Lessons Learned (Part 1)

While prison was not nearly as much fun as you might imagine it to be, God used that time to draw me back into a right relationship with Him. I kept track of the lessons God brought to me during that time, and thought I'd share them with you. Here's the first half:

• God is more concerned with Holiness than happiness.
• God requires an "always on" connection. We can only experience God in the moment we are in. Another way to think of this is like the power brick for a Laptop - when you unplug it, it very quickly drains of power.
• To walk in faith, you have to have wet feet. (See Joshua 3:15-17)
• Know not who you are, but whose you are.
• Don't be a "microwave Christian" - you need more than 15 minutes a day of God in your life. (I got this from Melvin Ross)
• Don't confuse your cross with your crops. When you a bearing the consequences of your sin that's on you, it's not from God. (I got this from Rev. J. Wright)
• I can forgive anything, because I have been forgiven everything. (Eph 4:32, Col 3:13)
• Trust God to be excellent. (Ps. 40:1-3 The king waited on God to act.)
• Scriptural Husbands are foot-washers to their wives. (Consider what it really looks like if we love our wives as Christ loves the Church.)
• Despair is never the right response. Once you have repented, Godly sorrow has done its part and any further beating yourself up is just self-pity and wallowing. God has forgiven you, forgive yourself and go serve!
• Everyone does not have to love/forgive/accept me, but in Christ I have to love/forgive/accept everyone.
• Some hurts don't heal 'til Heaven.
• Maintain an eternal perspective. What will this (whatever this is) really matter in 200 years? In 2,000?
• Prayer changes things because prayer changes me.
• Live conscious of the immediacy of the end. (1 Peter 4:7, Rom 14:11-14)
• Don't act/think like a spiritual pauper when you dwell in the treasure house of the King. (Eph 1:3, 1 Peter 4:2) 
• Our service and responsibility to Christ begins in our homes. (Mark 7:9-13, 1 Tim 3:4-5, 1 Tim 5:8) 
• Be quick to hear, slow to anger, slow to speak.
• We build in the plains to sustain us in the valleys.
• To receive the hope of/in Jesus Christ, we must first understand the hopelessness of our condition. (Contrast the rich young ruler with the adulteress at the stoning.)
• Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay. (I got this from Dr. Gary Marsh)

I'll post the rest on Friday.

Drew