My Purpose Driven Life Journal

Day Thirty Seven

2008-07-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

Day 37

Sharing my Life Message

Romans 12:11 “Never let my Zeal Lag”

It’s one of my favorite things to do. Talking about my life. It is one thing I know best in life. It is a miracle I can still remember it all too. Not because it was so long ago, but the fact of all the so called damage that has been done, the drugs that I have done, the damage to my brain they say comes with the brain cells they say I have killed every time I have shot up, the metal disease they have diagnosed me with, the many trips to the psychiatric hospitals and the amount of medications I have taken over the years must have had some effect on my memory you would think. But it is amazing the amount of information in detail I can recall at any given moment when a situation presents itself. Especially from childhood everything I can recall when my parents say “I don’t remember that.” Why is it that parents conveniently forget the most painful parts of their children’s lives when we remember them like they were just yesterday? I never understood that.

But one thing I do understand is, listening to a testimony that comes from the heart of someone that has experienced the touch of God in their life is so moving to me. It is all I ever wanted to be able to do. I have mentioned before about a man that gave his testimony to a group of Jr. High school kids when I was twenty years old I was teaching that moved me in such a way that I prayed to God that I wanted a testimony just like his so I could someday do what he was doing. That is all I ever wanted to do with my life, move people in such a way that my life made a difference in them to feel the power of God with the words that were coming out of my mouth. As I grew up I found that I did have the ability to move people with the words I spoke with. Even when I wasn’t speaking about God, no matter what I was trying to say, I was always convincing. I was always able to get people to listen to me, to get what I wanted just from speaking to them. My manipulating skills took me far in life. Some for the good of me and some for the not so good for me. Either way my words and speaking ability always seem to get me through in life.

Now that I have a subject that I am proud of, a testimony that I am comfortable with, a character I am no longer ashamed of, I am ready to let God use me to share the Power of His saving grace known to the world around me just how He has transformed me from the man I used to be to the man I have become. For me it isn’t difficult to get a conversation started. I am in a very unique situation where ever I go. And if I take along my pets with me that makes it all the more easier. You see due to my medical situation I have been left to depend on a wheelchair and usually if I am out alone, I am carrying a 9 year old Iguana with me. So she gets the attention first, then somehow after the conversation get comfortable and more on a friendly basis, I usually will get asked why I am in or need a wheelchair. That is the only question I wait for. That is my open door. If I was just another man with a Lizard, we would talk about them. If I was just a 47 year old man in a wheelchair, who would come up and just start a conversation with me just for the heck of it? But given my personality and my gift for conversation, my young spirit, my love for people and a conversation piece on my lap, one that is gentle enough to attract the smallest of visitors, I can enjoy a day out and have a chance to share with almost everyone I meet. It was the streets where I used to use and look for things that got me into trouble. So it is no wonder that is where God has me back at sharing my testimony. The same places where the enemy used me to fail at so many things is where I am being used by God to bring him the Glory he deserves.

The bible says we are all supposed to be actively sharing our faith with those around us. But I wonder if we all are taking this task He has given us as seriously as He has commanded us to. How many people do we see every day that we just walk or pass by and have never even mentioned to them we are a Christian? How many even know that we go to church? Or that we believe in a God at all? A lot of people like to keep their lives so private but being a Christian should be the least private part of our lives. We in America don’t have to worry about persecution for what we believe. We can shout it from the roof if we want to. People stand in the middle of the street and do it all the time. But we don’t have to go to that extreme. All we need to do is be ready when an opportunity presents itself. If God knows our hearts and knows that we want to do this, He will bring the opportunities to us. God loves a willing spirit and an obedient soul. This He can use all the time no matter where we are in our walk with Him.

Remember we all have a story to tell, we all came from somewhere before we knew God. Something happened to allow us to get to know and chose Him. We all had and still have a growth process that is full of ups and downs and experiences that have tried our faith and have taught us lessons that will strengthen and encourage someone else. Whether you have almost lost your life and been saved from losing it or whether God has kept you safe your whole life, you have a testimony that is all yours. And God will bring just the right kind of people that need to hear YOUR TESTIMONY so that your life will have a purpose to it and a meaning that will be worth something to someone else. So always be ready to give an account as to what God as done in your life. Someone NEEDS to know what He has done for YOU.

Day Thirty Six

2008-07-08T10:30:00.002-07:00

Day 36

Made for a Mission

“The best use of your Life is to spend it on something that outlasts it”

One day a young boy set out for school but never arrived. The school called to see where he was and why he wasn’t in school that day; His father said he had left at his regular time as he did every day. Worried what happened to his son, he got in his car and began to drive the route his son walked to see if he could find him but he wasn’t anywhere to be found? He called the police and they set up a search party and soon the whole town was looking for his son. They would not stop until the lost boy was found again. The father never gave up hope that his son would soon be with him again. He knew that his neighbors would not stop until his son was found because they also loved him and his son.

So it is the same with God and us. Unbelievers are like the lost son in the story above. And all our neighbors are all the Christians in the world who God has called to help Him find all the sons that are lost in the world because God is frantically looking to get them back to Him. God needs our help in finding them. This is all God is concerned about as He sits up in heaven, working in our lives to get us to a place where we can be instruments of His purpose to fulfill His purpose in us, to make us more like His son Jesus so we can do what His son Jesus did while He was here on earth. Each one of us individually He is shaping and molding to become more and more into the character of His son, one day at a time, one feeling at a time, restoring us from one hurt at a time, one broken relationship at a time, so we can be used in one ministry at a time. He has given us each talents and abilities to be used in specific ways, placed us in specific locations and places that are needed so we can be near the right individuals He wants us to reach because it is only us that can that reach these individuals. When God brings certain people into our lives, it is for a reason and for His purpose. There is always a reason why they are there. They just didn’t show up out of the blue. God brought them there. You are not in line behind them by accident. They are not your neighbors because the manager rented them the apartment next to you. They are not your co-workers because someone else hired them. When we understand this, that God has the control and does the behind the scenes work for us, we realize that half the work is already done for us, and we just need to finish what He has already started for us. It is like a salesman walking in a place that has already been primed ready to buy something; they are just waiting for the guy to come in with the product. They may not say YES right away, but eventually they will bite. You may just need to sharpen you salesmanship skills a little, find what works for you.

How do you develop this desire to reach those around you? Pray, always pray first. Second you need to have a love for people. A strong desire to care about the people that God puts in your life daily. To be able to have genuine concern for those around you and see them not only as just people in your life but as people that you want to spend eternity with. I heard a saying once that I think really applies well to the motivation and desire in people to be able to share their lives with others. “Those who have been forgiven little love little, and those who have been forgiven much, love much”. Now this isn’t always true is all circumstances because I know many people who have lived wonderful lives that have great big hearts for people. But I have also seen people who have lived very hard lives, that have gone through very many difficult times, have had many things to overcome, me included, that because of these hurdles to overcome have developed a greater love for mankind than the one they started out life with in the first place. God through their experiences has taught them how to love the unlovable whereas a lot of people just don’t know how to approach or reach them. We, I were these people at one time in our lives.

It takes a long time, and sometimes people never get to a place in their lives where they realize that reaching the world around them up and above and beyond their everyday jobs and responsibilities is what they were created to do. Between taking care of their families, going to work, paying the bills, spending a few hours in church on Sunday, who has time for much anything else? Maybe we should leave it all up to the single people. They must have more time on their hands right? Jesus was single anyway. Be more like Jesus the bible says. And go out and get twelve good friends to follow you around to lend you a hand with what ever you need done. Run your errands and wash your feet and hair. Fix your meals for you then you will have time. Ok maybe this is the wrong way to go about it, it would be nice but it isn’t reality. God gave all of us a personality to use in someway that will and can affect others in a different way so that we can be used to share our own lives and experiences with others. God has given us all experiences to be used that will reach others in some way. It is up to us to share them. To stay silent is the crime. To not tell others what God did in our lives is hiding His truths.

Someone in my life right now grew up with someone putting a lot of bad feelings and bad teachings towards the bible in his mind. He really doesn’t trust the bible as having any truths in it for the moment. How to get him to a place to trust in anything it says is going to be a challenge for me. So what I have asked him to do for the moment is just rely on what he sees in me. (this really puts a pressure on me doesn’t it?) Let me be the example of what you believe someone that believes in Christ is. Instead of me showing you what it means to be a Christian is by showing it to you in the bible, watch my life everyday, you are living with me. See how I treat you. See how I have treated you. See how I treat those around me. Watch how I live my life and compare it to how you know others that you have seen live theirs. Then every once in a while I will open up the bible and show you something that goes along with what I am doing or saying and see if it doesn’t match up with something you are seeing me doing or living. Maybe this will be a way to reach him and get him to understand that what he has heard or read or been taught in the past maybe wasn’t the right thing in the first place. Before we can preach the word of God we have to live the word of God. And we can’t live the word of God if the word of God isn’t in us.

Day Thirty Five

2008-07-08T10:30:00.001-07:00

Day 35

God’s Power in my Weakness

The Four “F” Words in my Life

Failures, Feelings, Frustrations and Fears, we all have them but nobody is talking about them. I wonder why not? That would just be too much to bear. If people knew what was inside of us, how could we walk out the front door of our homes and face the world in public? Who we are to others instead is just someone that everyone thinks we are. If they really knew what was inside of us, if they really knew who we were, what make us tick, would they still accept us? Would they still sit beside us in church and say they were our friends? So to be sure, we keep quiet about our true selves and go on pretending without ever telling anyone those little secrets we have grown up with all our lives. Mostly because we don’t want to look at them ourselves, they even scare us sometimes. We don’t want to admit we have feelings like that. How could we, we are Christian’s and God didn’t make people with stuff like that in them. Didn’t Jesus die on the cross to take all that stuff away and redeem us, to heal us and restore us? Wasn’t all the bad stuff in us supposed to go away when we accepted Him? When we prayed to Him to remove something wasn’t He supposed to answer us and give us the desires of our hearts like the bible says? Please Lord remove in me anything that doesn’t line up with your will in my life. That sounds like that right thing to pray for doesn’t it, but what about when it doesn’t seem to go away? What if it just continues to linger for the rest of you life? Is this what Paul was talking about when he said he had a THORN in his side? Something that reminded him that he always had a reason to have a need for the Lord in his life? Something that made him always realize that he was human and that he always needed to constantly rely on the Lord every minute of his life.

Well the same is true for this servant of God. Nine months before I was even born my mother began taking me to church. She was the spiritual leader in the home I was raised in. Everything I learned about what it meant to be a Christian I learned from my mother and my grandmother. At the age of nine I went forward willingly on my own with excitement down that long isle in church to secure my salvation for eternity. The enemy must have known soon after that what a man of God I would become some day as much as my Father in heaven did because it wasn’t long after that long run down the isle that he started messing with my mind and my head in so many ways. Nightmares and dreams and hallucinations after I woke up from those nightmares began to torment me every night. I was afraid to go to sleep at night. Monsters in my dreams with devils in them that were always just one step behind me coming after me. Fear of my dreams, fear of my father, and fear of my classmates at school. Fear seemed to run my life as a child. No place in my life seemed safe. Puberty came at an early age for me in a way that I didn’t understand and I became confused about who I was and what to do with those feelings. I was again fearful to speak up to anyone for the simple reason that I would be punished for doing something bad again. So I just kept quite about what was going on inside of me. So now instead of being afraid of everything outside of myself, I was now afraid of myself and the things that were inside of myself, something that I didn’t understand about myself. I thought that something inside of me was broken. Something in my head, something in my body, and something in the things I was thinking doing with both. I was too young to even know what the word gay or homosexuality was at that time. But I knew something wasn’t right at the same time. And I also knew that I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. Especially my father or my mother because she would talk to my father, she told him everything. I was left all alone with all this stuff. Already I was asking questions to God like “Why me Lord, what did I do to deserve this? Am I going to have to live with these feelings all my life? Why can’t I just be normal like everyone else?” These were difficult questions for a twelve year old to have to deal with and to suffer with at that age. While every other twelve year old is just concerned about playing with his friends, I was worried about hiding and keeping secrets about myself and feeling depressed over things I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why God wasn’t answering my prayers or even if He was listening to me. I prayed everyday for an answer but none ever came. I couldn’t see why He was being so silent. I begged and pleaded every night, I prayed for forgiveness for my thoughts and feelings, I asked God to take away the evil that must be inside me, and at times I just wanted to die to make the madness go away. Imagine a twelve or thirteen year old boy wishing he were dead because he didn’t want to live with the feelings in his own mind. I remember how weak and insecure these feelings made me feel all the time. As my teen years went on, these feeling seemed to consume me more and more. My high school years seemed to become one lie after another. My grades suffered, my attendance suffered, I learned how to forge my counselors signature on re-admits very well after every time I ditched classes. The only distraction I found was my involvement with the children’s department at my church. Actually I think it was a way for me to re-live my own childhood again in a safe environment. It was the first time in my life I was receiving recognition for a job well done for doing something right and good for someone else. I enjoyed seeing the happiness on the faces of the kids that I never felt as a child growing up, and knowing that I was a part of that happiness for them made me feel proud that I could be a part of it. Also the praise I received from their parents was something I never seemed to get in my own home growing up. I had found a place to get what I had never gotten before. This helped in so many ways to subdue the thoughts that haunted me so strongly through those teenage years.

Remember I said I hadn’t even seen the word gay written anywhere before? Or even seen it mentioned other than used in a joke on the playground? Coincidently shortly after I heard a guest speaker give his testimony one day in the Jr. Hi department, and I prayed a prayer that I wanted a testimony like that man where I wanted the same testimony as he had that God would give me one where HE would save my life over and over again, I saw that word printed in a newspaper that read GAY HOTLINE and a phone number. At first, to me a hotline meant trouble, and why would someone that was gay be in trouble? I could think of many reasons. It took a couple of weeks for me to get up the courage to call the hotline to see what it was all about. When I did, this was the beginning of the end, so to speak. It was the beginning of a change in the direction of my life in a drastic way. It was as if as soon as I prayed that prayer for God to give me a testimony, the course of my life completely changed all of a sudden. Soon after I was leaving church, my family and friends for a future of confusion, mystery, and unknown experiences that would leave me in a world that I never knew existed. My testimony soon began to take shape, from one life threatening experience after another, from one mishap to another. Was this what God had planned for my life after all? Why would he allow all this to happen to me I wondered. Did He think I was some kind of super hero that could withstand so much pain and agony to come out on top like I have now? And not just me but especially people like my mom and the rest of my family that had to watch and go through so much with me over the past twenty some years. How strong did He think they were to suffer right along with me? It was bad enough being labeled the BAD KID growing up as a child, but now I was really living up to that label as an adult with my addictions, my arrests, my trips to the many rehabs, and psychiatric hospitals for the paranoid delusions I would inflict on myself from my drug use. Over and over again I would ask WHY? Why was all of this happening to me? I had forgot about that prayer I prayed for a testimony where I wanted to be able to sit in front of a large crowd of kids and or people and tell them the story of how GOD saved my life over and over again. Well in order to do that He had to actually save my life over and over again didn’t He? Through all my fears, through all my failures, and through all my frustrations, God has never been out of the picture. I never understood all those stories in the bible growing up and how they could possibly have any meaning for me but now I see they are as relevant today as they were when they were written and lived back then. The Egyptians wandered aimlessly for forty years, so did I. The enemy messed with JOB trying to discourage him, he did also with me. Job prayed for death to befall him. I did too. He also cursed the day he was given life, so did I at times. Paul had his thorn. So will I for the rest of my life. It keeps me dependant on Christ every day of my life. It lets me know I need Him every day of my life. What once was a weakness that I always gave into is now a reminder that I need Him more and more every minute of every day. Through all my pain and suffering has come strength and courage that I never knew I had before. He has led me to a place in life where I can develop my faith and strengthen my soul with a body of believers that I can share with intimately. The wilderness I wandered in was not in vein by no means, the experiences I have had and come through are now my purpose He has developed in me to be able to give back to others. It has taught me the true meaning of the word LOVE and COMPASSION in a way few ever get to experience.

Day Thirty Four

2008-07-08T10:29:00.001-07:00

Day 34

Thinking like a Servant

Is this too much to do?

A life of service to others, why would anyone want to do that? Everything our society tells us is to have the things we want for ourselves. Fast cars, big houses, fine women, the hottest men, get rich quick schemes, almost everything the world has to offer us is obtainable if we just set our minds to it. All we have to do is work hard, put all our effort into it, and strive for the best in life. You can even hear some preachers preach this from the pulpit. Twist and turn the scripture enough times and you can get almost anything out of it you want. The FLDS are very good at this. What can be done to lose this mindset and develop a mindset of Christ that puts people first and ourselves second? How do we get to a point in life where others are more important than ourselves? It doesn’t just happen one day all at once. You don’t just wake up with the desire to go out and give it all away. I do believe that God’s plan for a persons life starts very early in life, obviously. Where he allows us to go, what he allows us to experience, the time it takes us to make the mistakes and learn the lessons He teaches us.

Today I had the opportunity to speak with an eighteen year old that was very mature for his age, It was a meeting set up by God I have no doubt. I once asked God to give me a testimony like a man I was listening to that had a very hard life of crime and punishment. I wanted a testimony like this man, not so much the crime and punishment part but the idea of being saved by God for the purposes of being able to testify to God’s saving power in my own life to a large crowd of people, in this case a large crown of teenagers. Today I realized something. Whether it is a large crowd or one at a time, my testimony is one that God has given me to share with who ever asks the questioned, WHAT HAPPENED TO ME? I used to be so embarrassed to even leave my home in a wheelchair. I didn’t want to be seen as a crippled. I don’t see that anymore. I don’t see myself as someone who is DISABLED anymore, but someone who is ENABLED to do everything the Lord wants of me to do. I am not the shy guy, afraid of my own skin, afraid of what others will think of me when they see me. What is it I am doing when I share with someone my life and my story? I am serving God and giving them a message that can show them that God has so much power to do exactly what He as always said He could do, take a life and change it into something great. Heal and restore the broken hearted. The ability to describe what it was like that brings young men to tears, and then calm them with words that softens their heart to be receptive to Gods love. I never mean to bring them to tears but it just happens more times than not. I don’t even think it is me as much as it is the Holy Spirit reaching deep down into their soul and grabbing a hold of them.

Having a ministry of a servant, doing the work of a servant where ever it is needed just because something needs to be done probably doesn’t come naturally to most people. I am sure most women will tell you this when I comes to the housework and trying to get their husbands to lend a hand with it. How can a man be such a great servant at church but such a lousy help around the house? I am sure many women would love an answer to this question. Some people have more time than others this is true. I on the hand, have lots of time being single, not having a regular job to go to, my time is pretty much my own and can give a lot of it when ever it is needed or called upon. Sometimes I want to take on too much because I think that if there is a need before me it must be mine to fill or take care of. As in the case this week of the two young homeless men I took in. I just couldn’t see letting two young men that are perfectly able but just in a situation at the moment where they were sleeping on the beach. Most people would just say “I’m sorry to hear that, I’ll pray for you that you find a place” but yet I take it as God brought them to because I have a place and they are not taking anything out of the way from me. I have a roof over my head, they do not. I have food in my fridge, they do not. They need help finding work, this was my profession. And now one of them has work and the other one is getting work. What if I would have said what everyone else probably would have said and probably not even done to begin with? They would have missed out on the blessing I have been receiving over and over again all this past week.

God never called anyone to be saved and go on their merry way. Imagine if those 120 didn’t go into that upper room and begin to pray. Where would we all be now? No one would have been spreading the GOOD NEWS to no one. Christianity would have just died out like another “HERE TODAY GONE TOMORROW FAD” of the 6th century. Even today we see the Jehovah Witnesses and the Mormon missionaries walking and pedaling the streets in service to their religion. Whether out of duty or out of true service to their beliefs, they are out there serving diligently while Christians are sitting back saying things like “I don’t have to go to church to be saved” or “I read my bible, sometimes” or “I do what I can when I have the time”. Gee, you go, I bet God can’t wait to get you into Heaven. He will be so happy to get you there after all you have done for him. At least He will be saving a lot on the rewards He will have to be giving out when it comes to your name. So what is it, what does it mean to truly give back to God with our time and our lives to others, to put people first, to put our church’s needs ahead of our own? The body of Christ is a living breathing entity that must be kept alive if it is going to survive and grow and maintain a life of its own in the world today and it takes not a few but all of us together to keep it that way. One of the biggest hearts I have seen is in the janitor in my church. One of the most spiritual men I have seen is the same man. He serves and he is the most unseen and the person I most get excited to see when I do see him. I always wait to hear what he has to say, I sit and listen to every word that comes out of his mouth. His ministry is to have the church prepared for service but his gifts far out weigh his ministry. If everyone served Christ and the body thereof in this manner, there is no telling to what would happen to the church today. But it is as it as always been, only a select few seem to be able to accomplish this level of service of servant hood.

Falling in Love with Jesus Christ, falling in Love with the body of Christ, falling in Love with the idea of serving others means letting go completely of ones self, letting God in to places that we are afraid to to go ourselves. Taking a chance that our own needs will be met only after will begin to look after the needs of others. I am finding through all of this, especially even the past weeks that when I take on the needs of others, when I listen to the voice of God and seeing the needs of others He places before me, my needs are not as important when I am only focusing on myself, and second the needs I do have seem to always be taken care of by the time the needs of others have been met and taken care of. I don’t understand always how it works but it just happens. Some how, some way, all of a sudden the needs I had yesterday or the day before have been taken care of all by themselves while I was doing something for some one else. Or a desire of my heart comes to pass that I just couldn’t ever do on my own but some how it gets met or someone blesses me with something that meets the desire I had in the first place. I think it is because God sees the work we do for others and sees that we have sacrifices ourselves for others and gives back to us because we have sacrificed so much for Him without even putting ourselves first. It is like sowing a seed, do unto others or for others and the same will be done or given unto you or me. This is what GOD wants to do in our lives, bless us for what we do, when we do it with a clean heart and pure motives. Remember, God sees it all, hears it all, and watches over us all. He would never let anything go unseen, Good or Bad.

What can one do to develop this thing called a servants heart? Seek and ye shall find, Ask and it shall be given. Knock and the door shall be open. In other words, PRAY. Ask God to change your spirit. Change your thinking, How can I explain the JOY it brings to see the faces of the people that I minister to every day and what it does to me knowing that I have done something for somebody else? How do I put a feeling into words? Let’s try it this way. How do you feel when you have a need and you know that someone else has gone out of their way to help you meet that need in your life? Grateful they were there and took the time to spend with you. Relieved that the problem you had is now gone. How would you feel knowing that you were someone that was able to do something that helped out another person that was in the same situation you were in once? Do you remember what it was like when you were going through the same thing, now you have an opportunity to return the favor to someone else. God allows us to go through things in our lives not just for our own sake but for the sake of others some day. Every thing we go through is a preparation to be able to understand someone else’s situation later on in life. When we overcome something in our lives, this is how we can know that we are going to be used by GOD to give back to someone else, it is all preparation for our purpose in life, to prepare us to give back what we have learned and grown through. God never wastes a lesson He tried to teach us. It was meant to be passed on to others. It is like the man who hordes money and wealth, You can only obtain so much but people are never satisfied, I love what I obtain every day inside knowing that I am serving a living Savior that blesses me when I put myself last and others first. For so many years I spent my life seeking after everything and anything that I thought would make ME HAPPY. I had no regard for the welfare or the feelings of others. As long as my needs and my happiness were met, that was enough. If you were the object of my desires or the substance of my needs, when I was finished with you, and I had no more need for you, I discarded you. It was a horrible way to treat any human being. But now with my eyes wide open, and looking at other the way Jesus sees all people, knowing that I fit into many of the categories that most people in society shuns every day, I have a better and deeper understanding and more willing desire to be of service to anyone I meet. Most of the time it is just communication and a conversation they desire with another human being, someone to listen to them and take an interest in what they have to say as you pass them by or sit next to them on a bus ride. People need to be noticed and feel like someone sees them. Acknowledge their presence in the world. Is this too much to do?

