The truth will set you free

Most of us will have heard this scripture - "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:32). It's easy to think of this truth in just a positive context - e.g. "I know the truth that God loves me and this truth frees me." That's all very well and good. But what about the truth when it comes to negative, painful things in our lives?

My life has been a lifelong battle with constant, almost overwhelming emotional pain. When I became a Christian the pain did not instantly vanish (although there are times when I really wish that it had). I began to find that negative, bitter situations in my life began to arise a lot more frequently than they did in my pre-Christian days. Being a Christian did not make life easier. In fact it made life worse. I didn't understand it. I spent the first year of my Christian walk trying to proclaim positivity and blessing over my life through constant confession of scripture. Funnily enough, it didn't work. I claimed scriptures about healing for my constantly pained emotional and spiritual state. That didn't work either.

Over time and through many hard experiences, my thinking began to change. The scripture came to mind - "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me, Your rod and Your staff comfort me." The part that really stood out to me was the part about walking THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death. It didn't say walk around it, or skip over it and pretend it's not there. God used this scripture to help me realize that I was to walk through the constant, overwhelming pain in my life, but that I need not fear any evil in this process because God's rod and staff would comfort and guide me in this place of overwhelming internal darkness.

What I began to realize is that the valley of the shadow of death was also a place of truth in itself. Truth that contained the power to truly set me free - the freedom I had longed for since I was a child. These truths would not be easily discovered. Nor would it be a pleasant process in trying to find them. But discovering the painful truths hidden in the valley of the shadow of death in my own heart was a process I simply had to go through if I ever truly wanted to get well.

One of the ways in which my thinking began to change was learning that I had to learn to fall into the negative feelings that I faced when certain situations arose, rather than trying to simply push them away by trying to quote scripture over my life or embrace "the power of positive thinking." Some of those negative feelings drove me into behaviours that were not good or healthy. For example - I have struggled with cigarette smoking on and off throughout the years. Due to some distressing personal circumstances I started smoking again last year. I kept on trying to stop using my own willpower but it simply didn't work. I would simply start again. One day I foolishly didn't eat anything at all throughout the day - I just smoked constantly. I tried eating dinner in the evening and due to a day without food my stomach rejected my dinner and I vomited everything back up. I went to bed early and managed to get a couple of hours sleep before waking up at midnight. I couldn't get back to sleep - not only was I still feeling quite unwell due to not eating and vomiting the little I managed to get down in the evening, there was a constant sense of distress in my emotions and I just couldn't rest.

I began to realize that this was happening for a reason. God was stirring something in me that He wanted me to address. I couldn't quite put my finger on it using my own thinking so I prayed for guidance that God would make it clear to me what I needed to see in myself. Almost instantaneously I blurted out "I HATE MY BODY!!" The second I did that - the emotional distress vanished, along with the desire to smoke cigarettes. Not only did I fall asleep immediately but I haven't had a cigarette since.

God was calling me to walk into the valley of the shadow of death with this issue. I tried to avoid this walk by stopping smoking using my own strength - but it wasn't enough. God needed me to do nothing but smoke that day so I would get sick and into this terrible place of distress so that I would be able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and uncover the truth that was keeping me bound in addiction in the first place. When I said that I hated my body I confessed to God the truth that had been lurking down in my thinking which I didn't even realize was there. It was a negative truth, yes - but as I confessed it and brought it to the light, the negative thinking lost its power over me and I have been walking in freedom from smoking ever since. 

So if you are finding that you are facing the same issues over and over again in your life and can't figure out why, listen to your heart. Is God tugging at your heart strings and asking you to walk with Him in the valley of the shadow of death through your own life because He wants to bring you to the root cause of these issues in your own heart? This might be why you're facing the same thing over and over again. God is allowing it to surface again and again because He wants to guide you through the pain in your heart so that you can find the truths in the valley of the shadow of death that will finally set you free.

My book speaks all about my journey of walking through this valley - hence the title No Way Out But Through. It's available from just about any bookstore (although you may have to ask them to order it in) or you can buy a copy online as it's available through most online retailers. If you need further advice, encouragement or prayer - please let me know.

Take care and God bless.

Letting go

One of the hardest things we must learn to face as human beings is dealing with our past by letting go of things we cannot change. All of us face things in our lives that we wish could have turned out differently, where we wish we'd done something else, said something else, anything to avoid having to face the fact that we are still greatly upset over something that may have happened a long time ago.

I have realized that my biggest character flaw is my inability to accept things in life that I cannot change and to relax. Relaxing means accepting things as they are around you, accepting that not everything needs your distinct control and input and that things can cope on their own without your influence. It means that you have to have faith in others and in your surroundings to do the right thing without you distinctly telling everyone exactly what to do and where and how to do it. I've found it almost impossible to accept anything at face value and simply believe in anything and trust that my belief is not going to be betrayed.

