge. http://www.walkingwithgod.net/

“Not receiving any blessing from your father is an injury . . . Not seeing your father when you are small, never being with him, having a remote father, an absent father, a workaholic father, is an injury. “

I have wounds from my father that runs deep into the soul. It dictates my daily life and who I am today. I had the absentee father who was never there and did not take the steps to help me become the man Jesus wanted me to be. Though every day is a lesson and every day I am working on living life through God’s eyes, I struggle with many of the aspects John Eldridge speak of.  Every day is a learning process in trying to hear God’s voice.

“Men either overcompensate for their wound and become driven (violent men), or they shrink back and go passive (retreating men).”

I have become over driven and need to be liked in other’s eyes according to what I accomplish. Then I get angry because the wounds start surfacing and then I form chaos to try and destroy what I worked hard to accomplish. I am getting better at putting everything into God’s hands and letting him guide my life, but that inner hurt still surfaces and tries to take over. Growing up, I tried hard to get my father’s attention with being smart and being over driven, but he could not see that because he was not home. So, I tried harder but with no avail.

“We still need to know what we never heard, or heard so badly, from our fathers. We need to know who we are and if we have what it takes . . . It is a hunger so essential to our souls that it will compel us to find a resolution.”

My promise and resolution is to never put my son through what my father put me through. Though my father and I had a good relationship before he died, growing up and the important years of a male child’s development was very bad. God has blessed me with this dear little boy who needs all the attention it takes to become a man; a man for God.

I am finding that God is the only resolution to a man’s hunger to heal the wound inside. Even when my father was alive and telling me he was wrong and sorry on every aspect of my childhood, it still does not heal the wound. Only Jesus can do that. I work hard at giving my life to Jesus and letting him take control while letting him diffuse my ego and need to control.

“When a father and son spend long hours together, which some fathers still do, we could say that a substance almost like food passes from the older body to the younger body. “

My goal is to feed my gift from God, my son, with whatever he needs and with whatever God speaks upon my heart. My son means the world to me and is even a bigger blessing when I take into account that God has trusted me to raise this child and be a father to him.

• I will teach my son Jesus Christ
• As long as Jesus  allows, I will always be a man and father to my son for Jesus
• I will surrender the masculine attributes of being a man to my son

“How come when men look into their hearts they do not discover something valiant and dangerous, but instead find anger, lust, and fear?”

“Without a great battle in which man can live and die, the fierce part of his nature goes underground and sort of simmers there in a sullen anger that seems to have no reason.”

An aspect I learned from this book is that I do a lot of assuming. In my life, I always assumed life was going to go my way and God was always going to be there and bless every move I make. Obviously, that is not the way it works. The abandonment and betrayal felt when things do not go according to my need to control my life with my ego greatly wears on my happiness and energy.  Anger, lust and fear come from my assumptions flying apart at the seams in a destructive trail of mental anguish.  In turn that makes me feel like God is not in my life or does not notice me. Even with all the wonderful things God has blessed me with, I still focus on assumptions.  The author was 100% correct when he said assumptions guide our life in every aspect by interpreting the events in our life and by supplying momentum, meaning and direction in our life. Intimacy with God is the reason for our lives.

My ultimate goal is to ask God what he thinks of me and not stop until I have an answer.

This is last month’s LifeChurch Men’s Mentoring group reading report. Very good book. TrueFaced.

Sin is like poison pumping through our bloodstream getting thicker and thicker with every breath we take. Since we are sin by nature, the disease never goes away and dilutes our blood, body and soul and nags at our conscience.

The sin we perpetrate and the sin perpetrated against us resides in our body, in our organs, our mind, body and spirit.

Unresolved, sin destroys the very being of who we are. When we ignore sin, a force is released that drains our confidence of who we really are and who God wants us to be. We cannot handle the sin being done to us because it ignites the nature of sin already inside us. So we give ourselves permission to act out sinfully.

I harbor painful sin in my life that eats me alive and sends the unspoken message to my family that I prefer you to be who I want you to be than who you are.

Behaviors that result from unresolved sin are as follows: Sensitive to my own sin and judge other’s sin. I hide my sin and become vulnerable to more sin. I have a hard time loving or being loved, and I attempt to control others. My controlling behavior is not a response to something in the present. It is triggered by sin in the past that never got resolved.

Unresolved sin is resolved through the grace of God and repentance.

There are two roads we can take: trying to please God and trusting God. Trying to please God imprisons our hearts. Trusting God is the path I need to take in my life. If I do not trust God and believing who he says I am, I will start trusting in my own actions and trying to please God which will fail every time. We live by God’s grace alone.

God wants to reveal himself to me because God’s dream is that I influence others from who I am rather than what I do. God’s goal is to mature me into the likeness of Jesus so he can release me into the dreams and desires he had for me before the world began. I am saved by the grace of God and not my ability to keep from sinning because I am sin by nature. We are born into a fallen sinful world.

