I am continually amazed at how God provides such an abundance of truths from the wisdom writings and how they mesh or flow into my circumstances today. Perhaps I’m encouraged to move ahead in confidence, or to wait patiently though seldom with adequate understanding. Perhaps I’m merely awaiting confirmation, but all too often it seems, the experience requires a very painful but oh so necessary, total reworking of me and everything I hold dear, or increasingly, NOT dear enough!
I am increasingly aware I have either developed, been given, or am acquiring a dream/desire to communicate by writing. Isn’t that just totally absurd? Me write? Who would ever take time to read it? And what would I ever write about? I’m still waiting for several articulate readers to step forth with a heavy dose of a reality check!
In my defense though, coaching protocols today encourage us to discover or uncover our dreams/desires and this leads us frequently back into our earlier days, maybe even back to grade school, to a time when circumstances overruled dreams and desires. Perhaps your dreams and desires were restrained, repressed, discouraged, misunderstood, or for sure at least, not practical in your life situation then or later for whatever reason. And only now sadly, are you and I finally having the luxury of discovering how the God given desires of our hearts are so intricately interwoven with our natural skills and abilities even though as I did my entire life, lied to myself while pursuing all my other adventures while in my workaholic stupor. Hopefully, you were not as obsessed as I!
You know this writing all began quite innocently as Loretta had encouraged me to write throughout our marriage but I seldom obliged. I literally had nothing to write about. No creativity was present. Then our two younger sons several years ago threw in their support and this past November, our eldest set me up with a blog that was all new to me. But I did write, or tried at least. Basically, I just looked out the windows, admired the beauty, and started typing.
Some of you remember those first posts. Actually, the first post comes up when you google merlinsmustache.com as “Greetings.” As I recall, Ben was getting ready to leave when he said “you need to quick write something introductory” so he could show me the process before he left. Now I am surprised the post is as coherent as it is considering the time frame of its birth.
The very thought I would someday enjoy spending hours communicating through a keyboard when I never even took a typing class, was a huge stretch … but now I even have a future list of subjects I am looking forward to developing when time permits.
All I can say at this moment on Friday afternoon at 4:59 PM, is this. I find it simply amazing how God has worked in us as Loretta and I are two very imperfect vessels, especially I. True, we had been considering God’s will or suggestions for our retirement for years. Howbeit now, the focus has evolved into a consuming passion for us since the 9/18/18 accident. We are not persons of great faith or even significant prayer warriors. But being sidelined on the bench has provided me time for considerable reading, listening, and prayer coupled with an intense seeking to know and experience God as I have never done prior, and it has been in a few words, “simply marvelous.”
Never in my life have I been as happy, fulfilled, and filled with expectations when I really have no concrete basis for such. It certainly is not because I have any great predictions for my liking to write or because I’m getting any accolades from anyone anywhere!
Recently I was listening to an evangelist relate his wilderness experience of God earlier leading him into significant kingdom building activities progressing toward the dream he had heard from God years earlier, but then all the events in this couple’s life were disrupted for several years. And during their wilderness times of silence, solitude and simplicity, he heard God say “I just wanted to know if you were really in love with me, or merely with the dream of what I could do for you.” And that stopped me dead in my tracks as I was working in the lab at the time when I heard it. I hit the 30 second rewind button on audible twice to hear it again. And again. Yes, those 25 words suddenly turned the lights on for me spiritually. Am I actually so in love with Jesus, seeking His righteousness, His holiness, His presence, regardless of the task, OR was I only in love with the dream of what He could do for me. May I explain.
Only of late do I realize how I have been so deceived in my past quests for spiritual accomplishment. Yes, decades ago I was likely unknowingly the model Pharisee at my church. Eventually I “matured,” and saw the error of my ways and actually went underground by just staying off the platform choosing instead to engage others in their stories of their faith walks and be an encouragement as a faith facilitator. During my Pharisee stint, I once focused my “merlin’s project attention” on several men outside the church without faith and in visible need of a relationship with Jesus.
