Wednesday, July 17, 2019

testimony of epiphanies, evidence of transformation

Since my world broke beyond my own repairing it, in September 2003, I have experienced four significant epiphanies. One within days of the calamity visited on me when my first marriage fell apart. The second one, four years later (2007) as I climbed out of clinical depression. The third one was five years after that (2012) when I came face to face with a truth God had for me to stare down. The fourth one came in 2016, when, at the bottom of my being, my worst year ever, I had to face how I am when I’m weak and reliant on my own strength, without God’s power.
Each of these epiphanies was a crossroad. Each was a crisis. Grief in the first. Depression in the second. Identity in the third. Entitlement in the fourth.
The first epiphany I call ‘the material versus the spiritual’ epiphany.
I had it at a school sports carnival of all places. I had already attended my first two AA meetings the two previous days. The day prior to that my world had fallen apart; marriage collapse with, for me, no warning. Suddenly, it hit me as an interminable gift; the more I gave up what I had materially, the more God gave to me spiritually. It was a powerful moment, possibly one of the most fundamentally spiritual moments of my whole life, which was an eternal gift of God’s provision, given I was about to endure the fiery pit of marital death that would utterly consume me (over the weeks and months ahead). I was filled with a purpose that I truly wanted to give everything away to receive something that would be given and never could be taken away—spiritual grace the harvest given for generosity and kindness sown. I had the answer. I had the gifts of the Spirit. The whole bag. And the marker of this epiphany has run with me to this very day. This truth remains and pushes me onward. The transforming outcome of this epiphany is I’m committed to giving away what I cannot keep to gain what I cannot lose; to give away the material is to gain the spiritual. To accept loss is to gain our soul.
The second epiphany involved discovering the value of an 18-month self-directed daily focused study—of the biblical book of Proverbs.
The least likely time to become clinically depressed, immediately after I had married again, I slid into an unprecedented darkness I simply had no answer for. I was approaching 40, newly married and trying to work that out (a horrid season for my new wife and I), wondering what I had ever achieved in my life—a midlife crisis if you like—and suddenly my confidence dipped to an all-time low. I had no idea how to extract myself. I got onto antidepressants, for they’d worked for me four years previously, and slowly I righted the spiral and headed it north. The thing that was central to that process was the new found vigour I was given for studying the biblical Proverbs. The more I nourished my mind with these pithy sayings, the more my heart was healed. I was ultimately given material for an eBook that was published in 2011. Once I had this epiphany, days after my 40th birthday, the dread of my depression was cleansed with God’s purpose. My confidence returned. I had the answer. The transforming outcome of this epiphany is the practice that started—writing devotionally for publishing—continues to this day… 12 years and 8,000 online articles later.
The third epiphany I call ‘learning the value of men in my life’ epiphany
This epiphany arrived on an evening in July 2012. I had been referred to a secular sociological book, Iron John: A Book about Men by Robert Bly (1990), and having read it, I heard God’s Spirit usher something uncomfortable into my soul! But the trepidation I experienced when I came to admit I was scared of getting close to other men was cleansed with purpose within thirty minutes, for now I had the answer. God had been pursuing me gently for years. I was one of these men who ‘didn’t need men in my life,’ and what I learned convinced me I could never be a good pastor until I overcame my disinterest in what I thought was the superficiality of men. I’ve since learned there are so many men ready to go deep in a spiritual way! And the irony of this epiphany is that it was a secular university post-graduate course, a secular lecturer, a secular psychoanalyst, and a secular book that God used to get me back onto God’s agenda. I am so glad of the fears I had that were exposed through my counselling training; also, through a brave female faculty member who had no qualms in telling me straight what I needed to do to be any good; to her suggestion that I embark on a course of psychoanalysis therapy sessions. Eight sessions later and I was prescribed a medicine; the epiphany lay within its pages—I was a fearful man and the key to me overcoming my fear lay in investing myself in other men’s lives. The transforming outcome of this epiphany is I’ve continued to involve myself deeply in many men’s lives, and practice never saying no when opportunities come.
The fourth epiphany I had was ‘the entitlement cure’ epiphany. (Credit to Dr John Townsend’s book, The Entitlement Cure.) 
I’m not narcissistic by nature, but I definitely had a grief-and-abuse-laden season that left me at my absolute weakest spiritually, susceptible to responses of pride, because I was in environments that for me became caustic. Within a week of our world falling apart again in late February 2016, I had the epiphany—March 2, at about 7.30pm, in a sleepy south-west town on the beachfront. I was reading a book about ‘pocket entitlement’ (those areas in all our lives we feel entitled about) and it hit me like a ton of bricks. What were the things I could finish the sentence “I deserve…” with? God put his finger on three of them. I deserved respect. I deserved understanding. I deserved recognition. Oh, what a humbling moment! I sought my wife’s feedback. All she said was, “I think there’s something in that for you.” Ouch! But my dread was cleansed with purpose within thirty minutes, for at least I had the answer. I learned to despise the phrase “I deserve,” preferring instead to acknowledge that whilst I had needs (like all of us do), I could never demand my needs be met exactly how I demanded them to be met. The rest of that year I spent repenting of this. Indeed, the outcome of this epiphany was there were many important conversations with the appropriate people as I owned what threatened to hold me at distance from spiritual freedom. I also made a lifetime commitment to keep the knowledge of my pocket entitlement at the forefront of my mind.
The fifth epiphany, what and when will it be? It’s due in the next year or two. All this reminds me that I’m not there yet. And that’s okay. None of us arrive… until we do… when we pass from this life into the next.

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