CASTIMONIA

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A Healthy Regret

There is an old story about the time Emperor Frederick the Great visited Potsdam Prison. He spoke with the prisoners, and each man claimed to be innocent, a victim of the system. One man, however, sat silently in the corner.

The ruler asked him, “And you, sir, who do you blame for your sentence?”

His response was, “Your majesty, I am guilty and richly deserve my punishment.” Surprised, the emperor shouted for the prison warden: “Come and get this man out of here before he corrupts all these innocent people.”

The ruler can set us free once we admit we are wrong.

We do ourselves no favors in justifying our deeds or glossing over our sins. When my daughter Andrea was five or six, she got a splinter in her finger. I took her to the restroom and set out some tweezers, ointment, and a Band-Aid.

She didn’t like what she saw. “I just want the Band-Aid, Daddy”

Sometimes we are just like Andrea. We come to Christ with our sin, but all we want is a covering. We want to skip the treatment. We want to hide our sin. And one wonders if God, even in his great mercy, will heal what we conceal. “If we say we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins, because we can trust God to do what is right” (1 John 1:8–9).

Going to God is not going to Santa Claus. A child sits on the chubby lap of Ol’ Saint Nick, and Santa pinches the youngster’s cheek and asks, “Have you been a good little girl?”

“Yes,” she giggles. Then she tells him what she wants and down she bounds. It’s a game. It’s childish. No one takes Santa’s question seriously. That may work in a department store, but it won’t work with God.

How can God heal what we deny? How can God touch what we cover up? How can we have communion while we keep secrets? How can God grant us pardon when we won’t admit our guilt?

Ahh, there’s that word: guilt. Isn’t that what we avoid? Guilt. Isn’t that what we detest? But is guilt so bad? What does guilt imply if not that we know right from wrong, that we aspire to be better than we are, that we know there is a high country and we are in the low country. That’s what guilt is: a healthy regret for telling God one thing and doing another.

Guilt is the nerve ending of the heart. It yanks us back when we are too near the fire. Godly sorrow “makes people change their hearts and lives. This leads to salvation, and you cannot be sorry for that” (2 Cor. 7:10).

To feel guilt is no tragedy; to feel no guilt is.

Today’s devotional is drawn from Max Lucado’s Next Door Savior.

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Journal Through Recovery – Bonus Podcast #19 Powerless

Bonus Episode 19 –Powerless

Truly accepting my powerlessness began recovery for me. With that acceptance came my understanding that keeping my sins secret only kept me powerless.

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Men of the Bible – Noah

Noah

His name means: “To Rest”

His work: We don’t know what Noah did for a living before he heard from God, but following that encounter, he became an accomplished carpenter. His character: Noah was a righteous man, obedient and faithful. His sorrow: In spite of his admonitions and warnings, Noah was unable to convince his neighbors, friends, and extended family to repent. As a result, they were all drowned in the flood. His triumph: Noah’s obedience saved not only his life but the lives of his wife and children. Key Scriptures: Genesis 6-7

A Look at the Man

Once in a while a man comes along who’s not afraid to obey.

We cannot imagine what it must have been like to be Noah. He lived in a culture that was corrupted by immorality and violence. According to the story, the earth was literally “full” of it.

So reprehensible were people’s lives that God regretted having created these divine image-bearers. So much so that he decided to remove every living thing from the face of the earth, like a man clearing a table with the back of his hand. Can you imagine?

But on his way to starting all over again, the Lord looked at Noah. His life was so exemplary that in the middle of all this debauchery, he found favor in God’s eyes. This man, Noah, was righteous and blameless among the people of his time. Because of his faithfulness, he was the one man whom the Lord chose not to destroy.

We don’t have to look very far to find a lesson in this man’s life. Like Noah’s culture, the one that surrounds us is drowning in immorality, corruption, and violence. And like Noah, we can choose to quietly capitulate or to stand against it. Once we decide to stand firm—to live in obedience to God—the tricky part comes with trying to understand how. What does submission to him look like? And what should we expect as the result of this obedience?

Tucked away in this story is the secret to Noah’s success. Noah walked with God. For Noah, surrender was not a single decision or noteworthy event; it was a process. A routine. A journey. A walk. Obedience was the natural result of this methodical approach. Walking with God meant knowing him. Knowing God meant loving him. Loving meant hearing. Hearing, obeying.

And obeying God meant salvation.

We can imagine that decades of subtle and overt ridicule may have led Noah to question God. There had to have been moments of loneliness and genuine doubt. But taking one step at a time along the path God had laid out for him kept Noah on track.

