As The Deer...

Ps 42

I read this this morning and was blessed and encouraged to place all my hope in God. Trying times are always ahead and when I meet them there are so many paths that would lead me away from my trust in Christ just as there were for the psalmist who wrote this so many centuries ago. Then it hit me, God knew that there would be a day when His children would need this Word so He inspired men to place it in a group of writings or "books" and call it the Holy Bible. But what really hit me was that this is someones memoir. The writer went through this and recorded it as God gave him the inspiration to do so. Of course I have always known this but this morning I was feeling like I was the only one who ever went through it. I was feeling sorry for myself. Yes, I was encouraged, yes, I was strengthened and just as it was for David it was up to me to get myself out of this funk, nobody was going to do it for me. So I sought out God. Isn't it nice to know that Holy Spirit is there to comfort and strengthen us and isn't it even more awesome that our Heavenly Father is there to chastise us when we begin to act like spoiled children and throw our little pity parties? My day is too full to allow me to get in the way of God being glorified. He truly is The Lifter Of My Head.

God Bless and lets look up today, you cant see your future if your looking at the ground.

Part 5 of A Winning Hand

When I was 15 I sat next to my brother in a church pew at Sunnyslope Christian Center in Hollister, CA as the preacher asked if there was anyone in the audience who wanted to give their life to Christ. My brother who had just graduated from SF Teen Challenge and had been trying to get me in church since he got out leaned over to me and said “Come on Cy, God wants to forgive you of your sins and have a relationship with you.” My response to him was, “I don’t need God or forgiveness, I never hurt anyone and I have everything I need already.” Of course I doubted everything I just told him. I just wasn’t sure of anything except this, I knew everything would change and I didn’t want it to.

On that day God offered me the winning hand and I refused to place my bet. I knew that if I was to take God up on His promise that I would lose all that I had, even though I believed that what I had was not enough to give me the things I wanted in life. But I always had so little that I was unwilling to part with the little I did have. What I didn’t know was that soon the little I had would lead me down a path that would eventually leave me with nothing at all.

I found myself living and sleeping on a pile of discarded cushions behind a dumpster, eating what stores throw away, pushing around a shopping cart as I went about my days digging in the trash for recyclables and begging for drug money on street or in front of the local video store. I had not only lost everything material in life but I lost my family and most importantly my opportunity to raise my only son. It was the loss of him that kept me stuck in depression and misery for over 7 years.

What I didn’t know is that God is the Master of taking little things and filling them with His power to do big things.

Part 4 of A Winning Hand

Christ's example of what our aim is and how we can use service to rise above "placement in life":

Philippians 2:5-8 NKJV

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: ⁶ Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; ⁷ rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. ⁸ And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

I was converted to Christianity when I was 25 but was not fully committed until I was 39. I had spent my youth chasing the American Dream and using my placement in life as an excuse for failure and a reason to fail. Consequently I ended up never really achieving any real success. There were times when I felt like true success was just right around the corner but I always believed that it was reserved for someone else and not “a guy like me”. That was my failing, I believed in the lie planted in me long before when I was a young boy, I had to be just like everyone else around me. Trouble is all my friends and family were drug users, drinkers and criminals. This was my lot in life. Or so I believed.

When God called me into the ministry I was just about to be 40 and I was in a drug rehab facility. San Francisco Teen Challenge was a place where I could learn to connect with God and discover that there is so much more to life than obtaining the American Dream. In fact that dream is not and never was what God had called me to. His calling is so much more than what a nation can offer, it takes you beyond your own means, further than yourself and higher than any of your own expectations. I see now that there is nothing I cannot accomplish as long as I continue to trust in Him and allow Him to lead.

