This morning I went to mens prayer group and I came to realize what I had come out of and where I need God to take me in my life. At one point in my life I had been involved with law based religion, trying to justify myself through good works and self righteousness instead of trusting in God. So when our pastor shared with us a verse from Isaiah about how God had been reaching out to his people wanting relationship yet they chose to go their own way and burn incense and honor other gods, coupled with the verses in the new testament about the Pharisee and the publician praying, I came to realize how self-righteous and legalistic I once was and how I desire to get away from that attitude and totally embrace God's ways of doing things.
My life is no picnic. I struggle at times with both OCD and Tourettes (which is a neurological condition characterized by involuntary tics). I had grown up being taught to just cover it all up and pretend I was normal. But I am realizing that I need to be authentic, that I need to let God be at the center of my life, and I need to let God change me into his image knowing that he can use me to reach other broken hurting people like myself.
There have been times when I have been totally like that Pharisee and "I'm so glad that I don't have the same problems so and so has". But I also know that that's not the way of God and that God wants us to have relationships with and friends with people from different backgrounds and to understand where they are coming from and get involved in their lives.
Now as an Aspergers person I admit that I do enjoy gaming, I do enjoy reading, I do enjoy spending time with my church family, and I do love the computer job that I have and the people that I work with. And I also realize that God has a greater plan for my life that I can possibly imagine and that there are going to be times in my life that I am going to have to take a path that is a little tougher than Normal and that God is going to ask me to walk that path because that's what he did with Jesus and Paul. Both faced persecutions and criticism and attacks at every turn. I grew up with this, with the bullying and persecutions and I realize that the only way to go is to let God be at the center of my life.
I look at my life and I see a lot of things developing. I'm realizing that I have an undiagnosed condition (PTSD) that needs to be diagnosed and treated. I'm choosing to have faith on this one. I have already let God take care of a lot of it, but I'm also going to let God use my counselor to lead me to a diagnosis and treatment of the condition. God does a combination of both. I have supportive and loving friends around me and I'm thankful for that.
Tourettes is commonly misunderstood. As a kid I would deal with a lot of the vocal tics as well but these days they have become more muscular. Still when I get aggravated sometimes I will start involuntarily cussing but this is beyond my control.
I have a lot of conditions. But I have a big God as well. And part of my journey is trusting him and putting my life in his hands and letting him write my story and be at the center of my life even though I may not understand why things happen, although I sometimes get frustrated with being triggered, I trust that God is taking care of it and that he has a plan for all of this and a plan for me to go and minister to other people that are going through trials. This morning we talked about how ministering does not mean you shove Jesus down someones throat that doesn't want it, it means that you get involved in their lifes their problems, you walk in their shoes, try to understand their story and where they are coming from (this is empathy). And overall to just be a friend to people.
Part of trusting God especially when you have an anxiety type condition like OCD or PTSD is trusting God instead of turning to alcohol or cigarettes. There have been times when I have started to go down that road every time that I have dealt with some kind of traumatic episode. I'm glad that I have a faith family that is walking with me through some of these trials. They have prayed with me, they have supported me, they have loved on me. This is what I talk about when I talk about God's direct healing. God speaks through my pastors, God speaks through brothers that are going through tough trials the same as me. God has used pastors to show me that self medicating is not the way to deal with trauma but that He wants me to take it to him.
Part of what sets the God of the Bible apart from so many other gods or goddesses or religious systems is that He is a personal God that want's to be involved in our lives, He is someone that we can talk to just like we can talk to a person about what we are going through. And he is a loving Father, as he put it in the Prodigal Son his arms are open even if we are far from Him and he wants us to run into them.
Blessings.
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