Day Thirty Three

2008-07-08T10:28:00.001-07:00

Day 33

How Real Servants Act

When you first hear the word servant, you usually think of someone that works for a master as someone in a position of service. Someone who attends to the needs of his masters needs and wishes on a daily basis, or maybe a driver or a house servant. Maybe a gardener or grounds keeper. But a Christian servant is much more than any of these. Whether you are a Pastor, a Sunday school teacher, a choir member, a church office worker, or just a pew sitter, we were all called to serve one another. First each other within the body of Christ, then those that are in the world outside of church, those we live with in the world. Our neighbors, those we meet everyday, even those we don’t know but those God brings into our paths that need a helping hand. It takes a certain mindset to put others first and yourself second. To see the needs of others and act without thinking, this doesn’t come naturally for some. It must be developed. Human beings have a natural instinct to take care of themselves first. To meet their own needs and then think of the needs of others, it is sort of how we are raised. “I’ve got mine and I will pray you get yours too” I can hear all the time in the isle ways and the lobbies of the churches I have been in all my life. This is what I mean by a servants heart must be developed. It doesn’t just come with the prayer of salvation. Rick spoke of God giving us special abilities that we can use to either bless other with or if used incorrectly used to even sin with. Or in my case, I used to try to buy the affections of others with. I tried to do for others to get attention from them. I thought that if I did for them they would just automatically return the favors and do right by me back. But not everyone was as nice as I was. So when I came upon others that were let’s say TAKERS and not GIVERS, I learned real quick what resentments were and how to let them grow and how to let my anger get the best of me as I held onto it. As a teenage I enjoy seeing the joy in the faces of the kids I worked with. Being able to be responsible for their happiness brought so much happiness to me. I enjoyed doing for others from an early age. It was something that was a part of me from the beginning. It was later that I learned to be a little more selfish as I grew up, but somewhere deep down I always had the ability to do for others that made me feel better about myself. Even the job that I did so well at was a job of service to others. Finding and place others in work daily so they could have a living was something I was very proud of and very good at. I felt bad the days I had men sitting in the office that I couldn’t get out to work, it was those faces that made me work harder and harder at my sales in the afternoons or on the phones looking for and finding more companies to use them everyday. It wasn’t the money for the owner that I was concerned about, it was the fact that they were in need of money for their families or their rent or their food that day. This was sort of my responsibility I thought. I actually felt bad when I couldn’t get all of them out to work each day. I did everything I could to make sure they would work the next day somewhere. Even though I was the man in charge, the boss of the office and they were my employees, I took it as I was serving them. I was doing them the service of looking for work for them, making sure they all had somewhere to go to work everyday to feed theirs selves and their families. They looked to me to be able to do that everyday. I was serving them not the other way around. This was why I was able to get up and be in the office every morning at five without any problems every day. When you have something you enjoy and even love to do, you don’t think about it being a burden but a joy to be doing. Only God can put this kind of love in your heart. The act of serving others no matter what it is. It is a wonderful gift to have once you have it if you don’t pray to receive it. I think God is willing to hand this one out to everyone since He calls us all to do this. Where ever we go, what ever we do everyday, there are always people to lend a hand to, whether we ask “what can I do for you?” or whether someone asks for a favor, or whether we just see a need that someone has, they are always opportunities to be of service somewhere. Volunteering is an excellent way to be of service when you find you have extra time on your hands. Your church, my church is a great place to volunteer at. They always have a place that has a need. Even keeping the Pastor’s snack closet is a need that must be met. I know, I do it all the time.

Having a servants heart is a quality of Christ that shows others what is truly in your heart. It isn’t something that has to be talked about or publicized, it is just something that can be seen by all and it let’s others know without saying anything that you are someone that has the mind and attitude that Christ is and has made a change in. If others have known you in the past and know you now, they will probably see a great difference in your personality. A difference in who you once were and who you are now, without even saying anything, your acts of service can be your unspoken testimony of the change that Christ has made in your life. This alone will bring others to you and make them ask what is different and what has changed in your life? You never use to be like this. What a compliment this will be. So Stand up for Christ, look for ways to show others who HE is in your life without even saying a word. Lend a hand, be of service to others. Do a favor without expecting anything in return.

Day Thirty Two

2008-06-04T12:48:00.001-07:00

DAY 32

Using What God Gave Me

Where do I start? God has given me so much. He has given me talents. He has given me intelligence. He has given me a heart of compassion above many. He has made me sensitive to the needs of others. And a mind that still functions even after the destructiveness of living a life of addictions and craziness. I am surprised that I can still put all my life together down on paper or on a computer the way I can after all the things I have done to my body and mind over forty seven years. That God has really blessed with the ability to still have the capacity to think and to create and to put together everything in a way to get a message across so that His Glory can be seen and be understood by others. I didn’t use this gift in school, in fact when it came to anything like writing or speaking in public, I made sure I was absent that day, or that the dog ate my homework just to get out of having to turn anything in. Who knew that when I copied the back cover of a book but change the words around a little just to make it sound a little different and got a “C” for the effort, the teacher was really trying to tell me something, I had talent for something she saw in me. An ability that was hidden deep down, too bad she never encouraged it past that point from there on out. I was always the last one to recognize something good in myself. No one ever told me much growing up that I was good at anything except my piano playing. Then when I was in my middle teens I began for the first time getting praise for my ability to care for the kids I taught. I found that was something that I really cared about, caring for others that I could relate to. A group of people that allowed me to be myself with the stigma of having to worry about someone over me telling me to behave or stay out of trouble or always correcting me for bad behavior. Instead I was getting positive reinforcement for the things I was doing and the effort I made. This brought joy into my life. As an adult I found that I was able to manage people well, that I took very little effort to be in charge without sounding like I was lording it over them. I worked well by doing things that I expected of others first. No one ever was asked to do anything they hadn’t already seen me do a number of times before I ever asked them to do something. It was only in my personal life I had problems. It was only in my personal life I was selfish. But that was then and this is where we are now.

I hope soon and very soon the talents I have been given can be used to bring glory to God. He didn’t bless me not to use me. That would waste both our times. I thank God for the things He has blessed me with, and kept a part of me over the years, although sometimes they can also work against me I always have to be on my toes to recognize the difference. Having a good strong voice it great for some things, but it can also be an annoyance in others. A quick wit is also good, but it also needs to be tempered with love and the right place to be used. I enjoy very much the ability to interact with many people. People are why Christ came. Not the rich and famous but the down and out, the weak and the meek. And I have been both at times in my life so I understand them both. God sees past the outer and so can I. Seeing through the eyes of Jesus takes a real heart and mine is developing into it more and more every day. Sure there are still some people I have a hard time with but that just still tells me that Jesus is still in the process of working on me too. When I arrive, it will only be because HE has arrived to take us all home. Until then, be patient with me.

Day Thirty One

2008-05-29T14:58:00.001-07:00

Day 31

Understanding My Shape

Abilities, personality and experiences, how do they shape who I have become? Where do I begin? My first God given ability or talent I can remember was at the age of five on my grandmother’s piano. I started playing it on my own with no one in the room all by myself. Simple songs like Mary had a little lamb and Twinkle Twinkle little star all by ear. My parents leased a piano when I was six years old and I began to take lessons to see if it was something I was interested in and I kept on playing for the rest of my life. By high school I had stopped the lessons and all I needed was an audience. It came naturally to me this gift of music. If only I could sing I might have gone on to do more with it. Up until high school, school was pretty easy for me, my grades were mostly all A’s and I never seemed to struggle at my school work. God did not fail at blessing me with an intelligent mind either. To be able to pick up music like I did there had to be something upstairs that worked I guess. It wasn’t for a lack of knowledge in high school that my grades became less than average, but it was my emotional state of being and my depression that got the best of me where as my attention to my school work and my motivation to succeed failed me. But at the same time my school work lagged, I found a new passion to replace it. A new part of my personality emerged. I replaced my depression with giving and helping others. I knew that my childhood was not a peaceful or pleasant one, but by serving and working with the children’s department at my church, I found a way to replace my brokenness and at the same time forget about my emptiness by making others happy and seeing the joy that I could bring to others by just being myself without the pressure of what I was going through trying to be someone everyone expected me to be everywhere else. This was the first time in my life I felt truly happy in life. I felt loved, accepted, appreciated, needed, all the things a human being was created to be but never seemed to get anywhere else except when I was at church teaching or spending time with the kids and the parents of those kids. It was safe and secure. What could ever possibly make me want to leave all that? But yet I did. While I was involved with the children’s department I found that I had a great personality that the kids seemed to gravitate towards. I was someone that they all wanted to be around. Their parents couldn’t stop praising me for what ever it was I had their kids couldn’t stop talking about MIKE and their child’s desire to spend more time with me. Even after the year that they would spend in my class they never stopped coming by and visiting. There were always the kids of the families that were the regular church goes that would always be there, but I always seemed to gravitate toward the one kid or the many kids that were not there with any family or parent, the ones that had no parent connection. The one that maybe came just for the girls, the one that came because of a special event and I saw as an opportunity to get to know that may struggle with a drug problem or a law enforcement problem, the kid that didn’t go to regular school but to a continuation school. You know, the kid that was DIFFERENT! All ready even as a teenager God was putting it in my heart to reach out to the people, the others in this world that were different and not like all the others, because even as a teenager I was already feeling different and not like all the others. The ME I am now is the same ME I have always been. It doesn’t matter today if the different people are still teenagers or if they are adults, they are all the same. I see them all every day I am on the street and I am glad I have the personality to still be able to mix and interact with them all just as well. The only thing I think that has changed is the date on my ID. It says I am another year older, but as long as I don’t feel it and as long as people still say I look and act many years less than it says I am, I feel great.

It wasn’t until after I left this safe and secure environment that the experiences became my training ground for my life lessons. And like high school, I wasn’t a very good student. I had to take the same classes over and over again, some for almost twenty years. Again it was my personality that was my biggest selling point. Once I was over the hurdle of my awkwardness and my newness to a world I didn’t understand, my ability to talk my way into situations that would get me what I wanted was easy. I didn’t have to try very hard to get what I wanted out of this new life. Things, this or that seemed to come very easy to me. In fact everything I desired was mine for the taking. This is why I became so hooked if you could use that word, to this new lifestyle. Was it all my and my wonderful personality that got me the desires of my heart, or was it the enemy that gave them all to me? Either way I was like a kid in a candy store and all the sample were free and never ending. I could talk my way into anything, or out of anything if I found myself in a situation I didn’t want to be in. Very rarely did I suffer at anyone’s hand. I should have gotten into a lot more trouble at times than I did, but somehow I always managed to talk my way out of them.

Working was always something I was good at. My work history while I could change jobs early in life they were not menial jobs, they were very good high paying one. From building airplanes for McDonald Douglas at age eighteen, to driving eighteen wheelers at twenty, to managing a business from twenty three to age thirty, I knew how to make money, keep a job in the mist of my addiction and disease, and perform it well. When I have something I am responsible for, I can get the job done. I know how to put more than one hundred percent into what ever it is I am doing. That has always been something I do well. I take pride in what I am given to do. I think this comes from my father always telling me I was no good and couldn’t do anything right growing up so I became someone that overachieved at what ever it was I did. THANKS DAD! You taught me something even if it wasn’t in a positive way.

Everything in my life as it’s meaning and it’s purpose as I just found out in that last couple of sentences. How God can use circumstances is very unique. I never would have thought that all those years of my father being the man he was would have ever taught me anything positive in my life or that it would have ever done me any good in life, but as I can see now, it did have an affect on me that was used for my good. It made me want to strive even harder at what ever it was I was asked to do because I didn’t want to hear anything like what I heard all my life from him. WOW, I can’t believe I am just now realizing all this for the very first time. This must be why I am sitting here this morning writing all this down. Thank you FATHER in Heaven. Thank You Rick for writing this book, I have really found much more healing here than I ever imagined. And Pastor Mike for listening to God and suggesting this book for me, it is exactly what God wanted me to do instead of finding a counselor this year to start off with. I am shaking right now feeling the touch of God all over me imaging and hoping for what is next in my life.

What is God going to do with all the abilities and experiences I have had I can only imagine. If you can compare the hurt and harm to others in my life and turn the tables on the enemy, WATCH OUT WORLD, there’s gonna be an explosion. When the Lord finally releases me on it, there is not telling what we will do together.

Day Thirty

2008-05-29T14:57:00.001-07:00

Day 30

Shaped for Serving God

NEVER LET YOUR ZEAL LAG

Can I see God planning each day of my life ahead of time? Or do I just see Him knowing it ahead of time? I can’t see Him planning my sinful life for me because that would just be wrong. But I can see Him planning what He would use it for. I am sure He didn’t say ahead of time “I am going to make Michael a Junkie and have him shoot speed for most of his life just to make him able to speak to other junkies for the rest of his life. Or I am going to give him a father that hurts him and leaves him so he can minister to other boys in similar situations that he will meet along the way as he grows up. But I will use those experiences he is going to have and give him a heart that feels passionately for others that feel the way he did. I am going to save his life time and time again just like he is going to ask me to one day to prove to him that no matter where he is I was and am always listening to him and to give him every desire of his heart because I know that at the end of the tunnel that will seem so dark to him at times, at the end of it he is going to feel and experience so much joy and happiness that I know he will praise and thank me and serve me with his whole heart. Just like a diamond cutter has to apply a lot of pressure to make that diamond faceted and beautiful, so was the pressure that God put me under to take me from a diamond in the rough that I was to the jewel that I am becoming. He knew it wouldn’t be easy on me, or Him having to watch, but He knew the end of the story, where as I didn’t, He knew the joy that was coming, He saw the end result before the story ever began. So when I begin to develop this same kind of faith, even though I don’t know the future of everything that is happening in my life, it is because of the past experiences of my life that I can trust in Him and know that the end result of everything is going to be for His glory and be just what He has planned for my life. IE: no worries about the ending.

So what are some of the things that I know that I am passionate about? You might ask, what are some of the things in life that I love and care about, passionately? People! People that are hurting, or those that are different. Different than what? We are all different this is true. But as the world sees things, there are those that are acceptable and there are those that are less than acceptable. It isn’t right to put people on a scale like that but it is done every day. It goes by weight, looks, color of your skin. Where you live, what you drive or don’t drive. How you dress, whether or not if you work or if you work, if you have all your mental faculties or if you don’t. Let’s face it, people that are different that you don’t usually get attention from you. Most people don’t think to put out their hand to someone that looks talks or walks to a different beat. But in my case, I know I am that person that doesn’t look talk walk or move to the same beat as others, so it’s up to me to speak up. I am glad God has given me the ability to be able to do so without being too intrusive and to be able to have a sense of humor to get the party started as they say. Conversation comes easy for me. A quick wit and a smart come back used in the right way can be very useful to me. I enjoy people, I enjoy making them laugh. I have been called many times “A HAPPY PILL” for others when they are feeling down and depressed. I have had friends cry to doctors when I was being moved from one floor to another in a psychiatric hospital because they didn’t want me to leave. I have had friend on the phone from other states tell me how important my friendship was to them because of the way I made them laugh and how I made them feel just because I was able to life their spirits in a phone conversation we had. The gift of encouragement is definitely one I know God has blessed me with. Hospitality is another one I know He has given me. I love taking care of my friends and serving them when they visit. Serving them when I visit them it doesn’t matter. Making people happy was a way I made friends in the past and making people happy just because it makes me happy that they are happy now is a blessing to me. To be able to know that they are happy because of something I said or did is a wonderful feeling. To know that I was responsible for making their life a little better today and that I was able to do something to put a smile on their face is a great feeling. I thank God that He made me so sensitive also. I can hear things is peoples voices and in the words that they use or the word they are not using to express themselves that allows me to understand what life has done to them. Especially to the young men and women I meet everyday. And example of this would be a boy named Alex a month ago telling me he never knew his real mom but that it didn’t matter any more. Why would he tell me that and at the same time say it didn’t matter any more. IT DOES MATTER OR HE WOULDN’T HAVE SAID IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. I can put myself into the story of a 13 or 14 year old boy in a split second when they tell me their dad is gone or their family is in jail or they don’t even live with their parents. Instantly my heart begins to ache and cry on the inside because I hear God saying to me “Mike here is another one that I have placed in your life for a reason” And it makes everything that ever happened to me as a child have meaning. Better than that is when one of those kids or even an adult says to me “Mike why are you in that wheel chair?” Now every moment in my adult life begins to have meaning. It was my whole adult life that put me in this wheelchair. If I wasn’t in it, who would ever think or have a reason to ask me anything? No one ever walks up to someone and says “tell me about your life twenty five years ago.” And they never think they are going to get a Novel when they ask me that question either. But I am really good at deciding just how much they can handle and what they will be ready to hear and not hear. I think the best story I ever told and the best reaction was about 10 years ago sitting with another kid named Alex, it was about forty five minutes to an hour into the story, and he was wiping his tears off with the sleeve of my t-shirt. Not just a drop or two, but a river of them while his arm was around my shoulder holding on for dear life. When he left my home he was still in these tears all the way to his house and when he walked in to his house his mom was on the couch watching television and she told me a few days later he came in crying and just fell into her lap and cried for over fifteen minutes without saying a word. Later after I met his friend Oscar, he told him “be careful, Mike will make you cry when he tells you his story” and when I told Oscar the same story, He cried too. It was never my goal or my intentions to make teenage boys cry, but I do want to make them think. Both Alex and Oscar were no strangers to the drug and sex life already as fifteen and sixteen year olds. I at least waited until I was twenty one. Oscar said the one thing I did after telling him my story was I ruined his MACING skills. MACing is his Flirting and his ability to pick up girls for sex skills. Well every time he had the opportunity he thought about my story and my life and my unfortunate circumstances and thought twice about what he was about to do and changed his mind for the moment. I had left an impression on him. How long that lasted I will never know but it sunk in for the time being and that was what mattered. The seed was planted. So I guess you can say that any of us is like a farmer planting seeds of our lives into the lives of others every day. Our, my experiences are all like little seeds that God uses to plant later on into the lives of people we meet to share with them what we have learned and what we have gone through. I have never met so many young men that are fatherless or motherless as I have in the past two months. I have never met so many that have so many drug addicted parents as I have theses past few months. I see it in their eyes, I hear it in their words and in their stories about their lives, they are missing so much. Very few of them ever mention the word GOD. Today is the first time I heard that one of them say he has a grandfather that is a preacher. His dad is not in his life and his mom has had three different men father her five children but this is his life. He is fourteen years old.

All in all, whether or not it is a teenager that has a history like mine, an adult that suffers with a mental condition, or anyone with a drug problem, my life has meaning every time I meet them. Where ever I go, no matter who it is, I am comfortable in my own skin because I know who it is I belong to and that is all that matters to me. I am not out to impress anyone, live up to anyone’s standards, or try out for the next audition. But I am out there to just to be out there because that is where THEY ARE, that is where Jesus was, OUT THERE ON THE STREETS with THEM, the public, who ever they were. Not the rich or the pretty or the famous, just the ones that would listen or speak with him. He had a gimmick, it was called Miracles. I have one too, they are called SERVICE ANIMALS on a WHEEL CHAIR. We each drew a crowd in our own way. But either way, the message was delivered.

Everyone, every Christian’s job is to get the message of Christ out to the world. How you do it is up to you. You were made in a special way to reach people in a special way. If you are not, find it. Don’t let your light grow dim. NEVER LET YOUR ZEAL LAG.

Day Twenty Nine

2008-05-29T14:55:00.000-07:00

Day 29

Accepting your Assignment

An assignment, serving your Master, doing your job, all sound like something like hard work, something like slavery, something like you have to do so many hours of the day just to pay your bills and get by financially. NO ONE wants to do that so it is a hard thing to have to accept doing. Finding a job that you enjoy getting up and out of bed for in the morning is a rare thing to find. I don’t know many people that pop out of bed in the morning because they can’t wait to get to work. I was probably one of the lucky ones. I not only enjoyed the job I had, I couldn’t wait to get there. I started work at five in the morning, was on call twenty four hours a day and night after hours, it was a normal thing to be out on a Friday or Saturday night and have my pager go off and a company need employees to be on a job site at four the next morning and I would have to stop what I was doing and find them at that hour no matter what time of night it was. But that is what made my job interesting and I was always prepared for it so it really didn’t take more than just a few phone calls and then I could go back to what I was doing. I didn’t know anyone my age or any age for that matter that said they couldn’t wait to get to work every day, or enjoyed the fact that when I told them I started at five o’clock in the morning they said I was crazy. But I was also off at two thirty usually. But if I had to work until closing at six, it wasn’t a big deal, it was my office, and it was my responsibility. They were my employees and my vendors that needed servicing. I was committed to seeing that every one was happy. I truly loved what I did.

When God created me, He had a special plan in mind. He made me with a special personality, a plan that including my likes and dislikes. He knew the way I would be raised and the kind of people that I would work well with. He wouldn’t ask me to minister to a group of people I had nothing in common with. What would be the point? It would do Him no good and me no good. I would lose interest and my motivation would suffer before I even got started. But hand me a handful of people that I can relate to and that I am comfortable with and that I know before I even meet them and we’re set! I could minister to them in my sleep if I had to. Sometimes I feel like I am too. God would never give me a job to do that I wasn’t suited for. He would never give me a job to do that I wasn’t inspired to do. He wouldn’t assign me a job that He knew that I wasn’t excited doing for Him. No one likes a complainer, even God, even though I am sure He listens to them a lot. But what is better than having someone wake up in the morning with an attitude of “Where do we go today Father? Who is on the list of people to meet today?” Someone that is willing to say I will go where ever it is you need me to go. And just be a good listener to His Spirit and respond to it. To be ready to be able to speak at any given moment a situation presents itself, without worrying about what others will think. The army had it right when they advertised “IT’S NOT JUST A JOB, IT’S AN ADVENTURE!” Everyday in His service should be an adventure, because you never know where God can lead you, to whom He can lead you too. Christians talk about being Happy Joyous and Free. But a lot of the time it seems like they are living their Christian lives like they are Happy Joyous Free and Selfish because they are KEEPING all that Happy Joyous and Free stuff to themselves. Like on a Sunday morning you can hear them saying “Good Morning, How are you, Praise the Lord, I got Mine, Hope you get yours too” and then they walk away. If that is how they are at church, imagine how they are any where else during the week. If they can’t even be caring, honestly with the body of Christ on HOLY GROUND, imagine their testimony anywhere else in the world. I don’t even want to think about it. My mother is sixty seven years old and she says she is still waiting to see what God wants to do with her life. MOM look around, please! You are not here just to keep the house clean.

I am so happy that God has created a FIRE in me, a passion in me. Energy in me to be able to use in what ever it is I do. That I am the type of person that can’t just do something half heartedly, that no matter what I ever did in life I always put more than a hundred percent into it. I know this was why when I quit my job that I loved so much just to get high for a few months, that when I went back after I sobered up, this was why I was hired back, that I was convincing enough and serious enough with my life that my boss and the owner knew that if he hired me back, I would do nothing but make money and do right by them, and they were right. I increased the business of two of their offices by five hundred percent within just thirty days. I was the right man for the job for them, and I know God sees me as the right man for the job for what ever assignment He gives me.

God’s assignments are never ones that require a resume that are unreachable. You are the resume He is looking for. There are no requirements needed. Well except that you are willing to accept the work He has for you. That is all. I guarantee it will be a job you are probably already in the middle of doing somehow. The people involved will already be there in your life. And if they aren’t yet, don’t worry you will get along with them just fine. God will only bring you someone that wants to know you. Think of the happiest day you could have. Then think of God giving you an even better day and that will be your best day of work. And then you would say, “If I could do that every day I wouldn’t even worry about the pay” because at the end of the day the satisfaction of knowing that your day just meant more than any paycheck could ever give you, would be enough to carry you though until tomorrow or even the next week. Yesterday is gone for me, but today, was even better, and yesterday was the BOMB!

Day by Day

Each day of my life is a new adventure

For what it holds is store for me I do not know

But one thing is for sure, my Lord will be there

To keep me and guide me, and with Him I will share

As each day goes by I see more and more

Just what it means to walk with the Lord

To ask seek and knock, on Him I will call

For Jesus is with me when I stumble and fall

Each morning I pray that my spirit He’ll renew

It’s a cleansing I need, by His blood thru and thru

Fill me O Lord with your spirit today

That others might ask if I know the way

As day passes on and trials they come

I count it all joy cause I know whom they’re from

In Him I will trust, endure ‘till the end

Cause Jesus you know is my strength and my friend

Today I believe that He’ll show me some more

And give my the hope that my heart He’ll restore

It’s my life he is changing, for a price I could never afford

Hallelujah to Jesus, and Praise to my LORD.

