Scorched Earth

 

Today I went back to the place where I used to go

Today I saw that same old crowd I knew before

When they asked me what had happened I tried to tell them

Thanks to Calvary!  I don't come here anymore

Thanks To Calvary ~ Gaither singers 

The other day I was thinking of a few of the things that I have done in the past that somehow I no longer find attractive to my lifestyle today.  So, apparently drinking and hanging out in strip clubs is no longer profitable for me.  Yet, that's the way things used to be for me.  After all, I was a man and that was what men did.  Men also treated women with a somewhat sense of disrespect, made their own rules and tolerated disrespect from nobody.  Believe it or not, some years ago that was me.  I lived life on my terms.  Sure, I still believed in God, but He was not the central point of my life.  Back then, God was more or less a bystander as I did my own thing.  Following mainstream church theology, if there was a bad situation in my life, I heeded the advice from a few Christian friends and assumed that God was somehow angry with me for putting Him on the back burner for so long.  So, I would make the Lord a few promises of good behavior moving forward and continue on with life as I knew it.  That was my view of God, as the overseer of my life and not the reason for my life.  After all, God was in heaven looking down and I was here on earth free to live my life as best as I could to His standards.  If I stumbled, I'd vow to do better and then continue on with what I was doing.  In this way, I began to associate the difficult times in my life as Gods punishment for my own behavior.  Did I resent God for this?  Not really, but I did question Him that if He indeed loved me then why would He bring such constant hardships upon me.  It hadn't yet clicked in me that it was not God who was dragging me through the hardships in my life.  It was God who was yearning to save me from them.

Yet God is commending this love of His to us, seeing that, while we are still sinners, Christ died for our sakes. 

Romans 5: 8, Concordant New Testament

I remember that hike to this day.  My friend Dennis and I were slogging up the hill of a local park on one of our many hikes around Portland.  I'm not really sure what turned the conversation to God, but Dennis began speaking to me of a God of love and not of discipline and punishment.  This was a side of the Lord I had rarely, if ever, noticed.  The seed had been planted.  I now began to look upon the Lord with a different perspective.  God wasn't that overseer whose sole task it was to discipline me for not upholding His commandments.  The God I was slowly learning to see was a God of love and compassion for His children.  Indeed, His very nature is love {1 John 4:8}.  I realized in time that I also had been mistaken about the separation I had assumed there was between myself and the Lord.  There is no God in heaven and me on earth.  What there is now is Christ Jesus in me {Galatians 2:20}.  It was never the Lords desire to leave us to live alone without Him.  

Not long after my hike with my friend, I found myself once again dabbling in the ways that I used to do.  Yet, something felt different this time.  The desire for personal enjoyment was fading.  One night, as I stood at the door of another local strip club it finally hit me...this isn't who I am anymore.  Those same haunts I used to frequent no longer seemed as enticing to me.  Instead of expecting Gods punishment, I enjoyed His love and mercy in my life.  The other day a friend I once knew from the clubs I used to frequent called to ask me where I had been.  He hadn't seen me around the old scene for some time.  I told him that I had been busy with a few other things.  After I hung up I smiled...Thanks to Jesus...I don't go there anymore.  

He who is not loving knew not God, for God is love.

1 John 4:8, Concordant New Testament

~Scott~