Borrowed Light

Shedding My Wilderness Sandals

November 11, 2013Mike Leake 1 Comment

I’ve always considered God’s provision a sign of God’s approval. Perhaps that’s a remnant of my days swallowing the damnable prosperity non-gospel. Or perhaps its from places like Psalm 34:10, “The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.”

Now I’m not so certain. Consider this:

“For forty years I loathed that generation…” Psalm 95:10

That verse caught my attention. Especially as I thought about how it related to these verses:

For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing. –Dt. 2:7

What? “Lacked nothing”? I thought he loathed them. You mean he is still providing for them and making sure that they “lack nothing”? Weird. God even cared for things like clothes and shoes:

I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet. -Dt. 29:5

His Provision Doesn’t Equal His Pleasure

God wasn’t providing for the wilderness generation because he was pleased with them. In fact he loathed them. But he was providing for them because He is God and He is good. He’s still their Father. So he cares for them; and somehow I think He still loves them—even while He loathes them.

This leads me to conclude that just because God is providing for you it doesn’t mean that you are being obedient and pleasing to Him. It might just mean that while you are being a complete goober God is still faithful.

Manna isn’t milk and honey, or wheat and barley, or vines and fig trees and pomegranates. And water from a rock isn’t brooks of water or fountains and springs, flowing out in the valley and hills.

Conviction

This truth left me broken and repenting a few days ago. Here is something that I wrote in a prayer journal (otherwise known as a diary for a dude):

Lord, I want to pursue your pleasure and not merely your provision. I want more than shoes. I want You. I don’t want wilderness provisions because of my disobedience. I want your rest. I want your smile.

I’ve grown less passionate about the Lord’s pleasure. I’ve contented myself with His provisions (which are awesome)—but I’ve assumed that His provision means that He is pleased with me. I know that He’s ultimately pleased with me because I am covered in Christ. And I know that I don’t pursue the Lord’s pleasure by performance. But I don’t pursue it by passive disobedience either (James 4:17).

It’s this:

“God is delighted with our obedience when it is the fruit of our delight in him. Our obedience is God’s pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure.

The Israelites wandered 40 years in the desert because they didn’t trust in the Lord. They didn’t believe he could spread a table for them in the wilderness. My heart has grown similarly jaded and that scares me. I’ve been a fool that has contented myself on lesser things. So, I’m praying today that the Lord will remind me of this and stir up my heart to passionately pursue His pleasure.

It’s time I shed my wilderness sandals…

Today in Blogworld 11.11.13

November 11, 2013Mike Leake

6 Reasons Not to Abandon Expository Preaching

It’s fascinating that this article first appeared in 1996. Do you think expository preaching has grown since then?

Should God Alone Make You Happy?

Interesting. How would you answer that?

Pretty Woman and Why You Judge “Prostitutes”

Lore Ferguson explains why she never uses the word “prostitute”.

Influence Is Not > Than the Truth

I think this post by Erik Raymond is one that needs to be read and considered.

This is amazing. A homeless vet gets a makeover. (On a side note does anyone else think this looks like Chuck Norris in the 1980’s?)

How God Rescued Me From Pornography Addiction

November 8, 2013Jon Perera

Everything seemed perfect . I was the oldest of three children in an immigrant family. We had a home, tucked away in a nice middle class neighborhood, surrounded by other financially secure families. We attended church every Sunday. We were living the American dream.

The cancer diagnosis forever changed my world.

A few months before my 12th birthday we would bury my father and with him most of my stability. I had responded to Christ and was baptized that fall after my father’s passing. But with the death of my father loneliness became my companion. When I lost my father I lost the only consistent and godly male role model that I had known.

One day I took my lonely heart to a magazine store to get an automobile magazine. While scanning through the magazine rack, I noticed a group of guys huddled in the back of the store. I thought, “There must be something of interest to me over there”, and so I joined them. What I saw that day began a 25 year addiction. What at first grossed me out, began to entice me.

Before I knew it, that peek at a magazine led to trips to the adult movie store. Then the internet found its way into my home, and I spiraled down into even more destructive behavior. I became like a crack addict looking for a fix. Which, interestingly enough, recent studies have shown that pornography use changes the brain’s dopamine patterns—thus making it equivalent to cocaine or heroin addiction. I didn’t think of in those terms at the time—but I was as hooked to my pornography as others are enslaved to white powder.

In the book of Luke, Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son. When the son had lost everything, he was reduced to working in a swine field. He hit rock bottom. Pornography held my hand to that swine field.

I was addicted.

Marriage, children, and church hopping did nothing to stop my addiction. My pornography began to slowly diminish . But whenever there was a stressful day or when I felt alone, and was by the computer with no one was watching, I would return to pornography as a release and a way of dealing with the issue at hand.

In 2009 I attended a Men’s Conference in Navasota, TX by myself. At first it was just another gathering. But in the afternoon a baseball player got up and shared his testimony. There was a cross at the front, he said “Whatever hang-up or issue you have you can break free through Christ and what He has done for you. Write down that issue, come forward and use a hammer and nail it to this cross”! Through the Holy Spirit’s prompting, I went forward and it was the beginning of the end of my addiction.

The second week after I returned from Navasota, I had a very trying day. I felt the urge to go online, but remembered what I nailed to the cross and did not. There were some slips, however. In late 2009 I met with a pastor and shared my story with him. This led to me publiclyHow share my testimony and story with a men’s lunch group in 2010. In March of 2011, at a Christian retreat, God finally broke my pornography addiction.

Are there times where I get tempted? Yes. Are there times where my eyes wander? Yes. When temptation and wandering come up, I go to God, ask for forgiveness, and move on. Because God is a God of Grace and forgiveness because we are NOT perfect, just forgiven.

It was not easy, but reliance in and through Christ and coming back to Him was and is the only answer. I’ve found that, even though I cannot/could not break this addiction on my own, it can be broken. Through confessing of sin (to God first, 1 John 1:9), and then opening up to a friend, pastor, confidant, etc. we bring our sin into the light. Remember, sin will take you farther than you want to go. But don’t forget grace can transform you deeper than you’d ever imagine.

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Jon Perera is married to his wife Anne of 16 years. They have 3 children Andrew,Audrey, Austin. The couple has lived in McKinney TX since 2004 where they attend Crosspoint Church. Jon is blessed to teach an Adult Bible Fellowship class and teach 1st graders on Wednesday nights.