Day Twenty Eight

2008-05-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Day 28

It Takes Time

“I want it NOW” or “I want it MY WAY” are common catch phrases we hear every day when it comes to many things in life. The worst is standing in front of the microwave and saying HURRY UP! You can’t cook or heat up something any faster but still people get impatient and say hurry up in front of the microwave. If the microwave isn’t fast enough for some people, imagine their impatience with God when it comes to their prayer life. They probably get real frustrated if what they prayed for last night didn’t happen by the time they woke up in the morning. And when they realize that it didn’t happen just the way they prayed, I bet they have a lousy day all day wondering why God didn’t answer their prayer just the way they prayed the night before. Then there are people like me who started praying for things at the age of eleven and prayed every day every minute of the day it seemed like and nothing ever seemed to happen but still I just kept on praying believing that someday God would answer me just the way I was praying but HE never did, and still hasn’t to this day. At least now I know what Paul meant by living with a thorn in his side. So I guess I do have something in common with someone in the bible. Just because we pray for something doesn’t mean we are always going to get the answer we want. And when we don’t it doesn’t mean He didn’t hear us either. It just has taken a lot of time for me to understand this lesson or this part of my life and to be willing to accept this part of my life and learn to let God use this part of my life as He sees fit. It sure as given me opportunities that no one else could ever understand or areas of ministry that no one else could ever reach into. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If this is true I should be the HULK of the Christian world then with all the things that have tried to take my life and all the time I have tried to take my own life, and all that God has seen me through and brought me though, God’s faith in me has been much stronger than mine has ever been. But has time as gone by, He has helped me to realize that I can accomplish much more than I ever thought I could, that He has kept me around for much more than I ever thought I was created for, and that from the very beginning His plan for my life has always been much greater than I could have ever seen. Why else would I have made it this far after so much despair and so many traumas in my life, just to sit back and watch life pass me by day after day? But because there have been so many and so much that has happened over the years, it will naturally take a great amount of time to reshape and refocus my life in a direction that would be positive and stable enough to have meaning and a solid foothold. Trying to walk on water with a head full of doubts would be foolish. But a mind that is clean and free from worry and free from guilt and free from shame is a mind that can do great and mighty things and this takes time, time that comes from spending it with God and with others daily that are of the same mind, time daily of replacing old ways with new ways, time daily of spending it in prayer and studying His word. Learning to rely on Him for every area of my life, not just the ones that I am comfortable with but also the ones that I have trouble trusting in. Being willing to face issues that I can see and also being willing to face issues that other point out to me that I can’t see in myself.

But it won’t happen over night, or the next night. As long as I am alive there will always be things to change in me, lessons to learn, wounds to heal, and areas of my life that will need growth. Just when I think I have learned to be patient in one area of my life, there will always be another area that comes up that I have trouble with that is there to humble me. To keep me looking to Jesus for help and guidance, and of course there is always going to be that THORN in my side. It like a line in a movie I once saw, people were at a home after a Jewish funeral and someone said “Why are the mirrors covered up?” So we don’t see the pain in our faces. “Why are we sitting on boxes?” To make sure there is Pain in our faces! There is always going to be something in our, my life that is going to be there to remind us to lean on God because when there isn’t I begin to feel comfortable and feel a little bit like a God in my own life and think I have control of everything. This is where I start forgetting that God is in control, that God wants to be number one in my life. That He wants to be the center of my life. I need things in my life to have a reason to depend on Him for. Then as I conquer them one at a time, I can feel a sense of accomplishment in my life. I can see the growth in my life. I can see that we are in this life together and that I am not in it all alone. That God is on my side. This is a great feeling to have and to walk in everyday. It builds confidence and self esteem. It builds character and self worth knowing that the God and creator of the universe is deeply concerned for me and my daily comings and goings, even the little things in my life, the struggles and the triumphs. When people realize that God is on their side day after day after day, the possibilities are endless. You begin to trust in yourself for things that you never thought possible before. The light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter. It may not be quick, it may not be fast. It may not be the Burger King “have it your way”, but it will be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing, right on time, the way God intended it to be, if you will only be patient, willing to be honest, and willing to let God do for you what you can not do for yourself, then you will become just what He wants you to be. I will become just what He wants me to be. A mirror image of His son Jesus Christ.

Day Twenty Seven

2008-05-21T23:32:00.001-07:00

Day 27

Defeating Temptation

Defeating temptation after so many years of enjoying it was no easy task. Recognizing it as a temptation and not just a way of life was the first step for me. When you have become so a custom to doing things as a normal part of life and then all of a sudden making changes in your life and deciding that there are things in your life that you don’t want in it any more, all of a sudden, you are faced with decisions that you hadn’t had to deal with in the past. Should I or shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I? Is this really not ok anymore? Will this be ok or will this lead me into something that will take me down a path that will lead me into something else I don’t want to get involved in anymore? What about these friends? Do I have to give them up too? Soon I have found myself having to make a whole lot of choices that were very difficult to decide on. Decisions that left me in situations that left me feeling very uncomfortable. Usually situations that left me all alone because it was usually a decision that meant letting go of friends that were not good for me. I was never a person that dealt well with loneliness. A low self image and low self esteem I needed others around me to feel good about myself. Surrounding myself with people and doing things to please them was one way I got the attention I needed and doing things for others whether it was the right things or the things that made them happy right or wrong didn’t matter as long as everyone got what they wanted or needed, I always looked like the GOOD GUY and therefore got the attention I wanted and needed to feel good about myself. So what if I let my morals or my character fall by the wayside in the meantime. This was the first step I had to take when I came to the point in my life that I wanted to serve God instead of my own self and my own needs. Letting go of others and saying yes to God’s ways for my life was the hardest part of defeating the temptations in my life. Removing the reasons that made me fall into sin was one of the hardest things for me to get used to doing. What did this accomplish in the mean time? It gave me “alone time with God”. The more the PEOPLE were out of my life, the more time I had to rely on God to fill in the missing pieces I was lacking in my life. The emptiness in my home, the quietness in my home, the lack of the constant telephone ringing and late night visitors. But also the less I was putting myself at risk. The more I was focusing on what God wanted, the less I was putting myself in harms way with everyone, with every strange I was meeting. And possibly allowing myself to be taken advantaged of. So there were benefits in listening to God and resisting the temptations that I so often would give into.

But what would I do when I just couldn’t take the loneliness that I was left with? Who could I talk to when I was depressed and or lonely? Over the years of making few friends that I could trust, there were very few friends that I could go to. But with less than fingers on one hand, I do have a few that no matter what it is I am feeling, I do have some that I can go to that do know all there is to know about me inside and out. Friends that know all there is to know about me and still love me. Friends that no matter what I say, when I say it, how I say it, will always be there for me. I couldn’t trade these people in for all the money in the world. If you don’t have someone like this in your life, I bet your life might be rather hard for you at times. Someone in your life needs to know everything about you. Because although God know all, you can’t see or hear Him, and there has to be someone whom you can sit down with and verbalize your feelings to and get understanding from. Who will listen to you when you are going thru a struggle, when you are at your wits end with a problem, and when you just need someone to be there for you.

Defeating your temptations in your life also requires that you have ammunition, God’s word hidden in your heart and mind, something to say back to those voices in your head that are telling you to do things at a moments notice. If you have nothing to fight with, how can you win? You have to be able to recognize a lie when you hear it other wise you won’t know you are being misled down the wrong path or that you are being led to do something that goes against God’s word. The enemy is far too sneaky to just come right out and lie completely to you. It will always sound true up until the very last word. And if you are not on your complete guard, you will miss that very last word and be thrown for a loop before you even realize you are in a spin that you can’t get out of because by the time you realize it, you are probably feeling to good. And once the pleasure of the sin takes over, you’re gone. Once the pleasure of the sin is in your mind, you are more than half way gone. The moment the sin is introduced you need God’s word to defeat that lie right from the start. Knowing all this is one thing, having the willingness to act on it is another. Anyone can say they want to be sin free. Anyone can say they want the defeat temptation in their lives. But where and how much are you willing depends on you everyday. It is always a choice, not a right. A choice to say I have hidden His word in my heart Just in Case. I will stay away from here, just in case. I will remember to reach out to my friends when this happens, just in case. No one can do it all alone. But just in case you are all alone, God is always there when you are, and He promised that HE would always plan a way out, just in case. It’s up to you, to me, to believe that there is always a way out. That we are never alone in our temptations, they are just Gods way of saying I am trusting in you today one more time to show me how much you love me. Will you love me today one more time?

Day Twenty Six

2008-05-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

DAY 26

Growing through Temptation

Until I read this chapter, for the third and forth time, I was having a difficult time finding a place to start. It has taken days to get my thoughts together. My views on temptation and Rick’s views on the subject have been far apart from each other my whole life. Some of it came from my upbringing in the church I grew up in and the way things were explained at an early age and the way my young mind understood things to be. I grew up thinking that if I just thought the wrong things over and over again, that it MUST BE SIN because if that was what was on my mind it must also be what was in my heart. And because of the nature of the things that were on my mind I most definitely wasn’t going to talk about them just to see if I was right or if I was wrong about them. So I suffered with my feelings and my thoughts from a very early age. It just wasn’t about homosexual issues, but much more than just that. Today compared to the seventies, the homosexual issue is a much more talked about, accepted in the public eye as we have celebrities and television shows centered around this subject with every turn of the dial. As a young boy, temptation, a thought, a feeling, a desire, it made no difference to me, in fact I didn’t know the difference between them. to me they were all the same. To me just having an immoral thought race through my head made me feel sick, evil, sinful, shameful, ashamed, like I should have never been born to begin with, and like it would be better if I could just die. This started at the age of eleven and continued throughout most of my life. Trying to find anything to occupy my mind to rid myself of these never ending negative feelings about myself was the hardest and most demanding exercise of determination a boy could endure. How to escape my own mind, my own head, my own way of thinking was a never ending task. The best way I found to escape was as a teenager in church. At the age of fifteen when I began helping out in the children’s department, was the first time in my life I had ever received positive reinforcement for anything I did in my life, both from the kids I worked with, the adults in charge of me and the parents of the kids. To hear them say ‘MIKE, my son or my daughter has said such wonderful things about church and the way you encouraged them to want to return, I just want to thank you for what you have been doing.” Some one thanking me for something good I did, this was exactly the opposite of what I can remember growing up hearing at home my whole life. It was praises like this that helped to keep those evil, sinful etc. thoughts somewhere deep down inside of me. But never GONE, just buried.

As a young adult, after leaving my so called SAFE ZONE, and finally giving into the war within my head, my heart, and my mind, I couldn’t take the pressure anymore. Temptation had risen from a feeling to a curiosity to an exploration than began a quest that seemed to have taken on a life of its own. I had to see how things would play out. What was all this inside me? Where would it lead me? What would I find within its calling? Temptation, a world all unto itself, and in order to grow up, I had to go down as far as it would lead me. Once there at the bottom, the struggle to get back up, through all the hills and valleys that I had been lead down was now the growth process of my life. How do I get back to where God was once the center of my life? How do I get back to Him though all the things that had clouded my mind and changed my ways of thinking? How do I begin to release all the things that had their hooks in me so deep that it would seem like their hold was set in me for a lifetime? Was it even possible to find my way back again after over half my lifetime had been spent giving into all the temptation the world and the enemy had offered me and that I had accepted so freely with no questions asked?

The Word of God said that it was. It didn’t say that it was going to be easy. It didn’t say that it was going to be instant. It just said that it was possible. It was grace and mercy that saw me through those years of temptation, now it would be faith and prayer that would see me through to the other side. With these four elements of God, everything in the world under heaven is possible. There are times when I think that there are parts of me that are never going to be able to be forgiven or removed or changed or taken away, but this is just what the enemy would have me to think just before I am ready to move on to the next phase of my recovery, onto the next step in the process of restoring my mind to the mind God gave me in the first place. Another lie born of satan that tried to steal my joy and my happiness that God gave His son for in my place.

It is one step at a time, one though process at a time, One diversion at a time, One addiction at a time, One habit at a time, One lie at a time, and one thing after another until I start over and do it all over again. Rome wasn’t built in a day, putting down my needle starting six months after I started and took twenty years to finally let go of. Saying good-bye to nicotine was another twenty year habit that was an on again of again I’ll try it again one more time until it finally was gone. Thinking that every Friday night was meant for Speed and Sex that would last until Monday took years to change, even though while I was in the middle of it, I knew it wasn’t what God wanted for me. And that it wasn’t what I was looking for or that I was going to find what I was looking for while I was participating in it. But there I was, believing the lies the enemy had so carefully laid out in front of me. The enemy was good at giving me just enough to entice my mind while leaving me without enough to satisfy it at the same time. Giving me enough to get me high but not enough to make it work or last the way it had in the past. But the promise that it would the next time. And I like a fool, a sucker would believe it every time. How many times does a person get lied to before he stops believing them? I am embarrassed to say. How many years did I spend trusting the enemy to again give me what the temptations promised to do for me? Again, more than half my lifetime. How many mistakes did Thomas Edison make when he invented the light bulb? But then how many things did he know NOT TO DO the next time? Well same here. I know many things not to do, many things that don’t work anymore. MORE THAN MOST and have lived to tell about it, that is the real miracle, Surviving all of it at the Will and Grace of God for His Purpose. God purpose is to bring every man unto Himself. And it is up to God to use us to accomplish that task. If it is His will to use me to do that by seeing me through all my temptations and allow me to get though them just so other men women and children can see the power of God, then that is all by Gods doing, nothing I have ever done has gotten me here to this point except one thing, making a choice to follow Him, surrender to Him, say yes to His will for my life. I have given in to every thing that world had to offer. I have fallen into temptation, given into it, ran with it, and failed at resisting it over and over again. If it were up to me, without God temptation would be a losing battle, but because I Love God, I have made up my mind to decide that I would rather say TODAY I thought about serving God and serving others to keep my mind off the temptation, rather than to sit and dwell on the things of the past, the feelings my flesh would love for me to enjoy, the places my head would love to take me. I have twenty some years of memories, but I also have those same twenty some years of remembering who lied to me, who deceived me, and where all those phony promises got me. If a can throw all that back in the face of the enemy, he shouldn’t stand to much of a chance in the future.

Day Twenty Five

2008-05-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

DAY 25

Transformed By Trouble

I wish someone would have told me about this one when I was growing up because as I have written in my past writings, TROUBLE followed me all the days of my life right in front of GOODNESS AND MERCY. Now more than ever as I made that request to God at the age of twenty to sit in front of a large group of young Jr. High and High school students, (maybe that is where the request should have been STAND IN FRONT OF) and tell them all the ways GOD has saved my life over and over again, do I desire it even more now. If I can just help them understand early enough that life isn’t their fault, that the troubles that they are having just being young men and women are really just God’s way of GROWING them, maybe they can see life in a different view point and not be so shocked when things don’t always go their way. That the stuff that happens to them aren’t really tragedies but lessons that God is using to make them into something GREAT and that with each one of them, they are closer to becoming just who He created them to be. Hopefully they will learn what needs to be learned and ask what can I learn from this early enough not to have to repeat it over and over and over again like the author of this message did. I understand why GOD feels His word is so important to us as Christians, He wrote all the instructions down to be able to live, if we would just pay attention. How great would it be if our children would but listen to their parents and mentors and teachers the first time and soak it all in instead of letting all this wealth of knowledge just pass them by. Or why does anyone sit in a church service to hear the pastor and then leave and not remember a word of it the rest of the week? I HAVE NO IDEA! But then I am just the kind of person that can’t do anything hap hazardly, anything I do I am passionate and serious about, otherwise, why do it? Why waste anyone time? It makes no sense to do anything you are not committed to in the first place.

So have you ever heard the song that goes like this, “NOBODY KNOWS THE TROUBLES I’VE SEEN”? Can you imagine going through the same troubles as the next guy? Lucky for you my troubles weren’t yours. I guess God figured that I was the only one that could endure all the things that life as brought my way and God also had the faith that I would someday emerge from them relatively unharmed. Good thing I said RELATIVELY uh? Being infected with the HIV virus for the past 26 years and rolling around in a wheelchair for the past 13 may be more than relatively to some, but with the troubles I have seen, it seems like nothing to me. WHO COULD EVER SAY THAT and get away without being thought of as a liar? ME, that’s who! Sure times were tough, times have been tough, and they can still get tough. And for most of my life I fought ever one of those tough times with usually by making them tougher. Shoot a little speed here, sleep around over there, make a fool of myself in the process most of the time everywhere. Did I listen to the mentors around me, usually not. Did I pay attention to the warning signs that God put in front of me, not usually, mostly because I didn’t recognize them until it was too late. How do you tell someone when they have been hurt emotionally that it is for their own good? That God must be allowing it so you can grow. No one wants to hear that, especially at that very moment. Or when you have gotten yourself arrested, then released with the charges dismissed, some might say that was a waste of time, but was it? Was it a warning call? Did I pay attention to it? For about 2 days then right back where I was the day before I was arrested. Lesson heard but lesson ignored that quick. (That is where the FOOL stepped in and took over)

So where was the good in all my troubles over the years? What lessons have I learned finally? Where do I start? l I don’t play with matches, I don’t cross the street without looking both ways, and I never eat something that doesn’t smell good. I know that drugs don’t solve problems, they create them. I know that temporary sex is just another way of telling myself that I am hurting and that I am really lonely and that there is something missing that only GOD can fill in my life. What else? That God is really the only one that can LOVE me the way I want to be and need to be loved, regardless of what my mind or my hormones tell me. That serving others rather than taking everything for myself leaves a better taste in my mouth and a more joyful spirit inside me. That lying to make myself look better only last until people get to know me. And that I can depend on people only as far as I can throw them, so the old saying goes. But God has got my back and will never let me down. That all along no matter where I was or what I was doing, it would not have happened unless God thought that I was for my own good or that it was something that would teach me something, sometime.

I always wondered why it always took so long for me to come to the point of surrendering to God. Why was I so stubborn for so long? Combine loneliness with extreme emotional pain, a need for acceptance that you look for it from almost anyone, only to realize that it is people that are flawed but not the Lord. But I could only allow what I could see and touch rather than what I needed to just believe in and trust and have faith in. It has taken years of seeing God’s hand in situations that I have no idea humanly how I made it out alive. Or that I wasn’t locked up for things that I have seen other spend a lifetime in jail for. Was I that special to God that He allowed me to be saved for some grand purpose? I must have been because I am here writing all this. Remember I asked God for something many years ago, And I was just reminded of that tonight. ASKING GOD FOR WHAT YOU WANT. I have always known that He will meet my needs, like the sparrow. But tonight I was reminded of or was it just the first time that I was ready to hear this, that when a person is seriously ready to be set free from the troubles in their lives, asking God is the first step. HE wants us to ask. Come to me He says, tell me your burdens and I will make them light. Let me transform those troubles in your life, let me know that you are ready to have them removed and I will.

There has been an old issue in my life that I have tried dealing with over and over again, this week it has presented itself in one way or another more than once for no specific reason. I know I have asked God to remove it more times than grains of sand on the beach. But was I ready to have it removed? Did I want it removed for real? Do I believe that it is possible? Intelectually yes, beyond that, I can only wish. How do I come to believe with my whole heart that it is possible when I have a lifetime of memories to recall at any given moment whether I want to or not? All I can do is say “YES GOD I am ready” and let Him finish it for me. I have always thought that it was my job which is stupid is the only word I can spell at the moment. I know there is no way I can do anything, Lord knows I have tried. It is just something that seems like it is a part of who I am and not just something that is a symptom of something else. It is the ELSE part I have no idea what it is. So where do I go from here? Just keep trusting God to do His part. Surrender to Him what I can not do for myself. Say “YES GOD I am ready”. You know my heart, my mind and my shortcomings. Thank you for getting me this far, but please don’t stop here, finish what you have started. Make me a whole man, a healed man, a man of integrity and a man that is above reproach in every area of his life. Start today, begin NOW, make me into your son Jesus. Make me an example for others to see YOU in me. Let my life have the meaning you made it to be. Restore unto me, the joy of my salvation, the feeling I felt at the age of nine, when I went forward and asked you to save me. I ran down the isle to make that a commitment in my life, always let me remember to run to you now with everything that I am. Every trouble that comes my way, every feeling that confuses me or wants to harm me, Let me run to you with it all Lord. I know you will be there, because you have always been there. Don’t leave or forsake you son Michael, he needs you now more than ever.

Day Twenty Four

2008-05-13T02:12:00.000-07:00

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.

Day Twenty Three

2008-05-13T02:10:00.001-07:00

DAY 23

How I Grew, and I am Still Growing

Sure the seed was planted, a long time ago. October 9^th, 1969. My mother told me to WALK, but inside I wanted to RUN down the isle into the waiting arms of Pastor George Peek of North Long Beach Brethren Church. I wanted two things, for God to save me from the things I knew made Him unhappy with me, and for Him to save me from my father. After that day when the days and months and years past, and as I would call out to Him to save me from my father, and it seemed like He was absent or didn’t hear me, I wondered, why He didn’t listen to me. Why wouldn’t God pay attention to a little boys cry for help? I didn’t stop believing that there was a God, I just didn’t understand why everything I heard about Him didn’t seem to come true for me.

Then as I reached puberty, those horrible confusing years that really shut me down and locked me inside myself, God got even more distant. I wouldn’t speak of anything I was feeling or thinking to anyone except God and He didn’t seem to be hearing me because I just wanted all that STUFF to just go away and the more I did, the more it just seemed to get worse. Umm, Nature, no one told me what to expect. But somewhere deep down inside I just felt that what I was feeling wasn’t normal and that something was broken and it was God’s responsibility to FIX IT so I prayed and cried out inside to Him every day to FIX me, to change me, to make me normal (what ever that was or is) but nothing ever happened, the feelings I had just got stronger and stronger, so again the absence of God was there all the time. I heard that if you asked God for His will to be done that He would do it. Well I couldn’t think of anything more in line with His will than to take these abnormal feelings and desires out of me but they never left. I used everything I could to mask or disguise them. I tried removing myself from any temptation that I could think of. Wasn’t that the right thing to do? I became involved with the children’s department at the age of 15 which took up all of my time. I became better friends with them rather than friends my own age just to keep my head away from the temptation that I had at school all day. I loved telling stories that I had grown up with to children. I sometimes felt like even though God didn’t listen to my prayers, the kids still needed to hear about who He was and that they needed to hear about Him so I wanted them to know about Him. I remember the first 4^th grader I led to the Lord on the back stairs of the church one afternoon. He was sad and upset about something and I asked him if he knew that Jesus died to make everything better for him. And with tears in his eyes he prayed and asked Jesus to come into his life. And as the years went by I watched Sterling Zimmer grow and grow into the most amazing spiritual giant I had ever seen. For the next five years he became one of the most smartest, most popular, most well liked young men in the church and at his school. Every week when he arrived at church he would stop by my classroom to say hello, then when he got into Jr. High school he went to the same school I attended and would stop by my home to visit every day. Just to know that I had this kind of an effect on him made me proud to know that I had an influence on a little boy’s life like that. But at some point at the age of twenty one I had had enough of waiting for God to answer all my prayers, ten years I though was enough and I left church and family and my values to try and find out those answers to all those questions I had rolling around in my head for myself.

So what happened to the seed that was planted at this point in my life? Did it just die? No, unless I died it couldn’t die. In a way, God’s voice seemed to get a little clearer. Because I was now hearing things that bothered me, my conscience. I didn’t’ hear this before because I had never acted on my feelings. But now I was taking all those thoughts and curiosities and making them a living thing. Now instead of trying to find something to take the place of temptation, I needed to find something to take the place of God and the guilt I was feeling, not as easy a task. Pleasure was temporary, but it was also the cause of the guilt. So more pleasure seemed to work for a while, which piled on more guilt. But when I found chemicals to go along with the pleasure there went the guilt and there is when I thought I had reached the point of no return. Satan had his hook and found his hold on me, he found what worked to keep God far away and me safely bound and tied. I struggled for years within my addictions to break away and find my way back to a life I once remembered. Every time I thought I had made it safely to a neutral corner, the enemy found a way to drag me back into his web of lies one more time. When would this end I would cry out to God? How much more of this can one man take? It was like Moses and the children of Egypt being taken to the edge of the promised land for a glimpse of it and then lead away just as they were about to take the final last steps every time for the last five or ten years. Something always seemed to stop them at the last and final moment of there redemption.

