CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

K.LeVeq

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How to Read the Bible and Actually Get Something Out of It!

God’s Word was a mystery to me. Oh, I knew it. Or could quote some of it. I knew a lot of the stories. Understand it? Really get something from it? No. Hear God while reading the Bible? Nope, not ever. I am thankful to a good friend for his mentorship in the below method and others in studying God’s Word at the direction of the Holy Spirit. Key point…at the direction of the Holy Spirit. Trust me on this. Below are the steps I follow. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Get a journal. Use it everyday just for your Bible reading. Trust me on this. If you like things like documenting, journaling, trending then you will want a journal just for this. Journaling is a great practice for actually remembering things, well it is for me. I am getting old so journaling is a must. I also find it really neat to revisit my past, see where God has brought me from. When you do this, it reminds you of how good God is. Really good. I can’t see it in the middle but revisiting is eye opening. 

Read His Word. Everyday. Yeah, I know, right? Actually spend time in His word. Not hours. I spend about 15 minutes a day. You have 15 minutes you can spare by turning off your phone. Trust me, you can find the time. I used to think I had to be a Biblical scholar or more of a scholar than I currently am to read the Bible and understand it. Actually, not so much. I use blueletterbible.org. It’s an amazing website. Then I do the following:

  1. Decide what book I will read
  2. Read a passage a day (maybe 5 – 10 verses)
  3. Identify the verse or verses that resonate with me
  4. Write them down in my journal
  5. Use the concordance in blueletterbible.org to further understand those verses
  6. Write down what I hear from the Holy Spirit

See this is the part where God speaks. His Holy Spirit will reveal truths to you when you read His word. Don’t get frustrated to start. It’s up to HIM to reveal His truth to you. Be faithful and He will do so. So you don’t forget them, WRITE THEM DOWN. 

Pray. Yeah, pray. After I read His Word and discover what He has for me, I pray. I pray the same way every time. I follow ACTS (Acknowledge, Confess, Thank, Supplicate). I first acknowledge and praise my God and Savior for who He is. Then I confess my unconfessed sin in as much detail as I possibly can. Then I thank Him for what He has done for me in my life. Finally, supplication. I bring my requests to Him. I ask Him to validate the truths I read in His word. I pray specifically. 

Reading His Word daily was really intimidating to me until I started using this method. Figure out what works for you and spend time in His Word daily. Don’t miss out on what the Holy Spirit has for you!

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What Is In a Name?

By Keith B., NotUnknown.com

What is your name? Where does it come from? Is it a family name? Does it have special meaning? I have an interesting middle name. My middle name is LeVeq, pronounced (la vek). My grandmother liked unique names. My dad’s name was King. His older brother, my namesake, was LeVeq. He died at 4 years of age. Dad told me that was his first real experience of sorrow and grief, even though he doesn’t remember LeVeq. He mourned for the absence of a brother close to his age. I understand that as a middle child by five years older and younger.

As you can imagine, I received a lot of teasing about my middle name. I didn’t mind, actually. I was and am proud of that name and the meaning behind it. I knew how special that name was to my father. The fact that he gave that name to me has always been a source of pride, even when others didn’t see it that way. 

I was in church recently listening to a sermon on Moses and the burning bush. What I didn’t remember was that Moses asked God what name he was to tell the Israelites of who gave him direction. Names were important then. Names were interspersed with meaning and gravity. They told the story of who you were and where you came from. God’s name was no different. He told Moses to tell them “I am who I am. Say this to the people of Israel. I AM has sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14). 

God was very specific when He directed Moses to tell the people who sent him. He sent a message to Moses and the Israelites. He reminded them that He is I AM. Not I WAS. Not I WILL BE. He is the great I AM. He is now, was before, and always will be. That is who we serve. We served the God who is with us and in relationship with us right now. Not who we hope to be good enough for in the future. Not who we were good enough to meet before we fell. He is our God now. He reminded Moses and the Israelites that He is the God for their “right now.” He was with them in their struggles, pain, and loneliness. He wasn’t a God they had to hope for. He is the God of right now. Today.

What name do you use for God? Is your relationship with Him happening right now or are you trying to aspire to reach him as the God of your future when you are good enough, clean enough, sober enough, free from sin enough? Just … stop!

I live my day to day with the God of right now. I start each day using step 3 and turning my life and will over to Him…today. Then I ask him to show me where I have been wrong and promptly admit it. I do a searching and fearless moral inventory to ask Him to show me where my flaws and defects are showing up. I ask Him to make me ready to give up my shortcomings and then remove them. I seek His guidance on where to make amends. 

Living in recovery with Him is a daily pursuit. The God of right now, the great I AM, is the God of recovery, the God of one day at a time. He is the God who knows my past, loves me anyway, and walks me through each day. Is your name for God, I AM? I encourage to trust Him with your today…everyday.

