One of my biggest motivations for writing this blog is the hope that someone out there can learn from my mistakes. If there’s any good that can come of the pain that I’ve gone through (and caused), any light that shines for someone in a dark place, then it’s more than worth it.

There’s another reason as well. The difference between what I thought about God most of my life and what I’ve come to know about Him is so big, and so life-changing, and frankly, so good, that I’m compelled to write.

My prayer is that you, the reader get a glimpse of the divine and awaken to his invitation in your own life. To be deeply known and deeply loved by your creator. To awaken to His love and experience the joy and peace I’m discovering.

The biggest challenge I face in sharing this is a language problem. So many of the words that I will use to tell you about my encounter with Love are the exact same words that I heard for many years in church. The spirit of religion had absolutely sapped the life out of words like ‘repent’ and ‘confess’ and even ‘sin’. Those words were thin and brittle when read through the lens of legalism. Thankfully God flipped the script on me. Here’s that story.

Sunday, Jan 28

My eyes were opened one Sunday morning in January 2018. Our family went to church as normal, except this Sunday we visited a new church where my friend Paul attended. Paul had invited us to come to church with them earlier, but it just hadn’t worked out that way until now.

A lot of different forces came together that morning to wake me to the nature of Love and the power of Love to change our lives. The Spirit was guiding me of course, and Pastor Jamie preached in a way that really resonated with me. Another factor was that I was becoming more desperate in my seeking of God, or at least I was becoming more aware of my need for help. I was self-destructing and I knew it.

I was on a path that I knew would eventually cost me my marriage and my family - possibly within the year. It was terrifying to feel like there was a part of me that I couldn’t understand, couldn’t live without, and couldn’t control and it was dragging me into hell.

Crash

A few months before, I was in a motorcycle crash. A pickup truck rear-ended me at a stop light less than two miles from home. Fortunately, I wasn’t hurt badly. The bike wasn’t as lucky- it was totaled. The accident shook me up though. Initially, I brushed off the crash- I even went to the office later that day.

The motorcycle crash didn’t hurt me physically but it ripped a gaping hole in the thin veneer of ‘okay-ness’ that I used to hide my secret life. It was as if the mental constructs I had erected in my mind that allowed me to live with myself in that state had been knocked off of their foundations by the trauma.

That Sunday morning I was looking for help. I was looking for some way out. With apologies to Johnny Lee, I was looking for Love in exactly the right place that morning. And I found It.

Or it found me.

The Good Shepherd

When a sheep gets separated from the flock and it becomes aware that it’s lost, it doesn’t run around looking for the flock. It lays down and cries out for help. A good shepherd knows his sheep and when one cries out in distress, the shepherd leaves the rest of the flock and runs towards the lost sheep. He scoops the lost sheep up and brings it safely home and tends to its wounds.

That was me on that Sunday. A lost sheep, crying out for help.

The Good Shepherd did just what he said he would do. He ran to me and lifted me up in the arms of love.

Born Again

To move forward I had to forget everything I thought I knew about God and about myself. My old view of God said that God was angry and that the reason my life wasn’t working out the way I wanted it to was that He was punishing me for my many hidden sins. The God I encountered was inviting me to awaken to his love and begin to live out of the power of love.

The penny dropped for me when I saw that there existed an actual dimension of Love that we can live in here and now, namely the Kingdom of God. When I heard ‘kingdom of heaven’ I had perceived only of a post-earth experience. I had made the mistake of thinking that eternal life is what you get after you die if you’ve followed all the right rules and acted properly in this life. I thought getting saved was primarily about avoiding hell in the afterlife.

“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”

— John 4:7-10

Heaven is here

Now I was seeing that I could be saved right here and now. My shame, ego, false self, and limiting beliefs could die and I could rise up and live out a new God powered life. That I could become someone more like God who didn’t sin in the way that I had always sinned.

