Perks Of Being His

It’s hard sometimes to be grateful for anything that happens to us in the darkness of the dungeon of our difficult times. But this morning God graced me with a memory from my time in the pit and gave me a little object lesson.

A year or so before the Texas State Parole Board sent me home in time for the holidays, I caught a break that quite possibly kept that eventual parole possible. A prison guard escorted me and my co-workers in the kitchen back to our block after we dished out chow for our fellow inmates. When we stopped to be searched before the door to our cage could be opened, I noticed the guard on the keys eyeing me in a strange way.

I had never had any problems with this particular officer, but my stomach still did it's best contortionist impression. I knew something was up. Woodard, step out, he said.

I stepped back out of line and stood with my hands behind my back as he let the others into the day room. I felt like I was deflating as my chest tightened and I fought the urge to crumble. Hopelessness set in when the guard said, I guess you weren't expectin' to be on the shakedown list today, with a look that said he was thinking the exact same thing that I was. What I was thinking was how could I have been so stupid?

The second he said shakedown I knew what happened. I had been drinking a little, preparing to pull my shift in the chow hall when the guard who escorted us to and from work showed up a little earlier than usual. I screwed the lid back on the all-purpose cleaner bottle I'd rinsed out and used to keep my drink in and stashed it quickly behind my bunk. If no one entered my rack, there would be no problem, but I wouldn't have called it hidden. Busted,

The guard took me over to the cat walk and pulled out my bottle. He showed it to my escort joking about how it'd basically been right out in the open. My boss looked at me like he wanted to smack me in the head. He reminded me of my mother a little at that moment, and then to my surprise he acted like a parent. P. asked E. to let him handle things, he said I was one of his workers and he'd appreciate it. E. looked at me, shook his head, said something about how I'd never given him any problems so why not? He handed the bottle to P., who then escorted me towards the holding area for disciplinary cases.

He asked me what I had been thinking leaving the bottle out like that, and in true alcoholic fashion I blamed him. If he hadn't shown up early I'd have had time to hide it better and wouldn't have gotten caught. He looked at me like I was an idiot, and today I understand why. At the time though I believed  my answer true and solid. He talked to me for a few minutes, the gist of the conversation being that if I ever got caught like that again he'd personally make my life unbearable. He poured the contents of the bottle into the toilet and wrote me a warning contraband case for the empty bottle. No alcohol mentioned anywhere in the paperwork. Then he sent me back to my cell. I never heard anything else about it.

I screwed up. He covered for his own and let it go. I still don't really know why, other than grace. At the time I had little gratitude. Of course I felt glad that I wasn't in trouble, but I  felt too angry at losing my liquor to appreciate it. I actually believed he should  have let me keep it somehow if he was going to let me off the hook at all. Today I am grateful for the mercy he showed, but that's not the point.

What is the point? The point is that this prison guard, who proudly wore the symbol of his pagan beliefs every day, gave me an example of God's grace and love. I've screwed up. We all have. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The accuser stands before the Father, the Judge, and screams, guilty! And from the side Jesus steps in and says, this one is mine, I've taken care of it.


No it's not exactly the same. Jesus didn't hide anything or break any rules to cover for us. Instead He shed His blood and died for us. He doesn't threaten us with a promise to let us have it next time. He gives us His grace and power to access so that we can become someone different, someone better, than the offender He covered, and if we fall short again, when we fall short again, He forgives.

But we are His. He takes us and makes us clean. He takes our failures, mistakes and rebellion on Himself so that we don't have to pay the debt that we owe. When the accuser tries to hold our sins against us, He's right there saying His blood has covered it all. But Jesus does more than that. He does something that human grace can never do. He gives is the power to change. He sets us free, not only from the law and the accuser, but from ourselves. Our very nature makes it impossible for us to please God and walk according to His ways. But the transformation that comes from being one of His makes us righteous and able to walk with Him, to not only be but to act like a child of God.

I Will Not Be Afraid ~ Long

Fear. "This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. It is an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it. It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. But did not we, ourselves, set the ball rolling? Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble." 

(P. 67:2, 'Alcoholics Anonymous')

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

 Timothy 1:7 New King James Version (NKJV)

After selfishness and self-centeredness, fear may be one of the most damaging and dangerous enemies we have. Fear that God didn't really have their best interest at heart and was holding out on them spurred Adam and Eve into the decision to listen to lies and look to the fruit for their answers rather than God. Those same two fears, and under both for me was the fear that God didn't, couldn't. really and truly love me the way He loves "good" people, drove me to the same choices the first couple made, only my "fruit" was alcohol and drugs and sex and approval of others and...

