Encouragement
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A college professor once related a satire on the Biblical story "The Prodigal Son." He said that when the wayward son came back, he physically got kicked back out. The professor also remarked "You can't come home."
This cynical remark is not true, certain not when it pertains to God. In his office, the professor had an envelope for "mean" messages and one for "nice" messages. The "mean" envelope was much larger than the "nice" envelope.
Like The Prodigal Son, we can come back to God once we go astray. I did. Like the children in Paul Mccartney's song, who say "we're so sorry, Uncle Albert. We're so sorry but we haven't done a thing all day..but when kettle's on the boil" we're so easily led away.
Even people who were brought up in a Christian home, as I was, can easily be let astray by the things of this world. Unchecked sin, not recognized and confessed and turned away from continually, can put you in what the father of the Biblical Counseling Movement, Jay E Adams calls a "downward spiral."
I've been in and out of the church, trying to follow God's ways. But the last time I strayed I was out too long and fell into a black hole! Scientists say that when you go through a black hole, you travel much faster than the speed of light, but you don't realize you're going through a black hole. This is what happens when you become callous to sin.
I didn't want to listen to counsel - to the pastor, my parents, my wise for her age daughter - nobody. I left the church and went my own way. I had a job with a rug company and when I passed by the church on deliveries, I thumbed my nose at it.
I lost my rudder, my anchor. Instead of matching my behavior with God's Word, I just followed my own desires, lusts. At one point, I left my wife and lived with someone else, even though I was with someone else on the side while I was married. The first few months I was away, my wife pleaded with me to come home. As time went on, she seemed to give up on me. When things got bad where I was, I wrote her a letter and confessed "the grass is not only not greener - it's brown!"
The people I lived with were selfish, mean, hostile, manipulative, materialistic, vain and violent. The police came to the house frequently when family members went ballistic and screamed so loud at one another that the neighbors could hear them. One family member stole even from her own biological son, and her mother. I had to leave after I got into an altercation with her. I had complained to her mother about her talking loud about 5 a.m. As I was eating breakfast, she entered the kitchen and started screaming and thowing things out me, saying I was a "tattle-tale" and restricting my priviledges, in her mother's house! At one point, while I was trying to eat my cereal, I unintentionally sprayed her with food when I yelled "leave me alone!" She spit on me and closed in on me. I panicked and ended up slamming her into a stack of trays, injuring her.
I was arrested. My driver's license still had my old address, and I was able to go back home. My wife didn't want me there, but legally I could stay, and I did. I ended up plea bargining and got two years probation, and was able to do community service by continuing to volunteer at a local Salvation Army. This is where I came in broken and turned back to God.
I started online freelance writing. After awhile, I lost the Internet, and started using the Wi-Fi at the local library. There, I befriended homeless people I knew from the community meals at the Salvation Army. Since then I ended up with an unofficial homeless ministry.
I had filed for divorce. It didn't happen, but this time my wife filed and I was divorced.
I was able to overcome temptations; I was on the right path.
In my associations with the homeless, I met a formerly homeless guy who set me up on a WordPress site, where I continue to advocate for the homeless and write about connected things, and where I "preach."
After hanging with the homeless for about a year, I befriended a homeless woman whom I ended up taking to the ER, where she was dianosed with stage IV lung cancer, which metastisized to the brain. I took care of her for two and a half years. The treatment cleared all cancers after a little more than two years treatment, but the cancer creeped back to the brain, and is untreatable. I'm writing this from her bedside at a nursing home, where I've been camping out during the day.
A long time ago, my late mother used to say that it may take a tramatic event to return me to the Lord. She was right. My prayer is for people in the church not to be lured away, not even when the kettle is on the boil!
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...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them... 2 Cor 5:19
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