For the first time ever, I dared to see myself as someone who was free. God’s love flooded my entire being. Through most of the sermon, I sat there and wept. Not just tears running down my face, but shoulders shaking, head down, snotty-nosed weeping. My wife and kids had no idea why I looked like I had lost the plot to life, sitting there sobbing my way through our first Sunday at Journey Church. They knew nothing of my hidden sin, and had no idea that I might see myself as ‘needing salvation’.

Of course, I argued with God about this radical grace. My rational mind rejected the idea that I could simply receive His love for me and be healed and live a new kind of life.

“But God - you know what I’ve done. How can you love me?”

He answered back “[I have removed your] sins as far from us as the east is from the west” - Psalm 103:12

My protests were met with a warm invitation. An invitation to simply be in awe of a God who loves me this lavishly. To embrace the fullness and the mystery of knowing and being known. To be open and honest and unafraid and unashamed in the presence of a Divine Love.

That afternoon I tried to explain to MJ and the kids what I had experienced. I told MJ “my life just got wrecked, but in the best kind of way”.

wrestling with god

I went on a long motorcycle ride that afternoon. I needed time alone to just think about what all of this meant. Was I really so loved? Despite my sin?

Bible verses flooded my mind….

“ ...I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

— Jesus | John 10:10

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

— 2 Corinthians 5:17

“...Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

— Jesus | John 3:3

“...seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. ”

— Colossians 3:9b-10

As the miles rolled by I wrestled with God. It can’t be this simple or this good. He started revealing to me his absolute ever presence. I began to see God everywhere I looked. Everything I saw around me sparkled with new life. Hope almost burst my heart open.

This hope gave way to faith, a belief that God loved me and had paid the ultimate price for my sin and had shown through Jesus how to live out a life of death and resurrection, ever becoming more of who He had made me be.

It was so clear to me that I could now live out a new life, freed from the compulsions and lusts that had such a powerful grip on my life.

I want to shift gears and talk directly to those of you who feel like they need help from God.

You are loved just as you are right now.

You don’t have to ‘get right’ first before you can receive God’s unconditional love for you.

The Kingdom of God is an actual dimension of love that exists for you to enjoy right now.

You can access this Kingdom today, through a child like awe and wonder.

new me

As I began to live out this new God powered life I experienced new peace and a new power to live above the limiting beliefs and habits that had kept me locked in shame. My perception of God changed - from fear to love. The change in my identity reverberated through my family.

One of the most beautiful things about this new life is the mental clarity and peace that came from living this way. Suddenly my creativity began to come back. As my mind was healed and renewed, I started dreaming big dreams again.

“...assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

— Ephesians 4:21-24

In the past there was always a part of me that held back from God, fearing that if I really lived for him that he would take away the fun things in life. Now I was discovering that this new life was wildly better than any life I had before.

I had to die in order to truly live.

One misunderstanding that blinded me to His love is this: I used to think that the unique things that made me ‘me’ were the bad things that I had to give up (dying to self) in order to 'be saved’ (avoid hell in the afterlife). I thought that I had to give up my individuality and become a boring carbon copy of the religious ideal set before me. Legalism has a way of distorting the story and I want to set the record straight.

The opposite is in fact true: when I die to my false self (ego), then true life begins. More of who and what I was created to be (in the image of God, no less) begins to emerge. Life becomes imbued with deep meaning and deep peace. Real joy takes root deep inside. Think about it - this new life is literally powered by and aligned with the motive Creative force that is at the base of all reality. None of this can be realized by following a system of rules or laws.

How are you?

When the storms of life crash onto your shores—and they will (coronavirus?)—there’s only one thing I want to build my life on. I want my life anchored to the Ground of Being itself. That’s the invitation. Drink deeply from the well that doesn’t run dry. Feast on the bread of life. Know and be known. Speak the truth in love.

How is it for you? Are you experiencing this new life? Are you experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven as an ever-present, day-to-day dimension of peace, love, truth, justice and creativity? I’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are on the journey.

If you’re bored of God, bitter, worn out and struggling, I’d love to hear from you too! There’s no shame in being there. You can come to the Father no matter where you are or where you’ve been.

“...I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

— Jesus | John 14:6b

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