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God’s Will…How the Heck Do I Find It????

I am a planner. I like to use “strategery.” If you don’t know that word, you are too young and should probably stop reading now. So anyway. I am a planner or as I like to say, a strategic thinker. Sounds so much better. I remember being in high school, coming to the end, and trying to figure out what was next. Where was I going to college? What was my career going to be? What was the PLAN????

I became very much a seeker at this time. Seeking out God’s will for my life. His plan. What was it and how do I find it? I asked Him to show me. I sought it out in every way I could. I read scripture, prayed, asked my parents. Always the same answer…He will reveal it in His timing. ARRRGGGHHHHHH!!! Are you serious? Really? Ok, I will wait. Only…I never got it. No great revelation, no burning bush, no master plan.

I spent the next 30 years following my own plan. Oh, I prayed. And bargained. Sought His strategic vision for my life, especially when things went very wrong as happened quite a lot. When He didn’t provide it to me, I just kept driving and following my own way. My own best decisions led me to unemployment, leaving my wife and family, sons who wouldn’t speak to me, spiritually bankrupt, and financially unstable. My plan worked out really well!

After much forced humility, soul searching, surrender, and brokenness, God has shown me His will…daily. Not in a large, strategic, forward looking way. Just day by day. It took me learning to live one day at a time to realize that He was right beside me, hoping to guide me if I would just surrender.

God’s will becomes apparent to me a step at a time. He reveals it in His timing but in how I didn’t expect. After I worked step 3, turning my life and my WILL over to the care of God, I began to see how He reveals His will to me. When I listen, seek His guidance in my daily minute by minute life, He reveals more. Only He hasn’t so far given me the larger plan.

I recently began work on a Masters in Addiction Counseling degree. God made it very plain to me through prayer, His word, and many of you that I should pursue this. So I have. Only He didn’t tell me how to pay for it, how to navigate, how to get to graduation and practice. He let me know much as He let Abram know…get up and go. I will get you there. Scary but freeing.

In 2016, as I stared down the end of my marriage and life as I knew it, I first truly recognized God’s guidance in my life at the age of 48. He clearly told me that I needed to do a full disclosure of my sexual immorality to my wife. He promised me I would survive. He didn’t reveal how that would look or what would happen in between. That is the first time in my life that I stepped aside, and as my friend Dan says, “let Him drive.” 

What I found was His decisions and plans are better than mine. The last 4+ years have been wonderful, ugly, painful, full of joy, full of sorry and damage. I survived. My marriage survived. My boys speak to me. I don’t know how we got here. I just know I didn’t drive.

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Amends…Should I?

We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. – Step 9

Amends. Amends are defined as to compensate or make up for a wrongdoing. For me, Step 9 seemed overwhelming and terrifying. But necessary. Something I couldn’t not do. By the time I reached this step, I had been in recovery for almost a year. I had disclosed my wrong doings to my wife, read my first step in front of a room full of men at a Castimonia meeting, and shared my step five, the core of my addiction, with a friend who had no idea what addiction was or the impact on others. Making amends didn’t seem like a choice more like a given. 

After I made amends…to my wife, my kids, my mother, former co-workers, my friends…I got to see God work in the aftermath first hand. Some of those relationships ended. A few without acknowledgment. A couple of former co-workers heard my amends and dismissed them, choosing to hold on to who I was and what I had done before. 

Many relationships gained a level of closure. My mother and were strained at the end of her life. I loved her but couldn’t have her negativity and unhealthiness as a part of my every day. I was able to get to a detente, a peace, with her. I explained to her how I felt I had wronged her, how my behavior had been disappointing and detrimental to her and my father. She didn’t want to hear it, wanting to excuse it and let me off easily, but I asked her to let me finish. She did, was gracious, and we had the rest of her time together without walls between us.

Some relationships have been restored. My oldest son saw the betrayal I had towards him and his brother and mother, and completely shut me out for over a year. He refused to speak to me or acknowledge me. He sought his own healing and recovery, found it, and in the process allowed me to be his Dad again. My youngest son only asked me to do one thing…don’t lie to him anymore. 

And my wife…my wife has spent the last 3 plus years trying to muscle past the totality of deception and hurt I inflicted on her, forget it, bury it deep, and act as if it didn’t happen.  She did so because she thought that would restore our relationship, not seeing that she needed that time to recover and heal. When the hurt and resentments became too much for her, she started seeing a counselor, finding health and allowing our two to become one again.

But what if I hadn’t chosen to make amends? What would have happened? This question occurred to me while reading Proverbs. In chapter 5, starting in verse 11, Solomon reveals a picture of a man at the end of his life, lamenting the results of his adultery and refusal to repent:

“And when you groan at your latter end, When your flesh and your body are consumed; And you say, “How I have hated instruction! And my heart spurned reproof! And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, Nor inclined my ear to my instructors! I was almost in utter ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation.”