There is nothing I can do to persuade God to give me grace. Not one action brings me closer to God. Grace from God is what saves me and places me in God’s heart. Humility attracts grace, grace changes my life focus, grace lets God handle my sin, and grace handles how I treat others and how I treat my sin issues.

Understanding grace, love, forgiveness and repentance is very important for my relationship with God. I need to see others as saints who sin instead of sinners who are saved. If I see Christians as sinners it gives me permission to reject them as sinners. The powerful gift of forgiveness protects us from the sin done against us.

It is easy to understand the act of receiving God’s love by reading it in a book but very hard to practice. God loved us first and we feel like we have to do something to receive that love. Love is the first gift of grace from God that dissolves sin. As I work on trusting God and his love for me and my family, I can allow more of God’s grace into our lives.

I will also work on repenting of my sin for the grace of God and knowing in my heart that repentance does not mean there is something we can do about sin, but admitting in God’s presence there is nothing we can do about sin. I will never be sinless and will always for short of God’s glory when left to my own avail. Only Jesus was sinless and perfect. But Jesus brought with him grace, forgiveness and repentance, while I bring three inhibitors of repentance: isolation, pride and wrong motive.

Most of all I have often felt betrayed by God himself. I never want to feel that way again.

Buy the book on Amazon.

Last month in our LifeChurch mentoring group we covered relationships with our wife.

Both Angie and myself work hard to be a constant example of what we want our children and us to be in the eyes of Christ. Romans 15:18.

I respect Angie very much and value everything about her. She makes me a better person and has taught me many things in our relationship, as a man and with our kids. We share everything and work hard at being a team working together to share our lives while raising out children.

It is very important that Angie has input on everything we do as a family. We make decisions based on the family concept and work together to make those decisions work for our family.

Angie’s natural ability to create relationships has taught me two of the greatest commandments from God; love God and loving others.

I place Angie above myself and make her second to God and teach our children to respect her in that aspect. Angie as a mother and wife is so very important in our family. She absolutely sees things in a better light than I do. In that same aspect, she usually shows me how to be a better person.

Having kids as a mature man is the best thing God has done for me in my entire life. Having seen Angie give birth to my two children is the most amazing thing and allowed God to open my eyes and respect her and put her above all else on earth.

One of the major things I wanted to change is to hug my wife first when I get home from being out. I think that shows a bonding and reminder of what is important in our home.

There is no meaning in a word. There is meaning in people.

Words can lose their meaning when there is no action behind them. But with action comes meaning. I work hard to allow my words to have action for Angie and the children. The meaning in my heart is in my family, in the people in my family.

I am working hard every day to make sure all Angie’s needs are met. I know it is important for me to realize her needs and reach out to make sure we are working together to meet her desires.

I work hard to understand when I have hurt or offended Angie in any way. Many times I will open my mouth before I realize I should be thinking instead of talking. Or my own desire to garner acceptance with humor I will make a joke when one is not needed.

We have had our disagreements but as we grow together we work hard at not having disagreement fights and to come to a peaceful agreement on all things. Constant disagreement destroys a home and shows lack of respect for both wife and husband in the children’s eyes.

The book, The God You Can Know, was an amazing read. It really opened my eyes and brought me closer to Jesus Christ. God spoke to my heart through this book as many topics were discussed that I am currently struggling with in my life.

• “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

The author says our main purpose in life is to glorify God. I do not think my planned purpose has been to glorify God. This statement really puts into perspective where we should be focused daily in our lives. Do not focus east and west but focus north to God and let him control everything else.

• Character Development – “If we choose to worship that which is passing away, you will reap the fruit of an equally unstable mind and character.”

Character development is really an important aspect in my life. Character development is the hardest thing to change inside myself. It is easy to hide my true character from myself but to the outside world my flaws are exposed on a daily basis. Not focusing on God really does make an unstable mind and character.

• “How dare we question God’s love when we undergo trials? Eventually we will praise the Lord for showing us his side of the trial.”
• “Why do you act as though events take place without my approval or without my knowing it?”

This is another big problem I have. I have a tendency to question the trials I go through. God is so consistent with revealing the reasons for the trial afterwards. He is always consistent. And yet I still squirm and struggle through every instance. Stomp my feet like a child. Insecurities, lack of confidence, demands, weaknesses, unbelief and my humanity gets in the way every time God places me in a learning situation. I will go as far as KNOWING God is with me and is in control and yet I still struggle and want to do my own thing.

• “What about the god of false expectations – expecting what someone is not giving and therefore assuming one has the right to complain or get angry? What about the god of having our eyes on other people? They fail us; therefore, we fail also. What about the sin of putting our eyes on circumstances? Things go wrong; therefore, we hold the right to be disappointed instead of being content in all things. No worshipper of Jesus Christ desires to cling to his own rights.”