I've also realized that this character flaw is based on a desire to change both the past and the future. It's mainly based in a desire to change the future so that there's no chance that the future could ever feel as bad as what the past does. However, this is a self defeating strategy. If I go out of my way to try to change the future so it doesn't bring up old feelings about the past, all I am really doing is protecting the way that I am already feeling instead of facing it. It's an art of managing and compartmentalizing negative feelings rather than openly admitting them and coming to terms with them. Putting old feelings into a box so that you never have to face them means that you leave unhealed areas in your heart and soul that subconsciously drain your energy and leave you feeling fatigued.

What has helped me begin to change my thinking in this area is to think about Jesus and what He went through on the cross. He could easily have chosen to not face up to the fact that His own creation (the human race) had fallen and chosen to sit and wish that He could have somehow changed the past to stop it from happening. Instead, He chose to accept what had happened, as much as He didn't like it, and chose to love us enough anyway that His plan for the human race was to change overnight. The new plan for the human race involved His death on a cross and though it was the worst possible thing He could ever go through, He chose to change everything based on what we had done. God chose to respond to our actions rather than to just react to them, or refuse to even acknowledge them altogether.

There's a big difference here regarding things that happen which upset us - we can either react to them out of frustration that our own prideful desires to make things the way that we want them have failed, or we can respond to them in humility and realize that we are not God. We do not know the future, we don't control everything and we don't get to decide exactly how everything pans out. We don't know the beginning from the end. Only God knows that - even if He's not in control of people's actions directly, He still knows the beginning from the end and is able to work around it. To react is to show we are angry at life and ourselves because our own pride has not provided us the outcome we wanted. To respond is to show that we have a greater faith in a God who is in control of both the present and the future and that He loves us and has our best interests at heart. To respond to a person rather than react to what they've done is to show genuine love for them. If God had just chosen to react to the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, we'd all be dead. But He chose to respond and reach out to us anyway. Of course, there are times when reaching out to people is dangerous and there are times when ties with people need to be cut because of what's happened - but overall we should try to respond to people in love when possible rather than react in anger and frustration because our own bubble of illusion about our own self importance and ability to control things has been popped.

This has made me realize how important it is to learn that I myself cannot control the future and that there are things that are going to happen to me and things that I am going to do which are irreversible and will result in a changed life for me and others. It is important for me to begin to realize that my efforts to try and control the future so it will never end up feeling like the past are futile and are draining my energy. It is important for me to realize that a changed future from the path that I originally set out and planned for myself is not always a bad thing and that sometimes going in a new and unexpected direction can turn out to be the best possible thing for someone. Because of some of the spiritual baggage I have carried around with me over the years I have become deeply afraid that if I just sit back and let things happen and let someone else take control and relax and just let things be, that the outcome will be the most horrifying, soul destroying, irreversible thing imaginable and that I will somehow be to blame for not doing my best to prevent it and that I will live in regret for eternity because I didn't do something to prevent this awful thing.

The truth is - we cannot change the past. We can only change the way that we feel about the past. We can change our future - but we must be willing enough to realize that for all of our planning and control there are things that we cannot simply plan for and have to learn to trust God in. I've found it much easier to trust in myself and my own planning to protect myself from a future that may feel like my past. Because of some of the things that have happened to me over the past few years I have become very afraid of trusting God with my future as I half expect Him to bring something terrible into my life because it's something else that I need to go through in order to help me realize the parts of me that still need divine healing, but I have to remind myself that the time of suffering in my life is very nearly at an end.

I also have to realize that if I am ever going to heal completely from all that has happened over the years I will need to learn to accept the past in full and accept that these things have happened and cannot be changed. Thinking that I can somehow change the past to suit what I want or that I will somehow bring about a different outcome if I stew on it enough is wrong and negative thinking and is just leaving me going around in circles. It's hard to come to terms with this but it simply has to be done. I lost a relationship with a close friend recently who proved that they weren't interested in the spoken word of God even though they constantly went out of their way to say that God's truth was more important to them than anything. I felt betrayed, mocked and deeply let down. This blow was very hard to take as this was a friendship I thought I would have for the rest of my life yet I was left with no choice but to walk away from it. I have no choice but to come to terms with what has happened and realize that I cannot change it. I cannot hold on to the past - the friendship we had before - because it no longer exists. I cannot change things and I certainly cannot control that person's response. All I can do is respond to their actions even if it hurts me and change the course of the friendship as a result.

Planning is something I have found immense safety in over the years. I love to be able to plan for things and work out just how everything is going to go. I don't find that I cope particularly well when something happens that's completely unexpected and throws a spanner into the works. Instead of focusing on responding to the change, dealing with the spanner in the works and altering the course of my plans if I need to, my default reaction has been to fly off the handle at the change that has dared happen without my specific consent. I have realized that this method of operating is useless. Life does not take prisoners. There are things that happen that come completely out of the blue that cannot be changed and can alter the course of our life's path because God and the world are far bigger than we are and our own little boxed in plans for our lives. The sooner we come to terms with this and learn to relax in a world we know we cannot fully control, the sooner we will reach a greater place of peace and contentment as human beings.

