Note: If you've not had the opportunity to read the foreward or previous chapters and would like to, please look for the title of this writing under the "Blog Pages" tab above and click on it. You'll find what's available to date under that tab. jbh
The Passion Well - My Journey To Find It
Chapter One:
A Potentially Motivating Question Of Motivation...
***
1 Peter 3:14-16 (NLT)
14 "But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. 15 Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. 16 But do this in a gentle and respectful way. Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ."
***
If you're a Christian please allow me to ask a deep question that I hope you'd be willing to give some sincere and honest thought to: Can you define what motivates your devotion to follow Christ?
For some there's a simple pat answer that can be rendered almost as if it's been spotted, tagged and set aside to be offered in defense on occasion at a moments notice without any real introspective consideration. For some others, there'll be a sincere, well thought out and defining answer because they truly invested themselves in finding it. Others may find themselves on an honest hunt to examine...
It's a question that I've asked myself. And the examination of different seasons of my own life has produced more than one answer - a subset of answers if you will and each of them fit for the current season at that moment in time ...
Initially, it was simple Sunday School faith that led me to a beginning "relationship" with the Lord as an 8 year old. What I knew of Him then was pretty limited and untested in my own life. My motivation then was pretty simple, self serving and unfortunately rooted more in fear than any kind of love. From what I'd personally gathered in Sunday School, there were two possible destinations for a soul leaving this world - one being the golden glory of Heaven and the other the unimaginable horrors of Hell. With the trusting faith of a child, my young mind believed what I'd heard. So the choice really wasn't hard for me to make - this Jesus, the Son Of God, could save me from a terrible and unimaginable fate. The simple, short answer at that time was ... there was a way out, so I took it.
But my perception of God as a boy wasn't in regard to the complete truth of His great love and desire for me as His very own unique child. It was instead one overwhelmed by the magnitude of His pure, perfect holiness and as an awesome, omnipotent power standing in judgment over me. Of course He is all that He's said that He is, but there was much more to the truth than I knew and understood at the time and I somehow missed it. I was much more focused on being afraid of making Father God mad and consequently getting fried by a lightening bolt. I had such fear of this God who had the power to send me to eternal punishment that fear became the primary basis of my relationship with Him. I was sure that any misstep I might make could lead to instant failure and the stakes were high. I was so young and had so much to learn...
So my childhood motivation was fear...
As I became an early teenager life wasn't without its recurrent conflicts among some of my peers at school. Turmoil seemed to have a knack for turning up at a moments notice and the encounters would sometimes leave me bruised and bleeding. I was awkward, from a financially challenged background (which often left me dressed differently) and I was small and still somewhat outspoken when offended. Any of those traits had the potential to make me a target of ridicule in the adolescent cosmos and my inability to keep my mouth shut and ignore the continual taunting only exacerbated the situation. Like a moth to a flame, I continually defended my worth and defied the ridicule that seemed to be elicited from the inequities of my social standing at the time. In short, I ended up harboring some some hurt and resentment along with a driving need to prove myself worthy to spite my accusers.
But in early adolescence a new front to be contended with rose up as well. It was one that came from within what had once been considered the personal sanctuary of my youth. Peer conflicts alone have the potential to become a seeming high hurdle for some to clear in developing years, but the conflict that began in what had once been the safe haven of my home left me without anywhere to retreat except inward.
It wasn't until a few years after he passed that I came to understand that my dad suffered from bipolar disorder. That wasn't something that I had any awareness of at the time, but I was more than a little aware that something frighteningly had the ability to flip his moods without any warning. It created an atmosphere that was completely unpredictable and well beyond the understanding of a still developing young mind. Behavioral correction began to take on a whole new meaning that could involve fists and feet and was sometimes based on supposed offenses rather than actual misdeeds. It was confusing, internally crushing and the depth of anger was often without a personally definable cause at the time.
At this stage, Jesus, my Savior became an inner refuge. I could tell Him anything in secret without any fear that the issues of my wounded heart would be ridiculed or that the things that I confided in those quiet, sometimes tearful conversations with Him would be shared with anyone else. I began to attempt to read the King James Bible anxiously seeking some kind of understanding in the hope of learning some key to a power that could change the dynamic of my chaotic and confusing young life. It was a struggle, but I hoped that maybe if I could be a better person things would change and there wouldn't be any more pain or conflict. But there was still so much to learn, not only about God, ... but about myself as well.
