Day Twenty Four

DAY 24

Transformed By Truth

Truth, what is it? Is it in the mouth of the person who says TRUST ME? Does that mean you are about to hear something TRUE? For much of my adult life, I believed people who said those two little words. Why would they say them if what they were about to say wasn’t true? UMM, silly Michael, look in the dictionary and under the word FOOL there was your picture. It seemed to become that way after a while. I guess I was searching so hard for something to believe in; someone to love me, that I would believe anything anyone told me if I thought it would make me happy for the moment. THE MOMENT, what about FOREVER? Why couldn’t I or didn’t I care about seeing the long road ahead of me? I never thought about it because I didn’t ever know from one minute to the next if there was ever going to be another next time. In my mind, this was all there was. I lived every day for the day, every moment as if it were my last. And every time I got my feelings hurt, let down, stepped on, it was just another reminder that the world and people were nothing to be trusted. That those two little words TRUST ME was the biggest lie ever told. Even as a child not knowing what those two words were or meant but still they were something I was supposed to have learned to feel, I never did. Instead of trusting that I would be protected, I grew up in fear. Instead of growing up trusting that someone would always be there, there wasn’t. Instead of growing up knowing that everything would be alright, it never was. Trust and security, the two most important things a child should learn to live with and have in his or her life was absent from me, so trying to understand these concepts in someone that I could never see. IE: God was a very difficult thing to learn how to do, especially when learning to hear Him took so many years to recognize. What was a little boy to do?

As I struggled through life with a head full of God knowledge, and a heart so broken and full of guilt and shame, I always knew God had His best in mind for me and that His word was the best thing to look to for the answers to all of the questions I had. But at a young age trying to decipher those answers for myself without being able to ask for help without revealing my secrets to anyone was not easy. I say that only because there were times in my life I did talk about the sensitive issues in my life with quote un-quote MEN OF GOD, but maybe it was just the times or the era that I lived in but they were as uneducated and naive or completely misinformed to have any idea what to say to me. Some wouldn’t or didn’t even attempt to pray with me. Their best advice was to tell me to just MOVE OUT OF STATE and maybe everything would just go away if I was living somewhere different. Like that would make any difference what so ever. So you see the advice of some was just so wrong it was no wonder I seemed so helpless to seek advice from anyone, but back to the topic at hand, God’s Word. Finally it would come down to “Was I ready to give into it or not”? For years I searched for someone to give me answers, a solution to follow to guide my life to live by, Psychologist, therapist, counselors, humans with their own minds and own ways of thinking. All of them with their own egos that thought they were right in their own way of thinking about life and how I should live mine. But every time I got this bad sick feeling inside that would tell me this isn’t the answer, don’t you understand I am a Christian, and God says. Then they would say something like “Yea but God didn’t really mean for you to suffer like this did He?” Well suffer or no suffer I guess that is my choice. But no matter what, your way of thinking isn’t going to make me feel any better about myself so “See you later BYE!” So once again I am left to myself all alone to figure out who I am, what to do with what I am feeling, and how to live my life with the feelings that I have been dealing with and the confusing thoughts and all the lies I have been hearing and believing all my life. Every once in a while I would put my thumb on the Bible somewhere as I felt Gods gentle spirit leading me, sometimes I felt the comfort that it brings, other times I felt the conviction that it can also make a person feel. That is when I usually put it back on the shelf so many times before. I just wasn’t ready to make a commitment to continue with the next verse or the rest of what I was reading entailed at that point in my life. But I always knew “IT was in there, the TRUTH was in between the covers of that book on my shelf.” The rules if that is what you want to call them. I don’t because that sounds to much like something you have to follow and if you don’t you will be punished by someone that will make you feel sorry you didn’t meet up to their standards or worse, send you to hell. I like what I heard once, using the words HOLY BIBLE as an acronym, He Only Left You Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. How simple does that make the Bible sound, Basic Instructions written by the designer on how to operate His creation? I remember my dad all to well at Christmas time after opening up a new toy that had to be put together that had a lot of pieces and a big book of instructions. The instruction got thrown out with the wrapping, because MEN don’t ask for directions and they don’t need instruction. But sooner than later someone was in the trash looking for those instructions. How often when life gets us down do we go looking for a dust cloth and the bible on the shelf to see what is wrong in out lives and try to find that one or two verses that will make us feel better, hardly ever. So what happened to me, how and when did God’s word all of a sudden just jump out at me and become so alive to me. I can think of two times in the past year that God did His leading that was so amazing that I was hooked so strongly on it. Last July I was in my bedroom, and He nudged me to stick my thumb in it because I was right next to it on the table in my room. I picked it up and stuck in my thumb and opened it up to the book of Proverbs chapter one, the very first page. So I read the first chapter, put it back down and went on with my day. The following day I read the second chapter. I found verses like Proverbs 1:23 If you repent and give heed to my reproof, I will pour out my spirit upon you. or chapter two, My son if you will receive my words and treasure up my commandments within you, making your ear attentive ….then you will understand the reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord. It was on this day after I read the second chapter that I took these verses to heart, and took my four packs a day of cigarettes habit to the trash can and trusted GOD to do his part and threw away FOUR CARTONS of them straight into the dumpster. Four packs a day meant the kids in the neighborhood used to call me chimney because I always had a smoke in my hand. But as soon as I released them into the dumpster, there because of my faith, went my habit and my cravings all at the same time. I had been trying many ways to quit for a long time my 20 year habit, cutting down, changing brands, not buying any then just buying one pack at a time. Nothing worked. But throwing away four cartons, all that money at once, not even giving them away to other smokers I knew. GONE, in LESS THAN 60 SECONDS!

Then just this February when I called my doctor to tell her to stop the medication I was abusing, the Lord told me to put my thumb in the bible another time I put it into Psalms 116 and began to read, it was verse 16 He was heading me towards and it read “I have Loosed Your Bonds” and then verse 18 said “I will Pay my Vows in the Presence of His People” and right there I knew I had to take the microphone away from my Pastor the next week in church and testify to what the Lord had done in releasing me from my addiction of thirteen years. The Power of the Word of God will out do and out live any thing and any human being ever. Why would anyone go anywhere else for an answer or pay anyone any amount of money for answers that can be found for free in the instruction manual left by God for His people written by His Holy Spirit through His people in the first place? It makes no sense and I am living proof because I have spent a life time doing just that, Sad uh? Starve if you will, starve if you must, but never go to your Pastor with a problem if your first one is anorexia from the word. He’ll just send you home with a diet plan and tell you to call him in a month. Because there is nothing he can do to force Gods word into you. There are no feeding tubes for the Word of God, you can feed with others, or as the old saying goes, you can lead a Christian to the Word of God but you can’t make him READ IT, he has to do it all on his own.