So, if you're a planner like me, you may have identified with something in this blog. I hope that you take something from this and feel encouraged in some way. You're not alone in your journey.

Take care.

The pursuit of truth

Truth has to be one of the most important things in the lives of human beings. We are all searching for truth about different things in life - who we really are, what our purpose is, who we should marry, what football team we should support, etc etc. Many of us devote our entire lives to the search for truth, not only for our own sakes but for the sake of others whom we can share the truth with once we find it.

Jesus was the single most devoted person in history to the truth. He spent His entire time on earth preaching the truth about many different aspects of life. The truth he preached won Him many friends. It also created many enemies - mainly because the truth that He preached offended them because it didn't line up with what they wanted. The Son of God was unfailing love. He was also unfailing truth and invited His followers to journey with Him throughout His life's mission of both preaching and fulfilling the truth through His sacrifice.

In John 6, Jesus was teaching about His crucifixion. Many of His followers became offended with His teaching and said - "This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?" (John 6:60). Jesus' response to them was simple - "Does this offend you?.....There are some of you who don't believe." (John 6:61-65). The following verse is very telling - "From that time many of His disciples turned away, and walked with Him no more." (John 6:66). Jesus was not a man of compromise when it came to the truth. He knew what was right - and He stuck by it. He challenged His disciples to put the truth even before themselves - and only those who truly loved the truth and believed in Him accepted what Jesus said to them and stayed with Him. The rest disappeared.

We all have a certain knowledge and understanding of the truth in our lives. Each of us has different truths that relate to us as individuals. The truth that Jesus was preaching about His own crucifixion challenged the belief systems many of the people of His time held dear. Yet they proved to Jesus that they were only interested in the truth just so long as it suited them and lined up with what they wanted. They couldn't handle their core beliefs being challenged by anyone - even the Son of God - and therefore chose to walk away. Jesus' pursuit of the truth took Him to a bloody death on a tree. The only disciple that embraced the truth of His journey enough to be able to walk with Him to the very end was John - who is often interpreted in scripture as "The Disciple that Jesus loved." (John 13:23).

Truth has become something that has become very, very important to me - especially over the last few years. Spending a life in constant, almost indefinable trauma has lead me on a relentless pursuit for truth as throughout my own journey inwards over the last 12 years - which has brought me most of my healing - I have come to know for a fact that "the truth will set you free." (John 8:32). The truth which has brought me the most healing has challenged me very deeply and forced me to let go of any ounce of pride I ever had in my life as I became more and more aware that stubborn pride blocks ones ability to face the truth in their own lives. I have developed enough inner strength now to be honestly able to say that I do love the truth and I am prepared to stand by it - even when it hurts me. Most of the time, the truth has only really hurt because it's challenged me on a deeply rooted lie I've been subconsciously believing - sometimes for a very long time.

I have had to learn that when a word I knew was true was spoken into my life and it hurt me deeply - it was because God was using the truth to weed out the deeply rooted lies I was believing in my own heart. I then had two choices - to either become offended and reject the truth because it upset me, or embrace the truth and accept that the very fact it upset me meant that I was being challenged on something I needed to be challenged on. Sometimes this was a very hard and lengthy process and it could be a long time before I was truly able to identify the lie I was already believing in my own soul that this truth was clashing with. But I had to realize that this process was all a part of spiritual growth  as becoming a stronger, more emotionally healthy human being meant to uproot the lies in my soul and replace them with God's truth. The uprooting process was painful - even more so when the lies had been deeply reinforced over time. But I had to realize that if I didn't embrace this process, I wouldn't have grown. God bluntly told me once - "Do you want to get better, or not?" It was up to me to make the choice to do the right thing and allow the lies to come to the surface so that I could identify and be healed of them.

What I've found is that many Christians do want to love and embrace the truth, but we are all at different stages in our walk. Some are not yet ready to face the truth about themselves that they need to face in order to move on. Some need to see their pursuit of their own plans completely fall apart before they are ready to submit to the truth of God's plan for their lives (I was one of these people). And then, there are some who are well aware of the fact that God has spoken the truth - yet are so hopelessly obsessed with their own pride that they willingly reject the will of God because He wants something different to what they do. I recently lost a long term friendship because of this, and though it's upset me greatly, it's better that I know now where this person was at before I invested any more into them.

It's hard and painful when you see the loss of people in your life because others do not understand your quest for truth and your development into the person God has called you to be. It's made me realize just how important it is to surround oneself with people who are truly prepared to embrace the truth in every sense and that they are humble enough to allow God to speak His truth into their hearts and change their lives. Simply professing to be a Christian is not enough. You cannot put yourself, finances, loyalty to relationships, and other things before the truth. If you truly claim to love the truth, you must put it first and put your money where your mouth is. You must be prepared to face the truth - most importantly, the truth about yourself. Look to the story of Jesus and the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-22). He simply couldn't accept that He had to give up his wealth. Jesus challenged him on the deepest belief he held in his own heart - which was that money was more important than anything. Even though the young man knew Jesus had spoken, He couldn't accept his truth and went away sad, refusing to follow Jesus and gain eternal life as he wished for because the price was too high - the price of having to let go of his own pride and dependence on material things.