So my early to mid-teen motivation was refuge...
The latter part of my teens and into my early twenties I'll refer to as my young adult years. I left home in confusion and anger shortly after my seventeenth birthday and found myself enveloped by a world that I really wasn't in any way ready for. Predictably, given my angry and struggling state at the time, it wasn't long before I found myself immersed in readily available substitutions for the internal peace that I desperately longed for. But just as predictably, those things never satisfied the internal ache that I carried even with increased doses and they never brought me closer to finding answers to the questions that haunted the conflicted inner me.
Why? Why is there so much hurt and evil in the world? Why do people seem so anxious to want to cause hurt to each other? If we're all created by a God who loves us, why does He let us suffer all of the evil and ills that seem to inexplicably exist in the world? The questions didn't dent my faith in Him or His word. I had a fear of even entertaining doubt, but the questions hung there and lingered agonizingly persistent somewhere in a dark corner of my heart.
Now seemingly alone in the world at seventeen and seeking a resolution to my harbored anger and frustrations, I began to discover that I had easy access to things that I previously wouldn't have even considered. But drugs, alcohol, sex, running wild and a host of other crazy things failed to resolve my anger or my hurt, they only added to it. In fact, in a very short period of time, just a period of a few months, they turned on me. Life quickly became so seemingly unbearable that there came a point when I reached from what I viewed as life's toilet bowl for the handle and pulled it with every intention of permanently flushing my miserable life...
But of course my suffering as a youth was nothing compared to the truly devastating suffering that so many experience in the world. My young, impressionable, self centered mind had already been so impacted by certain experiences in life that I was struggling to find some explainable and acceptable resolution to. And having felt enough rejection from sources I had once wanted so much to be a part of and others that I'd once looked up to, my previously outgoing focus turned largely defensive, defiant and far too often inward. I was generally focusing obsessively only on the personal unresolved negatives and looking for resolution to my inner struggle.
As I would gratefully come to fully realize later, the ever patient Lord doesn't easily let go of what belongs to Him and that He desperately loves. Those intimate outpourings of my heart earlier in life had reached a divine ear and opened a permanent connection to a far greater heart than my own. They began a relationship with the God that fully understood me and the world around me far better than I understood myself. What I had started earlier by my desperate unfiltered honesty and intimacy with Him, He continued to engage in even when I later allowed my frustrations begin to overshadow my relationship with Him. He never wavered and He never backed away from me, even when I shamefully turned callous and neglectful toward Him.
As much as I rebelled and thrashed around in frustration through that period of my life, I could never completely escape a recurring draw to periodically acknowledge the Lord's presence. He occasionally moved in those "mysterious" ways in spite of my "bull in a china shop" approach to life, to remind me of His presence and it continued to give me a distant, but glimmering hope. It was as if it was intended just to remind me that He was there and persistently waiting for me to wear myself out and finally turn to Him in surrender. Those periodic reminders of His presence eventually began to have me looking with some gently increasing hope for the next appearance of His hand. The mildly expectant act of looking for them was what enabled me to occasionally see them and seeing them ... continued to give me hope of finding some kind of purpose in life and perhaps an explanation for some of the things I'd encountered up to that point. I was carrying scars that wouldn't heal and far too many now were self inflicted. I knew there was a doctor in the house and that gave me hope. I just struggled with sticking to following His prescription...
My young adult motivation was hope...
As I came into my late twenties and moved on into my thirties, I'd been subjected to the world and it's self educated opinions relentlessly. In many cases I found them both repressive and offensive to the faith that I'd stubbornly clung to and it wouldn't get any easier. In fact, opposition would eventually come to a head and create something of a personal inner crisis that I'd find myself forced to resolve.
The Apostle Peter exhorts us in 1 Peter 3:15: "if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it". And although by this time I had some personal, experience based reasons for my own belief along with some scriptural knowledge, I really hadn't prepared myself to explain why I believed to a seemingly scoffing and increasingly hostile secular world. I'd never felt a need to stop and ask myself why. I certainly didn't understand everything, but I'd experienced Him and had already established His presence in my life as fact for myself. At that point, I was so busy struggling with the issues of life that consumed so much from me, that I hadn't prepared for the possibility of needing to make the case for my belief to a scoffing audience. At this point as an adult with emerging adult understanding, I would be made to pay a very uncomfortable price for my laziness and it would lead me to ask a very important question of myself ... Why do I believe?