Well it finally had to come to an end sometime. Everything has a beginning and an end. Even the Bible starts out with the words “In the Beginning” so I knew that what had started in my life must have an end to it someday. My last and final chapter of letting go and letting God ended in February of 2008. For thirteen years I had been on a medication for a medical condition that turned into an addiction that the enemy used to keep me tied up and bound. It was the only thing in my life that I was holding onto that was keeping me from allowing God to have total access to all areas of my life. I couldn’t function with it or without it. I felt I needed it because I had used it for a valid reason at one point in my life, but as time went on I had learned to abuse it for a whole lot of other reasons and learned to use it to satisfy a whole lot of other feelings I didn’t want to face in my life. I knew for a long time that this was what was standing in my way between me and God. For a long time I had so much fear of “What will I do without waking up and not having this to take in the mornings? How will I make it through my days having to deal with the feelings that I know will come crashing in on me? Who is going to be there when I begin to cry all day long?” These were just some of the things I was worried about when I began to think about letting go of the last drug and last addiction in my life. But in reality it was like God pruning off that last of the dead branches that were still attached to me. The biggest and the heaviest ones and YES it was going to HURT, A LOT. But it was those last branches that were sucking up all the life out of me.

So it was time to let go and let GOD. How did I know it was time? For the past few months He had been preparing me for this final act of commitment. He lead me back to a place I said and promised I would never return to. The only promise I think I had ever made to God and kept, ever. He placed a Pastor in my life that was prepared for me. He placed church members in my life that HE prepared for me. He placed me in a Church that was prepared for me, or as I have said before in my past so many times “HE SET ME UP” for this very moment. I knew at this very moment that it was NOW that I had to say NO, this is the END. This will not, this can not go on any longer. I made two phone calls. The first one was to the pharmacy to have the refill I was on my way to pick up put back on the shelf, and the second phone call was to my doctor to tell her that she needed to take this drug away from me and not allow me to have access to it any more because I had been abusing it. It was at that very moment I felt the Lord release all the depression, all the misery I had been feeling for the past few months. He even put my thumb in the middle of the Bible to Psalms 116 and when I got to verse 16 it read “I have Loosed Your Bonds”. No thumb could have just picked out that very verse at random like that at that very moment. But God could! No pill from any doctor could have taken away what I had been feeling for so long just like that, but GOD could! No drug could have made me feel better without the side effects like that, but GOD DID! I didn’t even ask for any of that to happen, I just made a choice to put an end to something that I didn’t want in my life anymore. I made a commitment to myself and a promise to myself and to Him to live without the help of anything other than God in my life any more no matter what the outcome was going to be without the drug. And He met me right where I was instantly. The reasons the drug was prescribed were not working anyway. The reasons why they were being prescribed are being met now that I am not taking them. I did my part, God is doing His. No more life sucking branches attached to me anymore.

Since the pruning has been done so painlessly, real growth has taken place. Feelings have risen, feelings have been put on these pages, but with very few tears. They’re more like memories of life that took place, a story of a man that lived through something that got him to a place that has brought him to the promised land still in one piece, with a sound mind, with a pure heart, with an honest Love for God and a heart for people that I can say to everyone I meet,

Have you fallen in Love with Jesus, I have! Would you like to meet Him. Let me introduce you to Him.

Day Twenty Two

2008-05-13T02:08:00.000-07:00

DAY 22

Created to Become Like Christ

OK, next Sunday I’ll show up to church in sandals and wrapped in a sheet, and I’ll have to get a wig until I can get my hair to grow back out, will this complete the meaning of this chapter? Of course my feet will have to be dirty in the sandals. Oh he was talking about “on the INSIDE” to be like Jesus. I think if I try really hard I can sweat blood.

What does it really mean to become more like Jesus Christ? I don’t know if I can honestly say if that concept in such a way as it is today has ever been impressed upon me as it has this last year, to become LIKE HIM and not just to be someone who tries not to sin so much. Growing up being told that I was such a BAD KID was no way to grow up thinking of myself. Thinking Mike was BAD or WRONG from the beginning was so imbedded in me it was a hard label to overcome. It was much easier to learn to accept and learn to get my attention from that than it was to learn to succeed from a positive viewpoint of myself. When I was praised for something good in my life, I sometimes had a hard time accepting it as true. Why would you tell me that? Don’t you know how BAD I REALLY AM? If you only knew what was really inside me I would always think to myself, you would think twice before you said those NICE THINGS about me. Living under constant criticism of myself I know kept me from growing and moving on with my life many times. I always chose to view myself through the eyes of others, people who really didn’t matter much but I allowed them to have their opinions and let their opinions matter more about me than I did my own that I would never even considerd what GOD thought of me. Because I knew HE KNEW what was really inside me and I knew a lot of that stuff was worse that what anyone ever saw. But what I failed to realize was that before I was ever born HE KNEW all that, and yet HE still decided to choose me and accept me. What ever it is or was that I felt was BAD that HE just saw as something that He could change, that those parts of my character weren’t all my fault, and the ones that I had chosen to develop on my own I could chose to surrender to HIM when ever I wanted to. It was the job of His Holy Spirit to nudge me into wanting to do just that. And that He could do this when ever He wanted to in His time. The desire to have what I have right now at this time in my life I have had for a life time it seems like. So why is it I am just now getting to this point in my life, God’s timing, not mine. Only He knows why He took the time to get me to this place in my life. Never before have I experienced GOD in such a way move in my life in such a personal way. I have always felt His presence but the way He is being so comforting and so obviously leading my paths and revealing Himself to me is definitely something more than I have ever experienced before.

Looking back on my life, there has been very few people that have had direct influence, meaning other than my parents for as long as I lived with them, but other than that, most of the lessons of life I have learned by my own trial and errors. Because I wanted to get away from any thing that resembled authority, I wanted to be in total control of everything that had to do with Michael Carpenter. “DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO” Stubbornness was a word that fit well in a description of me. Self centeredness was another one. It was MY LIFE, MY WORLD, MY WAY. But when something went wrong, it was never MY FAULT. Someone or something else needed to take responsibility for it. Blame it on an ADDICTION that was a DISEASE, a sickness, not my fault, or a MENTAL ILLNESS a sickness and again NOT MY FAULT. Either way, both were KNIT IN THE WOMB. So how could I be at fault? Kind of sounds like “BUT THE WOMAN YOU GAVE ME” doesn’t it? It just has taken years of beating my head against the proverbial wall time and time again for me to understand that life doesn’t owe Michael anything or any special favors, but rather I owe it to myself to pay attention to life’s lessons and life’s challenges to grow up instead of sitting back at getting beat up my the same mistakes over and over again. I need to turn off that song in my head that has been playing for so many years “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toy’s or Us kid”. There is nothing wrong with a “child like mind” or being Young at Heart but putting away childish ways has to come some day. I always wondered if I would still be doing and thinking or even be around living at the age of 50 with the same mind set as I did in my twenties and thirty’s. I still feel much the same way as I did then. But what has changed is the reality of decisions I made then and the ones I make now are slightly different. Maybe a whole lot different I hope with some. Do I have to? NO. But do I want the chaos I made with those decisions back then? No and that is the difference today.

So what is more like Christ today? The “ME” is out of the picture in most of the things I do. The fact that I have a purpose of things “TO DO” every day I wake up. It wasn’t too long ago it seems like that my days were spent waking up, lighting up, medicating myself, zoning out, fading out all day, and going back to bed. I had no idea of what to do with myself or my days. I had no reason to make any efforts in my life for anyone. Why? There was no one in my life to do anything for. Bored, lonely, depressed were three more words to describe my life besides stubborn and self centered. Now I have replaced those words with Joyful, giving, serving, caring, helpful, seeking, worshipful, mindful, excited, hopeful, patient, kind, forgiving, just to name a few. Becoming but not arrived, becoming more like Him everyday. Forgetting it is anything but me and all about Him, a life of service to others for others because He has given everything for me. I am here because He has willed it for me. My life is not my life but HIS. I just made a mess of it, I am not to proud to admit that one. I am just glad I didn’t destroy it totally to where He can’t use it anymore. So LORD do with me ALL YOU CAN and ALL YOU WANT. I’ll do my best not to get in the way again. Continue to teach me and mold me to be more like your son Jesus. Use all those you have put in my life to complete this work in me. Now and forever more, I am forever in your hands.

Day Twenty One

2008-05-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

DAY 21

Protecting My Church

In day nineteen, I started out saying “Can’t we all just get along”. Well church is the only place you can join where no matter who you are, what you are, no matter if you are rich or poor, everyone is equal. Everyone has just as much an opportunity as the next person. But when each others personalities begin to over ride the main purpose of the mission of the church, trouble begins. When someone’s personal way of thinking becomes more important than the goal of the task at hand, the final result can become lost or never completed. Quarrels can easily become more common than harmony. Gossip then begins to spread like wild fires. Who did what to who, or who didn’t do what when. Remember imperfect people that are trying to do something to perfection often run into something that doesn’t seem to go smoothly. This is why it is so important to remember where the focus is supposed to be. Not on each others faults or mistakes, but on the one that gave them the job to do in the first place and who they are doing it for to begin with. FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS. Don’t ever let your guard down. Everyone has weaknesses, yourself included. And everyone has his or her own strengths. People work together better with encouragement rather than condemnation. A little praise goes a long way. A little dissention takes a long time to forget. A pat on the back feels uplifting; a personal dig at someone’s ego can discourage them to never return. Human beings are sensitive creatures. Depending on how each of us was raised or what we all went through as children, we all need different levels of nurturing even as adults. Leaning to get along with other adults in a situation where the personal differences are so noticeable, takes time and patience. Learning to accept others in a place where you may not have had to deal with people like that any other place in your life before may be difficult. But if church is a place you can’t get along, how would you ever get along with people like them any where else?

I am happy to say that since I have been at my church, Johnson Chapel, I have enjoy seeing how people work together and how the team effort in getting things done as really benefited everyone I have had the opportunity to be involved with. Whether it was planning a party or being asked to provide help for Sunday refreshments, I have enjoyed being asked and getting involved in everything I have been asked to do. Even just being around the church and being in the office during the week has been a blessing seeing how everything is working behind the scenes is fantastic. I have been able to watch two very dedicated women very competent at what they do who may or may not always get the recognition they deserve. But what they do is the very back bone of our church. I know and have seen that out Pastor depends on them greatly. Now if he could just keep me out of their hair I know he would really be pleased.

Day Twenty

2008-05-13T02:06:00.000-07:00

DAY 20

Restoring Broken Fellowship

Letting go of my Rage

Conflict, I grew up with it all around me. Someone was always shouting, arguing, fighting, and getting mad at someone for something. The wall of grudges ran deep within me. “I’ll get you my pretty” as the wicked witch said in the Wizard of Oz riding her broom in the storm. I would sit around thinking up ways to get back at my sister for something she had done all the time. And when I did figure out just what I was going to do, I planned it well, and when I executed it, she knew I was getting even. Even though I knew I was going to get in the worst trouble I had ever been in, so what, no one ever punished her, so I did the punishing for my parents and took what ever I got because I usually got it anyway. So I just thought I might as well get even with her in the mean time. But as I grew up, because of all the fighting and yelling that went on in the house when I was younger, anytime someone raised their voice, inside I backed down. I didn’t like to hear loud voices or angry voices being used. No matter what the topic was, if it was said with a loud or harsh voice, I cowered inside. I never felt like I could stand up for myself and speak up for myself because I was always made to feel like I was the bad kid just because that is what I was told for so many years. This is why I probably felt safe being around the kids in church from the time I was a teenager instead of friends my own age. Not much conflict there. And if there was any, at least I was the older on who was in charge and could be the one to resolve them instead of being the one in the midst of them usually. So I felt very comfortable as a manager of a business in my twenties being a boss over many employees. I only had one man over me. That was Brad and even though I learned how to argue with him, I felt safe that I could express my anger and not have the threat of being hurt and that at the end of the day, what ever the argument was about, it ended when we locked the office door. But in my personal life, when there was personal conflict, personal pain in a relationship, casual or intimate, it only took once for me to get hurt and instead of discussing it I just learned it was better to walk away and not wait for another round of when will you do this again. It was easier than trying to face the issue and wait for it to happen again. That is why I went through friends as fast as lighting strikes sometimes. All was good until there was the first disagreement. Then depending on the level of disagreement or the circumstance, it could be over as quickly as it started. My voice could raise to levels unknown without me even knowing it at a snap of a finger with so my intensity over nothing. Rage would be a good word for it. In fact many people asked where mine came from and I would answer “WHAT RAGE?” The one who are displaying right now they would say. I guess I would hold so much in that when it finally did come out, every bit of anger that I had been holding in for so long came out all at once and the poor soul that was in front of me at the time was the one who was the proud recipient or it all.

When I first read this chapter, I couldn’t thing of anyone that I had any conflict with. Life has been pretty peaceful for quite a while. BUT then yesterday just out of the blue, something happened that could have reincarnated my rage all over again. I was asked to leave the Mall with my service animals by an uneducated security guard that just had no idea who he was messing with. Instead I left the mall after letting him know I would be taking care of this issue with his bosses and maybe even a lawyer. But not once did I raise my voice, shout, cuss, swear, or promise myself to take revenge. I did do some internet searching for things to present to them next time I am in the Mall. I did contact the mall operations manager today and had a discussion with Cindy the Manager of the Mall and explained to her the situation and what my views were and what my situation was in detail concerning my animals and my reasons for having them, She understood and was able to see my views and as well as I did hers. We finally came to an agreement that we could both live with and that I feel no other legal action needs to take place at this time. But I also was able to find out that the operations manager of the security officers had a bad experience as a small child and is very afraid of my kind of animals so it is also his own issues with them that is playing a part in his decision making processes. Sad that I have to deal with his childhood fears but not right at the same time. So instead of just backing down and getting angry and frustrated and doing or saying anything I shouldn’t, I calmly made the proper phone calls to the proper people and calmly stated my concerns and was polite and to the point and resolve the problem with no conflicts like I usually created all by myself in the past. I am proud that I did this. And it just wasn’t for me but for my animals and all the folks that get to enjoy them when I take them for a ride with me. Maybe it is because my and my prayer partner had just finished prayed a short while ago. Maybe I am just growing in the Lord. Maybe Jesus is becoming more and more a part of me everyday the more and more I trust him to take control and let him handle the big and the small things in my life so I can enjoy life and let life be what He wants it to be for me, abundant.

Day Nineteen

2008-05-13T02:04:00.001-07:00

Day 19

My Purpose Driven Life

Cultivating Community

There’s a saying, “Can’t we all just get along?” Easier said than done, in the real world you can pick and choose who you want to hang out with and get along with. In a church body, you have no control over who shows up or who the other members are. God just brings together everyone with different personalities, with all their differences and characteristics and at different points in their Christian maturity. Some are saved, some aren’t. Some have been saved for a long time and some may have just been saved for a short time. Some may understand forgiveness and others may not. Some may be able to control their tongues while others still have trouble keeping it to themselves. But yet we are all one family. No different than the ones we grew up in or with.

Speaking of the ones we grew up in or with, everyone one of us grew up in a family that was different than the next. Some had a family that was complete with both parents all the way through their childhood, while others grew up with only one or the other parent. Maybe just one to begin with or maybe there was a divorce half way though our childhood and we had to go through the pain of seeing them split up and separate from each other as was the situation that I live through at the age of 14. The first time my parents split apart from each other was when I was in seventh grade. My mother came to my school and picked me and my sister up early one day to take us out for ice cream and tell us that our dad was at home moving his stuff out of the house into an apartment of his own. This bewildered us because we didn’t see why this would be happening. I guess we were still a little to young to understand what was or wasn’t going on between them yet. But at the same time it seemed like it was like our other friends that had only one parent at home and they would visit them on weekends. Their separation only lasted a few months and then my dad moved back in with us and then we moved to another city and they bought another home where we live though out Jr. and Sr. High School. But within just another year after that move my parents were separating again, this time for good. This time it was for a divorce, and also the happiest day of my life. I was finally glad to see him go. He was an angry and abusive man that had no idea how to be a father or a husband to anyone. Since this is the kind of father I grew up with, it is no wonder that the family I grew up in was not your normal Leave it to Beaver family. I always wondered why our family couldn’t be like the families I saw on the television shows we watched as children. Or why did television portray families that were so far out of reach for the way things really were? It seemed unfair to me to show us that this is how it is supposed to be but turn off the television and watch out, daddies home and he’s in a mood. Or turn around and there’s no daddy anywhere. And brother and sister just can’t get along. While the war in Viet Nam was in full gear, the war between the siblings was at its peak all the time also. While soldiers were hiding in wait for the enemy, I was hiding under my sisters bed waiting for her to go to sleep so I could reach my hand up and grab her and scream and scare the life out of her so bad it would be until she was 30 years old before she stopped looking under the bed before she went to sleep at night. In other words, my family was more dysfunctional than the word itself. So learning how to live as a family wasn’t the first thing I learned in life. Learning how to live life with others wasn’t the second thing I learned in life. Learning how to get along with others wasn’t something that was taught to me at home by any means. I feel the pain of it to this day when I so much desire a relationship with both my brother and my sister and it just isn’t there. I remember my brother who is six years younger saying to me one time when I was taking my 8 year olds in my third grade Sunday school class out for the day if he could go with me and I said no, “GEE Michael, how come you can be nice to your kids at church but you can’t even be nice to your own brother?” Why couldn’t I treat my brother like I treated the kids I loved so much at church? I loved my kids, but not my own brother. That was very sad. Why not? What made him so different?

So what happens when you put someone like me, who grew up in this kind of dysfunctional family with other people who grew up in their own kind of dysfunctional families, and you try to combine them all together with only one common bond, a belief in Jesus Christ. Try saying “So can’t we all just get along?” Who is the joke really on? Some have believed for a lifetime, some have believed for a lifetime and still never got it. Some just walked in the door. Some have the mentality that says “Well where I come from,” and then others don’t even say where I come from they just do what ever it is where ever they came from and don’t ever worry about where it is where ever they are at. Then watch the reactions from the family around them. See how the fan disperses the proverbial chicken poop. But somehow, we all just get along, why? Because there are enough people to handle loving the ones that are new at the family stuff, I know this from personal experience. Being one of the new members in my congregation, and being in a congregation that I feel like a family for the first time since High School, it’s like learning all over again. My Pastor’s wife wrote me a while back that she felt like God brought me here for Training. Training for future plans He has for my life in front of large crowds of people. So I am taking everything I am hearing and being taught very seriously, from everyone. So many things are happening all at once in my life. In the last three weeks God has brought back four people from my past, two that I knew over 10 years ago and two that I haven’t seen in about two years. I have to ask myself why is this happening all at once, all at the same time in my life. Not many people have this many friends just show up out of the clear blue sit next to them on the bus, or park next to them in the middle of the store parking lot, then just walk up to them in the middle of a Mall, or call them on the phone. God is doing something. God is preparing me for something much larger than I could ever imagine. So the work of everyone in my church family I am taking very seriously and I am using the wisdom and knowledge of all of them to teach me exactly what God wants me to learn. I feel He has placed each and every one of there at this point and time in my life. Just as He place everyone in my life at every moment of my life.

I wrote a letter today to a friend named Robert, a man I met in the hospital this week as I was having surgery. God divinely appointed this time and place for us to meet I am as sure of it as I am everything else in my life. In my letter to him I spoke of a man that was my boss for many years during my years in my twenty’s when I was also in the midst of my using Crystal Meth at the same time. My boss was not a Christian. But he was someone God used to watch over me. This is what I wrote Robert about my boss Brad Lane.

God gave me a boss that understood me and was more like a father than a boss. If it was any other boss I would have been fired so many times. But instead I would just call him and say Brad, I had too much this weekend, I need to go home, can you please come in. And he would. Or we would fight in the office over something, but after work was done, and the doors were locked, the fight stayed in the office and we went out for drinks. How professional was that? At 31 he took me to rehab. At 28 he took me to the hospital for my first rehab. And I walked out 2 days later. At 26 he was the one who called my dad and said Mr. Carpenter you son is a stubborn son of a gun and was supposed to be in the hospital last Friday at his doctors request but refused to go now here we are a week later and when he left today he didn’t look like he was going to be with us another day. Can you drive up and go check on him with me. God put a man who wasn’t a Christian by any means in my life to watch over me. He was in the Air Force for 20 years as an Intelligence Officer, a very smart man but also a very caring man. God knew that those years of my life I was going to need someone to pay attention to me. When I was estranged from my family and from anyone that would have any positive influence in my life, so the person that had dealings every day in my life was my boss. I thank God he put Brad Lane in my life during those years. I wouldn’t have made it through that part of my life without him.

Just as God put Brad Lane in my life at just the right time, I believe with my whole heart that He as placed my Pastor Michael Barta in my life with just as much precise care as He did in the past. And not just Pastor Barta but also his wife Linda and each and every member that He has brought to Johnson Chapel AME over the past years in preparation for my return to a corner I promised GOD I would never return to. It just has taken Him thirteen years to get everyone there ready for me. And once everyone was in place, He was then ready for me to watch a man named Jamal Bryant on television on a day and time that he wasn’t supposed to be aired just to get me in AHH to really get me to notice that something was special about this denomination to make me inquire about it specifically to a friend that led me to the corner of Second and Bristol in Santa Ana. My whole life I have been used to being the ODD MAN in the BUNCH. In elementary school I was only one of about four Caucasian kids in the classroom. In Jr. Hi and High School I knew I had to be the only one with homosexual feelings hiding beneath the surface, and as an adult no matter where I lived it seemed to be little Tijuana instead of AMERICA the Beautiful. But getting over the differences in me and in others is just one part of me that I am learning to overlook. It is also one of the gifts that God has given me to be able to reach out to almost anyone in any situation. I have been in almost every situation everyone has been in. From a drug addict, I have been there. To the mentally ill, that is me. The homeless, almost at times but I see them on the street every day because I am on the street every day. I have lived in Little Tijuana, in the Ghetto, in jail, in rehab, in board and care, in the hospitals, and with everyone that has resided in these places. Not too many people can say they have spent the majority of their lives in these places with these kinds of people as a way of life, and lived to talk about it. It is these places I am most comfortable. With these humans that others stray away from. Look at and walk the other direction, just because the lack the understanding. I may not have graduated High School with a 4.0 or even a 3.0 but test me on what I have learned in the last 30 years as a mentally ill drug addict plagued with a fatal disease they said I should be dead from since the early eighties, I don’t think anyone has learned to LOVE the way I have. Webster can’t even begin to define the word COMPASSION the way I can. What makes me sad is that I can’t just put my arms around some one and take all their pain away from them and make theirs all just go away. If I could take it from them and just remove it in an instance that would be the best thing in the world. But I know they must learn to go through the same things that I did to get to where I have to enjoy the JOY that I know today. IT is as RICH as anything I have tried to shoot up in my arm, and satisfying as any physical pleasure I have ever looked for, and as lasting as much as all the wealth I ever tried to acquire. And to think I told God thirteen years ago “God I really messed up this time, I promise with my whole heart, I will NEVER come back to this corner again as long as I live.” And I kept that promise. I broke a lot of promises to Him in the past, but that promise I kept, until He changed it for me.

Day Eighteen

2008-05-13T02:03:00.001-07:00

Day 18

Experiencing Life Together

Jesus’ commandment to Love GOD and love others as we love ourselves is where everything starts. Well for a long time loving myself was where everything stopped. One reason why I treated others so badly was I never learned how to treat myself with respect. I spent years, the formative years misusing myself in so many ways, allowing others to misuse and mistreat me, how could I ever learn to treat others with respect or with the kind of love they disserved? I spent so much time trying to take what I wanted from others or to fill my own needs without realizing that there were others that had feelings too. As long as I was temporally happy at the expense of someone else, life for me was good. I wasn’t concerned about LIFE WITH OTHERS; it was about LIFE in my own little world. You were allowed in it only as long as I wanted you to be in it. When I was tired of the space you took up it was like an old car in the driveway, I traded you in for a newer model, a better model, a faster model, and there were always plenty to choose from. One reason for my way of thinking was before I get hurt was to get rid of even the possibility of letting you get near me that close. I had been hurt too many times in the past and didn’t like it. I remember the first time I was in the bars and went home with someone. He was someone I knew from High School. Then we made a date to see each other again on Friday night around eleven at the same club we met in. But when he came in he was with someone else on his shoulder and I walked right up to him and said “Hello What’s Up?” He pretended like he had never met me. He didn’t want the guy he was with to even know that just two nights prior we had spent the night together. MY FIRST NIGHT WITH ANYONE and he was playing it off as it never happened to my face. In front of everyone to save HIS FACE. I honestly didn’t understand why he would or was doing this to me. I was as innocent as a child about these things at the time. I left the bar in tears, started the car and began driving somewhere but had to pull over because I couldn’t even see the road because there were so many tears and I couldn’t control the car. I had never felt this much or this kind of pain before ever in my life. HOW could someone do something like this to another human being? To someone they had slept with and given everything like that to? Right to their face, in public? When I stopped the car I was right in front of a big tall metal box on the side of the road, they called it a phone booth, remember those? This was in August of 1981 and I was still only 20 years old. I got out of the car and the only person I could think to call in this state of being at midnight was my old girlfriend from high school Joyce. I remember waking her up and through my tears saying “something terrible just happened and I need to come over can you be up and ready to talk?” Of course she said yes come on over. Boy was she in for a shock that night. I told her after I stopped crying that I had a date and got stood up. She said “Is that what all the tears are for? Who stood you up? Do I know HER?” “Nope” I said “His name is Kenny” “What did you say” I said “HIS NAME IS KENNY and I went to HS with him” “OMG”. And I said this just as her mom was walking through the hallway on her way to the bathroom. So the conversation from there was me explaining that fact that this was why we never had sex, why I never went for any of her advances and why I thought or knew that I was gay. AND then what happened with Kenny and why I was crying and so hurt.

