Speaking through our Giftings

Im a little bit emotional right now, so I’m not even sure Im going to post this.  God speaks to me.  I’ve talked about it with whomever might listen to me.  He has always spoken to me, I just never really took the time to stop and hear or recognize his voice.  But I just felt it was a relationship that was uncommon to most, but available to all.   It took devastating loss for me to fall to my knees and embrace Him.  Even since then, we have regular conversations.  Now I know that might make me sound like Im a candidate for the looney bin, but He speaks in specifics to me, that actually come to pass.  I could give you about 50 specific examples.  The thing with God is that he wants to speak to all of us in that same manner.  I think my position in life at this point is to tell as many people as I can about this.  Not necessarily to lead people to Christ, though that is a natural byproduct, but rather, I believed I’m called to enhance other people’s relationship with Christ.  For years I was a milquetoast, mediocre Christian.  I wasn’t too bad..but I wasn’t wholly devoted as I am now.  Loss had to refine me.  I wish I would have learned my lesson earlier.

Im writing this because God speaks to us through what our passions are.  For example my great friend Jim, is an outdoorsman, God speaks to him when he’s camping in nature.  My friend Russ is a musician, and God speaks to him through music, I could give you more examples.  But with me, Im a filmmaker, so God speaks to me through Film.  I just watched Seven Pounds with Will Smith.  I felt a little foolish because I saw it in a group with several other people crammed together, close by.  I just cried and cried and cried.  Why did I cry?  Was it the content matter?  Maybe, he did lose the people he loved.  But maybe it was just because it was a beautiful project and God speaks to me through the beauty of film.  I just totally felt his presence envelope me. 

Now this has been an extremely difficult emotional week for me.  My children for the time being will no longer take nor return my calls.  There are some details behind that, but I don’t want to get into a fingerpointing session.  But suffice to say I have been made out to be the bad guy in that situation again.    Im always wrong on that side of the fence anyway and belaboring the point just makes everything worse.  God again spoke to me.  Do not repay evil for evil.  I have been doing that, especially in the light of this blog.  That needs to stop.  There are some unfair things that have happened in my mind, and I wanted to shout from the rooftops and obtain justice or sympathy for my plight.  But that is no longer what God is calling me to do.  I pray for X and her hubby nearly every day.  That was a very hard prayer to pray at first…but now it is getting easier.  There are Biblical foundations, “Pray for those that persecute you…”  So that is indeed what I doing. 

As far as I can remember.  I was always a very happy guy.  Very much like Pollyanna.  I was fortunate to have a God fearing loving household.  My parents have been married for nearly 50 years.  Their relationship should be a model for others.  Its not perfect, but they are committed to others.  That commitment is what has given my siblings and I sense of security that children of divorce simply do not have.  I grieve and that is one of the reasons why I cried today because I failed to give my children the same safe and secure upbringing I had as a child.  But back to the happiness quotient.  Maybe I was tuned out of reality.  I wasn’t really bothered about how God was going to provide…because I know he always did.  That probably wasn’t the most prudent thing as a husband and provider.  I perhaps was too reliant upon God and didn’t give my family the security they needed.  I tried to make up for it with love, attention, and time, but apparently that wasn’t enough. 

I always felt called as a missionary to spread God’s word.  But not your usual, preach in a mud hut in Africa, missionary.  I felt God wanted me to use my giftings to further his kingdom, thus Hollywood was my mission field.  But things didn’t turn out the way I anticipated…so God first moved us as an entire family in very spectacular way to Taiwan.  I can easily say 2003 was the best year of my life serving God and making virtually no money.  Ironically enough it was the last year I was happily married.  God called me back to the mission field two years later in 2005.  I had a job offer from Saudi Arabia…but I was fighting God on this one.  There was no way I wanted to go.  So my then wife and I prayed about it…and said..God if you want me to go, I need to know in a big big way.  So the very next day in church, the entire sermon was on Matthew 19:29, If any man leaves his father and his mother, his wife and his brother, his children and his land and travels into a foreign land for my name sake, he will receive a hundred fold blessing and the gift of eternal life.  My then wife and I knew right then and there, I was supposed to go.  I didn’t want to leave my family…but I was called, Im 100% certain of it.  While Taiwan was the best year of my life, serving God, Saudi while also serving God was the hardest.  I missed my family dearly…and wound up losing them when then wife didn’t want to be married anymore.

I was devastated…and that is understatement.  It’s a miracle of God that I didn’t have to be medicated.  I did love them so.  I say all that to say that God spoke to me through all that pain.  He later then called me in a similar spectacular way to Bahrain.  Now this is the part Im struggling with.  I miss my kids, but I know I’m doing God’s work over here in a Major way.  But the problem is my children.  It is being spun in Texas that I had abandoned my kids which couldn’t be further from the truth.  But I can’t defend myself.  God called me here for this season, I know that I know that I know.  Yet my relationship with my kids is turning…increasingly cold.  It absolutely breaks my heart.  If I had the power to have them live with me full time, I’d do that in a minute. 

So Im at a dilemma.  I can’t reason with Texas…they don’t listen to me.  Its truly amazing how justified people can be in their own minds.  But I have to rely upon God to fight this battle for me.  The more I fight and take it into my own hands the worse it gets from my perspective.  I love my kids, I miss my kids, but I have to be faithful to God’s calling.  Why would God call me to be away from that which I love and adore the most?  Im going to have to ask him that in Heaven someday.  In the meantime, I have to “lean not upon my own understanding” and know he is enacting a perfect plan in my life.  It’s the waiting that is the sucky part.  I wish there was even the slightest compromise.  But I have to rely upon my faith for that one.