Letting Go

So I play for a football team called Ambassadors FC and tonight we played in the final of the shield in a competition we are in. It was a pretty good game, competitive, end to end stuff but unfortunately we lost.

Yeah it was really disappointing especially how we got back in the game really well. And it got worse because I think I was kind of responsible for their winning goal. That sucks. I felt crap about it. I felt like I had let the whole team down. I just wanted to get changed and go home.

But I realised that how I treated this game is a lot like how I treat life. You see I played pretty well otherwise. The whole team did. But I did my bit and worked hard. One short moment of lacking in concentration was the only major mistake I made the whole game. And yet that one moment ruined the game for me. I instantly forgot about all the good things I did and how I helped the team the rest of the match.

I treat life the same. I am not suggesting that I am so amazing and I never put a foot wrong in life, because I do. A lot.

But a lot of the time I sin. I can go through life doing pretty well with God and then do something stupid and I beat myself up for ages. I can't seem to get rid of the thought that I have let God down and the people I love and who love me. It taints everything else in my life. I just want to go home and forget about God and what I did.

And this brings me to the match. I made a mistake that cost us the game but afterwards nobody mentioned it. It wasn't brought up. I left imagining the rest of the team staying behind to have a go at me. But yet nobody had a go at me or blamed me. That's pretty special.

My favourite verse at the moment is Romans 8v1 (NLT)

"So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus"

All the thoughts I had in my head about everyone blaming me were false. And the same is true of God. When I mess up and stray from the path he intends for me he doesn't blame me. He doesn't rub it in or remind me of it to make me feel bad. Becuase right now, in this moment, in every moment I'm not to blame. I can carry on knowing that there is nothing on me.

And that means I can get on with becoming more who God wants me to be without becoming so inward thinking that I simply come to a standstill. God wants us to remember that there is no more blame to dish out so why waste time dwelling on our mistakes. We can let them go. They are not ours any more. And that motivates. It motivates me to keep going. I hope it motivates you too.

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Evolve or Die

OK. So first things first. I don't really want to moan on here but I want to get something off my chest. When you are at a concert and insist on clapping (don't get me started on that one) please ensure that you do so in time with the music. This is for the girl sat behind me on Friday night. Phew! Glad that is out in the open. Anyway..

On Friday I went to one of the most amazing concerts I have been to. I was at the Opera House in Belfast to see the Swell Season. If you don't know who that is, then why not?? If you haven't seen the movie Once then why not??

Don't read on. Check out Glen Hansard singing "Say it to me now" unplugged from the concert. Awesome!

But I want to talk about something he said as an introduction to one of the songs. I can't remember the name of it but he used a phrase that stuck with me. It was "evolve or die." How when we find our lives in trouble or we are stuck then we have a choice to make. We either move on and up or we die. We either start to make our life count or we continue down the road we have been heading.

For many of us we feel like we are at that place where we can't see any hope. We just see a dead end and we can't imagine getting out. It seems we have only one option, to die. But I think that Glen touched on something pretty amazing. That that is not the only option. That we don't have to carry on banging our head against a brick wall.

For me at one point in my life, lust was that wall for me. I couldn't see a way out especially with porn. Many times I chose to die, but I realised that through God I could change. I could evolve. I decided to not die any more and I evolved. I got accountable, I started letting God get involved and things changed.

What is even better is that it wasn't just down to me. I decided to evolve but on my own I wouldn't have been successful. But I can be because I have help. There are people who help me and their is a God who helps me.

Romans 6 v 22-23 (The Message)

But now that you've found you don't have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.

It won't be easy but sometimes we need to take a conscous step in the right direction and when we do, we will be surprised that it can be achieved. If anyone tells you that you are stuck and trapped it is a lie. If you tell yourself that, it is a lie. No matter how hopeless it seems, there is always hope, there is always a way out. We just need to want it.

If you are in that place right now, do yourself a favour and watch this video.

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One of the reasosn I like to write here is that allows me to put my thoughts into some sort of coherent (or maybe not) order. Either way I get to think through what I have been reading or thinking about.

This time it was something that I read by Jon Acuff. I have mentioned him before on here but you should go straight away right now and check out his website.

What I really want to talk about is not what he said exactly but how he is able to open the Bible up and really allow what it is saying to us. Sometimes I read the Bible and it all seems so familiar, it doesn't really isnpire me. I kind of feel apathetic sometimes. But thankfully there are people out there like Jon who are able to help us see the depth of what the Bible says.