We all think we have a right to complain and get angry. The more I struggle from my trials the more I complain and get angry. I have one vision of how my life should be and God has his plan. I place my eyes on circumstances instead of placing my eyes on God. While keeping my eyes on circumstances I hold on to the thought that I do have a right to be disappointed and the right to cling onto my own rights. I so desire to be able to be content in ALL things. This is such a struggle.

• “What about the god of false expectations – expecting what someone is not giving and therefore assuming one has the right to complain or get angry? What about the god of having our eyes on other people? They fail us; therefore, we fail also. What about the sin of putting our eyes on circumstances? Things go wrong; therefore, we hold the right to be disappointed instead of being content in all things. No worshipper of Jesus Christ desires to cling to his own rights.”
• “The positive meaning is that I must have a willingness to be ruled. Often, it is our pride that rejects others’ telling us what to do. The thought that another would expose faults or suggest a better way to do something can be traumatic to the proud person. He sees no need for correction, no need for others to watch over him, no need for being ruled. That attribute carries into every walk of life, even the church. As a result, division takes place, and the character of God is belittled.”

I am full of pride and ego that comes with every human being. Pride and ego is the essence of our human nature. My pride often restricts me from the willingness to be ruled by God. As far along as I am in my walk with Jesus, I am still deeply rooted in ego and pride. I think diminishing pride and ego are the major steps in allowing to be ruled. My ego and pride disrupts me from being ruled by other humans in correction, exposing faults, and trying to help me. It hurts my heart knowing this division belittles God’s character.  It scares me that clinging to my own rights pushes me away from Jesus. Other humans and our own emotions are notorious for being inaccurate and will let us down every time. Jesus never lets us down and is the only consistent we can rely on in life.

• “One cannot stand erect spiritually and see one’s sin as God sees it. It has to break the heart. Had yours been broken?”

This is amazing statement. Standing erect while worshipping God keeps us from seeing our own sin. And yes, we must be broken before God can start over in order to make us better people.

• “The attribute of God should also cause all of us to be more tolerant of one another. If God can put up with people, so can we.”

If the creator of the universe can find forgiveness in his heart and put up with people, there is no reason I cannot do the same. Forgiveness is a problem I tend to have toward people as I keep them at arm’s length.

• “Knowing a lot about the word of God without knowing the God of the word always produces pride.”
• “For the first time salvation by works was introduced as they covered themselves with fig leaves. They tried to do something in the flesh to make themselves acceptable to God.”

There is nothing we can do to change ourselves from sinners to perfect beings in the eyes of Jesus. The works we do is not enough. It is by grace alone that we are saved by Jesus. Humans have been trying to get on the good side of God by works from the beginning and have fallen short of HIS glory.

• “If you are secure in your position in Christ, that will always produce a calmness in the midst of calamity.”
• “Confidence is a direct result of knowing your position of Christ.”

Having confidence in Jesus has not been one of my strongest attributes. I do not have confidence in Jesus internally. He is more of an abstract distant source of joy, happiness and peace. This also coincides with me not opening my heart completely to Jesus. It seems at times that saying Jesus loves me or I love Jesus has only been words. Confidence is such a hard thing to obtain. Confidence is all based on perspective. I think the only real way to have true confidence in Jesus is to let go and let him have your entire life. Bow down and give it all to him to handle. Confidence in Jesus is not the assurance of being protected or the quality of life or only good things are going to happen. That has been my problem with having confidence in Jesus. No, true confidence in Jesus is saying the Lords prayer and knowing the Holy Spirit is upon you from the Grace of God. True confidence in Jesus is knowing God’s character and meditating on that daily. True confidence in Jesus is glorifying God in everything we do and if it does not glorify him, do not do it. Knowing the word of God is good for the ego, but knowing the God of the word is confidence. One has to be completely broken before they can crawl to Jesus and hand him their life with the proper confidence needed to flourish in God’s grace and faith.

LifeChurch NW

The Chazown book and group session was an amazing experience and taught me a lot about the problem areas in my life.

Through Chazown I concluded that there were two major spokes I wanted to work on with two major goals. The spokes were people and health.

• To better my relationship with people at home, at work and with strangers. To start loving people and being more open so Jesus can shine through me and help others.
• To start eating better and exercising more so I can stay healthy and watch my kids grown up.

My core values are:

• Reliability, Knowing God, Creativity, Confidence

My spiritual gifts are:

• Writer, Exhortation, Knowledge, Leadership, Wisdom

PURPOSE STATEMENT

To use my vision, wisdom, honesty and experience in creating writing elements and other creative endeavors that help people better understand life through the eyes of God with faith and appreciation, while making a difference and setting an example for my children.

