Chris' Christian Blog

August 19, 2019

"August 19, 2019" 

How do you combat sin?

We all have sin in our lives. For most of us there is one particular sin that we cannot seem to rid ourselves of no matter how hard we try, pray about it, or do anything else. I know I have a sin like that. I promise myself it won;t happen again and the first thing I know I have stepped over the line again. I have prayed about it until I have gotten to the point where I am questioning Jesus about it. Why does He not answer? My biggest strength lies in Philippians 4: 13 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
I find myself wondering why I keep failing when this scripture says I should succeed?

"Prompt: Use these words in you blog entry: ocean, glacier, tide pools."

My muse has been on hiatus recently so my creative juices are a little low. However I managed to write to research term papers last semester for Marshall University that both got A plusses and my muse was gone then too. I often think we can write without our muse. Writing is as much about motivation and skill as it is about raw talent and muse. So I'm going to give this prompt a shot. I don't know how well I will do. Hopefully I'll get some feedback.

The ocean is a place I have never visited. I have no particular reason for not having gone there. I've traveled all over the USA hitchhiking in my youth. Usually I was just looking for companionship or trouble and never bothered to see the sights. I've been within 10 miles of the beach and just never had the desire to go. My priorities were always elsewhere. I have never seen a glacier either. I have seen the effects of glaciers but have never actually saw one. Tide pools are also a mystery to me. I can't write about them as I have no idea what they are. I do know what pools are but tide pools are new to me.I know it seems mysterious that a person who has spent most of their adult life in higher education would not have seen or heard of these things. I just never did. My priority for a long time was getting high. I managed to maintain a fairly decent grade point average despite of chasing a high all the time and I learned a lot. I just really never had the motivation nor opportunity to visit the things in real life that I studied in college. I may someday visit the ocean but the familiar is adequate for me.
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Prompt: What does the phrase “Closed Door” mean to you? If there is such a situation, what’s behind the door? Why is it closed?"

Closed doors to me have always been a sign that whatever lay that direction is not God's will for me. I believe firmly that God has guided and molded my life. He has let me make my own stupid decisions and suffer the consequences for them, but He has used my decisions to make me into what I am today. I like most of what I am today. I can look back on my life and by faith I can see God's hand in many things. My ability to write has been blessed by God. I started reading very young and I remember how it struck me when I had that epiphany that letters had meaning. Why I nearly jumped out of my chair and did flip flops. The word "go" was the first word I ever actually "read" and I have been going since. By the time I was in fourth grade I had read every book in the school library as well as many classics. I was reading a whopping 250 words per minute with good retention. That had to be God opening a door for me! Then I began to write and found that I could put symbols together to make a cohesive whole. I hated grammar because it seemed like child's play to me. Spelling became easy and I won spelling bees all the time. Do you see where this is going? I feel all of this was a gift from God to shape me into a writer. It also helped me with higher education. I am probably one of the only people to ever use ten years to get a bachelor's degree. I hold a specialized associate degree, but due to the accreditation of the college I attended the credits did not transfer to any other school. I had to start from the beginning. Then due to my age, my advisors pretty much gave me free reign in selecting classes and I took many non-required classes just because I thought they sounded fun. All in all, I used up my student loans and barely got through my undergraduate degree. I will finish it this December and probably apply to a graduate program. I have the MSW program at Marshall University in mind. The point is that I don't believe in closed doors. I believe in them but I believe they are closed because God is guiding me to something better. I literally thought I had wasted most of my life because other than college I never worked. I wrote and I got high a lot. I am a recovered drug addict. Now I see that God has again intervened. My addiction experiences and the experience in overcoming addiction has given me a powerful tool to use to help others overcome addiction. I have been clean for 10 years, 6 months, 1 week, three days. That means I can show others how to get clean and stay clean. I can relate to an addict as nobody else can because I am one! Now I am about to back up my experience as an addict with a regents bachelor of arts in psychology as well as a specialized associate degree in dependency disorder/mental health technology. Those tools are invaluable to a peer support specialist and make me a formidable weapon in the war on drugs. God used all my experience to bring me here. By closing doors He guided me to this point. I can't wait to see what doors He opens and closes next!

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