Part 3 of A Winning Hand

The Apostle Paul understood that even though he had achieved all of what his culture considered success, there was something that kept him from finding true satisfaction in life. He writes about having obtained success in many areas, in the area of religious zeal, in the area of the law, in the area of status and position in life, all of these he was either born into or have achieved by diligence in study and zeal in commitment. However, all these compared to reaching out for a closer relationship with Christ is nothing. When writing about his successes the Apostle Paul says this:

Philippians 3:3-8 (GNT)

³ It is we, not they, who have received the true circumcision, for we worship God by means of his Spirit and rejoice in our life in union with Christ Jesus. We do not put any trust in external ceremonies.⁴ I could, of course, put my trust in such things. If any of you think you can trust in external ceremonies, I have even more reason to feel that way.⁵ I was circumcised when I was a week old. I am an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, a pure-blooded Hebrew. As far as keeping the Jewish Law is concerned, I was a Pharisee,⁶ and I was so zealous that I persecuted the church. As far as a person can be righteous by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault.⁷ But all those things that I might count as profit I now reckon as loss for Christ's sake.⁸ Not only those things; I reckon everything as complete loss for the sake of what is so much more valuable, the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have thrown everything away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ.

He continues by telling us of the discovery he has made that allows him to feel so passionately about something that he would throw away all he has and embrace a life challenged with one hardship after another.

Philippians 3:9-11 (GNT)

⁹ and be completely united with him. I no longer have a righteousness of my own, the kind that is gained by obeying the Law. I now have the righteousness that is given through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is based on faith.¹⁰ All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings and become like him in his death,¹¹ in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life.

Paul later writes about discovering something of much more worth and value than status or station and his pursuit of it. He then makes this proclamation:

Philippians 3:12-14 (NKJV)

¹² Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. ¹³ Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, ¹⁴ I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

“It's not what you are willing to do that will make you successful. It's what you are willing to do without until you get there.” ~Daniel Waldschmidt~

A Winning Hand part 2

Like many Americans today I always believed that if you didn’t have what the Jones’ had then you were lacking in life. And if you had something nobody else had then you were really doing well because then everyone will desire what you have.

The sad truth is that though this is a world view it is also very prevalent in the church today, so even after coming to Christ I still struggled with my own self-worth. I believe that this type of thinking played a major role in my inability to gain a stable relationship with Christ and I found myself going in and out of church. It wasn’t until I began to learn from the Scriptures and get my identity from the Truths and Promises found in God’s Word that I was able to be truly satisfied and content in Christ. It doesn’t mean I have taken a vow of poverty and have learned to live without, it just means that I have learned to live happily with what I have, knowing that God does not only supply all my needs but is the Giver of all good gifts.

Jesus after warning us of the nature of the devil says this aabout Himself, “I have come to give life and life more abundantly!” John 10:10b That word abundant means, more, much and big! This means that I can expect much from God, I can expect more from God than what the world can offer me, and I can expect big things from God! Like not just my son getting saved but his children as well coming to know Christ as Savior, not just my bills being paid but having money left over to help others meet their own needs. It means not only will I be guarded from illness when everyone else around me is getting the flu or a cold but that He can heal me of major, life threatening diseases like Hepatitis or Diabetes!

Paul understood this as well and next time we will get further into the Scriptures and see what God has to say about the Hand we were dealt….

A Winning Hand part 1

“…if you’re dealt four aces, that doesn’t make you necessarily a great poker player.”

~Mitt Romney~

In the law of opposites if this statement is true then so is its counter.

“If you are dealt a bad hand it doesn’t necessarily make you a bad poker player.”

Too often many of us complain about the hand we are dealt and use our “unlucky condition” to excuse us from believing in ourselves and aiming high in life. How do I know this? Well, I lived it.

I have told myself many times in the past, “Only if… or I wish this… or I wish that…” and this type of thinking has hindered me more than any bad choice I have ever made or any mistake I have made. You may say “How can you say that? You’re a former heroin addict you were homeless and begged for money and ate out of supermarket dumpsters. Weren’t those bad choices the reasons for you not becoming successful in life?”

My answer to you would be, no. Those aren’t the reasons for me never owning my own home or buying a new car. Those choices are not the reasons that I haven’t been able to be the father I would have liked to have been or have raised a large and happy family. The reason I believe I have failed in my past is because I had my eye on the wrong prize. Mind you, I no longer believe myself to be a failure even though I still do not have any of what the world would consider “success”, but even so, I am still not in want. I have all that I need for happiness and satisfaction, the restoration God has brought to my life is nothing short of amazing. I have found a new target to aim for and it is one much loftier than material wealth. I have discovered eternal life with Christ and an abundant life on Earth.

In part 2 we will learn from where this great revelation has come.