Well, the list goes on. We may put ourselves into bondage with different things, but dig deep enough, and it's all the same wormy fruit. Fear is part of the human condition in the fallen world we live in. There's not anything that can be done to completely eradicate it from our lives. 

Sooner or later, something or someone will cause the spirit of fear to rise up within us and scream for our attention. It's like sour milk. If you drink milk on a regular basis, sooner or later, you're going to get a mouthful that you wish you hadn't. If you doubt that, ask 10 people what sour milk is like. If you don't get answers about the awfulness of it from all 10, you have most likely found one or two people who haven't drunk milk since infancy and simply don't remember. But how it affects us depends on what happens next. The natural human reaction to spoiled milk is to spit it out, and quickly. If we ignore that instinct we may find ourselves with a wonderful case of food poison that will insure that we never ignore that instinct again.

Sadly, the opposite is true with fear. It seems our natural instinct is to gulp it down and guzzle more. When we begin feeling the effects of the spiritual food poisoning, we look for a solution, and human nature is to wash the "answer" we try down with another dose of fear, fear that it won't work, fear that it will get worse, fear that blah blah. We try to push it away, cover it up, or distract ourselves from it, without doing anything to purge it from our system before it poisons us further, and perhaps even causes our death, since quite often our "cure" for fear is a deadly or more so than the disease itself.

But there is a better way to handle fear. Spit it out. It's not that we ever escape tasting fear, but we can learn not to swallow, not to bring it into the core of our being and let it rot there. We spit fear out by trusting God. We run to Him and His will when afraid rather than solutions we come up with ourselves or that are offered by the world. 

God created us to be able to feel fear. Fear has a purpose. Fear keeps me from driving at night without my lights on at 80 mph. Some might call this type of fear wisdom. But other fears aren't so clearly for our safety, and even they have a purpose. They determine who we are and how we live by how we react to them. We can respond by running to our Heavenly Daddy, where we find a refuge (a shelter and place of strength) and an ever present (always available) helper, or we can turn to other sources for security and find, instead, only the fruit of destruction.

With the first choice, fear becomes a momentary feeling that pushes us closer to God and this is replaced with His peace, regardless of the circumstances. With the second, fear becomes a part of us, altering us, until our spirit is filled with and consumed by it. If worry and fear rule our lives, we can be assured that we have been spiritually food poisoned and have responded to a bite, or many bites, of fear the wrong way, because turning to God never produces an increase in fear, never makes our core, our spirit, fearful. Our Daddy gives us power, love and a sound mind, the exact opposite of fear. 

There is hope for those sick with worry and fear. Step one, step away from the fruit. Stop eating and run to your Daddy. Step two, get out of the way and let the Great Physician do the work. You can't fix your fear problem anymore than you can operate on your own eyes, Step three, well, if there is a step three or more, God will direct you to it and through it as you do the second one. 

We may have to taste fear from time to time, but we don't have to drink it, and we certainly don't have to let it be a part of who we are any longer.

Today's Thoughts On Freedom

I always knew that there was something greater than me, a God who created the universe and everything in it, including me. I believed at a young age that God had a purpose and plan for my life. But fear made me doubt that God’s design for my life would give me the life I wanted. So like Jonah, I ran from God’s will for my life. 

This created a void in my life that could only be filled by a relationship with my Creator. I tried to fill this void with other things, pleasures and distractions that would provide escape from the misery and pain that reality without God in my life brought on, from the truth that my will led only to destruction. Before long, I became swallowed up and enslaved by the very things that I turned to for refuge. 

I knew that I would die if I did not escape the prison that I had created for myself. In desperation I turned to God for help, I admitted that there existed no victory for me in my own will, in my own strength. I surrendered to His will, way and purpose. When I did, God gave me the direction and power to escape my bondage. He set me free. I discovered more than freedom through defeat. The truth is that the will and purpose of God for me had been nothing to fear. It gave me everything that I had ever desired. 

No, I don’t mean money or glory or many of the surface trappings of what we often see as “the good life,” but rather it gave me the treasures that lie beneath those ideas. God gave me what I truly desired over and beyond what I could imagine, especially from the darkness of the dungeon that had swallowed me and held me bound. I found love, peace and joy. 

The life worth living that I thought I ran toward when I rebelled from my Creator, insisting that my way would be better became a reality only when I quit running from God and began running to Him. God’s purpose is better than anything we can do on our own. Today I will remember that while my way may appear better or more enjoyable, history has proven time and again that it never is. Today I will run to Him and make my purpose His purpose. By doing so I will find another day worth living, another day that ends in contentment, one more day filled with love, peace and joy. How much of these three treasures I find today will depend on how completely I am able to surrender this day to His will and His care. You too can enjoy victory and a life worth living today by surrendering and trading your will for His.