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. 

A Decision Driven Life

Dalyn Woodard shares a short message (about 11.5 min) on how to live a decision driven life and not return to the past from which we've been delivered. The principles in the message can help us resist the desire and tendency to return to the bondage of our past.

For those who may prefer to read rather than listen, the transcript of the message is below the video. It is our prayer that you are blessed by what you hear or read.

A Decision Driven Life

We are born with God-given instincts and drives that fuel our desires, and desires determine our decisions. When we are hungry, we react to the desire to get something to eat and therefore to no longer feel hungry by making a decision to eat. We can desire food and be hungry, but the desire itself can do nothing but make us miserable unless it also drives us to the point where a decision is made to do something about the discomfort we feel. This is true spiritually as well.

Those of us who are Christians all had at least one time before we surrendered to God and accepted Christ as our savior where we found ourselves desiring relationship with God, to be saved. The motivations for the desire vary. For some of us who heard more about the great love God has for us, the motivation may have been to get closer to that love and to experience and know it more. Those who heard more about the effects of sin and the judgment that comes as a result of our sin may be motivated more by fear and the idea that eternity in heaven sounds a lot better than eternity in hell. The motivation may have even been less spiritual. There are times we come to God for reasons that we are less comfortable with later, such as to fit in, to belong and be accepted by others, or to please our parents. There are other possibilities as well. But the motivation doesn’t really matter.

Surrendering to God and living a spiritual life in relationship with Him is like wearing a seatbelt. We can put our seatbelt on out of fear, fear of injury and death, fear of getting a ticket. We might buckle up to make those we love happy. I must admit I wear my seatbelt more because it makes Leah feel better. We can strap ourselves in because we believe it’s the right thing to do or because it just makes sense. But our motivation for wearing a seatbelt is far less important than the decision that is born from the desire that motivation is tied to. What really matters is when we have that wreck, when life happens, were we wearing the seatbelt or not. And when life happens, it’s less important why we first came to God than it is that we have learned to run to Him rather than away from Him. So whatever our motivation, that desire for salvation led to a decision, a decision to follow Jesus, to surrender our lives and will to God’s care, will and plan.

Our desires grow or diminish and evolve as we go through life, and our spiritual desires are no exception. What may have started as a desire to escape hell develops into a desire for a richer, deeper, more satisfying relationship with our Creator. Out of that desire can come the decision to develop a more substantial and effective prayer life, to study God’s word to get to know Him better, etc. But our desires can also take us to places outside of God’s will for us, lead us away from deeper relationship, inspire new decisions that are contrary to the decision we made to follow Christ, especially in areas where we are or used to be in bondage. Our desires get messed up due to sin. We often experience a type of spiritual Stockholm syndrome.

Addiction to drugs and alcohol led to decisions in my life that were devastating to me and those around me. I came to the place where I realized that I had to get cleaned up, locked up again or covered up by the grave. It’s not a fun place to be, and the desperation of that darkness and hopelessness in my life gave me the desire to do what I needed to do to give up control and let Him set me free from the bondage that experience told me I could not beat on my own.

Early in my recovery though, this caused a confusing conflict. Part of me still wanted to drink and use, despite the danger and the full understanding of the devastation it would cause. Even though part of me wanted relationship with God and to surrender to His will for my life, another part of me wanted to do my will, and my will was distorted. My desire for a drink or drug would build until it was stronger than my desire to do anything else, despite the consequences.

Psychology would tell those of us struggling with destructive bondage, such as drugs and alcohol, compulsive spending, sexual addictions, whatever, that we need to understand the motivations behind the desire. That we need to find other, more safe and healthy ways to meet the needs in our lives and to avoid people, places and things that trigger those harmful desires that lead to horrible decisions like voluntarily going back to our captor’s embrace. But I propose that we already did all that was necessary in that regard when we realized that we were powerless over whatever had us in bondage, and that the only hope for us is found in a loving God who has and can supply us with the power to overcome that enemy. We made a new decision based on desires to be free, a decision to surrender and do what God wants us to do.

 Then the old desires woke up. We want the old bondage, maybe we don’t want all the pain and trouble it caused, but we want something tied to it. Like the Israelites desired to return to slavery in Egypt when life became uncomfortable in the desert of freedom, we actually desire to leave the road to deliverance God has lead us to and return to the life we had before. This causes questions like, “How can I pray for God to help me overcome this obsession, this desire, to engage in my area of bondage when I don’t want Him to save me, when I want to go do that thing?” “What right do I have to ask for help from God to do His will, when my will is not to do His will but to do my own?” The answer to those questions and others like them is in that first decision we made to accept Jesus and surrender to Him. That decision made us children of God, and being a child of God is what gives us the right to ask for help when we don’t want it, to ask God to fight for us when we want to surrender to the enemy.