At the end of the day, God's truth - especially His spoken Rhema word - is absolute and unchanging. Learn to embrace it and if it offends you, ask Him to help you understand why you are so offended. Don't be upset when He challenges you on deep issues in your heart. He is doing it because He loves you and wants to grow you more as a person. Embracing God's truth is the best thing we can ever do for our own souls - even if it does hurt at times. Count the cost, and realize that it's better to learn the truth God has given to us than walk around in a place of prideful offence because we refuse to face the lies we believe deep in our own souls.

Take care.

Three seasons

The last two years of my life have, in a lot of ways, become the most important years of my entire life - certainly in my adult life, anyway. Some of the things that happened were seemingly very random, yet God clearly spoke to me recently that everything has happened exactly as He ordained it and has happened at just the right time. God spoke to me of 3 seasons over the past 2 years - the season of Death, the season of Burial, and the season of Resurrection.

This is of course a parallel with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the first day, He died a brutal death on the cross. On the second day, His body was buried and a stone rolled over the mouth of the tomb, where He was to be held for evermore (or so the people who buried Him thought). On the third day, Jesus cast off the shackles of death and rose again, from the darkest place imaginable to a place of brilliant light and wholeness, having accomplished the greatest mission anyone would ever accomplish in the history of the world - to open the door for the souls of human beings to be saved. This journey cost Him everything. But it gained Him everything as well and achieved something that could never have been achieved by anyone else.

The season of Death began when I went through burnout in August 2011. My health died, my job died, many relationships either died or were dealt fatal blows that would eventually bleed out later on. This was a hard period - a very lean period where I was too sick to work so most of my time was spent at home, trying to work through my emotions and gain some understanding of what had just happened to me. Meanwhile those who in a lot of ways played a part in my downfall seemed happy and prosperous. This was a very, very bleak time. I picked up some bad habits which I hadn't used for years, such as cigarette smoking, mainly due to the horrible stress I was going through at the time. During this time two living environments in Taupo folded up and I ended up moving back home with my parents in Tauranga in June 2012. The season of death lasted one year.

From August 2012, the season of Burial began. Things had already died - now the funeral arrangements were being made and the death was made final. This was the season where I began cutting my ties with those who had played a part in my downfall in Taupo and where many of the relationships God didn't want involved in my future for various reasons were steadily weeded out of my life. This was the season where I finally saw that I needed to start coming off antidepressant medication for the first time in 8 years. As before, this was a season of deep soul searching and self analysis. It was almost 100% inwardly focused. Despite how bleak this season was, and how much loss was involved, I began to see a real strength begin to develop in myself during this time. I saw a boldness and a courage begin to emerge that I had never seen before and I also saw something amazing happen through my book being picked up by a major publishing house in the USA which would see my story propelled onto the world stage.

From August 2013, the season of Resurrection began. It started with the beginning of a new relationship with my girlfriend. Other amazing things were to follow. I cast off the last of the wrong friendships that had been holding me back with a new found sense of courage that my girlfriend helped me to discover within myself. It has continued to blossom into something new as after being out of work for nearly a year and then having a job which was only part time, I now have a good, respectable full time job which I will start in the middle of next month. I feel stronger, healthier and more confident in myself than ever before. However, this is only the beginning of this new season. More things are going to follow. The seasons of death and burial each lasted a day in the life of Jesus - or a year, in the life of me. However, the season of resurrection lasted forever. I believe my life is going to be similar. I have gone through something which probably would have killed someone weaker than I was - yet I got through it and I am a stronger, healthier person than I've ever been as a result.

I see a vision of myself as a butterfly that has been locked in a chrysalis of development for a very long time. It's a very small place to be in - tiny, in fact, and there was no room for anyone except myself. There was nothing happening except self analysis, emotional processing, self development, emotional healing. That's all my life has been about over these past two years. During that time I've felt a sense of almost claustrophobia - yet I always knew it was too soon to be emerging from this place of development as you have to make sure that you don't leave the place of growth and development too early. In the same way a butterfly will die if it exits the chrysalis too early - I couldn't leave this place of development until I was fully ready as any left over baggage that wasn't fully processed would be carried with me into the promised land I was walking into, and corrupt my blessing. I had to learn to not only accept the place that I was in, but to embrace it and really make the most of it to make sure that I was as strong and well developed emotionally as I could possibly be so that I could prepare myself properly for the future.

I believe I am out of this place of development now, and I am now learning to think more about other people rather than just myself all the time. However, due to the time I have spent thinking about myself and processing my own issues, I am able to speak into the lives of others with a level of depth and clarity I never would have had otherwise. However, it's not as if I have just blossomed immediately. I remember seeing the monarch butterflies we had at our house when I was growing up. When they came out of the chrysalis, they didn't just fly away straight away. They had to spend time straightening up their wings, allowing them to dry out, and probably went for a few shaky test flights before they really had the confidence to begin soaring. I believe this is the place that I am in now.