There are several key words here: “merlin’s project” and “visible.” The first, project, is what addictive people, such as myself do when they hide behind rather than face their separation from God and remain synthetic in their relationships. Visible in the fact it was readily apparent these men needed Jesus but what was not visible to me, though it was very visible to Loretta, was the extent to which I personally needed healing and restoration before I could speak truth into these men’s lives. “Merlin’s projects” continually during our marriage consumed and diverted my energy and attention away from my wife and family, even and especially, my spiritual growth, illustrating so well the hypocrisy of these hidden addictions that we often unknowingly tolerate in our relationships, families, churches and communities.
Addictions in addition to those we normally consider, are also found in such as food, travel, entertainment, continual self-centered thoughts, shopping, media, clothes, image, financial security, name brands, children’s activities, sports, software, pets, landscaping, gardens, books, google, tools, music, attitudes, conversation, busyness, intellectualism, creativity, hobbies, politics, minimalism, demonic, spiritualism, reading, games, and especially, physical health and well being, etc.
Understand we human beings are very capable of making virtually anything “addictive” if we inadvertently shift our essential purpose from being “human beings” reflecting God’s-best-possible-version-of-us; to merely becoming “human doings,” reflecting our consumptive addictive busyness and-less-than-desirable-version-of-ourselves.
Is it possible we’ve been trying too hard to facilitate healing for others as I did with those two men, when actually we desperately need first to receive healing from our “hidden” addictions ourselves? And then when we do recognize our hypocrisy, rather than immediately seeking forgiveness, restoration, and empowerment as we ought, we are embarrassed and understandably so… so we sit , soak, and sour in the safety of our pew, until we just can’t handle all the hypocrisy any longer, so we split. I keep wondering what effect these “hidden addictions” or “displaced affections” are having in our congregations today. Perhaps this explains why some today are seemingly so easily withdrawing their church support and attendance.
Or consider addiction’s effect from a different angle. You have heard it said that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. That is not from the Sermon on the Mount either! I believe every area of life can be weakened by one area of addiction. Mahatma Gandhi once wrote, “Man cannot do right in one department of life while he is occupied in doing wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole.” And we all know only the blood of Jesus and His righteousness can make our lives “one indivisible whole” and once and for all, stop all of this daily trivial pursuit nonsense full of excuses addictions!
I shared all of this to simply say this. I am only now learning to dream real dreams. I have had many dreams over the years but I never wrote them down. Dreams not written down and reviewed frequently are merely of-no- effect-wishes! Likely most of these wishes were quite selfish and self serving rather than “restorative and healing” to both myself and others in our quest to become the-best-versions-of-ourselves/themselves.
The question now for me this Friday evening on June 14, 2019 is “Do I trust God with my desire to communicate to whomever wherever however with whatever?” Or is my desire, enjoyment and dream to write, merely another one of “merlin’s misdirected self-centered addictive projects” in my feeble attempt at spiritual discovery, hopefully fulfillment? Time will tell. It usually (or always) does.
How about you? Is God tweaking your heart strings yet about anything possibly addictive for you? Are you on the path presently experiencing “restoration and healing,” not only for yourself, but also with the others in your life from over the years, where now, for whatever reason, it seems relationships may have weakened, perhaps even “soured?” And if so, for very little fault of your own, but you know now without a doubt, that you solely have the power and even quite possibly, the responsibility to initiate the process to make both yourself and “all of them” the best-possible-version-of-themselves now, and hopefully, even guide them into eternity. Can you trust God on this? The time is now. Become a faith facilitator. Many are watching you! Your destiny and your legacy lie in the balance.
Everything in life begins with a thought, leading to conversation, leading to relationship, leading to dreams and desires, leading to choices and decisions, leading to destiny and legacy, leading to joy or misery ….
Listening, asking questions and offering accountability is what I do.
Destination discovery, goal setting and implementing is what you do.
Celebrating victories is what we do.
Blessings as you go forth now resisting addictions by continually facilitating restoration and healing>>>> merlin