There are times in our lives when we have to live by decision rather than desire. It’s not easy, or fun, and we can’t do it on our own strength. It feels like every part of me wants to dive into, or perhaps the illusion of control makes me ease into, these ungodly things that have ruled my life so mercilessly. I lie to myself and propose compromises that the past make clear will not work. I have seen those whose DWI issues have led them to recovery from alcohol go back to drinking after the desire to drink became so strong that they convinced themselves it would be ok as long as they only drank at home and therefore wouldn’t need to drive drunk. It may even work for a while. But sooner or later that slave boss takes the little control we give back and runs with it, making all our promises to control and not let things go to the danger zone about as effective as blowing on dice before taking our gamble. I’ve seen men struggling with sexual desires actually try to save their families and relationships from what those desires might lead to, by turning to porn as a compromise. Soon they realize that they only added to their bondage and in addition to gaining a new merciless master also find that by feeding that area they eventually still did the very things that they were hoping to avoid in the first place.

 Not everything we think and feel is real or true. And not everything we desire is what we really want. What we want deep down is often much more silent than our selfish desires that live closer to the surface. The voice of desire that held us in bondage is so often much easier to hear and to feel that we must obey, sooner or later, than the still small voice that brings freedom. Then we try to fight the desire. We are fighting ourselves. We try to tell ourselves that we don’t want to do what we want to do, and therefore, we are lying to ourselves which robs us of our will to fight. We’re going to lose sooner or later, and the desire is actually beginning to cause us to hurt and ache for whatever we are trying not to return to. We feel like failures, or worse, like deserters. We made a commitment and now we want to abandon it, to return to our sickness, even though we know we’ll feel horrible and guilty afterwards if we do. And that’s if we’re lucky and we can get back to where we need to be before our slave boss drives us to destruction.

The key is not in learning how to fight our old desires or how to replace our old desires with new and better ones, but in remembering our decision. We don’t have to be led by our desires. Our lives can be decision driven. This is not natural, but it is better. It means we stop and evaluate our options based on the decisions we have made rather than following wherever our desires, which change moment to moment, take us. Our will, our desire resurfaces to do that old thing, whatever that old thing is. We can’t fight it. The act of fighting it keeps our focus on the bondage and lessens our chances of victory. Sooner or later we will fail. We might as well go ahead and get it over with so that we don’t have to keep feeling twisted inside because of the desire. Then we get to feel twisted inside over our failure and our weakness and how incapable we are of walking with God.

Or we can acknowledge that we want to do the wrong thing. We want to. We really really want to. But we remember the decision, and because of the decision we can pray something like, “Father, I don’t want to do what’s right right now, I don’t want to surrender to Your will over this, I want to do what I’ve always done or learned to do when I feel like this. But I remember my decision to turn my will and my life over to You, and that includes my desires. I can’t fight this. I don’t want to fight this. And right now I don’t even want to honor my decision, but I won’t turn back, I won’t welch on our agreement. I am making a decision to stay on the path of my earlier decision. But that means that You’ll have to do something here, because I can’t do this on my own now any more than I could before. I need You to give me the grace and power to stay true to the decision I made to let You free me from this bondage. Help me not to do what I want to do, help me not to be governed by my desires. Help me to do Your will in this matter at this time.”

Changing the desire is less important than changing our reaction to the desire. Instead of making the desire based decision to return to our own private Egypt, we can let the desire drive us to our provider and deliverer and to make the decisions birthed from that desire be decisions to stay faithful to the first decision we made for God. Doing this gives God the opening to remove the obsession of our mind, our desires, in our areas of bondage, and in time, we can walk unshackled and free filled with awe that we ever listened to the lies our former masters tried to feed us in the guise of desire.

Reacting To Hurts

Dalyn Woodard shares a short message (about 10 min) on reacting to the problem of pain caused by others, especially Christians, in a way that keeps us open for God to heal us and give us victory in these areas.

A Life Worth Living

Dalyn Woodard wrapped up the series on spiritual freedom and recovery from bondage of all kinds with the sermon, “A Life Worth Living,” which is about 42 minutes in length. It's our prayer that you are blessed and ministered to as you listen. May God bless and keep you.

Photo "Old Time Religion" taken by Dalyn Woodard copyright Eclectic Imagery.

Carry The Message

Dalyn Woodard continued the series on spiritual freedom and recovery from bondage of all kinds. The sermon, “Carry The Message,” focuses on  the second half of step Twelve of the Twelve Steps and the Biblical principles behind it and is about 25 minutes in length. It's our prayer that you are blessed and ministered to as you listen. May God bless and keep you.

Photo "Old Time Religion" taken by Dalyn Woodard copyright Eclectic Imagery.