teddwebb

This is a Devotional that the United Church of Christ sent out to everyone who had
signed up to receive their daily devotionals. This is a repost of their April 02,
2011 posting:

“I Met Jesus and My Life Is Not Better”

Excerpt from John 9: 8 – 9

“The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this
not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were
saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’”

Reflection by Anthony B. Robinson

What happens to someone who is touched and changed by Jesus?

When I watch a religious TV show or listen to some personal testimonies, it seems
that after meeting Jesus everything is better. “Jesus came into my life and now
business is great, my wife and I are super in love, and the kids, who were on drugs,
are getting straight A’s. Thank you, Jesus.”

It may be that way for some people. But I’m struck by what happened to the blind
beggar, in John 9, who was touched and healed by Jesus. He got healed and his neighbors
no longer knew him. His parents disowned him. And he was kicked out of the church.
If he’d given a testimony it might have been, “Yes, I was healed by Jesus and my
life turned into a mess. People I’d known for a long time acted as if they didn’t
know me, my family didn’t want anything to do with me, and the authorities threatened
to arrest me.”

I imagine his testimony might continue. “Yes, since meeting Jesus my life is harder
in many ways. But, you know, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because now I see.
I see how afraid many people are, how afraid I was. Afraid to tell the truth, afraid
to live, afraid to take any risks. It’s like we’re blind. It makes me sad. But I
don’t want to go back.”

Being touched and blessed by Jesus may not mean our lives are suddenly successful,
as society defines success. Jesus may make life harder, but in ways that matter.
He gives us problems worth having. And when we experience hard things on his account,
that is when we come to really know him.

Prayer

When you open my eyes to see by the light of your truth and grace, Lord, grant me
the courage to keep ‘em open. Amen.

Author: Anthony B. Robinson, a United Church of Christ minister

For the past 3 weeks, I’ve been having a tough spiritual time. When I say, “tough,”
I mean that “the devil” has been tempting me, trying to get at me, trying to distract
me, trying to draw me away from God. When I want to read my Devotional, a little
thought will pop into my head to try to distract me to do something else. Sometimes
a strong urge to go off and do something else will enter my mind trying to draw
me away from picking up my Bible to read The Word when I feel The Holy Spirit calling
to me to pick it up. When I wake up in the morning, I hear the tender, gentle, quiet
voice of The Spirit calling me softly to pick up my study Bible and read John 9,
or James 2, to just randomly flip through 2 Corinthians, or to read Habakkuk (and
I don’t even know what Habakkuk is!), and then I will feel that old man devil trying
to distract me and pull me away.

Sadly, I have to admit, he sometimes wins. I am human and I am weak. I pray to God
for strength. I pray to God for wisdom. I pray to God for help to discern The Word
from the pen of man. I pray to God for guidance and perseverance. I pray to God
to help me follow Jesus, to follow The Word, to be a Good Man, a Disciple of God.
I pray for my family, friends, church, and others as well that lay heavy upon my
heart. I pray to give and offer thanksgiving and to show my gratitude to God. I
pray to let God know that I really do appreciate everything that He’s done for me
and my family and friends. I pray to give praise to God. I pray to worship and give
glory and honor to God. I pray. I pray.

I have fallen from the grace of God and have returned into the light of God several
times over my lifetime. I know that when I am close to God, the devil attacks and
tries his best to distract me and draw me away from God. He does his very best to
throw everything he can in my way to prevent me from staying close to God, and from
getting closer to God. When you are in a relationship, ANY relationship, you have
to work at it in order to keep that relationship alive, flourishing, active, and
growing. In order to grow that relationship even deeper, you have to put even more
effort into it and the same thing goes for your relationship with God. Once you
pull your head out of your ass and see the light of God and form that relationship
with God, you have to keep working at it, daily, hourly, just like a marriage, EXACTLY
like a marriage, EXACTLY LIKE A MARRIAGE!