Ultimately I am beginning to walk in the season of victory, and though it's unfamiliar as I've never walked in a season like this before, I feel as if I am ready for it. I had to go through the spiritual journey I've been on over the past two years to be able to get to where I am today because without those experiences I never would be able to walk in the season I am in now. I would have just polluted my blessings with the darkness in myself. Fortunately, thanks to those two years of death and burial, I've been able to overcome most of it so that I am now able to contain the blessings that have come into my life.

If you find yourself in a place of confusion and uncertainty in your life, or if you're going through some terrible pain similar to what I've been through, don't lose heart. God hasn't forgotten about you. He knows what He's doing in your life. He's preparing you for greater things and the sooner you learn to embrace the season of preparation, the sooner you will be ready for the good things He's got for you and wants you to walk into. He's keeping you in that place of development not to hurt you - but because it's where you need to be. God loves you and wants you to walk into new things as a whole, strong, emotionally and spiritually healthy human being because if you walk in to a new thing with old baggage, you will corrupt it. So stay strong. Embrace the pain of growth and remember that it's for a good purpose.

Take care.

God is in control - even when we can't see how

The subject of God being in control of our lives and circumstances - even when we don't understand what's going on - is a subject often preached about in Christian circles these days. Often, His control means an answer or an outcome that we often don't expect, but later turns out to be the right thing.

Recently, my heart was deeply impacted by someone I once considered to be a close friend who has taken a proud stance for something that God very clearly indicated for me to take a stand against. I'd spoken to this person on several occasions yet they chose to ignore me despite the fact that I was doing as I was clearly told by God. The final nail in the coffin for this situation came up when I was talking to this person and all of a sudden my heart burst into flames with an urgent message from God for this person - "Tell them what I've told you." I stopped the conversation and explained that God had put it on my heart to tell this person exactly what God had told me. I explained that the stance I had taken was because God had told me to and that God was actually opposed to what this person was standing for. And once again, I was ignored as they continued to verbally defend something God had clearly told me (and them) that He was opposed to. Though they openly admitted that they knew that I was doing as I was told by God - they still continued to support what I was standing against and therefore had chosen to act in deliberate defiance to the will of God.

I literally couldn't believe what I was hearing. I thought this person was a close friend and here they were, deliberately dishonoring the Rhema word of God because God's word didn't line up with what they wanted. It's one thing to do the wrong thing and dishonor the word of God because we don't know any better or think we are doing the right thing when we really aren't. However, to be clearly instructed by God's Rhema word that we are doing wrong or are supporting something that is wrong - yet continue to do it anyway - is another matter altogether. I've learned in my walk that the Rhema word is the most important word a Christian can possibly hear. To see someone I once considered a close friend deliberately dishonoring the word of God because it didn't line up with what they wanted indicated that their pride was more important than God's truth - which was heartbreaking.

After months of trying to figure all of this out and dealing with the heartbreak, God clearly spoke to me. He simply said - "I don't see why you are so surprised this has happened, Graham. I'm not taken by surprise through all of this. I orchestrated this whole thing right from the beginning because I wanted to show you that this person does not have a place in your life any longer. This all happened due to My will and My purposes. Your life and ministry from this point on needs to be built on a firm foundation and part of that foundation is having people around you that can be trusted and can be relied upon to honor My Word and put it above themselves and their own wants and desires. Those who don't fit this mould will be removed because it's for your greater good."

I realized that most of my worry and stress in this situation had been simply because I thought that God had actually wanted this person to be a part of my long-term future and that God was angry because things hadn't gone to His plan. However, this wasn't the case at all. God knew exactly what He was doing and knew that this person could be relied upon to do the wrong thing - which is why He put the test of character in place so that I would see that they would fail it. It hurt now - in fact, it hurt enormously and a big part of why it hurt so much was the disbelief in my own mind as to what had just taken place. But I realized that a bit of pain now when the truth is revealed is better than an enormous amount of pain years down the line when a foundation has been built and it collapses at one point due to the pride and dishonor of someone who has spent all of that time focusing on what they want instead of putting God's Word and His truth first. God knew exactly what He was doing right from the beginning.

I have found that these types of situations often seem to happen when people are called apart for ministry - such as myself. God seems to be very pedantic as to who He wants in their lives - and who He doesn't. Since going through burnout in 2011, God has done an enormous amount of pruning in my life. He has removed people out of my life that He doesn't want to be there, He's removed me out of situations that were no longer beneficial and He's removed a huge amount of the fear and desire to please people at any cost which has plagued me my entire life. This fear has been replaced by a boldness and a courage to take a stand and do the right thing regardless of what it costs - and who decides to walk out of my life as a result. All of this has happened because of the life and ministry that God has planned for me. He wants the right people around me and wants me to have the ability to do the right thing and stand by God's Word and His truth before anything else.

