You can’t have both, Anthony!

Earlier this week when I was spending time with a mentor of mine, he said he has lived by the same life mantra for over 30 years.  He simply says to himself you can’t have both.  You can’t have your way and God’s way.  It has been the foundation of my soul that I could find a way to do what I want and just bring God a long for the ride.  I thought about his explanation and the conviction and passion he had for this saying.  Also, how much he lived by it and made a practice of using it in his everyday life.  I decided to use this for myself.  You can’t have both, Anthony! your way and God’s way.  It doesn’t work like that, you must choose one.  I stop and meditate on those words and realize the only reason, true reason, I am in this battle is because I just won’t let go.  I keep choosing what I want, my way, even though the brightness of God’s promises is shining all over me.  Why am I tormented by the truth that I am deceiver and of no good.  Why am I tormented by God’s love for me instead of just letting him hold me!  God is full of Goodness and the truth is he loves me and I should bask in that glory of His love, yet I choose to hide in the darkness.  I am so quick to tell people the right thing to do and how they should surrender, but as for me I’m good! (BIG LIE)  This morning started off well and I was happy but I believe my feelings of conviction have finally caught up with me.  I have been in this blissful place with God and with my sin. I am living this way as if it is normal and honestly for the last 20 years it has been.  This is the furthest from the truth and I am not truly seeking and choosing God, but yet want his blessings because I am following a routine! not happening!!

Now, I am closer to believing then I have ever been in my life and walk with Christ.  This conviction this morning is heavy because the Holy Spirit has truly called out the poser I have been for so many years.  Always finding a way to create secrets to provide me with my needs and wants when I want them.  I have believed this to be OK for all of this time, seriously, this is my struggle!  That was the other part of the lie I held onto.  My brokenness should be more than enough to have me run and stay put in Jesus but just because I want to get my way I create these deceptions.  The more I read, whether books or the bible, the more I see men and women who give up on their posing and stand in the light of Christ.  They show all of their flaws and trust by faith that Jesus has them under His wings.  They did not keep secrets or tell half-truths(which are lies) or catch that sin door right before it closes and no one is looking.  I turned to Christ completely for a quick minute and as soon as I became complacent I went right back to posing.  I was always finding a way to cover myself.  You can’t have both Anthony! Your way and God’s way, choose one!  This conviction was felt hard today because you can’t have joy in Christ if you really ain’t bout Christ!  There are several statements that the Holy Spirit is rising to the top of my heart.  The first is a reminder that if there is anything unholy in me then there can truly be NOTHING Holy in me.  Also, I cannot continue to praise God while the other side of my mouth tries to deceive Him.  I have been a deceiver from a very young age, it was one of my ways of surviving and we think we are so good at it that we can actually deceive God! WOW! He knows the pureness of our hearts! My heart is broken and black, there truly is nothing holy in me because my God is not my center, I have an idol(god) that has influenced my life for over 29 years.

The truth is my deception has only hurt me and some of those close to me. Honestly, when you deceive people who are not a significant part of your life, does that even matter, because you don’t matter to them.  Today I have realized how subtle the slime of this Earth has entangled my being.  I haven’t felt conviction for a very long time, mostly because my heart was hardened, and then because God knew I wasn’t ready to handle it.  He knows how my emotions flow and take over and I run from that very quickly.  I sit here feeling this heaviness from God and can’t believe I have the gall to act pious and call out those who are just as broken as I am.  I am here taking for granted the GIFT of my salvation as if it is something I have done for many years.  IT IS A GIFT!  As I reflect back I sit in humbleness because God still loves me even though I have played this back and forth game with my faith.  I wear tattoo’s and write poems and devotionals.  I have preached and reached out to those in need and prayed deeply for people.  All of this for nothing because the whole time I have been deceiving myself.  Praising God in the daylight and feeding the monster at night.  Even as I write this now the devil infiltrates into my thoughts and life and pressing on my falseness, my mask.  I need to reorganize my life when I repent and begin to serve more.  I will pray HUGE prayers and just forget about my selfish wants.  You can’t have both, Anthony! Your way and God’s way! Choose One!  It has been about 22 years and God has still done a lot of good in light of  my brokenness.  Honestly, God has not been my number 1.  A choice of darkness has reigned supreme in my life and unless I claim this weakness to the world, I would never be exposed and covered by His healing light.  My whole life has been lived in secrecy.  I have always had a side that no one knew about and that was all mine.  This was my idol and it was the foundation of my altar, not Christ.  He is a part of my altar but not the foundation and that has made me weak and to chase after a weak god instead of pursuing an Omnipotent God!