When I am not in a relationship with God, I can pick up the Bible and read it at
will and put it down and go on my way. To the contrary, when I am in a relationship
with God, and especially as that relationship buds, grows, and begins to flourish.
Old man devil begins to find increasingly and increasingly more and more of life’s
difficulties to throw in my path to prevent me and distract me from working on that
relationship. That old man devil does his best to kick good old Tedd’s ADHD into
high fucking gear, throw his dementia into a tailspin of confusion and mindless
wandering through the house looking for things and forgetting what he’s looking
for but continuing to look in hopes that he will find it anyway and just hours of
staring, lost in his own muddled muddied thoughts, and even the most hard fought,
prayer-filled attempts at reading a few scriptures become an epic battle of wills.
I feel like a battleground between God and the devil sometimes! LOL!!!

Fortunately, I have God on my side and the Power of The Holy Spirit to lead and guide me and
I am usually able to latch onto a few coherent scriptures, or if I am lucky, able
to make it through an entire book so that I can return later and begin to actually
study that book. It is slow and steady work, involving a lot of repetition, but
that’s mostly my own fault since I INSIST upon reading the same Books in the Bible
from half a dozen different translations! Ah, Overly Anal-Retentive Tedd Strikes
Again!!!

SO, I return, stubborn and bull-headed as ever. I pray more, I read my devotionals,
I pray, I read the Bible, I pray, I study the Bible, I pray, and all the while that
old man devil is doing everything within his power to destroy and inhibit the growth
of my newfound relationship with God. When “I found God” did anything in my life
suddenly get better? Nope. Did anything gradually get better? Nope. In fact, everything
has pretty much stayed exactly like it was, or has gotten worse. And to TOP IT OFF,
my quality of life has gotten a WHOLE LOT WORSE in the past 3 weeks because that
old man devil has been at full speed ahead trying to interject the speed of life,
those problems and duties of living in our Über-Fast-Paced California lifestyles,
and my myriad of illnesses into my God-Relationship-Building Time. “GRBT” 😉

Sometimes I still doubt my faith, but here recently, too many strange (for different
blogs) ‘things’ and patterns have been emerging, both from the various Bibles I
read and from the various concordances and studies I read which make me think that
I may be on the right track, or I may be stark raving mad. It is one of those two,
but definitely nowhere in the middle from the patterns I am seeing. I am a master of
patterns – it is data; I am data; we are one -> analyzing data patterns is what
I have been doing since 1986 (hacker/phreaker/cracker, then crypto Military Intelligence
National Security Agency, then data load pattern analysis for optimal “data” flow
through major hubs on IBM mainframes, then I went freelance data analysis/data workflow/complex
patterns for 4 years, then I went as in-house data/patterns/x-systems/’plausible
deniability hacker’ for 8 years)…so A LOT more of my brain is going to have to die
off before my “Bio Pattern Recognition Engine” is knocked out of commission! LOL!!!
But still, I am not the sharpest light bulb anymore, or the brightest thumbtack,
and my confidence is weakened by my current state, so I still doubt my faith sometimes,
regardless of what stands before me. This is mostly because I lack the benefit of
a PHD in Theology and am lacking the full knowledgebase, the full dataset from which
to draw my conclusions…

I see others who have found Jesus. Praise God! Their lives turn around. Their health
improves. Their marriage rebounds. They get new, high-paying jobs so they’re not
living paycheck to paycheck anymore. They found Jesus and apparently Jesus found
them and brought a bag full of “here’s an easy life for you now my Son” with him.
Yeah, I’m a little bitter over that sometimes. I’m human, but I pray for strength
to not feel that way and it helps take that anger out of my heart and replace it
with warmth and gladness and joy for them for being blessed.

I on the other hand, without fail, without fail EVER, when I find Jesus, well my
life turns into a stinking pile of shit.

It feels more different this time than it has ever felt before though. I feel hope.
I still feel blessed no matter how bad of things come my way. I still turn to God.
I still have the Love of God, the Faith in God in my heart and an unquenchable desire
to be as close to God as I can be this time. I think that old man devil is just
wasting his time. He may slow me down, but he will never break up my relationship
with God.

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