Pain came very early in my experiences in my new lifestyle as a young man. Whether it was a gay lifestyle or a straight lifestyle, I am sure they are pretty much all the same, people can be hurtful no matter who they are. I am sure MEN ALONE do not have the MARKET in cheating, lying, and backstabbing. But I will admit something men are not as tough at taking the pain as they try portraying themselves to be that is for sure. As fast as they can dish out the pain, they fall on their face just as fast in their pain too. So I learned very quickly many ways of preventing that pain. Seem cold? It was. Hurt before you get hurt, sometimes, most of the time. It soon became a way of life for me. But here is where the guilt started to creep in. Being raised as a Christian and taught to love and care for all people, the GAME of doing unto others BEFORE they do unto you was all new and different interpretation of an old saying. This is like when the devil said to Eve, “Surely you won’t die”. Well I felt like I was dying inside alright. One emotion, one feeling, one thought at a time. It was all disappearing slowly. It was like trading in something and getting nothing but a lemon in return, trading in my values for false hopes of satisfaction that lasted only a minute. So when I say the old but ever so true saying my pastor quoted this morning, “I may not be where I want to be, but thank God I am not where I used to be.” Look where I used to be. I can’t even imagine ever being there ever again. Some things in life seem like only yesterday, but the story I just wrote about, that was so long ago. I really feel my age when I think of how I have grown since the days of Kenny and the feelings of the pain of the WONDER YEARS.

Today I am in a different place. First of all I have spent so much time wrestling with God in my room and alone with myself over my conflicts. Allowing God to speak through the pain, the tears, the frequent putting my thumb in the Bible to just the right place he places it to hear just what He needs me to read to get His message across to me. Hours, days, weeks, months, and years of fighting the same demons over and over again expecting different results and getting tired of the same results that I have finally surrendered to Him everything I was holding onto. I thank him that He was patient in allowing me to let go slowly while still keeping His promise to Love and protect me in the mean time, and in that Mean Time preparing a place for me to discover the true meaning of fellowship with other believers. It didn’t happen all at once, but over a period of time while I was still letting go of the last things I was holding onto. It was the help and prayers of this faithful few that were the ones that brought me to the point of surrender so as a friend of mine told me in my last moments of depression, “Michael. What if your healing is just around the corner? What if the other side is so close to end your life now would really be the biggest loss of all?” I told her I was so tired of hearing that. That it was the same old cliché that you tell every person who gets suicidal and it never is, JUST AROUND THE CORNER. But you know what? Leslie was right this time. Jamal Bryant was right when he prophesied last August when he said “This is going to be the last episode of the last season of your life with this depression” Everything has been different in my life since then. There are and have been many things I can not explain. But the one thing I can explain, the fellowship at Johnson Chapel has changed me. The people I have met have made a difference in my life. They all have helped make me a changed man. I see the Lord in them and I hope it has worn off on me. From my Sunday school class with the five or six men that are regular in attendance, to the same on Wednesday nights for bible study, I have learned to expect them there, depend on them being there, and seek their wisdom and input. Today I just sort of sat back and soaked in the sharing that was going on. There is one man in his 80’s that even when he just prays, I am blessed. I have been there on Saturday mornings for intercessory prayer and he was singing alone in the sanctuary worshiping and it was the most blessed thing I had ever heard. God did not choose a church close to my home by any means, but He gave me a ministry and a way to get there that blesses me in the process that prepares me so when I get there I am ready to worship and when I leave I am ready to minister all the way home. Romans 12:11 as my pastor pointed out today says Never Lag in Zeal. Or in Earnest Endeavor: be AGLOW and burning with the Spirit Serving the Lord. Be Passionate and Excited about Telling Others of What’s Inside of ME. This is the Spirit I leave with when I go from a day of fellowshipping with my family. This is what I want to live with all the time. This is why when I am at home I am burning up the telephone lines in prayer with them, talking with them, seeing how they are doing, staying in touch, developing a relationship as friends outside of the four walls of the sanctuary. I need them, they need me, we all need each other. I especially like again what my pastor said last week, just because I may not feel like going one week ( not likely but I will play along) others may miss me and need to see me and know that I am there and all right. It matters to them if I am there. So you see it is not just all about me for me. It’s about me for them and vice versa. When someone I know and love isn’t there, I miss them and make a phone call when I get home and say, “Hey where were you today, I missed seeing you because I did.”

My biological family may not have been that close for many reasons and I missed that greatly and sought after it for many years. Still to this day it is a big hole in my heart that is still aching. But God is filling that hole up with a new family, my church family of brothers and sister, moms and dads, grandparents too. I love each and every one of them, including my little brothers and sisters that chase me around trying to toot my horn. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN WAYMOND !!

Day Seventeen

2008-05-13T02:01:00.002-07:00

DAY 17

A Place to Belong

I remember as a child, church was a big part of my life. Every Sunday and Wednesday night my mother took me and my sister and brother to Sunday school and to Wednesday night youth group. I really enjoyed it and had many friends. We went to summer and winter camps; we also had different rallies at our schools to advertise different events at our church and special nights for evangelism. Sometimes there were morning bible studies before school held at my home. In the summer after tenth grade a friend in high school asked me to help with the day camp at his church for the summer. It was at the Baptist church that I walk through the parking lot every day going to junior high school. That first day was life changing for me. Never before had I had the opportunity to experience anything like being placed in a position of responsibility over anything much less a group of other human beings. The kids took to me as I did to them. For the first time I wasn’t some one that was being mad fun of or someone that was the weak one or the last one chosen in the crowd. I was the one that all the kids were looking up to. I was the one they were looking to for their next fun activity of the day. I was the guy that was in charge of making them happy for the whole day. But even better than the first day was the second day, the day they brought their parents back to introduce me them and say “MOM this is Super Squid (it was a beach theme summer day camp) and he is coolest counselor ever! They all just about did the same thing in one way or another. And the parents all did the same thing in one way or another. They thanked me for making their son or daughters day a success. They told me that all their child could talk about was ME when they got home and how much they couldn’t wait to come back the next day, and that I had made that much of an impression on them. I was never that popular in my own school but to them I was the bomb, even though we didn’t use that terminology back then. All I remember is that I loved seeing and making them smile and enjoy having a great day. To bring joy and laughter on their faces was all that I wanted to do for them. At the time I didn’t even know why that made me happy but it did. Something inside me just felt RIGHT when I did that. As I grew up I learned why that feeling was so important to me. I was trying to take care of little Mikey inside of me. The sad part of me that wasn’t happy at that age that was lonely and scared all the time was still deep down inside me and I saw that inside a lot of the kids I was in charge of. And if I could make them happy just for the day, I was making me happy just for that day. This is where I found my place in the body of Christ and my purpose at church as a teenager growing up. After the summer ended, I stayed at that Baptist church and began teaching third grade Sunday school. I joined the High School department and began being a part of this church as my own. When I turn sixteen I got my first job as the assistant janitor with than big ring of keys that opened everything. I was in charge of polishing the tile floors every Friday so people could see themselves in it every Sunday morning. I like the compliments I received for it too. It made me feel like somebody important. Every family knew me because of their kids, every one knew me because I was always seen walking around with those rings of keys on my belt. I was always at church, more than I was at school sometimes. It was my happy place in the world, MY FAMILY. My father wasn’t in the picture at the time. My mom was always working. I didn’t really get along nor do anything with my sister or brother so my kids and friends at church were my family. Until the day I decided to leave all of it and go out into the world and seek out the unknown desires of my aching and confused mind and heart. This was the first time I experienced a broken heart. Pulled between my physical flesh and my kids I had grown up with there. I was teaching the same boys I had in my first third grade class in a seventh grade class when I left. I didn’t even say good-bye to them. I just told the superintendent that some things had come up in my life that were preventing me from giving them one hundred and fifty percent as I always had and that until I figured out what it was, I need to step down from teaching, and when I do figure it out, I would be back. Well that day never came. (I am in tears inside again now remembering that day) And if that day hurt me so much, and they weren’t even MY OWN children, how could my dad leave when we WERE his own children? HOW DOES A FATHER ABANDON A CHILD OR HIS CHILDREN? HOW DID GOD FEEL TURNING HIS BACK ON JESUS THAT DAY? I know how bad I felt that morning. It was the worst feeling I had ever experienced in my life. Literally it was like divorcing the church from my life. I remember walking out of the building that day thinking “what did I just do?” Not realizing the journey God was about to take me on, that I was about to begin to set out on for the next twenty some years of my life. Not remembering that little prayer I had prayed a month or so ago when I asked God for a testimony like the ex-con who had three hundred kids silent for an hour while he told his story of how God had saved him over and over again and how I wanted to be able to tell a story just like it some day. Well here I am writing about it and this is SOMEDAY. TODAY IS THAT DAY I PRAYED ABOUT TWENTY EIGHT YEARS AGO. Who would have thought God has seen me through all of what He has seen me through to this day?

And HE has prepared once again a place for me to have what I had so long ago in a body of Christ. He has hand picked from the pastor to the janitor each and every individual and everyone in between them to be my new church family and support me and to love me and to guide me in my walk and my spiritual growth process by placing me at a place called Johnson Chapel AME in Santa Ana, California. Everyone of them has a special purpose in my life. They have been placed in my life for a reason. Their personalities and their character is for my growth and refinement in Christ. I am learning from all of them as well as being bless by every one of them. I look forward to waking up and talking with and fellowshipping with them. Getting to class and services are the highlights of my days with them. Talking on the telephone and being encouraged and encouraging them keeps me going day after day. Helping out where ever I can brings me much joy knowing that I am participating in the work of my Fathers house. Seeing the work of the Lord continue in any small way makes me feel proud to say that I am a member and a welcome part of the body of JC AME. It is my home, my church family and church home. This I where I know and feel I belong. And plan to stay and belong for a long time.

Day Sixteen

2008-05-13T02:01:00.001-07:00

DAY 16

What Matters Most

Life is about Love

LOVE, something that every human being is searching for the minute they are born. A baby’s cry for it, a child’s need for it, a teenager’s hormones rage for it and adult’s lust for it. It’s an inborn yearning we all have from birth, God given and emptiness at the same time. We spend a life time searching for it. Willing to do almost anything to gain it we look in almost any place to find it, in almost any form or fashion. We spend out hard earned money to buy it in one form or another. Whether we are trying to impress someone or just make ourselves look good with things we are paying a price to find some kind of happiness to gain love and attention to ourselves. We will go to almost any length to chase after it, sometimes stepping over others and hurting them in the process with out even saying I’m sorry. Or we give of ourselves not realizing that what we are doing is really hurting our self more than we deserve to try to get the attention of someone who will never return the feelings we are putting out, but still we try to no end until we are left broken and disillusioned. So how do we learn to love with out all the pain and suffering? How did I learn?

The first place should have been in my home growing up watching my father and mother. And there were times I saw it between them, sometimes. But most of the time I did not. My father worked swing shift so I really only saw him on the weekends growing up until they were divorced at age 14. Then it seemed like a lot of arguing and fighting all the time and on Sunday’s it was just him sitting in front of the television watching some kind of sporting event that I had no interest in and that just being noisy in the room made him mad. Where is the love in that? I remember watch shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Brady Bunch and seeing what I thought a real family was supposed to be like. Even Dennis the Menace had what seemed like a normal life, and even though he was always getting into some kind of mishap, I never saw him get hurt because of it. Sure good old George next door would scream at him but for some reason that just seemed funny instead of scary and threatening. I always asked myself, “Why couldn’t my life and my family be like theirs?” a very innocent dream for a child that didn’t know the difference between television and real life yet, brothers and sisters that didn’t fight like it was World War 2, and moms and dads that greeted each other with a hug and a kiss when they came home from work. And when the child makes a mistake, the parent sat and talked about it with them instead of waking them up in the middle of the night with the back of the hand in the dark with no explanation. Was that too much to ask God for? What was I supposed to be learning from all this? How to overcome WHAT? How to SURVIVE WHAT? Anyway I didn’t see the love in any of it. No example in my home to begin with. Except at Christmas time when it would take four hours to open presents. But yet we heard about it the rest of the year when we would ask for something and the answer we got was “we spent all our money on you at Christmas”. Again, was it love or not? Buying affection I understood. Using it as a form of trying to make up for love not shown I understood. But needed it I didn’t. So what would I do to try to get someone to LOVE ME when I grew up? Was I good enough just as me to have someone love me just as I was or would I have to do anything besides just be myself to find it? The latter always seemed easier than the first. I had no self worth entering adult hood. No self esteem, a lot of fear, a lot of self hatred. So with three strikes already against me, what did I have to work with to begin with? NOT MUCH. For some reason my looks seemed to carry me quite a ways. So I began to build on that for a while. But I soon found out that my personality traits had much to be desired. I was a nice guy who when I got emotionally hurt, it would cause those same feelings I had as a child to kick in and now that I was an adult, I could lash out a whole lot easier that I could have when I was a child. The rage inside me was monstrous. I really scared some people. And the sad thing was I didn’t know where it came from at the time. I thought all my anger was righteous anger, like they deserved it all for what they did. Couldn’t they understand, they hurt me, just them. But it wasn’t just them. It was them, my dad, my mom, myself, old friends, anyone who had ever hurt me in that manner all at once. So finding someone to love, friends or otherwise was an uphill battle for most of my life. All I wanted was to be close to people, but the more I got hurt the more I pushed people away for fear of getting hurt again. It was sometimes easier being lonely than living in the fear of not knowing when they were going to hurt me again. That was more painful than being alone without the fear of being emotionally hurt again. But when I became tired of the loneliness, how do I get rid of that and at the same time keep my distance from the emotional side of life? Become good at taking instead of getting intimate with anyone. But this still wasn’t me. I wasn’t brought up that way. I was taught to care about others and their feelings, to put others first. But as an adult, I didn’t see very much of that anymore. So I became like the rest. But to do that without all the guilt, I had to play their games under the influence of something stronger than I was. It was Me on Meth. Together we could rule the world and not care about those who got in the way. Where was the Love in That? Well I loved the drug. I loved the attention I was receiving. And I loved the fact that I wasn’t getting emotionally hurt by anyone. So wasn’t love in at least some form LOVE ENOUGH? For a while it was. And for a while what was lacking was being covered up by all the chemicals. Then why when I began to write did I write lines in them that read “searching for love and acceptance”? How was I supposed to find Love and Acceptance in a world of chemically induced affection and temporary bought and paid for love in one form or another? Not very well thank you very much. It was a never ending cycle that had me trapped so deep to even think of breaking away from it caused great fear and anxiety. How do I stop all the madness? WHO AM I? I needed to face ME before I could even begin to try facing the world. Endless weeks, months, years of contemplation and self examination has been going on behind the scenes, mostly alone in my room to get me here to the computer to be typing this. How could I even understand the love from my heavenly Father when the first example of my own father was such a mess, then the mess I made of my own self for so many years and the way I looked at the world and took advantage of others I sought attention from? I definitely didn’t know the first meaning of the word. But yet I desired it with great passion. I was scared of it also. When someone said those three little words I LOVE YOU I was always waiting for the punch line, like a comedian’s one liner. Those were just words, anyone could say them, no one could live them, no one could show me those words without saying them. One man did, one time in my life. He didn’t say it, he showed it. In a way I could only believe he really did. And when he did, I fell in love, for the first and only time in my life. It may not have been what God had planned but when you tell someone you have just been diagnosed with the AIDS virus that you have been sleeping with for a month and instead of leaving you or worse, they take you by the hand and lead you into the bedroom to make love to you again, they must care for you, they must be IN LOVE with you no matter what. Who else would do something like that? What else would anyone feel? Up to that point in my life I had never felt that kind of acceptance just for being a human being much less a person that was dying from a disease that could kill someone else. (I just got stuck here for a minute. That was a tough memory)

But I finally did get all that behind me. The chemicals eventually vanished in 2002, the needle, the spoon, the cotton and the strap around my arm. But then there was just an empty shell of a man who was all alone with his feelings, broken as they were. Afraid of his own shadow at times, I trusted literally no one. Kindness in any form always had it’s price, didn’t it? It always had in the past. Not just from others but from me to. You see I had learned how to play those games too. And now I had to unlearn those games to. If I wanted honesty from others I had to be honest with others back. I had to start caring for them the way I wanted to be cared for. I had to reach out for something else rather than reach out to take, I had to learn how to reach out to give, but to who? Others just like me. And that wasn’t hard to find. They were already all around me. I had made a life time of gathering up the weak and feeble minded, the strung out and the tore up from the floor up. And since the Lord was already on my side and ready to give me the 3000^th and 2^nd chance one more time, we together just started where we had left off so many times before. It wasn’t like starting completely over, just where we left off. Thank GOD! His love returned instantly. I didn’t have to go through a 90 day waiting period for the benefits to kick in, when he said in Psalms 116:16 that He LOOSED MY BONDS that was it, no more discussion. So Let’s go to work He said, I have a job for you to do. No more sitting around and watching TV, smoking 4 packs of cigarettes a day, get up and get out there Mike. There are people to Love, people to minister to, people that need to smile today. Someone needs what you have to give and only you have it to give them. I have given you many tools, many traits in you personality that can reach the lost and broken hearted. Joy comes in the morning, wake up and it’s yours. And you know what? It’s true. Just waking up is a joyful thing for someone that said he was happy the doctor said he had only six months to live 21 years ago. Yesterday I wrote about my family, my church family and the love and acceptance I feel there. Yesterday was no different. And the way my prayers are working I even seem to control the length of the message I am hearing (that was for you Pastor MIKE please don’t tell the rest of the church) Every face and person the Lord puts in front of me is one of His children, potentially or otherwise.

How can I not love them all?

Have you fallen IN LOVE with JESUS?

Day Fifteen

2008-05-13T02:00:00.001-07:00

Day 15

Formed For God’s Family

The way the story was told to me, as a little boy, was that God was in heaven, and He CREATED the angels, like someone might make robots that do what ever the inventor makes them to do. In God’s case they were made to worship Him and praise Him constantly. They had no choice in the matter, that is all they COULD do. And one day God got tired of all this robot worship. How am I, God, supposed to feel great about myself with all these angels just doing what I made them to do? So one day He decided to make a place where He could create other kinds of creatures that wouldn’t just be living in heaven with Himself and that they would not see Him or the place where He lived but they would know OF HIM and that they would have this thing called FREE WILL, a choice to decide on their own whether or not they would love God or not. So those that did choose Him, He would know REALLY LOVED HIM FOR HIM, not just because He made them love Him. And those that did not love Him, even though He would give them every chance to, and try really hard to convince them to, but if they just wouldn’t, then He would have to let them go and not let them into where He lived when they died. It was Their Choice.

It seemed like a simple story to understand. But wait a minute, what about the guy that was also there to distract us from God, that didn’t seem fair. It’s like “Hey little boy, wanna piece of candy?” Didn’t my mom tell me to stay away from strangers? Yea but the guy offering me the candy wasn’t always a stranger. He wasn’t even in SHEEPS CLOTHING. He was my best friend. My boss, the guy next door, anyone and everyone, but never a stranger. It didn’t seem fair. Make a choice with the deck stacked against you. More distractions and more things to entice you and lead you away from God sometimes than to lead you to Him and keep you near Him. Tough world we live in. WOMEN, can’t they just leave the fruit on the tree alone? If an apple was the best looking thing in the garden, they must have been hurtin’! (It’s just my least favorite that’s all)

But I can understand Him, He created EVERYTHING for us, gave us everything we needed to live, survive, and make a life with. It is only right, only fair that He would expect something in return for all His efforts. Just one thing He asked, just one, but it was too much. When left to our own minds, most likely humans will always take what looks the nicest, most comfortable, the easiest, the less effort on our part to get what we want and our needs met to be satisfied, every time, hands down. It’s in out selfish nature to do so. Get what we can while we can before anyone else takes it way from us. Not even realizing that none of it is ours to begin with. It never has and never will be. But yet we act like selfish whoremongers or packrats thinking that “HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS . . . WINS!” When in reality he who dies with the most toys still dies.

But Rick taught me something or just explained the story in a way that I never heard it before. GOD wasn’t lonely so He created human beings, He created humans to have fellowship with and have a family with. He was perfectly fine all alone. (If we were made in HIS IMAGE, why weren’t we fine all alone?) But since the tree was there in the garden and mistakes were made, Christ had to come. It was the only way back to Him. It may not have been the plan to begin with, but plans change, constantly. Yes God knew ahead of time the course of my life, so I guess He made plans to fit those paths I would take. I used to think every time I made another mistake or went in the wrong direction; God had to come up with a new plan for my life as if He didn’t know what I was going to do until I did it. Then He had to sit back and get out the old Mike drawing board and erase what was there and take a look down on earth, see where I was heading this time, and make changes accordingly. Figure out new escape routes; figure out a new course of action for what I might do next. But even before I was born He knew what I was going to do and whom I was going to do it with. Where I was going to go and how I was going to get there. Who I would meet, who I would say YES to and who I would say NO to.

All my questions about why this parent, why weren’t they together to be the family I needed them to be, the example of what a family should be, didn’t I deserve at least this in life? I always thought God would provide ALL my needs, starting there. That is where I learned what it was supposed to be, a family, a mom and a dad. Loving and nurturing. Safe and secure, a positive reinforcing place to learn and to grow. That is what the Beaver had on television, why didn’t I? So then if I didn’t have an example of that at home, how could I relate that to a heavenly father whom I couldn’t see feel or touch? I couldn’t. If I was punished severely for something wrong by my dad on earth and had to feel his anger, isn’t that how God felt about it too? That is what I grew up thinking, that God my father was no different than my father on earth. The wrath of God, God’s vengeance, was no different than my own fathers. I was scared of both. Especially since praying to God to save me from my father didn’t seem to work, He must have been in agreement with Him all along. Why else would he abandon me like that? That is what little Mikey thought all those years. But as I grew up, realizing that God’s family was much different that the one I had at home, and what I feel now in a church that I am at home in, I feel a part of something so big, so secure, so wonderful, that I know that I know that it can only be GOD that could bring so many people from so many places with so many different backgrounds and cultures into one place and we can hug and communicate our needs and prayers and pray together and share with each other. For so long the loneliness in my life would cause me to reach out and hold onto people that had nothing in common with me and that I couldn’t trust just to fill my time with, fill my empty days with, pass the nights away with. But to sit alone all by myself and be happy or content, I never could, until now. The peace I have knowing that I am ok being by myself because in reality I am never alone by myself. I have always KNOWN that I wasn’t but now it is a relationship that I am not hiding from that allows me to be ok to feel it all the time. With a sense of direction and purpose there is a goal and something to reach for every moment of every day. And unless there is another human involved in it, there are always at least two of us at all times doing it together, no matter what why or where.