Noah’s obedience led to the preservation of not only his own life, but of the lives of his wife and children. Once the project was complete and everyone around him had rejected the notion that God would actually destroy the earth with a catastrophic flood, Noah and his whole family entered the safety of the ark. Then the Lord shut him in. Noah’s obedience not only led to the preservation of his own life but the lives of his wife and children.

In fact, Noah’s faithfulness—in the form of a great ark—became one of the early church’s symbols for refuge. The interiors of many great cathedrals were built to resemble the inside of a boat—a shelter in the time of storm, a reminder of an obedient man who went before us and was saved.

Reflect On: Genesis 8 Praise God: For using his followers to accomplish his purposes. Offer Thanks: For God’s mercy toward the human race. Confess: Any tendency to care more about what the world thinks of you than about what God thinks. Ask God: To show you what it means, not just to obey a set of laws, but to stay close to him throughout your life—to walk with him.

Today’s reading is a brief excerpt from Men of the Bible: A One-Year Devotional Study of Men in Scripture by Ann Spangler and Robert Wolgemuth (Zondervan). © 2010 by Ann Spangler. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Enjoy the complete book by purchasing your own copy at the Bible Gateway Store. The book’s title must be included when sharing the above content on social media.

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Powerless

Powerless

by Keith B.

July 8th, 2016 is the date I consider as my sobriety date and the date I actually began recovery. That was the day my wife found out that I had contacted a former affair partner. One she knew about. The only one she knew about at the time. That day began my true entry into a life of sobriety and recovery from sex and relationship addiction or how ever you want to label it. But that wasn’t really the true beginning. The true beginning was nine months earlier.

In October of the previous year, I let my wife know via text message that I was leaving her. Awesome, right? I didn’t have the courage to call her. I was halfway around the world, on a business trip. I had arranged my business travel to enable meeting a co-worker and affair partner who lived overseas. My travel was a constant. I basically abandoned my wife and boys. My lies were catching up to me. I had no choice in my mind but to tell her I was having an affair and leaving her.

The woman I was with told me either I made a break from my wife and kids or she was going to do it for me. I took the coward’s way out. I justified my decision by stating something I had been repeating in my mind over and over…when my wife eventually finds out, she is just going to leave you. So, I left her first. And then she shattered my carefully crafted justification by telling me I could still come home. So I ran home.

I started visiting recovery meetings. Visiting the right word. I went sightseeing, never settling or revealing anything of myself. A guest, not a permanent resident. My secrets stayed that way. They stayed my secrets.

My marriage became my only focus. How could I make sure it didn’t end. I dated my wife. Courted her. We went to counseling and

I wish I could say that was it. I confessed, begged forgiveness, saw the error of my ways, and was able to change. I did change. For a while. Until I didn’t. I reached out to that woman again, and she sent my wife a note telling her that her husband was still lying to her. That point was when I thought my life was over. I mean really over. That was the first moment I realized I was powerless to stop. My actions put my whole life at risk…I could lose my wife, my kids, my job. Everything. And I wasn’t in control. My life had become unmanageable. I was powerless.

Truly accepting my powerlessness began recovery for me. With that acceptance came my understanding that keeping my sins secret only kept me powerless. I couldn’t change myself. I needed help. That help would come from my counselor, my groups, friends, my wife, my kids. And that required that I be open, admitting that my life was unmanageable. I was powerless.

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Get Some Sleep

Get Some Sleep

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have its own worries. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” – Matt. 6:34

Easy to say. Not always easy to do, right? We are so prone to worry. Just last night I was worrying in my sleep. I dreamed that I was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative muscle disease, which took the life of my father. I awakened from the dream and, right there in the middle of the night, began to worry. Then Jesus’ words came to my mind: “Don’t worry about tomorrow.” And for once, I decided not to. I dropped the burlap sack. After all, why let tomorrow’s imaginary problem rob tonight’s rest? Can I prevent the disease by staying awake? Will I postpone the affliction by thinking about it? Of course not. So I did the most spiritual thing I could have done. I went back to sleep.

Why don’t you do the same? God is leading you. Leave tomorrow’s problems until tomorrow.

Arthur Hays Sulzberger was the publisher of the New York Times during the Second World War. Because of the world conflict, he found it almost impossible to sleep. He was never able to banish worries from his mind until he adopted as his motto these five words — “one step enough for me” — taken from the hymn “Lead Kindly Light.”

Lead, kindly Light …
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

God isn’t going to let you see the distant scene either. So you might as well quit looking for it. He promises a lamp unto our feet, not a crystal ball into the future. We do not need to know what will happen tomorrow. We only need to know he leads us and “we will find grace to help us when we need it” (Heb. 4:16 NLT).

Today’s devotional is drawn from Max Lucado’s Next Door Savior.