I had a very good friend who passed away about a year ago. He knew me before and after recovery. We had similar jobs, boys who were close in age, and met for coffee together over the years. In the midst of my early recovery, he confessed to me that he and his wife had separated, and that he had fallen in love with another woman from work. I asked if he had been pursuing that relationship prior to leaving his wife…and he wouldn’t answer. 

We spoke a number of times over the next few months. Through his divorce, cancer diagnosis, new marriage, and pain and dismay at the toll all of this was taking on his boys. His health deteriorated and his personal life continued to be a source of constant regret. Prior to his death, he told me that he never should have divorced his first wife, that he regretted the impact on his sons, his family, and his legacy. His legacy…that got my attention.

Recently I was talking with a great friend in recovery. He was stuck in his step work and reached out for help much as I have reached out to him in the past. You know how you meet guys who you can just see what God is going to do through them for others, he is one of those guys. He was asking a couple of us experienced (older I think is what he actually meant) guys on how he can get motivated to move forward. I shared with him the impact of amends. The gift of giving that to your wife, your friends, your kids, your co-workers…giving them that opportunity to release that hurt and resentment. Of how he was depriving them of that chance to let go. 

What I missed at the time was also what he was missing. He was missing the front row seat to watch God work in hurt, resentment, difficulty, pain…and use it for His will. And to build a new legacy…one of transparency, humility, and submission to God.

Not a bad way forward.

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Being Present

Checking out was my way of being selfish. When I reflect on how I was before, it’s hard for me to understand how I could purposefully miss so much. That’s exactly what I did, purposefully miss so much of my marriage. Events in my sons’ lives that seemed small at the time but seem gigantic now. Thinking about those specific times, I feel like an outsider. Around sometimes but never fully there. Just on the periphery. Watching but not participating. Missing all the important moments.

As I think about many of those times now, I can’t for the life of me understand how pursuing personal gratification was more important than my wife or my boys. The list of events I missed is long. The number of things I was physically present for and mentally absent is much much longer. A lot of those times I remember from photos but the actual memories are a blur. Like I saw a snippet of a video but didn’t really see the whole thing. I have the Cliff’s notes version of parts of my memories. 

I am reminded of what I have missed by those that were present. My wife and I are remodeling a house and preparing to move. We were pulling out old pictures and came upon some from my oldest son’s junior year. It was when he had a lead role in his high school play. I made it back for the performance after having revealed to my wife and sons that I wanted to leave them. My wife let me know that I could come home if I would walk away from that affair partner. I took the way out and ran towards home. Only I still wasn’t completely present. 

My oldest son saw the picture and the look on his face. He commented how painful that time was. How justified he and his brother were for hating me during that time. Later, I realized how much he hated me. In that picture, during that moment, I had no idea. Looking at his face in that photo now, I see the pain and hurt at one of the most important times in his life. That pain and hurt is ingrained in his expression because of me. I feel like throwing up just thinking about it and what I did to him.

My youngest son likes to go to Starbucks for coffee, really because he likes getting out of the house and driving. He is graduating from high school this year. Any time he asks me to ride with him, I go. We were recently driving when a song came on the radio. He got very quiet. I didn’t understand what was going on. He immediately turned off the music, which is very unlike him. I asked him what was going on. 

“I can’t listen to that song,” he said.

“Why not,” I asked? “What’s wrong with it?”

“Don’t you remember it,” he asked?

“No, I don’t. Should I?”

“It was popular when you and Mom were fighting so much. Right after you came back home.”

Ugh. I could see the lines at the corners of his mouth turning down. The stress across his brow. The pain that hadn’t dissipated from four years prior. Still just under the surface.

“I know you and I have talked a lot about that time. I just want you to know again how sorry I am for how I hurt you and your brother and especially your Mom. Nothing can excuse that. I am so sorry.”

“I know,” he said.

“You and I also talked about how I could make amends to you. The only way I know how is to be a good Dad, be present, and always tell you the truth. Is there anything else I can do,” I asked?

“No, just do that. Be honest. Tell me the truth. And be here.”

COVID-19 and the results of a global pandemic have been overwhelming to so many people. Sickness, death, job loss, economic hardship, food shortages, isolation. The effects are still being meted out on all of us. As I search through the circumstances of now and look for how God can use this for His benefit, the one area I see is the ability to be present. In the midst of all of this, I have been allowed to spend so much time with my wife and kids. Even as they are out of the house or about to be out, they have both been staying with us through this. I can’t even quantify how incredible this time has been with them.

Keith B. NotUnknown.com

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Thank you God for giving me an opportunity to be present.