Most of my adult life when I have search or sought out a church, I think the first reason was because I was tired of all the company I was keeping. The bad influences and the kind of people I was letting into my life. I needed new friends and people that were not doing drugs or running the streets and bars, committing crimes and going to jail all the time and dragging my life down. I don’t know what it was in the past, whether or not it was because of things I was still holding on to, things I wasn’t ready to let go of, but in my heart I thought I was at least being honest in seeking something different for my life. I had to start somewhere. All my life I was used to the grander things in life, the larger the better. It had to be impressive. So I thought the people would be too. Transparent I was, and the more I was, the more real I was, the farther people seem to run. Just getting help getting to those big impressive churches became difficult for me at times. Was it the wheel chair, was it my honesty about my HIV status, or my past lifestyle, I don’t really know. It was easy finding people to say “I’ll pray for you” and then see them walk away never to be seen again. They all got lost in those large crowds of people. Then one day the Lord led me to a small church in the middle of downtown Santa Ana on a corner I had been to before many times to buy food and get arrested on the last time I was on that corner, but I never saw the small brown colored church across the street behind the wire fence. I never knew it was there at all. But somehow watching a program early one summer morning on BET television and seeing a preacher that spoke words I had never heard before that led me want to find out more about the denomination he was from that led me finding that small church on that very same corner I was arrested on the day before my 33^rd birthday. It was like it had been there waiting for me all along. Every person there had a reason for being there for me. From the pastor and his wife, to members of the choir, from ushers to Sunday school teachers and members and even the janitor has had an influence and a purpose in my life. EVERY ONE there has been like being reunited with family members I had been separated from at birth. Today Miss Jackson told my friend William that I was her son and now she had another in him. My pastor and his wife are both the spiritual leaders I have always been searching for. And no where else have I ever been absent and been called on to see where I was and what was going on and been prayed for so much and enough for that I was able to finally let go of an addiction, the last addiction of thirteen years in my life. So when Dorothy said “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”, I now know what it was she meant by that statement. There really is NO PLACE LIKE A CHURCH HOME when God plants you in the right place all prepared for you like He has prepared for us in heaven someday. I can imagine heaven now just a little because when I enter my church on Sunday mornings the peace of knowing every one I see, the faces of every on I know, the smiles of every one that greets me, just knowing that I have been put in a place that is the answer to every one of the lines in the poems I have written over the years, “searching for love and acceptance”, has now come true. What more could I ever ask for? A Family.

Day Fourteen

2008-05-13T01:59:00.001-07:00

Day 14

When God Seems Distant

Gee, I have never felt like that. Gee, and I am the biggest fibber on the planet too. I was nine years old the first time I felt that God wasn’t listening. I went forward in church to accept Christ as my Savior, to as Jesus into my heart, to save me from my sins, and from my father. I prayed every day there after for him to save me from my father but was He listening to me? He couldn’t have been. So I honestly thought I must really be a bad boy or I must really deserve what my dad was dishing out because God wasn’t listening to me when I would pray at night “please don’t let my father come in my room after work and hit me tonight.” But my prayers never seemed to work. And those dreams, or should I say nightmares with those devils in them just kept coming and coming, with them coming after me night after night. Whether I was asleep or awake something was coming for me, wanting to hurt me. So where was God? Was he listening? Don’t tell me God was testing me at that age.

Growing up I think it was hard trying to understand how God was supposed to hear me when I prayed, what I was expecting the answers to look like, and where I was supposed to look for those answers. As a teenager all I had was a lot of mixed up feelings and that is where my prayers lied. I wanted God to fix those mixed up feelings. I sure wasn’t talking about them to my parents. I wasn’t talking about them with my friends. So who else could I talk to about them except God? But the more I talked with Him about them, the more troubled I seem to become. It was like talking to the therapist that just sat there and said “And how does that make you feel?” Never an answer just another question. And I had tons of them. Well after all of my teenage years of asking God questions and getting no answers out of Him, I stopped asking and began experimenting with my own feelings anyway I felt like them. The only thing I had going against me was my beliefs. Along the way during those teenage years I had gathered certain beliefs that I knew to be true, they just didn’t all line up with my feelings, and those unanswered prayers and feelings. So what’s a guy to do? When there are more unanswered questions than there are facts you believe in, the facts seem less important and less reliable to trust in. So the search for those unanswered questions begins, in places you thought you would never go. But yet at the same time, they seemed like the most logical places to find out what it is you were looking for. Was I trying to separate myself from God out of spite, or did I just think He didn’t want to follow me where I was going? I was angry, hurt, disappointed at Him. I wanted answers from Him but I just didn’t understand how to receive them from Him. At the time I even tried asking leaders for help answering some of those questions I had been praying about all my life but they too seem to let me down as they had no answers for me. So it really was just me and me alone to figure all this out, and at such an early and young age. No one explained to me that God WAS listening, that He DID really care. They didn’t even offer to pray with or for me. So where WAS GOD? I didn’t know. And out into the world I went. It was kind of like an alcoholic going back into a bar with a head full of AA. He had all the knowledge of what he should do and what not to do, but his disease and addiction were stronger than he was and had more of a hold of him. Well I didn’t have a disease or an addiction, yet. Just a curiosity that was so strong, and a desire to find out what all these feelings meant that I had grown up with were that even though I had a lot of knowledge of God in me, knowledge wasn’t enough. Sure at times I had felt close to Him, but when it came down to trusting in Him during the hard times or the confusing times and hearing His voice of comfort, I never knew how to hear His voice. Going to His word wasn’t an automatic form of seeking help in every situation for me. And even if it was, where do I look for such an answer and understanding for such personal questions as the ones I had? They all seemed to specific and if the answers were in the bible that easy, why hadn’t those pastors and leaders I went to in the beginning come up with them for me? Ah ha. See my point? I even stumped the wise men. But as time went on and I was out there lost in the world, whether it was my conscience or what ever it was, there was always something nagging in the back of my mind, telling me stuff, things that I didn’t understand should be in there. Why is this still bugging me? I thought I left all this in the past. Just because I quit going to church didn’t mean God left being a part of me. It just took a lot for me to try push the sound of Him out of my life. This is why I began to feel the guilt that I was feeling I think. The conviction of the Holy Spirit in my life telling me that “is this what you call a life Mike? Is this really making you happy? Do you enjoy getting sick?” But I would just look at one situation as a temporary set back and move on to better days ahead. Why let one circumstance get me down? Whether it was the FIGHTER in me, or the feeling that I could get over anything and just move on, I thought I was indestructible. Don’t ever tell me “I CAN’T” do anything. I will prove you wrong just to make you wrong was how I lived my life. I can get anything I want. Have anything or anyone I want. Can you say EGO? It was true, and others saw it and were amazed how I got away with it all the time. Maybe this is when I felt like I had no need for God. I was my own boss. No need for anyone else. I was on my own and getting what I wanted on my own. So was God still there or had He really taken a back seat? He might have been in the back seat but He was always there. He had to have been. Because some of the circumstances I found myself in I have no idea how I made it out alive, over and over again. Even then I would always thank Him, and once I even promised Him I would never return to that corner as long as I lived, and I never did. Until He brought me back there last summer after thirteen years to go to church. But even when I wasn’t OUT THERE so to speak, living the life of a prodigal son, and doing my utmost best to be the kind of person God wanted me to be, there were still times of Silence on His part. Times that I have felt like He was letting me go through things alone. This I didn’t understand. Why after all the time I spent away from Him and now doing my best to come back would He still chose to be quite? Especially when I was as depressed as I could get? Well I think what He was doing was forcing me to look deep within myself and see what it was that was making me depressed. For instance the last depression I went through was in December of 2007 and leading into the New Year. I had begun to crash from a four month manic cycle from my bipolar illness that I had not sought any medical treatment for, so it lasted long than it should have therefore the down cycle was much worse. My first plan of attack against it was not the best either. Resorting to pharmaceuticals as a way of escape along with new psychiatric medicine didn’t work. It only worsened the effects of my depression. But for two months I didn’t want to let go of the pharmaceuticals that I had been prescribed for over thirteen years and they were the cause of my depression. So praying for God to get rid of my depression at the same time was kind of senseless. It was like prayers hitting the ceiling and coming right back down at me again. Not until I DID SOMETHING ABOUT THE PILLS I WAS TAKING could God do anything for me. Until I made a phone call I had the pill taken away from me could God step in and do what He had been waiting to do all along. When I did, the minute I did, the flood gates of heaven opened up, literally. Like sticking my finger in the bible to a verse that read “I have Loosed Your Bonds” Psalms 116:16. Immediately after the phone call to my doctor. The depression was gone. All God was waiting for was for me to take the first step and the rest He was waiting to do. NO MORE BEING SILENT IN MY LIFE. God never choose to be silent all the time, but when it is in out best interest, He takes a step back to allow us the space to feel what we need to feel to make the right decisions in out own lives to grow in areas that we seem to be stuck in at the moment I think. At least that the way it has been for me at times. It’s not comfortable by any means. I don’t even understand it at the moment. Not until it’s over and I have gone through something and have gotten to the other side can I even see why it happened that way. But maybe, just maybe the next time, when I am feeling like I am alone again, the remembrance of the last time with be where my faith will come in that will tell me that I am not alone just going through something that requires more of me than I thought and that God feels that there is more of me that I think there is to handle the situation. And when it is all over, the stronger I will be because look how much stronger I was the last time He left me alone to handle something. Every time He does, my faith grows a little more. By now I should be lifting about a TON of Faith.

Day Thirteen

2008-05-13T01:57:00.000-07:00

DAY 13

Worship that Pleases God

It never gets any better than that!

Since I was a small boy until today, I have been to almost every type of church and denomination there is, within the Christian religions. I started out in the Brethren church soon to be followed by the So. Baptist and not even a hand were raised. Sometimes we stood when we sang and other times we just sat in our seats. I don’t ever remember the bible being read in a service other that what the pastor would mention in his sermons unlike where I am now in the AME church where we all stand in reverence to God and read it out loud every week a selected passage which is also where the sermon will be preached from. I like this very much. And I am sure this is the only bible reading some will get until next week. Sad but true. I remember once when I was about 8 or 9 years old going to church with my grandmother and a friend of hers named Betty Green to a very different kind of Christian church, far from being Baptist. They, and Betty, all spoke in a different language. One I couldn’t understand. And why were they falling on the floor? This to a small boy was really weird. What are they doing grandma? Is this a church? It was obviously my first exposure to the Pentecostal religion. Who knew and would have known then that years later I would be speaking that “FUNNY LANGUAGE TOO!” I remember it clearly when I entered Teen Challenge the driver that was driving me to the induction home asking me if I had ever been “baptized into the Holy Spirit”. I said do you mean have I asked Jesus into my heart? He replied “No I mean do you speak in tongues?” I said “No I have heard it once when I was 8 or so but other than that never thought or been exposed since. But what the heck, nothing I have tried so far as seemed to work, that’s why I am here I guess, you never know do you?” So one night during intercessory prayer, one of the other men, an ex gang banger from the Crips named Cricket came over to me and asked me if I had ever received the Gift of the Holy Spirit? I said no. So he took my arms and raised them up in the air and told me to just agree out loud with him in prayer as he began to pray. So as he prayed I agreed “Thank you Father, Yes Father..so on and so on.” And after about 2 minutes or so the Holy Spirit took control of my speech and I could not stop what was coming out of my mouth. In my head I was thinking I am possessed by the spirit of Betty Green. I knew that wasn’t true but it was just a fleeting thought, I knew what was happening. After about 5 minutes I began to feel like I could stop if I wanted to but didn’t. I even had a chance while I was there to pray with another young man while he received the Gift while we prayed together. That was even a better experience for me I think than my own receiving of the Holy Spirit, getting to help someone else, letting God use me for such an event in someone’s life. I will never forget that as long as I live. His name was Steve. I was thirty years old when this happened in my life. Why didn’t the Baptist ever teach this I wondered? They never spoke about it. Were they afraid? Are they afraid? What do or do they not want to believe about the Word of God? If it isn’t true why did it happen for me? Why do some churches practice the gifts in their service so strongly and some believe in them but don’t? I don’t know. I spent about a year in a Pentecostal church that did. And it was a Spanish church. In fact I just re-visited there a week ago. I remembered all the dancing during the worship and the sounds of the women praying in tongues that echoed in the background. They were really worshiping with their spirits in their service. But then in reading this chapter, if someone that was new had never read the bible or knew any thing about it, they would be like I was at 8 years old and wonder “what is going on?” whereas if someone walked in to my church they would have no problem understanding the formality of the service. So is one more right than the other? I can’t say. Do I enjoy both? Yes. My spirit can allow me to feel the presence of God in both kinds of service. I have even been to the Church of Christ where there is NO MUSIC played, and for one reason. They say that it distracts from the meaning of worship. That all they need is the voice and not the “entertainment” of the instruments. And Rick writes about this in this chapter that nice flowing music can soothe and make a person “FEEL GOOD” but is it the music that gets you in the spirit or is it the meaning of the words that you are focusing on? So for every person there is a place that fits his or her needs and personality. God gave me talent in my fingers when I was 5 years old. God filled up Lucifer with instrument all over his body and made him to lead the worship of the angels so my feeling is music and worship go hand in hand…sorry COC. Maybe that is why the song says WHY SHOULD THE DEVIL HAVE ALL THE GOOD MUSIC? He was the first to play and he seems to use it quite well to influence the world. I myself find it as a means to come close to Him. In the morning, when I am sad, when I am upset for some reason, it calms me. I can allow His spirit to talk to me. I come up with something new and the Holy Spirit gives me the title and the meaning to what I am playing. The emotions are in the music. God understands more that just my spoken words. And I hear Him in the music I am playing. Like I have said in previous pages, when the Lord gives a gift, it lasts forever and gets better the more you use and engage it. It never goes bad and you never get tired of playing with it, so to speak. It is my truest form or worship I think, because I am totally alone, just me listening to what I am feeling and sensing. Sometimes when I am in a service, my mind tends to wander or my thoughts will race, it’s hard to concentrate. That is just the life of a Bipolar I guess. But when I am alone at the keys, I am focused and my mind is only on what I am doing. It never gets any better than that.

Day Twelve

2008-05-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

DAY 12

Developing My Friendship with God

Discovering MY Passion

After reading this chapter, God revealed something to me that He saw in me. It wasn’t something He saw in me now but something He has always seen in me. That what ever it was I was in love with, I was passionate about that love. Whether it was my drug, my sex life, but more importantly my feelings with Camacho, I was passionately IN LOVE with him. I had to be or how else could I have put aside my spoon and my needle without even thinking about them? And why was I passionately in love with him? Because I believed that was how he felt about me. He came looking for me after the first time we met. Then only after a month after we met was when I got sick for the first time and went into the hospital. We had only seen each other a hand full of times. I had to come home and tell this man of 26 that the reason I was in the hospital was to find out that I was diagnosed with full blown AIDS and only had 6 months to live and you had been making love to me. Imagine having to tell that to someone, especially to an ex gang banger from 18^th street. (a large So. Cal. Gang) I didn’t know if he was going to walk out on me, beat me up, or what he would do. But no sooner that I could get the words out with all my tears he was at my side holding me and comforting me then taking my hand and leading me into the bedroom. That is when I knew someone, HIM, he was IN LOVE with ME. And I in turn gave him back all of my love. How could I not? Here I was with a death sentence and someone didn’t care about that, all he cared about was loving me no matter what.

So what is the difference between him and God? All of us at time in our life are dead to God in our sins. And He still loved us, no matter what. It’s the reason we should all be passionate about our love back to him, because He first loved us. I knew without any doubts where my life had taken me. The mire and the pits I had put myself in. And if you remember reading yesterdays notes, I got pretty crazy and disturbed in my own mind just fighting with my own addictions and still not willing to give them up. I knew what would happen when I got high but I still would do it anyway. That was passion for my drug. I was willing to give my life for something.

So is it any wonder God saw the Passion in me and knew that when I got to this point in my life that the passion of Mike Carpenter would be directed in such a way that when used for Him that I would become an unstoppable force of nature so to speak that could be used for anything He needed to accomplish? Yes to all of it. Just give me a task and point me in any direction and see what takes place. I would do anything to accomplish what I needed to do to get what needed to be done for my desires in the past so what’s the difference now. Not a thing.

This all started when I got HONEST one day in February with my doctor about my addiction to the medication I had been on for thirteen years and had her remove it and the access from me. Once that was out of reach and out of my life, God was free to move in and take over every room in my heart. No more lying or hiding from the world over something that had control over me. I took back and gave back the control of my life to Him. I love the story my pastor preached on Palm Sunday when Jesus asked two of His disciples to go get Him the donkey to ride into town on. They just obeyed Him without question. So often I hear His voice in my head telling me to do something but in the past I have been either not able to listen or not willing to obey out of fear or skepticism, but now I just do what is asked of me. I know what He wants me to do and that is how I plan my days. I know His purpose for me and follow it. I listen to the signs that He is giving me through other people. I want what HE wants because I know just from my past going after my desires only came to frustration and heartache. But more than anything else, although I respect Him for being the God of my life, I need Him to be that friend that walks beside me everyday of my life. He is the one that has saved my life but He is also the one that holds me up every day of my life. He is the one that shares the day with me in the mornings and the afternoons and in the evenings. If He didn’t I’d be a pretty lonely man.

Day Eleven

2008-05-13T01:23:00.001-07:00

Day 11

Becoming Best Friends with God

Prayer and Meditation

How can I remember to pray and meditate all day every day? How do I know that God is always there waiting for me, wanting my attention in everything that I am doing no matter how little the task is? For some this might be a hard question to answer. For me because of certain things that have happened to me in the past I know without a doubt that God is IN THE ROOM all the time. Let me tell you a story that will help you understand why I know this to be true. You might think I am messing with you, or that I am trying to pull your leg, but if you keep an open mind you will not only understand that God not only is in the room but that HE cares so much for you and me that He is willing to go to any lengths to get your attention no matter what situation you have put yourself into.

Way back when, in the days when I was caught up in my addictions and my despair so bad that I had to be alone to get high because it was hard to find people that would even dare to be in the same room with me when I would take my tie off my neck and wrap it around my left arm with a spoon full of crystal methamphetamine in front of me. My favorite radio station in the mid 1980’s in San Fernando California was KROQ the Rock of the 80’s. It played all the new wave music any thing other than rock and roll. This particular night while I was fixing up my shot for the evening, I was listening to Oingo Boingo. Just the name of the group should tell you something about the radio station and the type of music I was listening to. The syringe was ready, my arm was tied off, and I was ready. As I slid in the stainless steel needle into my vein and pushed in the plunger and began to feel the rush of the speed going into my body and my brain, I pulled out the needle and as I did, do you really think the DJ took off the record and replaced it with Bette Midler singing From a Distance God Is Watching You From Above? REALLY? But something happened. I checked the stereo, still on 106.7. Bette was still singing. KROQ never played THAT kind of music EVER. And they never just change a record in the middle of a song before. Just as I was getting my high? I got scared to say the least. SOMEONE IS WATCHING ME OUT THERE! Someone is controlling my electronics in my apartment. STOP IT I shouted like a mad man yelling into the air. They ruined my high, destroyed my evening, and made me hide under the coffee table with a blanket over it so they wouldn’t see me. (YEA RIGHT) I didn’t know where the cameras were but I didn’t want to take any chances. Someone or something was in the room with me. How else would they know the exact moment that I got high and that God was watching me? Well it wasn’t for a while but this happened again for a second time and I had had enough. After the second time every time I got high I changed the radio to classical music, piano only, and dared who ever to attempt to change the record to anything that had a voice playing. That ended that! No More Bette Midler.

Most of my drug use became nights and or days of terror. Something that wasn’t in the rooms of my apartments before I got high came out of the woodwork and or the electronics or the screws in the walls as soon as I did get high. What were they? I don’t know. Was someone there? Was SOMETHING there? Was it all in my mind? Where was my mind taking me in those moments? But one thing I do know, GOD was always there. He saw everything I was doing. As sick as I was He was there. He said He would never leave me and He didn’t. My friends all did. So were they really friends? What does it mean to be A FRIEND? God’s intentions weren’t to scare me He just wanted to let me know that He was there because He loved me. What else could He have done? It wasn’t time for the rapture yet so the best way He knew what to do was change the record on the only thing that was making sound in the room at the time. I would say that was pretty ingenious of Him.

So talking to the walls and to things that weren’t there was a common thing for me in the 80’s. But today knowing and believing that God IS HERE with me all the time is not a hard concept to grasp for me. In fact it is very reassuring to know that I am not alone now. That someone is on my side and that my days are spent with someone that knows me better than I know myself. If I looked funny talking to myself when nobody WAS in the room, at least now when the doctors ask me if I am hearing voices I better be careful when I answer them. Because I hear Gods voice all the time. And I know that when I talk back to that voice someone is listening to me. And there is no pill that will stop that one. I enjoy spending my day with Him. If I am out on the street and coming up to a bus stop and see someone waiting, I say to myself, “ OK God who’s waiting for us this time? Who do you have in mind for me to talk with on this trip?” And there is always someone. ALWAYS! I didn’t miss that last bus for no reason, because the one I am suppose to meet is on the next bus so I just relax and wait for the next one because that is what he has planned. No stress, no worry, no I’m gonna be late because I have no where to be except on that next bus.

I often wonder what other people do when they are alone. What are they thinking about? Do they think about just what they are doing at that moment or are they worrying about all the stuff they didn’t do yesterday or what they have to do later that day? Or can they just be in the moment and just be? If you are in a room with someone while you are doing a task, do you ignore them or do you carry on a conversation with them while you do what ever it is you are doing? Why should it be any different with God just because you can’t see Him in the room? Are you that insensitive? Do you just not care? Have you fallen in Love with Jesus . . .Lately?

Day Ten

2008-05-13T01:22:00.001-07:00

DAY 10

The Heart of Worship

Surrendering all of me doesn’t mean I give up, but I give in. It means that I am letting go of everything that I have been holding onto from the past that I thought I couldn’t live without to survive. Things that I have depended on to make it through the day, things that I need to not deal with feelings I don’t understand, problems in my life I don’t want to face. And there have been a lot of them over the years. Thank God He is a patient and gentle God. If He had decided to just rip everything out of my life all at once because He was in a hurry to see His purpose for my life come to completion all at once, and not give me the time to allow me to let go in such a timely manner, I never would have survived and He knew that. But by allowing me the space to make decisions on my own and the free will to decide on my own when to let go and how to do it on my own, but with His help when I needed Him to, that is what has made me strong. I needed to choose what and when to say no to. He could have stopped it all but what good would that have done me? I would have just sought out something else to replace it just has I always did when what I wanted to fix something when what I wanted wasn’t available. I was always able to find something to escape my loneliness and my pain other that Him. Because it was quicker and more physically satisfying at the moment than just sitting there in the pain and waiting for God to make me feel better from the inside out. So I would find a way to self medicate, fornicate, etc. to relieve the feelings that I didn’t want to experience over and over again like I had all my life. As time when on and as the years of my life continued, those solutions I had grown to depend on slowly began to let me down, failed to work as easy, or became less available. Don’t get me wrong, anything I wanted, everything I wanted is still there and will always be there, but am I willing to go to the extremes I once went to for them? In fact, some of them were now being handed to me on a silver platter so to speak and they weren’t even costing me a dime. Like the first drug I did was a little orange pill that cost me only four dollars, and now the last drug I let go of was being supplied by my doctor in the form of 360 little orange pills at a cost to Medicare at almost ten thousand dollars. And I was enjoying every one of those little orange pills every morning and every evening. But at the same time I was trying to enjoy them I was NOT enjoying any other part of my life. Instead of gaining weight which was one of the goals of taking that medication, I was losing weight. Instead of being happy I was sad and depressed. Instead of getting out of bed and taking care of my self I was isolating and hiding from the world and thinking of suicide the last two months before I surrendered them back to the pharmacy and called my doctor and confessed my addiction to her and told her to take them away from me. And then like all of a sudden someone had taken this huge weight off my shoulders everything that I had been feeling for years was instantly removed and taken away from me. I could breathe again. The burden I had been carrying around for 13 years was gone. I stuck my thumb in the middle of the bible, almost exactly, to Psalms 116 and when I got to verse 16 it read ..” I have loosed your bonds” and for the first time in my life I felt what I had just read. I had read verses like that in the past but just sticking my thumb into that chapter in the bible and reading that exact chapter and verse right after that phone call to my doctor was no coincidence, it was all GOD. And nothing has been the same since. That addiction in my life was the last one that I had to conquer to let go and allow God to begin to take full control in my life. It was the last thing in my life that was stopping him from being the Lord in my life and having access to my heart and my mind the two things that allowed Michael to be Michael, and what a person I have met. It’s like I have been keeping the best person in the world away from myself all these years. I used to complain about having no friends, now I have so many new friends I hardly have time to spend with all of them. The isolation in the bed and bedroom is such a distant memory that when I think about it I wonder how could that have ever been me, I am so occupied with things to do every minute of the day there aren’t enough minutes in the day to do everything I wish to do. And other that the morning shower and feeding myself and taking care of my home and pets, everything else I do in my day is for others. Whether it is worship for God, ministry for church, out on the street talking with people, running errands to complete a task to get something done for someone else, it is all for someone, Visiting someone in jail, in the hospital, going to bible study, to church midweek or evening, making phone calls, writing letters or emails to keep in touch. Isolating I am not. Depressed I am not, Suicidal never again. What has changed? Surrender, total surrender. I haven’t given up, I have given in. Let go. Of everything that I held onto. I have said NO to the things that the world said I needed to be happy, and said Yes to what God said is the only thing I needed to live life to be truly happy with, HIM. Sure I went about it backwards and tried everything else first, but that is just so when someone else is standing in front of me and has anything to throw at me or an excuse to say well I just want to try this or that first, I can say to them,” sorry to late, been there tried it already didn’t work won’t work, better let go of it now” because there isn’t anything this world has to offer that I have not tried to replace God with as a means to find happiness. NOTHING. It is all a lie, a false sense of security that will only lead you to one place, the state of despair with the capitol city of hoplessness, down the street of anxiety. Nice place to vacation but not a nice place to live. Believe me the travel agent sucks.