The main lesson I took from all of this is that God knows the beginning from the end and that when He puts certain circumstances in place within our lives which cause reactions from others that we don't expect (and sometimes even shock us to the core) we need not be surprised and think that God has been taken by surprise in all of this. He hasn't. He knows people's hearts better than we do and He knows who can be relied upon to do the right thing - and who can't. If you are struggling with unexpected changes in your circumstances at the moment and are perhaps facing something similar to what I've faced - remember that God knows the beginning from the end and that everything happens for a reason. The reason may not always be what you expect - but it's right nonetheless and although it may hurt temporarily, it will benefit you in the long run.

Take care.

The spiritual wilderness - continued

Looking back over the last eleven and a half years of my life and everything that happened during that time period, I am rather amazed that I'm still alive. I've spent that entire time in the spiritual wilderness - the most intense period of that wilderness was the 40 months I spent in Taupo. I've come out of it now, and I do feel like a new man. However, I've also been quite bitter and perplexed about the fact that despite now being a published author on the world stage, I have very little to show for it. I sometimes feel incredibly low on confidence and I have little trust in my own decision making. I am rapidly approaching 30 years old now. I see many people my own age (or younger) who are married, have children and their own house. Though I now have an amazing girlfriend, I certainly do not have children or my own house - not to mention no finances to be able to fund those things.

This has been a deep source of grief and disappointment for me and has often caused me to feel like a complete failure as a man. I am actually very good with my money - I don't go spending it wildly on stupid, unnecessary things. My computer is probably the most expensive thing I own (which I need for writing). My car isn't overly flash and I don't have a huge amount of worldly possessions. I've also gone through long periods of putting money aside into savings accounts, yet at nearly 30 I have almost nothing to show for it. A conversation with my girlfriend this evening helped shed some light on this for me and helped further my understanding of the nature of the spiritual wilderness, and how the wilderness affects us.

You don't get your own way in the wilderness.

If there was one thing that was stamped out of me early on in the wilderness - it was my ability to make my own decisions and see them work out in my favor. After I dropped out of University at the end of 2002, I began to look for a full-time IT job using the papers I had gained from Massey University. I knew this was what I wanted to do, so I went out of my way to make it happen. One day at church, God told my mother that He wanted me to go to bible college. I didn't want to know - because I wanted a job doing stuff with computers. So I set out to apply to make one of these jobs happen. It didn't.

It didn't matter if I knew someone in the company, how well my CV looked, how well I conducted myself in interviews or anything like that. It was literally impossible for me to get a job. I could be first on the shortlist to get a job and somehow I still wouldn't get it. I thought that this was just because I hadn't found the right job yet. So, I kept trying. Nothing happened. After about ten months being at home unemployed, I was just about ready to completely lose the plot. God gave my mother a vision of a brick wall - one which I was banging my head against. Mum eventually prayed to God and said "If you really want Graham to go to bible college, he needs a job to save up to earn money for his course fees." A day later, a friend who worked at a local supermarket said that they had a job going filling shelves for 40 hours a week. Being beyond the point of desperation by this time, I was ready to take anything. So I went along for the interview and got the job. God got his way - I certainly didn't get mine.

There's no abundance in the wilderness - you get what you need for the immediate future, and that's all.

I always remember one of the bible stories I used to read when I was a kid. It was about the Israelites when they were in the desert for 40 years. God rained down bread from heaven to feed His people who were walking through the desert. The people were instructed to gather enough for each day - and that was it. One family decided to disobey this rule and gathered enough of this bread from heaven (called Manna) for the following day as well. They went to check it the following day and found that it had all gone bad, and needed to be thrown out. They were unable to store anything for the future - they only ever had enough for what was immediately in front of them.

I am Scottish by nature, so that means that I don't like spending money. When I do spend money, I spend it on well thought out purchases. I believe in the theory of buy once, buy well. Until this evening I have been very bitter about the fact that despite my Scottish heritage, I am nearly 30 and almost completely broke. Looking back on the past eleven and a half years, it's literally been like I've had holes in my pockets. The second I came into any money or began to save - it just always seemed to disappear. I did have one period where I had a motorcycle accident which cost me a lot of money - but not long after that thanks to some amazing financial blessings and cutting back on spending I found myself back in a position of financial prosperity. However, shortly afterwards it was infuriatingly gone again.

At the supermarket job I mentioned previously, during the space of 11 months or so I managed to save up over $10,000.00. A good achievement, I thought. After getting the job, I gave up the idea of going to bible college and thought that I'd stick with that job and go and get a flat. It wasn't meant to be. Nothing worked out, until I finally gave in and decided to go to bible college after all. My course fees? $10,000.00 which included my living costs. All that hard work to save was gone. Then, after a year of bible college which had reduced my funds to zero and a failed job that I attempted to make work for 6 months, I get called by God to go back to bible college - again. And spend another $10,000.00. I'd gone from being quite wealthy for a young man to being ten grand in debt - simply for obeying God.