I think I accomplish this everyday with my writing, photography and other creative skills. I want to broaden this to help other people and allow them to experience the gifts God has placed upon me and my family.

1 John 4:20-21

20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

An eye-opening statement from the bible is that our love for God will be measured by our love for people. It is amazing to read that if we do not love others, we do not love God. I decided that in my Chazown training I wanted to focus on my relationships with other people. This would include my patience and forgiveness in people. I have a huge problem not being able to forgive people. I want to release this forgiveness from my heart with love and compassion. To me, this is God’s hardest command to accomplish.

In John 20:23 it says, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” I believe God tells us to forgive other people in our hearts and not to hold any hate or animosity toward other people for the things they have done in life or to you personally.

I want to be able to look at people and sense love for them. Sense the love that Jesus has for people. Jesus does not look at his enemies with anger, hatred or contempt. There is nothing but love that emanates from Jesus’ heart.

I was sucker punched in high school in art class. I slammed against the wall and hit the floor. Blood was everywhere. I think they used some of the blood in the red paint as a tribute to me being sucker punched. The kid that sucker punched me was mad at me because I knew the words to Paul Revere by the Beastie Boys. He dared me to touch his art work. I did. He sucker punched me.

I am going through the new Chazown mentoring program at LifeChurch NW. It will be a year-long learning process to make me a better man, husband, father and leader. I very much look forward to it. I had to write my experience and walk with God as part of the program and have posted it below.

My walk with Christ really had no glory moment that is memorable. I do remember going to Church as a child and always talking to God internally before I was 6 years old and growing up. All my life I always had internal conversations with God on questions, guidance, anger and happiness.

My mother died when I was 6 years old. This is when my life went down hill. I did not stop talking to God after she died though; I started talking more. Do not get me wrong; talking to God did not stop me from doing the wrong thing. It kept me from destroying my life and protected me from death. I tried everything I could to ruin myself.

I was in and out of trouble and not doing the right thing all the way up to my early 20s. Alcohol, theft, drugs, sex…all the sinful things in life. In 1993 I started doing the right thing in life and taking accountability for trying to make something of myself, staying out of trouble and trying to better myself.

After experiencing different Churches, experiencing different levels of communicating with God and life-changing events I finally arrived to LifeChurch in 2008. After getting to LifeChurch I may have been a better person and closer to God, but mentally my negative habits of communication and habits of internal destruction levels where very high.

I do think since coming to LifeChurch my walk with God has increased greatly and I have never been closer. My communication level, experience and reaching out has never been greater. My walk has never been stronger. My father died recently and my strong relationship with God has helped me to deal with this. I value family, my kids, my family, wife, and career greatly. God has blessed us many times over and has reached out to us by blessing us with a great life.

But over the years of my life I have built up a lot of negative mental habits and negative communication habits. I do a lot of comparing on an unhealthy level and hold myself to such a high standard of achievement that when it does not occur depression sets in. I think the ego and anger is involved greatly in this mental campaign of destruction. I do not seem to be getting better; I seem to be getting worse. It affects my personal life, my career and my relationships.

LifeChurch online pastor Tony Steward seems to be having the exact same problem as I am having and he posted a note about it on Facebook that is worth reading to understand where I am coming from. The only difference is that I compare everybody, not just new people I meet. He calls it a superhuman complex.

I push myself to such a high standard of expectations and in turn I think that the hard work should pay off in those areas and when it does not depression and blame sets in with a heavy does of “life is not fair” mental attitude. All this results in anger toward my family, friends and at work. I keep friends at a distance so they cannot disappoint me by not living up to my unhealthy expectations. I lash out from my failed levels of expectations professionally and in casual interactions with people.

I have such an unhealthy level of comparison that everything I encounter goes through this standards’ judgment and ultimate failure on my behalf and then me pushing back and getting angry. And forgiveness is not even close to being part of the end result. With all the anger and pushing back of letting me down I have a hard time forgiving people in the sense of letting things go. It is a strange dichotomy. I can forgive somebody or a stranger for doing something wrong to me first but if they disrupt this level of expectations and comparison, then I have a hard time forgiving that person and myself. But ultimately, I do forgive that person, but never myself.

It is usually not so much trying to pull others down, but more of trying to push me to a different level. Not the level God has set for me but the level I think I should be at. I struggle with God as well because I blame him for the lack of accomplishments and expected results and comparing myself to others.

I could obtain the world, but if it is not my preconceived expectations then I have failed. I get angry with God and try to push him away as well, but thank God, God does not go anywhere and does not allow me to push him away. He digs in and wraps his arms around me and continues to protect me from my personal destruction. He touches the hearts of the people around me in forgiveness and understanding so I do not completely destroy everything in my life.

Becoming a better person for my family.