Day Nine

2008-05-13T01:20:00.000-07:00

DAY 9

What Makes God Smile?

Well to start off with, I know what doesn’t make Him smile. I spent many many years running and thinking I could get far away from Him. I thought God would never find me in a gay bar and definitely NOT in a bath house with a needle full of Crystal Meth in my arm. If storms were God’s tears there should have been more thunder in the skies on the weekends in the 1980’s than ever reported in the history of the world. And not just God’s but also mine. I never knew a grown boy could cry so desperately so much as I did those years. All I was searching for was just a few simple answers to life’s most needed questions, WHO AM I? Where do I belong? My search began very early in life and I thought I started in the right places growing up in church and befriending pastors and counselors. They misguided me right from the start. Some didn’t even think to pray with me. So my life really has been a journey ALL MY OWN. Even the men and women with the degrees on the wall I sought out from time to time had nothing to offer but coffee table book rememdies with no substance. So it was always back to the proverbial drawing board with a big eraser and one more time I was starting over from scratch. But one thing I can say about myself is I NEVER GAVE UP! I was determined to get out of life what I deserved, no matter how long it took, no matter what I had to do or go through. Yea I had to fight to get here, myself number one. I was my own worst enemy. I was ready to take myself out at a moments notice over almost anything. It almost worked a few times too. Once after a weekend of extreme partying and making it to work at five in the morning on Monday, it was only six o’clock before I was calling Brad my Chief of Operations to come in and relieve me. After he came in and I went home and tried for an hour to sleep and couldn’t, I went into the bathroom and emptied the small container of cocaine into a spoon and tried to get it all into my vein. But with the plunger only half way pushed down into my vein I began to feel a rush so strong and like none other I had ever felt I pulled the needle out and crawled to my bed. For forty five minutes I held my chest and prayed my heart wouldn’t come bursting out of it. I took my pulse and watched the second hand on the clock on the wall in front of me, my heart beat 55 times in 15 seconds. That was 220 times a minute. After an hour maybe a little longer I realized two things. One, I wasn’t going to die and two, there was a needle in the bathroom that was still half full of the drug I had done an hour or so ago, so back into the bathroom to repeat the same ordeal once again. That is what I meant by “At a moments notice over anything or over nothing at all” I was trying to end something and at the same time never giving up on trying to find answers to life’s questions. They just weren’t in a spoon and a needle.

So what makes God happy, falling in Love with Him? For many years I knew OF God. I knew the stories about God. Of course, I taught them growing up so wasn’t that enough? I thought it was. But my life never resembled the kind of life of someone that was IN LOVE with him. I had only ever been in love with two things in my life. The first one was Crystal Meth Amphetamine and a man named Baldemar Julio Camacho. In that order, the first one at 22 years old and the second one at 26 years old. How do you know, how did I know I was IN LOVE with the two of them? My world was centered around them. I talked about them. I praised them in public and to my friends. They had a special place in my heart; in fact they had my WHOLE heart. Everything I did was for them. I worked to afford her. I made time to use her. I gave up everything to spend more time with her. And when Camacho came into my life I let HER go. Not by choice or thinking, she just disappeared. But when Camacho was gone at different times for any length of time, SHE would return like she had never left. That place in my heart she had was never really gone. She just patiently waited for her turn to come back in. They both knew of each other but never met each other. There was never a need. I was the only one that couldn’t live without one of them. I had to have at least one of the in my life to get through that time in my life. Camacho entered my life at a time of my life that was very vital. If he hadn’t been the one that was there, things in my life would have been very different, in fact he might have been someone God arranged to actually save my life. I am sure before this journal is finished this story will come out.

So how did I go from Head Knowledge and Story Book telling to Falling in Love with the man upstairs? Forty seven years of watching Him stand by my side, seeing Him rescue me out of some circumstances that I never could have gotten myself out of, and experiencing some things that can only be described as supernatural, literally. But more over than all of that, the feeling that I have that I am never alone and never was no matter if it was in those bars or sex clubs, He was always there right beside me. Always watching, always protecting, and that He was always hurting with me, always crying FOR ME. My sins had been paid for so it was my pain He could see when I was in my despair in those dark and lonely places. I went head of heals and gave my whole heart for the things I loved once, so why is it no wonder the way I live my life now. HEAD OVER HEALS FOR CHRIST. I couldn’t shut up about my feelings for Camacho. When we broke up the first time after a year and a half, I quit my job just to go on a two month vacation with Crystal. Well there is no breaking up anymore, No crystal to go on vacation with anymore. Just a marriage that will last forever that no one can separate me from. From the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I fall asleep at night we are together. If I wake up in the middle of the night, we can talk, I can pray some more. Why else would He wake me up? He has something HE needs to say to me or He just wants to hear my voice one more time. Where ever I go we go together. Who ever I meet we meet together. What ever I do we do together. He is the best companion that no one can see but me. Worry and stress have disappeared. They don’t dare follow us around. What ever I do is worship because He is the reason I am doing what ever it is. Taking care of me or out taking care of others, it’s all the same in HIS NAME.

Day Eight

2008-05-13T01:04:00.000-07:00

DAY 8

Planned for God’s Pleasure

Well it’s nice to know someone wanted me for their pleasure. Growing up, before I had knowledge of who God was, or even after I did, I still didn’t know who exactly He was. But I knew who my earthly father was. I have seen home movies of the years before I was in school. I saw him playing with me, playing catch, trying to help me ride a three wheel bike, that sort of stuff when I was still under the age of 3 or 4. I don’t have memories of that time, just the visual of the movies I have seen. But boy do I have memories of after the age of five. I have heard it said that before we understand God we tend to put our thoughts and feelings of our earthly parents ONTO God. How out earthly father treats us is sometimes how we relate to a heavenly father. For me, making a mistake meant I was a BAD KID, so said my dad. So I grew up feeling that this was how God view me when I would do and or FEEL the wrong things. I must be a bad kid to feel or do the things the bible says is a sin. As a child or young teenager, I had never studied the bible or been taught yet the things that made God the Father any different from any other FATHER. I heard terms like God’s Wrath, God’s anger, so what was different than that of my own dad? He sure had both of those under his belt, and I felt that belt so God and my dad must be the same. So I was scared of both. As a child I learned I could go to God with any problem I had in prayer and He would answer. I thought it was that simple. When I was nine years old I went forward in church down the aisle to receive Christ and asked the pastor “Can God save me from the things I do wrong, and from my dad?” Well I prayed and prayed everyday for God to save me again and again, but He never did, at least from my dad. So did GOD really love me? This is how I grew up thinking. Why wouldn’t he answer me? Or save me from my dad? Wasn’t He listening to me? Didn’t He care about the little boy who was scared to come home from school or go to bed at night? Where was God in those nightmares when I was being chased by those devils? Or when I woke up and they were in the room with me? So now I am reading that God made me for His pleasure. Were you God taking pleasure in all of this? I don’t think so. But I was praying. I know you heard me. Were you crying for me? I bet you wished you had created something else besides FREE WILL THEN UH? Yea I know, you saw the future, yea I know, the ultimate “it will be alright, just a little bit longer and you will be ok”. A little bit longer to Him was a lifetime to me. Maybe that was why I became so defiant and turned my back and said “MY TURN..MY LIFE..MY FUN. I am going to find my own pleasure. NO one ever stopped all the hurting for in the past so I will just do what ever it take to take all the pain away from now on. How was I to know the choices I was going to make weren’t the right ones? No one ever taught me anything to the contrary any way. I guess that is what growing up was all about. Making your own choices and mistakes (mine just the same ones over and over and over again). But I think God always saw my pain and my frustration, He knew my heart and knew all the things I should have had and missed out on. This is where I knew He felt sorrow. And why he always kept those two females so close to me at all times, GRACE AND MERCY.

I am sure it was just as rough on HIM as it was on me allowing me to go through everything I had to get me to where I am this minute to see me like I told Wayne on the bus the other day when I told him “Look at me, I’m in a wheelchair and I am more happy today than when I had legs, a car and a job with power and a paycheck.” And I meant every word of it! Back then even with all that material and physical gain, my heart was a mess, my head was in the clouds, and my life was one big roller coaster heading out of control. And to top it off, God was no where in sight, at least in my eyes. Oh HE peeked in every once in a while when I was at my worst and He want to give me a message. But that only caused me to become paranoid and run and hide in or under something. But it left me with one thing I can never forget for the rest of my life. GOD IS PRESENT AT ALL TIMES. Not just when I pray. Not just when I call His name. He is in ME which mean where ever I am what ever I am doing what ever I am thinking HE IS PRESENT. There is no escaping the presence and the love of GOD no matter how far I try to run or hide. No matter what I am doing He will always be there. He IS a part OF me. It is only in my mind if I choose to include Him or not, but He will be there anyway no matter if I want to acknowledge Him in it or not. I am NOT alone. I have never BEEN alone. I am not ALONE right now. Someone else may not see Him or feel Him in the room. Anyone else may not hear His voice speaking in the room but He is never silent anymore. There is always a conversation going on. And I don’t need another pill to stop it. When a Dr. asks me “Mike are you hearing voices?” I better be careful what I say. They just might want to lock me up again. So what ever it is I do all day there are two of us together doing them. A song I wrote last week is titled “TALK TO ME” and that is just what we do. I to Him and HE to me, ALL THE TIME. Praying isn’t something with your eyes closed and your head bowed, It’s a constant conversation with your best friend that is in the room. Remember He can feel lonely to if He is ignored and standing or sitting right there. How would you feel if someone you were in the room with paid you no mind?

Day Seven

2008-05-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

DAY 7

The Reason for Everything

Bringing Glory to God

I heard it said once “If there is no GOD, who made that tree?” And what really gets me is the BIG BANG theory. OK SO something in space went BANG. Something collided. WHO MADE THE SOMETHING THAT COLLIDED? It doesn’t take a bunch of over educated and over paid scientist to figure that one out. A universe and planets that just happens to rotate around each other and make a bunch of countries all try to be the first to figure out WHY? And all from a BIG Anonymous BANG? And yet the homeless are starving in the USA and the kids in school have no pencils but we have men in space trying to figure out what is on a planet and what it is made of and that is more important to our government. Where is the REASON in that my Father?

I have always loved the sunsets, and yet artists try to recreate them. Any scenic view is always something any painter wants to copy, why? Because they are the most beautiful of the creations God has given us to enjoy every evening to say Good Night. Sleep now, your day is done. Look up remember me before you lie down. I promise to do it again tomorrow. OH YEA, wait until sunrise. As if it all just happens by chance. Come on DARWINites, get real. When I think of DARWINites I see a bunch of Ostriches standing around with their head stuck in the sand. If they would just pull their heads OUT, they could see the beauty of everything. But they are looking in the wrong place.

So what can I do to bring Glory to God? How can I start? When can I start? Right out of bed. Like I said before in a previous day’s writings, it used to be as soon as I woke up I would reach for the Menthol’s and go through half a pack before I ever put a foot on the floor. Then I would move from the bed to the living room to the chair in front of the television and finish the first pack before I even fed myself. I think the nicotine really did curb my appetite. No wonder I weighed in at 130 lbs. Healthy . . . NOT! SAD > > >YES! Worshipful, to whom? What a wonderful way to start the day. So what is a worshipful way to start the day? How about a shower? And not just jumping in and getting wet and getting out, but getting in and enjoying the fact that you are actually taking care of what there is left of my body and finding those nooks and crannies that have never seen soap and water before. Whose body. HIS BODY. Now as for the nicotine that is history. Four packs a day of history. I started late at the age of 28 when I was being codependent with Camacho and lighting them for him and decided to be like him and have one. Twenty years of bondage, mostly to Marlboro. And they had no COFFINS to buy with those MILES on the side of each pack either. They should, that would have at least been worth it? Well after that shower there is more ways to worship. For me it my spirit that I need to feed. And the best way for me is at the gift God gave me at the age of five. Sit down at the keys of my piano or Roland XP. God has written so many songs with me. Some are prayers; some are songs of healing, while others are just songs of joy and laughter and bring out the energy in me to motivate my day. ALL IN ALL, it makes way for all of heaven to get its act in motion to move in my life for the whole day. Eating is something that has been a chore in the past for me. Not that it is hard to eat physically or hard to keep the food down, it was just I had no desire to get to the kitchen to spend the time fixing any thing. If someone had been there to be my slave and do for me I would have eaten but to do it for myself, the cigarettes just took that place. But the mornings you will find me not just making breakfast but preparing food for the day. So when I want to eat again later, it is ready. No one ever said I was never prepared. Especially now that the days are full and once I get going time is short and it is much easier if I cook once and just have to heat it up quick style later. But I do very much enjoy the morning time in the kitchen. Quiet, peaceful, and Good Food.

So after I take care of the body of Mike, what about using who I just took care of for others? After all, God did not give me his grace and mercy to keep me here just to clean and feed myself day after day. Even today, March 22, 2008 I am getting compliments on my looks at age 47. The new hair cut, the weight gain people are noticing. Steve said I looked 20 years younger today when I visited him in jail. His eyes are much clearer and he had only ever seen me with that long curly hair down my back so the Mike he sees now is brand new to him. But Rick Warren is right when he says that worship is more than just singing and praising. I did a lot of stuff out there and in private with who I was to myself and with other people that was not right, that was very much the enemies calling instead of God’s purpose. So now, all that energy I had before, the ability to reach anyone for selfish purposes where ever I went, with whoever I chose, why should I be any different for GOD? I am still Mike, the man with the gift of persuasion. Once satan inspired now GHOST inspired. And what a difference. In the past after getting all the enemy offered me or getting what I wanted, I got something that I never wanted, all the guilt. That was what I went to bed with, woke up with, suffered day in and day out with. It was what I slammed speed into my arm over, it what I filled up the spoon with. But now the opposite of that is JOY. PRIDE. SATISFACTION. Three things that were so far out of reach that it was no wonder I was always searching and reaching for things that seemed so distant. Now they just seem to show up every time I do anything. One thing I have come to enjoy is when the phone rings and it is a church member, her name is Madalyn and her first words on the phone are “Mike. Do you want to pray? It’s a whole lot better than “Mike you got a DUB?” (a DUB is a 20 dollar sack of marijuana, and I used to sell them which is also how I got myself into the position to be held up at knife point 3 times, in my wheel chair, can you imaging the nerve of some fools robbing a man in a wheelchair?) I can see that the person God created me to be was always in there, I just needed to learn how to use those qualities in the right directions and in the correct manner that would bring out the best results. IE: getting robbed or feeling JOY. It’s not a hard choice anymore.

Gifts are another wonderful blessing that we all like to receive. Whether it’s on a birthday or a holiday, they always bring excitement. But how long do they usually last? As a child we either wear them out as we grow or get tired of them when the next new toy comes along and our desires are enticed some more. But if the gift is from God it is for a lifetime. It will never wear out. There will never be a something better that comes along next year. It will never go out of style. And it will only get better the more it is used. Stronger and more evident and more needed the more we engage it over and over again. And the blessings and the joy every time we have the opportunity to use it because when we do will only bring so much Glory to God that heaven can’t resist raining down on us. And people grip over not getting that Christmas bonus they were waiting for. BOO HOO! Finding out our gifts takes time. Sometimes for me it was getting compliments over and over again for the same things to realize what I was good at or what I was always getting recognized for to understand what they are. The first one was my ability to play the piano. At the age of five I was at my grandmother’s piano playing by ear. By high school I didn’t need lessons any more, just an audience. God gave me this talent, it was in my blood I guess because of my grandmother as she was the pianist for her church as I was growing up. But it wasn’t until I was thirty for that I remember writing the first song that God gave that had anything to do with Him or my life. Since then there have been many more, and after I bought my Roland XP at thirty four just after I was released from the hospital with my spinal cord injury, has my musical talent really come into its prime and the creations that God has given me to express myself have only been to say the least a way of for me to worship in a most powerful way in the mornings. It can also drive my neighbors crazy in the afternoons if I don’t have my headphones on. The gift of encouragement and hospitality use to come out in a way of people pleasing with the wrong motives. If I could butter someone up with the proper affection to GET AFFECTION or spend lots of money on someone to get the love of someone that I wanted, well, was I getting what I wanted? Were my needs really getting met? I thought so. Well as long as I kept up the charade it was. But quit with all that, run out of spoils for them, where did they go? Anywhere but to me. So who is it that is doing it now? Is it still me or the Spirit of God inside me? I have always loved people. Making them happy as always made me happy. I don’t expect anything in return except knowing that I have done something for them that they could not do for themselves. God has blessed me in so many ways. Why do I have and others do not have? How can I NOT GIVE what I have been given for free? I used to DREAM of the day I didn’t have to work and could sit around all day and just get high and not worry about work or responsibility. That day came but the responsibility was still there. And the DANGER increased. And the responsibility of WHO I WAS doing the partying with, and what trouble they were bringing on me was worse that being able to relax and enjoy it. But now my time is MY TIME. And who ever comes into my life wasn’t brought there by me anymore, it is HIS choosing. I trust God to make those decisions now. And if there is no one, that means it is HIM AND ME and that is just fine with me. I can never get enough time alone with just US. LIKE RIGHT NOW. My days are so full of either the needs of my home and my animal family (and that is a ZOO and a half) or if I have appointments and the time I spend getting to and from with the way I spend talking and the extra time God has me out there, you see I LOVE THE STREETS. They are where I came from, where I played for the devil and where I shame him the most, KNOCKING OUT DEMONS ONE TWO THREE! He thought he was playing games with me before and laughing. Well look who’s crying now! What’s fair is fair and it’s my turn to get some, and GOD’S.

I used to think life was boring after the end of drugs and sex, what else could there be to life? WHAT A STUPID THING TO FEEL. I used to be angry about being in a wheel chair and bitter. But without a car and having to walk and take the bus, it’s a lot faster in a Quickie than my feet. HA HA! Plus at 47 and the way I feel about being 47 and enjoying the ministry of youth and kids, anything to be cool to them, like a great big air horn to get their attention just gives me one more tool to use to minister with. I don’t think a walker would do the trick.

In all of this, in every part of my life I see GOD. In my hygiene, in my attention to my home, the friends I keep, the friends God gives me. Where ever I go, God is there, who ever I run into, God is directing my paths and putting just who wants to in front of me. Believe me when I say I am a change man only because I am HIS CREATION. He is my Creator. I am becoming what God has planned me to be to show the world HIM. I pray that when other see me, talk with me, that they are experiencing HIM in some form or fashion. Please Lord, continue to change me mold me and shape me into your likeness daily. Make me YOU in a very unique way. Can you see GOD with an Iguana on His shoulders, I CAN!

Day Six

2008-05-13T00:45:00.000-07:00

Day 6

Life is a Temporary Assignment

I know about temporary assignments, I used to send hundreds of men and women on them every day. It was my job. And I felt like God. I got to choose you got to work and where they would go and who didn’t get to go to work. Sometimes I was partial to my favorites and sometimes I didn’t have that opportunity. It was a lot of power for a 24 year old young man. But I think for the most part I was usually pretty fair. The job and the customer had to come first and that was why I was able to succeed so well at what I did. Yea I had my troubles and fortunately God put someone in a position over me that watched out for me that really kept his eye on me and looked out for me that allowed me to make mistakes without the fear of being called a bad kid or being fired at the drop of a hat. This was someone that God used to express His grace and mercy in my life. And until I started writing this day’s notes did I just realize this very fact. Brad Lane, my boss all those years was an implement of Gods grace and mercy in my life. Someone who overlooked my shortcomings and my character flaws and saw the hurting soul inside and stood by me through some of the hardest times of my life, Thank you Lord.

So what about my temporary assignment from my Father in heaven? How many times have I tried to shorten it? I remember one afternoon I had sent about 35 women to a factory in North Hollywood. About 30 minutes later they all returned to the office and told me they were on strike and wanted more money. Two of them it was their first day. I told them all “Either you all return to work or you will never work for me again and I will just replace you no questions asked!” Well it’s a little different for God. He just can’t take my 30 minute notice when I tell him I don’t like this life and I am going to check out of it tonight with what ever means I feel like trying to take my life or put my self at risk. He just can’t replace me with another because there is no other ME. Sometimes I wish I could start over again but since that isn’t possible God just has kept me here by His grace to confound the wise, prove everyone else wrong, and give me chance after chance to correct my mistakes until I get them right once and for all until I am ready to be used as He is now for his purposes to fulfill His goals in my life. “For soon some day I’ll see the old man is laid aside, and walk through life with head held high, with dignity and pride” was the last line in the first poem God gave me “From Boyhood to Manhood”. And it only took 18 years from when that first poem was written, not a lifetime, although it seemed like it at times.

So now looking at life as just something temporary as a whole new meaning. Today I am just one more day closer to a time when I will be walking with Jesus and not putting up with the things of this world. Today is just one more day closer to being in that eternity that has been promised to me all along that I have been hoping for all my life. Today or tomorrow may be the only day I have left to let someone I know and love what Jesus has done in my life. We just don’t know how much time we have left to do anything about what is really important here on earth. So the small things that I have been used to wasting time with just don’t have the same meaning as they used to in the past, for instance sitting around the apartment all day smoking cigarettes watching television and sleeping etc. Notice how I didn’t even include fixing a meal in there somewhere? You can see how interesting and productive my life was at one time and just how well I was taking care of myself. Instead I spend more time in worship and reading and writing and fixing meals than I do anything else in my life on a day to day basis. And what fills in the gaps in between is who ever God sends to pray with or minister to and that just about wraps up the day or night. Why I ever said there is nothing to do with my life is beyond me. Now I have so much to do, I actually am tired and sleep like a baby in the evenings. So I guess you could say that I am Trusting God that my Test are only Temporary and that I pass them quickly so my days will be fruitful and my blessings will multiply (since I am not ha ha) and my life will be a joy to all I encounter.

Day Five

2008-05-13T00:41:00.000-07:00

DAY 5

Seeing Life from God’s View

Well then, Move over God, you are blocking my view! I can’t see a thing. What’s that? I’m in YOUR WAY! I thought you could see it all, from anywhere? Oh you do. So I can’t cheat or get away with anything. BUMMER. So this is where all that Grace and Mercy stuff comes in. I get it. But don’t you think I took that a little too far MOST OF THE TIME? OH that’s where the LOVE stuff came in. Thank you Lord. I really needed that. I still do. It was like that geometry test I took in tenth grade. Before I even got the test passed back to me I had already put in my 15 answers on the computer card. I just guessed at A B C or D and hoped for the best. Hey I got a 100% on that one so I guess I could do that with anything. Guess, cheat, it was all the same to me. Only Duane saw me do it so I had a witness to my 100% so it was believable and the teacher had no idea how the kid that hardly ever showed up for class and was failing the class to begin with could ever get a perfect score on something that you had to use scratch paper to work out all the answers to begin with. Why didn’t I save my one and only time that would ever happen for the lotto later in life instead of a stupid geometry test?