No matter how much I write about him if I do not confess that my life has been full of deceit and secrets He can not become my First Love!  There is beauty today in this confession of idolatry and this is I can choose Jesus and God’s promises for real.  I need to give up my half-truths and my keen ability to deceive because it does nothing but deceive me away from the truth of God’s love for me.  It creates isolation and depression and then I feel exactly as the lies that are whispered into my thoughts.  I DO NOT WANT MY WAY ANYMORE! I want God’s way only and I need to be reminded of that daily.  you can’t have both, Anthony! Your way and God’s way, Choose one!  When we expose our brokenness to others and to Jesus it is our weakness that we expose and I will have faith that God will forgive me for the poser I have been and exemplify the Son he claims me to be in His Name!  I must trust to tell who I really am in the mist of recovery, I need to remember There is only Good in Jesus and His light shines brightly on our flaws.  They will stay flaws when we continually choose our way over God’s way.  In the bible, it says to not let your heart be troubled, but the truth is that can only happen if I truly give my heart and soul, not just words!

YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH, ANTHONY!
YOU CANNOT HAVE YOUR WAY AND GOD’S WAY! CHOOSE ONE! AMEN!

One Love, One king, All Christ

Self-Help = Self-Hurt

When we take the time to look back at all the things we tried to fix on our own, we realize the failure rate is pretty high.  Now, don’t get me wrong there are some people out there who can MacGuyver the heck out of anything, but that doesn’t work on our souls.  The problem for most of us is our pride mixed in with about a thousand table spoons of shame.  We just know we can handle the situation and even have the guts to tell God we got it.  In the end, the only thing we get is shame, pain and fear and are usually too humiliated to even face God.  That in and of itself is a lie because he is omnipotent and will never turn on His Beloved.  We typically wait til it’s too late to get Group( Jesus, Holy Spirit, God) Therapy that the burdens have built up to the weight and the size of the sun.  This is what we do even when you read about history and even when you read about people in the bible who saw miracles and were with Jesus.  They all tried the self-help method and it never worked.  We hit rock bottom and then reach for the sky in the hope we can make it close to Heaven.  We are taught the self-help stuff from when we are kids and once we learn how to get our way we take hold of that and run with it.  I can tell you from personal experience that every time I have tried to self-help my soul I ended up self-hurt and running back to a place where I could medicate and numb that feeling.

I learned a pretty cool saying the other day and it was right on point, they said ” My best thinking, on my best day, Got me Here!”  When you place that in perspective and realize once you were in that place of darkness, dread or failure it was usually that plea to God to help you get out!  We so easily forget the blessings that God gives us and take for granted that everything we do should be for His Glory and not our own.  When we are in self-help mode we point fingers and always have someone to blame.  I read the other day that “we cannot blame God for all the bad that happens while we are praising Him for all the Good that happens at the same time.”  When we are in self-help mode we typically got ourself there through choosing the way we know and not the way we grow.  Now when you sprinkle in brokenness and abuse the only way to deal with those things is on our own, again another lie from the enemy.  Then God has people to enter into our lives who have the wisdom of knowing how God saved them and then they share with you that it is not your fault.  They share with you that your innocence was taken from you and you can have a clean slate.  God will cover with His robe and Jesus with His Blood so that you will be in the refuge and fortress of the Most High and adopted as His son or daughter.  My friends throw away your self-help stuff and reach for your bible.  The next step is GROUP(Jesus, Holy Spirit, God) Therapy.  Once you experience the sweetness of Gods love, the kindness of His mercy and the fullness of His Grace, the shame, pain and fear will flee!  For every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord! Amen!

One Love, One King, All Christ

Why do we splice back into our corrupt wiring!

This past Sunday I attended a traditional service and when I say that the second youngest person is in their early 60’s.  The pastor is 85 years old and spent a lifetime doing revivals for Jesus all over the country.  He opened up with talking about technology because his wifi at his house went out.  Then the technician at the house was talking to him about his wifi problem and he said that changed his sermon for this day.  Basically what happened is the technician fixed everything and put all new equipment into their house.  When he went to connect the network and leave it still wasn’t working.  The technician realized what he did was splice all the new wires into the main wire box outside and that wiring was corrupt.  It was at that moment he realized God put it on his heart to speak about this today.  This is what we do as followers of Christ, we are connected to the main source of our peace and salvation and for whatever reason we may find we splice back into our old corrupt wiring.  Whenever the path that Christ has trailblazed for us starts to show some difficulty we run back and go to what’s familiar.  We sometimes don’t even realize we are splicing back into the old way of thinking and living, also commonly known as ” The Old Man.”  We are so familiar with this that we by instinct will splice back into the thoughts and actions we think will free us of the burden we are feeling.  We will hold onto this comfort even though we know it is harmful to our soul.

Thankfully, we serve a God that is GOOD! He sees no faults in our wiring and is always ready to re-splice us back into his perfect, powerful and full of grace wiring.  Even when we splice back into the “Old Man” we feel the shock but it many times is not painful enough to remind us we need to fix it.  How crazy is it that even though we are connected directly to God and the flow is perfect we still feel inadequate about being there.  I am tired of that and want to sink deeply into the Goodness of our God!  That means giving up my wire cutters and splicers and relinquishing those tools to Christ.  The trick is wanting what God has to offer more than what we want.  There is nothing good in me or around me and there is Only GOOD, LOVE, MERCY and GRACE in Jesus.  I want that direct connection to stay fully intact and I want to live off the full awesome mighty power source of Love that My Adoptive Father wants to give me all the time! Amen!

One Love, One King, All Christ