This trend was to continue. If ever I had money from this point on, it just seemed to disappear. In early 2009 when I was living in Taupo, I felt God strongly impress upon my heart that I needed to really focus on saving money. So I did. For the next two years I saved all that I could and kept my expenses to a minimum. I wasn't sure why I felt to save, but I did anyway - diligently. Then in August 2011, burnout hit and I was out of work for nearly a year before moving back to Tauranga. The funds I had saved helped keep me afloat during this time. I didn't spend all of my savings throughout this time however, and began to build them up once I got back to Tauranga  and began working again halfway through 2012. Just as I finally began to make some headway and get to a better place - God opens the door for me to publish my book, which would cost me. Once again - all of my savings were gone.

I wanted to save for the future, but seeing as I was in the wilderness, I was only ever given enough financially to help me cope with what I was immediately facing. The few times I was able to save a bit of money - it was only because it was going to be completely used up later on. It was literally impossible for me to get ahead financially because of the season that I was in. My money wasn't meant to last, it wasn't meant to be a sense of security and it wasn't meant to help prepare for my long term future - it was simply used to fund the purposes God wanted it for in the wilderness.

There's one path in the wilderness - and that's Gods.

When the Israelites walked in the desert, they followed a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. This was the presence of God, which directed them exactly where to go and where to stay, as well as how long to stay there for. To go off on their own direction was to disobey God - and therefore risk death. The presence of God was tangible and there to instruct them that they were to follow no other path than the path God had for them.

My life had often felt similar. It often felt like I was walking a narrow, claustrophobic path between two cliff faces - with a solid wall of rock and dirt on each side of me. I could only walk the path that was laid ahead of me. I simply could not turn to the right or to the left because I'd just hit a wall. My experiences with the job situation back in Wellington reinforced this.

People got angry with me at times during periods like this of inactivity in my life and came up with all kinds of suggestions. "Why don't you move to another city and get a job there?" "Why don't you try this or try that?" No one really seemed to believe me when I said that I couldn't make anything happen. It wasn't for lack of trying to get a job. It just couldn't happen and it wasn't going to happen because it wasn't on the path God had laid out for me. I couldn't go out and make things happen for myself. If I tried opening any doors, they'd simply slam shut on me and refuse to open again. I began to realize that there was only one way that I could go, and that was on the exact path that God had set ahead of me - because nowhere else would even come close to working. So I began to learn to change my focus from trying to make what I wanted happen, to making sure I was hearing from God and obeying His will.

It takes time to adjust to life outside of the wilderness.

The wilderness is not a place of living, but barely surviving. You get used to not getting your own way regarding anything and you become a drifter, a lost soul, with no plan or future ahead of you except walking wherever the pillar of cloud decides to go next. You know that you've got no choice but to obey.

One of the most challenging things I am facing right now is the reality that the wilderness has finished its purpose in my life. I am now beginning to walk in the season of resurrection - into the promised land. And, quite frankly, it's quite intimidating. I understand to some degree how hard it must be for those involved in the military who fight in battles and spend all day and night just hoping to stay alive, to re-enter society. All of a sudden they don't know how to cope. War is all they know, and it's scary to imagine not being at war. I've been locked in a battle for my heart and soul in the spiritual wilderness for a long time now. There's been many casualties. But I've emerged victorious. However, the concept of facing life outside of the spiritual war zone is quite intimidating. I'm not used to having my own free will. I'm used to following the orders of my Sargent (this being God of course). I'm not used to being able to do anything except the strict orders given to me. It's new, and a bit scary. But I've made progress already. The more good things I continue to see happen, the quicker I will adjust and the easier it will be.

So, if you find yourself in the wilderness today, I sincerely hope this encourages you and helps to shed some light on what you may be facing within your own circumstances.

Take care.

From weakness to weapon

If there's one thing that I've learned about God in my 12 years of being a Christian, it's that He wants his people to be complete and whole. Complete wholeness is only ever able to come into our lives when the painful, hurting areas in our hearts are exposed and fully cleansed so that they can heal properly. This process is deeply uncomfortable and sometimes outright terrifying, but it's necessary if we want to move into the fullness of who God has called us to be.

One of the strongest biblical examples of this process happening is the prophet Jeremiah. He's rightly labelled  as a hero of the faith and has been a strong inspiration for me. When the call of God first came to him, telling him that he had been appointed as a "prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5) he immediately responded by saying "I do not know how to speak, I am too young." (Jeremiah 1:6). Immediately we see a fear and an insecurity on the part of Jeremiah. Despite the clear instruction of the Word of God, he still hesitated due to his apparent lack of belief in himself and his own speaking ability. I know that in my life, when I was younger, I struggled a lot with speaking up about things that I needed to and a lot of that was due to a lack of self belief and a fear that my words would upset people. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Jeremiah was feeling the same thing. Therefore, his greatest insecurities have been called out into the open by God through this instruction. However, God isn't calling him to hide from them and work around them - but to boldly step into them.