And why didn’t anyone tell me that life was one big spiritual test to begin with either? All I was told was that I didn’t have to work my way to heaven, that the work had already been done. Well I learned so early in life that in my innocent little mind I thought that it didn’t matter what I did, I was bought and paid for so that gave me the freedom to make the mistakes WE WERE ALL GOING TO MAKE ANYWAY. Hey I was just trying to find myself, wasn’t i? Again, Thank you for all that grace and mercy and love and patience. You see I used to see God as I did my earth father or authority figures. I didn’t know what a loving one was supposed to be so how could I relate to one that was far more superior to them like GOD? Most of everything I have learned I have had to learn on my own, literally. Yea there have been a therapist here and there but for the most part it has been me and me alone to work out what the heck went on, and what is going on, and where the heck am I going, and what am I doing? Why do I feel like this? Why don’t I feel like That? Where is God in all of this? Is He really concerned about me? I pray and ask for what I think is His will for me but those request seem to have gone completely unanswered my whole life. If the bible says something is not right, I pray for that to be removed from my life, why isn’t it? And if it isn’t, why would God leave something that could send me to hell inside of me. Then expect me to just deal with it. He knew the answers I was looking for and the help that I searched for and the answers I got and the answers I didn’t get. The frustration I felt and the corners I felt backed into but He just seemed to leave me there all alone and then say “GO AHEAD MIKE PASS THIS TEST. Well of course I failed. But I had fun failing and on top of that it felt good too, so the next time it became easier and easier to fail again and again until the only test was could I make it out alive?

And what about TRUST? The first thing I ever remember trusting in was my friend Bill in elementary school. I trusting him to protect me when danger was near. That was it, nothing more. I didn’t even trust myself to be good at home, to keep my temper in control or stop myself from taking my anger out on my sister. I didn’t trust my dad to not hurt me or my mother to protect me from him. I couldn’t even trust my own body from reacting to or responding to things as I reached puberty. Then as a young adult meeting new people and trying new things, being the innocent young naive person that I seemed to be, those two words TRUST ME became the scariest two words in the English dictionary. All my trust, in anything was gone. It was just me against the world. So you can imagine how it came to be that I always had my guard up and my defenses at full guard all the time. I could spot a lie a mile away. I could see right through people without even looking. It could be just a tone or an inflection in their voice that gave them away. Their words didn’t even matter.

So how does this all apply to the lesson? Amongst all the hurt that I have endured and all the tests that I have failed, I believe that I have just recently past the biggest one of my life. It was when I called my doctor I had her take the Marinol away from me and was honest with her why she needed to do that. So much has changed since the moment that happened. I have learned to TRUST me for the first time in my life. I have been blessed with so much that has always been right in front of me but it was like my eyes were clouded before but now they have been opened, once I was blind but now I see. I the view is like no other I have ever seen. God has entrusted in me the lives of others who are and were in the same places that I have been in. The latest trust issue is my friend Maria who came to me last Thursday with a 3day notice on the third day needing money to pay the rent. I only had 148 dollars in the bank and she needed 100 of them. So I went to the ATM and met her and gave her the money. She said she could return it this Thursday or Friday. I hope so because that is all I have for the month. And as I am writing this I am no down to 17 of those dollars left. But I trust her. She is a friend I met at the bus stop last year that invited me to her Portuguese church so I have no reason to doubt her. I HOPE. This is where I am trusting in God that my simple act of kindness won’t be anything but that. It’s only money but when you are a broke man already money is money in the world we live in. The animals need the food. There’s always credit cards right? UGG! But we won’t have to go there, TRUST..Mike Trust.

Now that I am a little older and wiser, I should be able to see the TESTS of life and the areas that God wants me to TRUST Him in a little bit more clearly than I did when I was growing up and trying to just get through life one lesson and one more of the same lesson at a time, over and over again. ONCE is enough from now on. Time is too short to go through all that again. Besides, I would rather start enjoying life from the lessons I have learned instead of going back and repeating them just for the agony of it again. It is really not worth it and it really wouldn’t work again anyway. I really do like who I have become, and I have gathered a wealth of knowledge to go with it. More than most in areas that most fear to travel, but that’s ok, it was sometimes a scary place to be in. And most of my friends and people in those places didn’t make it out alive. Thanks again for all the Grace and Mercy and Love I have come to enjoy and accept as such a gift most never get to experience in their lifetime. It is priceless and I have lots of it to share and spread around.

Day Four

2008-05-13T00:38:00.000-07:00

Day 4

Made to Last Forever

Well I know I’m made to last for something! My gosh how many times have I already died or should have been dead? You would think just have I had in the past that I was indestructible! That is sort of how I lived my life. Like I knew I was supposed to live for a long time so I lived to take chances and risks where others said I will just sit here and watch you Mike, you go and have your fun if that is what you call fun. And that is just what I did. Way deep down I knew there was a purpose to my life. I knew I could GET AWAY with a lot more than what I was supposed to. Arrogant would have been a good word to describe me. One of the lines in one of my rhymes says “Catch me catch me if you can, if you do you’ll be my fan”, a perfect example of that. Forgive me Lord. Even all you did to try to humble me, and it took a lot, I still continued with that attitude of living life like there was no tomorrow.

Even though it’s been more that four days to do day four, my days are radically different. I am always concerned with my mental health what’s going on. Is this real? Is this something that is going to last? Is it a cycle? Is it the medication? I don’t think so. What’s going on started immediately when God said He released me when I got honest the day I spoke with my doctor. How could I go from the deepest darkest depression I have ever been in to the happiest day of my life in a just a moment? God put my thumb in Psalms 116 and when I got to verse 16 it said and I quote “He loosed my bonds”. Now I have read verses like this many many times in my life, but still I struggled with many things. So were those verses NOT TRUE? NO. I just wasn’t in a place to receive them in a way that I could be ready or that I had done my part yet. This time my part had been done. I had to lay it down first. So now when I live like there is no tomorrow the phrase has new meaning. It means there is no time to waste. One I was never important, to myself. I didn’t care about taking care of myself, even the little things like a shower in the morning, feeding my spirit. I look forward to all of it when I wake up now. I can’t start my day without them. It’s not a rush job either. I enjoy the process of all of it. I find the time of praise and worship lasting longer and longer each morning. Plus it’s all apart of His purpose for me as it is spent on the keyboard. The rest of my days have been nothing but ministry for others. Whether it is writing letters to someone in jail, looking for a way to get a bible to Steve who is in jail, opening up my home for friends from church, studying, feeding my neighbor who is struggling, and talking her and her boyfriend through their struggles at midnight and praying with them. I find my whole day is spent with doing for others instead of being lazy in front of a television, sleeping in bed, getting high, or feeling depressed anymore. Sundays is an all day event at church, as is Wednesday with counseling with my Pastor, then Bible study in the evenings. Friday nights is another night for church and fellowship with believers. The phone is a tool for prayer every day with prayer partners. Email is constantly going back and forth with encouragement, the internet is being used to minister and spread the word and testimony instead of a tool to sin and fall into the traps I used to. I still get to sleep at night restful and peaceful. I awake with expectations of a new day and hope that today I will accomplish more than yesterday and see and meet someone that I can share my life with where ever I go. I thank God that He kept me here. Daily others tell me they thank God that He has kept me here for them in some way. I see purpose to my life everyday. In everything I do. I love it when others come to me and ask me for something that I can do for them, for help in the smallest way that to them is the biggest thing in the world to them. They don’t always know it but at that moment, I AM BLESSED, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, THANK YOU LORD, KEEP ON SENDING YOU BLESSINGS, KEEP LETTING ME KNOW WHY YOU HAVE KEPT ME HERE EVERY TIME SOMEONE NEEDS ME TO HELP THEM.

Day Three

2008-05-13T00:37:00.001-07:00

DAY 3

What Drives My Life

DRIVEN BY GUILT:

Where do I start? This WAS most of my life. Why should a Christian ever feel this? But I did. Why? I think because my SIN was never an accident, it was always premeditated. I knew what I was going to do and did it anyway. I chose to turn my back and go the other way. But at the time after all the praying and all the wondering and all the confusion, it was either DIE or TRY! Either commit suicide or TRY what my mind and then the men with the DEGREES and the wall said I was. Remember I said before I sinned with David, (what a name for my first experience uh? UMM, I just had a thought, DAVID do you know what I am thinking?_____________) I went through the 4 spiritual laws. Even my guilt went before my sin then too. My guilt went before I cheated on him the first time, even though I had his permission. If only I could have had HIS permission. FAT CHANCE OF THAT UH? But that’s what my question was trying to ask, since I took my chances and followed my own path, God wasn’t about to just abandon me, He must have wanted to keep me safe no matter where I strayed, even if they weren’t Christians like Pastor Marvin was speaking about. AM I RIGHT? ( you know if you get to far behind in responding to and following along with me, this WILL FEEL LIKE THERAPY AND JUST TALKING TO MYSELF) (THERE IS A NEW TITLE TO A SONG……TALKING TO MYSELF……inspired by Pastor Barta…lol) But I did walk away. Trying to PUT GOD OUT and let the NEW LIFE sink in wasn’t easy. Whether it was Sterling, the boy I told you about dying and going back for the funeral, or hearing the sound of my mothers voice wondering what was happening to her son this time, there was always something reminding me that I had a life that revolved around GOD at one time. Plus the HOLY SPIRIT was still trying to remind me HE was still in there. After me and David split I moved back in with my parents for a short while. I say short because that what it was. I was now a 22 year old adult who thought that I could come and go as I pleased. That meant out on Friday night, home on Monday after work. PLUS they had to listen to my phone conversations. Then I quit the job I had and wasn’t working. So it was “GET UP GET A JOB AND FIND ANOTHER PLACE”. That was when I found my first “GAY JOB” at a sex club or bath house. Which is also where I found my wife, Crystal meth. And there it went, MY GUILT, with that first needle and that first rush all the guilt disappeared. My mind never felt anything but one thing ever again. The first time God ever came into contact with me again was when I tried an NA meeting in HOLLYWOOD and they started with the Serenity Prayer. The first word sent me out of the room. It was hard enough wondering if I was being set up meeting in a church. Someone assured me it wasn’t church. But there was that first word and my first step towards the door. One of the lines in one of my poems reads “I roamed the streets back and forth, the harder I became. The guilt and shame was obvious ‘twas a life I lived in shame”. This really was THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

Resentment and Anger…the stupid pencil

Brad once told me “Mike why do you get so angry?” I would blow up over the most dumbest stuff. Someone would drop a pencil on the floor and forget to pick it up. Well what if someone tripped over it! COMMON SENSE. Well everyone doesn’t have common sense Brad the man with the background in intelligence would tell me “Everyone doesn’t have it” What do you mean? That’s why they call it COMMON, you are born with it! We would go around and around over the issue of being born with common sense or not being born with common sense while the pencil just lied there. He would ask me “What happened in you life to make you so angry?” Nothing just the idiot that left the DAMN pencil on the floor! At the top of my lungs. A pencil, a stupid pencil and I was in a rage. Who did what to little Mikey so long ago that a pencil wrecked his world? Can you imagine how angry I would get if something really deserved my anger? I was a raging lunatic. No wonder I needed a needle and a spoon as soon as I got home. That stupid pencil could have killed me. LOL

My father was a volcano of anger. WHY because his father who passed away when he was only 16 was a fist puncher, throw you up against the wall, and bounce you around the room kind of father. He was probably feeling as safe as I did when he died as I was when my father left the house. I never asked him how he felt when he died but I was the happiest boy in school the day my dad left that is all I remember. AND THAT IS SAD. Happy that you dad left you. Happy you were abandoned. Pick the better of two evils. Which was worse I do not know. Pastor Marv said “EVERY DAY is written in Gods book. He didn’t write it like a script to be followed did he? IT just that he knew in advance what would happen right? RIGHT? So if I had succeeded at suicide it’s not that it was HIS plan for me to die that way, it’s just that He knew I would go that way. RIGHT? All these RIGHTS? Require an ANSWER from you. And yes I am sure I resented my dad for all this. For many years into adult hood. I resented anyone who didn’t give me what I wanted when I wanted it as I wanted it. For all my pain and suffering I felt everyone OWED me. I was going to get it no matter what it took. SO I TOOK from everyone. Not that I stole property, that wasn’t me, just emotions, feelings, self esteem. As long as I got my emotional needs met and was satisfied, that’s all that mattered. That doesn’t seem like the Mike you know now does it? Just the opposite, when Mike feels Loved, he is the most giving, loving, caring, genuine person anyone knows. I know this because people around me tell me this over and over again and over the years these adjectives have been hard for me to accept. But I have no problem with them anymore. I just love being them. I know that’s who I am. It’s who I have always been. It was what has always attracted people to me. It way people, (MEN) fell in love with me so easy and why I had to push them away so much. PLEASE do not get to close, I will only end up hurting you. I didn’t know why then, but I do now. That bi-polar thang that controlled me and my mood swings, I never knew what was going to come out of me or my mouth. Another reason why Camacho was so important, He stuck by me through so my of those mood swings and temper tantrums. How and why I have no idea. He really deserves a medal. I guess you could say I was like a MERCY person in his life at times the way you described her.

ME afraid….LIVING IN FEAR UH!

It ties in with all the anger. Why else would I get so angry? Fear was the first feeling I thing I ever knew. Whether it was at home or at school, I was always running away from something. I just never had anything to RUN TO. So I think COMING OUT was the first thing I had to RUN TO, the first thing that was safe, the first thing that I wasn’t considered BAD or Evil. I was accepted for the first time in my life. Yes there was fear but a different kind of fear. Like when you go on an adventure. Or a ride an amusement park, you know it is safe, but the unknown is where the fear lies. But it is something you are there for.

Fear of being hurt is something we all live with. But in the world I lived in, it was daily because I put myself out there daily. But then again when I didn’t want that fear, the drugs, the promiscuity, the anonymity kept me far away from having to deal with anything close to resembling an emotion, either a fearful one a guilty one or any other one. Just the temporary satisfaction of my physical needs and temporary pleasures I could get at the snap of a finger, literally. I didn’t want to waste time trying to go through the feelings of being hurt over and over again or hurting someone over and over again. I knew there was something wrong with me when I was a little boy, I knew there was something wrong with me as a teenager, and I definitely knew there was something wrong as an adult. I just didn’t know what it was. I was just the type of man that would eventually hurt you, either with his anger, temper, his lack of commitment, (I learned that when I was with David) my childish behavior, my rudeness any personality flaw that I had to disguise the fact that I didn’t like who I was and didn’t know how to fix it.

Me Materialistic ….not very

Yea I like nice things a nice apartment, a car, but it was never the things that made the man I was, just the money and the drugs back then. If I had money to buy the material to get high with and the means to keep the party going and to keep every one happy, I was IT. So if drugs were MATERIAL there you go. I did enjoy a better than average lifestyle most of my life. Even now on SSDI I have more than most in my life. It kind of hit home the other day when Mercy asked me on the phone if I lived in a board and care. You know what? When I was depressed in December and January, that’s all I wanted to do, I didn’t want all this responsibility, for myself or anything in this apartment. I was really ready to give it all up. Can you imagine? That would have drove me to ,.,,,?

OH OH . . . APPROVAL watch out

This is what I lived for. Acceptance, to be Loved, And willing to do anything to get it, and give anything to get it. Please just like me. Please just take me home. Please don’t leave. Well fine…just leave, I can get someone else. Let me have another shot first. It took away the pain and gave me the motivation to find another. Took away the guilt and vanished the fear. Looking for approval in all the wrong places. NO WONDER I never found it.

It goes back to DAY ONE it all begins with God. That is all the approval I NEED. WHEN HE approves everything else I need just shows up. He knows what I need because he made the original ME. He knows who I am. He knows what has been done to me. What I missed out on. Why I feel like I do. What will be healthy for me. What will be unhealthy for me. Who will be right, who will be wrong, who to keep away, who to bring into my life, when to bring them in, when to make the phone ring, and when to keep it silent. Worry is something I have always done. My mother was good at it and I picked up on it early on. IF you are on time you are late. Panic over the time. Little stuff like that. I made enough problems in my own life to worry about. The friends I used to keep. The situations I would place myself in. The lies I would have to remember to whom I told them to. Keeping track of my motives were the worst. Sometimes, most of the time I didn’t even know what my motives were. It was like auto pilot with my behaviors. As long as I thought I was getting what I needed or what I thought I wanted to make me feel good, I thought I was doing something right for me. It was my happiness that mattered. But now if it isn’t HIS purpose for what I am doing, If God isn’t the reason that something is being done. DOES IT MATTER, REALLY? Even a shower. It is taking care of HIS TEMPLE. FIXING A MEAL, the same thing. Riding to Walmart with Digger. Seeing the joy on ANYONES face is HIS purpose. Even if there isn’t a story or a testimony, just a smile to cheer them up from who know what their day has been like makes my day a better one.

The Benefits ….

Meaning, Simplifies, Focuses, and Prepares

All of the above, but the best one is the lack of worry and stress. SELF INFLICTED anyway. Sure there will be times of it all but not the kind of what I used to create for myself. Example: I have a reason to wake up. A purpose to the morning. I started with taking care of me. Then I like to go to the keyboard with my headphones (for the neighbors sake) And let the spirit take me where He wants to take me. Till I feel the need to read. Now I am writing…it’s 2pm..MIKE I hope you are following along. But you see what I mean. It’s not all about the first cigarette or the power button on the TV. (4 days without spending a dime on them) FOCUS . . .i was out of the house yesterday at 7:30 because I was anxious to get to SS. with a box of Krispy Kreams. The friends of the past have been removed. The friends of the past that are still around are now called MINISTRY. The new friends are now called blessings. My church is now a FOCUS. Which is SIMPLE and MEAINGFUL. Even Kisha.

Day Two

2008-05-13T00:35:00.002-07:00

My Purpose Driven Life

Day 2

I am Not an Accident

What areas of my personality, background, and physical appearance do I struggle to accept?

Where this all started. The first place I remember being aware of something different about myself was somewhere in grade school. I was at the doctor and he told me I was missing a muscle in my chest. A pectoral muscle. One side was “flat” where the other side was “normal”. I WAS DIFFERENT. WEAKER. INFERIOR. I always looked at other boys to see if they were missing this muscle and wanted to be like all the other boys. A LOT. I could tell who was stronger by the way they looked. The same as women look at each other by the size of their breast, I always focused on the boys by the way their bodies were shaped. I so much wanted to be normal. But I knew I was made different. GOD left something out. I knew it, the doctor said so. Why did God make me different right from the get go? Weaker. Nothing I could ever do would make me stronger or make my body form the way everyone else did. So my mind always told me you will always stay this way so why even try? But as I grew older into my teen years, this was how I began to pick and choose my friends, by the way they looked. If I couldn’t have the body I wanted, I chose friends with the bodies that I wanted. Dr. Williams said this was a psychological term called “Cannibalism”, not that I wanted to EAT them but have want I couldn’t be by having them. I think this could have been one of the ROOTS of my homosexuality. I can remember specific individuals that I lusted over just because of the way their bodies looked and I wanted the same. I wanted to touch them, feel them, and hold them from a very early age. Friends like Duane, Bill, Sam, Joe, etc. all these were in Jr. High. While guys were looking at girls breast, I was looking at boys pectoral muscles and seeing who’s was stronger and more defined. So of course this shaped my personality in many ways. The lack of interest in girls and the deep desire to be around my male friends I began to wonder what did all this mean? I never heard the word GAY but I knew that I had no interest in what the other boys had interest in. Just the opposite of what they had interest in. THEM. BUT DON’T TELL THEM. Just be their friend and do what ever it took to be their friend. I looked up to them. Why? They were better looking, stronger and had better stronger bodies than I did. God didn’t leave them without missing parts like He did me. I was and always would be the smaller weaker skinner flat chested Mike. They didn’t see it or care but I did. But after I grew up and became a man and entered the lifestyle that I did, the focus on the body was so prevalent that it got even worse. The male body was everything. I wanted a man with the perfect body and sought so hard to find it, possess it, all to myself.

All these difference, and trying to hide them, they all went against everything I was brought up to believe in. Why did GOD allow all this? God didn’t make mistakes. God wouldn’t make anything imperfect. BUT HE DID, and it was ME. And to me as a child, it all seemed dirty and nasty. Just looking at another boy in a physical way seemed like lust and disgust. I could never ask anyone why I felt this way. It must be evil. The devil must be inside me. He grew up in my dreams so it just seemed natural that he would continue to live in my thoughts and my feelings and control those too. I was scared of myself just for being alive. I shouldn’t be allowed to live with all this. It’s not right to have to live with all this so young. But I couldn’t hide even from myself.

I completely understand the term or phrase “COMING OUT” and the freedom it has for those who have been trapped their whole lives. I really do. I feel so wronged by the pastors I went to so long ago. I cried in their offices before I ever put a foot anywhere in a gay bar, a bath house, or answered an ad in a newspaper. WHY GOD did they give me all the wrong answers? Push me away? Tell me to JUSY PRAY? Honestly did you really want me to live all of this to live through all of this to see all of this to know all of this to understand all of this like an education that no one else could understand and make it through all of this for a REASON? Well here I am. I made it. Now use me. What will you do with me and all this knowledge I have acquired. I’m waiting !

Day One

2008-05-13T00:32:00.000-07:00

My Purpose Driven Life

Day One

It All Starts With God

I was always glad my life started with God, being brought up in church. Beginning with my maternal grandmother passed on to my mom and on to me. It really was my only sense of peace in my young confused and fearful mind. God wasn’t a hard concept to understand. I am glad now that I understand it that I was CHOSEN by God. Especially now that I know that at least 3 of my neighbors are self proclaimed atheist, does this mean that they are NOT chosen or that their time has not yet come? But still they are 3 of the nicest neighbors I have ever had so go figure, being atheist, a life without a belief in anything, hasn’t caused them to become anything bad or left them with anything even close to struggles that I have had in my life. They just have nothing to look forward to later on, and that is the sad part I guess. What is life if this is all there is?

Genesis says “Let US make man is OUR image”. But did it say “Why” they wanted to make man in the first place? I understand the concept of angels and no choice but to serve Him and Us with FREE WILL but why did GOD decide to create a world with such beings that world eventually chose to make all the wrong decisions and destroy what he had given them? It’s like Panasonic or General Motors who think they have come up with the “Next Best Thing” but no matter how good the warranty is, you know it will eventually fall apart, need repairs to keep it going and sooner or later, it will become worthless and just give out and die, it’s purpose is but for a short time. So it is with us. Sooner or later, we will too.

From early on in my life, with all the negative influences telling me that I was different, bad, no good, etc, trying to believe that I could ever have a purpose was something so far out of reach just learning to survive seemed like an uphill battle. When ever I found something I was good at, it never lasted. It always went away and got replaced by something else or taken away due to circumstances or my own loss of interest. So my feelings on the subject became one of “well I guess that wasn’t meant to be” or “I guess I’ll never be good at anything” or “nothing ever lasts”. Those three little phrases seemed to be at the fore front of most of the things I have tried or gotten involved with. Whether it was a job a hobby, a project, it just never stuck. Some might say that it was because of that Bi-polar thang I grew up with. My own brain had an influence on me and the way my life seemed to go. But then again that same thang was also what gave me all the energy and motivation to try and succeed at everything I have done. WHO KNOWS? I am still trying to figure this out right?

But how can I ever understand ME until I understand HIM? I know this is why you and I Pastor are here together, and why it’s not me and another therapist. I have spent years trying to figure out what went wrong. What caused this, or that? Why did I become this way or chose this lifestyle or have certain feelings or attractions? Or chose to want to destroy myself, kill myself? Hurt others in the process. I have spent years searching for these kinds of answers. I even heard it said one time that “psychology was mans answers for mans problems”. Is this really true? I would like an answer to this one. It was Teen Challenge that told me this when they didn’t want to deal with my issues and I had told them that my mom had taken me to three different “Christian” therapist that all gave her the same answer, “Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter, I am sorry to tell you this but your son is gay, I can’t change him, but I can help him LIVE WITH who HE IS! They all 3 said the same thing. So I believed them too, if it was coming from men with degrees on the wall IT MUST BE TRUE right? Imagine my poor parents. And all we got from that Pastor Borror was “haven’t you prayed about it?” What was there to pray for? How do you pray for something like that? He had no idea? Just pray. Well I added up the years between 11 and 21, multiplied them by 365 and told him that was the number of days I had been praying so far. I figured if God hadn’t figured out how to come up with an answer for me in that many days He probably was at just as much as a loss as the pastor was. So I gave up and gave in and decided to become GOOD AT SOMETHING. What a fine mess I had gotten myself into Gomer Pyle. Who know who I do feel sorry for, my Guardian Angel. How many requests for a change of venue or leave of absence he must have put in for time and time again? This is a tough one God. But I think he is finally getting his reprieve.

Our or my purpose isn’t necessarily to succeed at the things I am good at in life, anyone can do that. But to know the One who made us in such a way as He desires I believe is a goal very few ever obtain.