My adult motivation ... ... ... FIND THE WHY
If the page appears blank and you don't see the post that you're looking for, please scroll up.
The Passion Well - My Journey To Find It
Chapter One:
A Potentially Motivating Question Of Motivation...
***
1 Peter 3:14-16 (NLT)
14 "But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats. 15 Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. 16 But do this in a gentle and respectful way. Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ."
***
If you're a Christian please allow me to ask a deep question that I hope you'd be willing to give some sincere and honest thought to: Can you define what motivates your devotion to follow Christ?
For some there's a simple pat answer that can be rendered almost as if it's been spotted, tagged and set aside to be offered in defense on occasion at a moments notice without any real introspective consideration. For some others, there'll be a sincere, well thought out and defining answer because they truly invested themselves in finding it. Others may find themselves on an honest hunt to examine...
It's a question that I've asked myself. And the examination of different seasons of my own life has produced more than one answer - a subset of answers if you will and each of them fit for the current season at that moment in time ...
Initially, it was simple Sunday School faith that led me to a beginning "relationship" with the Lord as an 8 year old. What I knew of Him then was pretty limited and untested in my own life. My motivation then was pretty simple, self serving and unfortunately rooted more in fear than any kind of love. From what I'd personally gathered in Sunday School, there were two possible destinations for a soul leaving this world - one being the golden glory of Heaven and the other the unimaginable horrors of Hell. With the trusting faith of a child, my young mind believed what I'd heard. So the choice really wasn't hard for me to make - this Jesus, the Son Of God, could save me from a terrible and unimaginable fate. The simple, short answer at that time was ... there was a way out, so I took it.
But my perception of God as a boy wasn't in regard to the complete truth of His great love and desire for me as His very own unique child. It was instead one overwhelmed by the magnitude of His pure, perfect holiness and as an awesome, omnipotent power standing in judgment over me. Of course He is all that He's said that He is, but there was much more to the truth than I knew and understood at the time and I somehow missed it. I was much more focused on being afraid of making Father God mad and consequently getting fried by a lightening bolt. I had such fear of this God who had the power to send me to eternal punishment that fear became the primary basis of my relationship with Him. I was sure that any misstep I might make could lead to instant failure and the stakes were high. I was so young and had so much to learn...
So my childhood motivation was fear...
As I became an early teenager life wasn't without its recurrent conflicts among some of my peers at school. Turmoil seemed to have a knack for turning up at a moments notice and the encounters would sometimes leave me bruised and bleeding. I was awkward, from a financially challenged background (which often left me dressed differently) and I was small and still somewhat outspoken when offended. Any of those traits had the potential to make me a target of ridicule in the adolescent cosmos and my inability to keep my mouth shut and ignore the continual taunting only exacerbated the situation. Like a moth to a flame, I continually defended my worth and defied the ridicule that seemed to be elicited from the inequities of my social standing at the time. In short, I ended up harboring some some hurt and resentment along with a driving need to prove myself worthy to spite my accusers.
But in early adolescence a new front to be contended with rose up as well. It was one that came from within what had once been considered the personal sanctuary of my youth. Peer conflicts alone have the potential to become a seeming high hurdle for some to clear in developing years, but the conflict that began in what had once been the safe haven of my home left me without anywhere to retreat except inward.
It wasn't until a few years after he passed that I came to understand that my dad suffered from bipolar disorder. That wasn't something that I had any awareness of at the time, but I was more than a little aware that something frighteningly had the ability to flip his moods without any warning. It created an atmosphere that was completely unpredictable and well beyond the understanding of a still developing young mind. Behavioral correction began to take on a whole new meaning that could involve fists and feet and was sometimes based on supposed offenses rather than actual misdeeds. It was confusing, internally crushing and the depth of anger was often without a personally definable cause at the time.
At this stage, Jesus, my Savior became an inner refuge. I could tell Him anything in secret without any fear that the issues of my wounded heart would be ridiculed or that the things that I confided in those quiet, sometimes tearful conversations with Him would be shared with anyone else. I began to attempt to read the King James Bible anxiously seeking some kind of understanding in the hope of learning some key to a power that could change the dynamic of my chaotic and confusing young life. It was a struggle, but I hoped that maybe if I could be a better person things would change and there wouldn't be any more pain or conflict. But there was still so much to learn, not only about God, ... but about myself as well.
So my early to mid-teen motivation was refuge...