If we continue to follow the story of Jeremiah, we see what was happening in the nation of Israel at the time. The people were living in deliberate, willful sin, yet the so called "prophets" were prophesying peace and blessing over Israel. God called Jeremiah to speak the real Word of God to the people and tell them that death and destruction was heading their way unless they listened to God and changed their ways. Nobody listened to him because they simply didn't have to. They laughed at him and mocked him, even went so far as to call him a traitor to his own nation. It got to the point where Jeremiah was so desperate for people to listen to him that he took to walking the streets with a yoke upon his shoulders. His own people became so angered with him that he was eventually thrown into a well to rot and die. Though he was eventually rescued, he was then imprisoned by his own people. Despite everything that happened to him, he refused to repent of the word he was given to preach and therefore remained in prison until everything he prophesied came to pass. Ironically, the Babylonians who overthrew Israel and thus fulfilled Jeremiah's prophesies, were the ones who showed him great kindness and allowed him to live anywhere he wanted.

I see an amazing story here. It begins with a young man, too frightened to go out of his comfort zone and speak, insecure about himself and his age. It ends with him facing every single fear in his heart and boldly proclaiming what God told him to say despite everything that was thrown against him. Nothing could stop him and he remained in jail, imprisoned by the unrighteous until his prophesies were fulfilled. His God-given role was very hard and cost him an enormous amount, yet he held firmly to the word of God and was eventually released by the very people he warned his own people against. The shy young man of old was long gone, replaced by a man as bold as a lion and with a faith worthy of mentioning in the Scriptures.

My greatest fears were along similar lines to his - standing up to people and saying things that might cause them to get upset with me or turn against me. Going through burnout in Taupo and facing the outright betrayal of two people I considered friends at the time was an absolutely cataclysmic event in my life. However, the next part of this was even harder as God actually called me to stand against these two people and tell both of them that the relationship that they were entering into was not God's plan for their lives, and that they'd be in serious trouble if they took it through to completion by getting married. I didn't make this decision to stand against them lightly. God spoke very clearly and said "I haven't blessed them, they've blessed themselves" and told me to stand up to them and warn them not to take things any further by using three simple words - "get over yourself!" I was being challenged - the same way that Jeremiah was being challenged - to face my greatest fears and obey the word of God regardless of what it cost me.

It was terrifying to begin with as I had no idea how people were going to respond but I knew that the Word of God had been spoken and that I was in serious trouble if I dared to disobey it, so I did as I was told. The same sort of thing happened in the sense that nobody listened to me and I lost a lot of friends out of it. People told me not to say anything to them, and after I had said my piece to them, some even went so far as to say to me that what I had said to them was "wrong" and "weird", yet I stuck to my guns and held fast to the stance I knew God had called me to take. It was painful and I lost a lot as a result for doing what I knew in my heart and spirit was the right thing to do. But at the same time, it began to develop a sense of confidence and self belief that I could stand against something and take the hits that went with it - yet I would still survive the outcome. I began to see friends dropping out of my life like flies - often because they didn't agree with the stance I had taken. This used to be the most terrifying thing I could imagine - losing friends because of something I'd done. Not now. My belief in the Word of God was stronger than anything and I was developing a boldness like I'd never had before which was prepared to make sacrifices for the sake of God's truth. People continued to ignore me, and the two people eventually got married. However, I still to this day, stand firm in the belief that I did as I was called to do and that deliberate disobedience to the warning that I was called to give them, will one day come back to haunt them.

The hardest part of all of this was that walking in obedience to God in this issue caused me to have to begin walking right through the most painful areas of my own heart. This was my greatest weakness by quite a long way - therefore God looked upon it as an opportunity to turn it into not only a very solid strength but an amazing story of overcoming and defeating fear. God wanted to take my weakness and turn it into a weapon for His Kingdom. Some days I was literally left shaking because the fear was just so overwhelming. But I knew that in this place of walking through my worst fears I was actually facing them - and therefore overcoming them. The worst thing God could have done with me, was to leave them all hidden in a compartment of darkness in my heart and not allow them to be prodded. This might seem like the safer option, but I would have been living with the continual weight of unresolved fear in my life and would have severely limited my functionality in the Kingdom of God - not to mention my ability to enjoy daily life.

This whole issue taught me that our journey with God to wholeness and full effectiveness for His Kingdom almost always results in us being forced to walk down a path where we are forced to face our greatest fears - not to torment us but because without doing this, we'll never become the people God wants us to be. Another example of this in my life comes from when I was several years younger and obsessed with distractions in order to keep my mind occupied so I wouldn't have to face what was really going on inside my own head. To force this mode of operating to change, I ended up being placed in situations where I not only didn't have a job, but was unable to get one. So I had no choice but to learn to look within myself and find the answers. The period of joblessness remained in place until I had faced what I needed to face about myself and learned what I needed to learn. Only then did God allow me to move forwards.

So today, if you're struggling with the word of God that's been spoken to you because you know you're going to face your greatest fears if you obey it, trust God that He knows what He's doing and that He's called you to do this because He wants to shine a light on the darkened, painful areas in your heart so that you can overcome them and move forwards. He's doing it because He loves you and wants the best for you - and also because He trusts you enough to want to use you for his purposes.

Take care.