This might sound heretic as if I am saying that the Bible isn't enough for me. But sometimes I think..well the Bible isn't enough for me. I don't have an amazing or complete understanding of what it means so sometimes I need other people to clear away some of the cobwebs my mind creates. And that is what happened after I read Jons last post about Matthew 11:28-30

This is something I have read so many times but when I read Jons post something made me really feel it again. It gave me a renewed sense of God and that is always a good thing. Check it out.

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explanations

I often find myself reading something that really resonates with me or stirs something within me that gets me excited about who I am. I like that. Recently for me it was the latest posting by Shellie R Warren on her blog on the xxxchurch site.

I like her take on all things to do with sexuality and what she said really got me thinking about being Holy and who we are in Christ. I won't go into great detail, but I want to share what I got from it.

She basically talked about being uncommon, about not being like everyone else, about treating yourself like God treats you, basically loving yourself. This is something I have a hard time doing sometimes.

You see to be common means to go with the grain or to try and be like everyone else even if you know that its not good for you. To be uncommon means the opposite. Not just to not care what people think of you but to not treat yourself less than you should

1 Peter 2:9-10 says
“But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.”

I like this because when taken in the context of which Shellie is talking ie from someone who treated herself sexually well below the level that God had planned for her, it is a reminder that we are called to be uncommon in these issues.

xxxchurch is important to me for many reasons but they are helping to remind myself that I am uncommon. I don't have to be like other people who don't take their sexuality seriously. I have a higher standard when it comes to that and so does God.

And I believe that this starts with how we view ourselves and whether we love oursleves or not. If we do then we will find it easy to live to God's standard but if we don't we struggle and I believe this has been why I struggled so often with lust. When you love yourself, you don't feel bad and don't need other avenues such as sex to give us self esteem. It's all in who Jesus is and what he does.

We need to remember that whenever we feel tempted or vulnerable to give in to sin. We have a standard to reach but which we already have met, simply because we have the Holy Spirit in us. I think that whenever we decide that we are worth more, that we are special as a basic characteristic of who we are in Christ, then we can be standard setters for people. We don't have to treat ourselves like we are worthless because we aren't. We are special, meant for a special purpose, unique, exceptionally valued. We are uncommon

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To Be Or Not To Be....

Recently I have decided I want to be more wise. I have even attempted to grow a beard. But unfortunately that does not make you wise because if it did I would at least be heading in the right direction. Instead I think wisdom comes from good choices, from experience and from learning from others who have made the same mistakes you have but are learning from them.

I think I made a fairly good start at being wise when I started to get accountable. I struggled with lust and porn and getting a couple of my friends to ask me how I was doing, to challenge me on my habits was a good choice.

A bad choice is sitting on your computer at midnight when you know that you get tempted the most at these times. A good choice is planning your day so that you won't have times when you are vulnerable. A bad choice is not being totally honest with your accountability partner. A good choice is texting your accountability partner when you start to feel urges to sin. I have done all these and more.

Another good choice I made was to start reading Proverbs and trying to learn from this book and digesting it and putting its practical help into place.

And it is full of practical help. In Proverbs 1 it talks about people who do not make good choices. People who "set an ambush for themselves" who "booby trap their own lives".

I have done this. I have made it easy for temptation by walking right by it. I love the imagery in Proverbs because I realise when I sit on my own with the computer I am being as foolish as someone who walks blindfolded by a cliff. It's just stupid. I would never do that. But yet I have in the past.

Thankfully I started to make more good choices than bad. Thankfully I put real things in place to make sure I didn't make the same mistakes over and over. I want to be like the bird in Proverbs who sees a trap and avoids it. And I am doing that.

The longer I go without looking at porn the more I have realised that making the right decisions is so important. One small decision can have huge implications. It's like an iceberg. We only see a small proportion of everything that porn can produce. If we choose to click on a link we know will lead us to porn, what was just one small decision can lead to spending hours searching for more extreme images and feelings of shame and disgust at ourselves. It can lead to the break up of relationships, increased isolation from our friends and more and more dangerous viewing.

In the moment we probably didn't forsee everything it would eventually lead to.

Thankfully on the other hand, one small good decision can lead to amazing things.

One simple decision to turn off the computer when we are alone can lead to more concrete habits being formed to avoid porn. It can lead to better self esteem. It can lead to having more fulfilling relationships that give us the most amazing joy. It can lead us to knowing God better and having integrity in our lives. It can lead to spending your time better. It can lead us to feeling more alive than we have ever done before.

Decisions can change our lives. For the good and the bad.

Porn doesn't have to control you. It doesn't need to ruin you. You can take steps to beat it.

It just means starting with the right choice.

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