The latter part of my teens and into my early twenties I'll refer to as my young adult years. I left home in confusion and anger shortly after my seventeenth birthday and found myself enveloped by a world that I really wasn't in any way ready for. Predictably, given my angry and struggling state at the time, it wasn't long before I found myself immersed in readily available substitutions for the internal peace that I desperately longed for. But just as predictably, those things never satisfied the internal ache that I carried even with increased doses and they never brought me closer to finding answers to the questions that haunted the conflicted inner me.
Why? Why is there so much hurt and evil in the world? Why do people seem so anxious to want to cause hurt to each other? If we're all created by a God who loves us, why does He let us suffer all of the evil and ills that seem to inexplicably exist in the world? The questions didn't dent my faith in Him or His word. I had a fear of even entertaining doubt, but the questions hung there and lingered agonizingly persistent somewhere in a dark corner of my heart.
Now seemingly alone in the world at seventeen and seeking a resolution to my harbored anger and frustrations, I began to discover that I had easy access to things that I previously wouldn't have even considered. But drugs, alcohol, sex, running wild and a host of other crazy things failed to resolve my anger or my hurt, they only added to it. In fact, in a very short period of time, just a period of a few months, they turned on me. Life quickly became so seemingly unbearable that there came a point when I reached from what I viewed as life's toilet bowl for the handle and pulled it with every intention of permanently flushing my miserable life...
But of course my suffering as a youth was nothing compared to the truly devastating suffering that so many experience in the world. My young, impressionable, self centered mind had already been so impacted by certain experiences in life that I was struggling to find some explainable and acceptable resolution to. And having felt enough rejection from sources I had once wanted so much to be a part of and others that I'd once looked up to, my previously outgoing focus turned largely defensive, defiant and far too often inward. I was generally focusing obsessively only on the personal unresolved negatives and looking for resolution to my inner struggle.
As I would gratefully come to fully realize later, the ever patient Lord doesn't easily let go of what belongs to Him and that He desperately loves. Those intimate outpourings of my heart earlier in life had reached a divine ear and opened a permanent connection to a far greater heart than my own. They began a relationship with the God that fully understood me and the world around me far better than I understood myself. What I had started earlier by my desperate unfiltered honesty and intimacy with Him, He continued to engage in even when I later allowed my frustrations begin to overshadow my relationship with Him. He never wavered and He never backed away from me, even when I shamefully turned callous and neglectful toward Him.
As much as I rebelled and thrashed around in frustration through that period of my life, I could never completely escape a recurring draw to periodically acknowledge the Lord's presence. He occasionally moved in those "mysterious" ways in spite of my "bull in a china shop" approach to life, to remind me of His presence and it continued to give me a distant, but glimmering hope. It was as if it was intended just to remind me that He was there and persistently waiting for me to wear myself out and finally turn to Him in surrender. Those periodic reminders of His presence eventually began to have me looking with some gently increasing hope for the next appearance of His hand. The mildly expectant act of looking for them was what enabled me to occasionally see them and seeing them ... continued to give me hope of finding some kind of purpose in life and perhaps an explanation for some of the things I'd encountered up to that point. I was carrying scars that wouldn't heal and far too many now were self inflicted. I knew there was a doctor in the house and that gave me hope. I just struggled with sticking to following His prescription...
My young adult motivation was hope...
As I came into my late twenties and moved on into my thirties, I'd been subjected to the world and it's self educated opinions relentlessly. In many cases I found them both repressive and offensive to the faith that I'd stubbornly clung to and it wouldn't get any easier. In fact, opposition would eventually come to a head and create something of a personal inner crisis that I'd find myself forced to resolve.
The Apostle Peter exhorts us in 1 Peter 3:15: "if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it". And although by this time I had some personal, experience based reasons for my own belief along with some scriptural knowledge, I really hadn't prepared myself to explain why I believed to a seemingly scoffing and increasingly hostile secular world. I'd never felt a need to stop and ask myself why. I certainly didn't understand everything, but I'd experienced Him and had already established His presence in my life as fact for myself. At that point, I was so busy struggling with the issues of life that consumed so much from me, that I hadn't prepared for the possibility of needing to make the case for my belief to a scoffing audience. At this point as an adult with emerging adult understanding, I would be made to pay a very uncomfortable price for my laziness and it would lead me to ask a very important question of myself ... Why do I believe?
My adult motivation ... ... ... FIND THE WHY
If the page appears blank and you don't see the post that you're looking for, please scroll up.
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