Needing God

I attended a funeral this morning and I observed the mourners and the how they were reacting to the situation. One particular mourner caught my attention. It was a child who had just lost her Grandmother, and a song start playing Vince Gill's "Go rest high on that mountain" and the child just broke into tears and started sobbing. She ran to her father who was seated across the aisle and the child's father just held her. Imagine if that child would have been left to bare her pain alone. Where would she get the comfort she needed? She needed her father and he wanted to be there for her to ease her pain.

That was a perfect illustration for this topic. Alone we bare the pain and the suffering with no positive comfort. We seek out false ways to take the pain away which in turn causes more pain and more guilt. It becomes a mountain that we can not move. God wants to be our shelter in the storms. He wants to dry our tears as He knows how many we have shed already. How do you come to depend on and need Him you may wonder? Well the only way I can describe this is through my own experience.

Step Three in Sex Addicts Anonymous says: We decided to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God. I had to do that. There was a point when I felt my spirit dying and I cried out to our Father "Help me" and through my tears.  He let me sleep until He showed up for work the next day. My life hasn't been the same since. The words "our will" means our intentions to do what we want to do, not what God wants us to do. Therefore, we have to change from living by our will to His will. We have to ask for what He wants us to do and be willing to do it. "Lives" means everything we are to the core. Our belief system, our interactions, our daily living basically has to shift to a much different thinking process than we are accustomed. More involvement with good rather than bad. We have to reflect a desire to be more Christ like and make that a goal. Hard to do? No, not for the most part. Think about it, we have a process addiction; we plan, we organize, we cover by lies and then we act out. Now imagine in a Christ like day; plan your strategy for staying away from triggers, organize yourself with a devotional or something out of the Bible, cover yourself with prayer and let others know what may or may not be good for you to do that day, then act on all that. We can do it, it just seems against our grain to do so, and it is. You will not succeed at Christ like days every day.  I don't, not sure I know anyone who does, but Christ is in my life more everyday and my days are getting better and I succeed more often.

Where does our draw to God comes from? Where does that shame and guilt we feel come from when we feel like we've disappointed God? The answer is we were designed to need Him. We were born with it. In Hebrews, God speaks of the new covenant with His people.  Hebrews 8;10-12: "I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying "you should know the Lord" for everyone from the least to the Greatest will know me already. And I will forgive their wickedness, and will never again remember their sins". We were born that way. So needing God is actually the natural draw to return home.

God provides the comfort and support we need in our lives. He wants to be that Father at the funeral who holds His hurting child. I have had so many moments where the only thing that made sense, the only thing I wanted, the only thing I could possibly do was to take it God. Where I didn't act out to feel better in a negative way. I did the positive and took it to our Father and He held me and sent me back into the world much more at peace. I am a sex addict, I have turned from God, I have made fox hole prayers with no commitment, I chose my will over His, I ran my life because I was the most qualified to run it, and in the end, I ran back into Gods arms. The promises of life He gives us when we choose Him have come, and are coming, true. My life is much more satisfying for Needing God and acting on it.

This is your life and your choice, but I am telling you now, I have been down many of the same streets as you have and all of them have led to a dead end. You know that as well. Why not choose a street paved with Gold that never ends. It is okay to admit you need Him and then to act on it. It is okay to embrace your Father and seek His comfort.  It is okay to lay down your pride, arrogance, and lonliness to allow your Father in Heaven to bring you a peace, joy and comfort you have not known before on this earth. 
Father in Heaven, You have written Yourself on our hearts and You have known us since before we were born. We thank You Father God for the love and security only You offer. To those who read this and need you Father, I pray they seek You and make the commitment to follow You and allow Your will in their life. Let us be the living example of Your love, Your tenderness, Your mercy, Your forgiveness, Your compassion, and let us act as a ray of hope to the hopeless. Father God we pray this in the precious name of Your Son, Jesus Christ whom we love so dearly. Amen.

My prayers are with you all. Jason.