What’s it like to feel lost and alone?

As a Christian born and raised in the church…I get frustrated sometimes because simply put, I never knew life without Christ and the feeling of hopelessness and alone-ness that comes from the search for purpose.  I find myself getting jealous sometimes of people who had life changing experiences where they were lost and confused, hopeless and alone and then encountered the love of Christ and now they have a new hope.  They are no longer alone and the weight of the world is lifted and the search for the meaning of life is finally over.  They are a new person…

I find myself feeling depressed about this from time to time as if it were a bad thing!  Ha…what a messed up way of thinking.  Bottom line is that I don’t ever want to feel that emptiness and hopelessness.

However, that being said…sometimes I feel lost in my foundness…

I feel alone in my fellowship.

I feel confused in my clarity.

It’s frustrating.  Downright aggravating at times.  I have nothing to compare my life with Christ to.  I don’t have a before and after, at least not one I can remember!  I just have an after.  Life after Christ.  Sometimes I yearn for the opportunity to feel the pain people without Jesus feel.  I hear the stories, but I can’t relate.  I’ve always been free in Christ.  Although I’ve done stupid stuff and strayed from the path…I’ve never lived a life without Jesus.

I don’t EVER want to live a life without Jesus because with Him I don’t fear death.  I have my purpose, but I want to ask anyone who is reading this…If you lived without Jesus and then encountered Him giving your life to Him…I’d love to hear your story.  I’d love to hear what your life was like without Him and how it’s different now that He pulled you out.  I would love for you to paint me a picture in as much detail as you’d like.

If you are reading this and you don’t know Jesus…I challenge you to give Him a shot.  Check Him out and find out what true love is about.  I am a very very blessed man.  I don’t take my blessings for granted anymore and I know that every blessing I have is by the grace of Jesus.

If you do know Jesus…then share your story about the transformation that took place when you let Jesus into your life.  I know I’d love to hear it and I’m sure others would to.

Blessings to you and yours, and remember…don’t take your blessings for granted.  It can be maddening, but be grateful for all your blessings.

Jeremy

 

Another Level

Jesus has called us all to a higher level.  I believe that more today than I ever have.  I feel it to my core.  I spent a lot of time in the word this weekend listening to a number of different sermons and through all of it…I just hear Christ calling us all to a higher level IN HIM.  I’m challenged as I write this because I know rising to the next level, going deeper with God if you will, wont be easy.  After all, I’ve been developing ME for 30 years now!  With all the distractions, drama and life that get’s in the way, taking up our nets and following Him…well, let’s just say it’s no easy task.

But as I write this, I feel an overwhelming excitement about getting closer to the One who came in all humbleness, in the meekest way possible to live a sin free, blameless life, just to take my place on the cross.  To die for MY sins.

As you read this, I extend the challenge to you.  What are you going to do to rise to the next level with the Risen Christ?  I have no idea what God is doing.  I have no idea what this stirring in my heart means for my future.  All I know is that I feel a warmth…a Love that I’ve always had, but never felt.  I feel a hope and a peace, that I’ve always had, but never felt.  Why all of a sudden do I sense this stirring in the depths of my soul…I can only guess, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with answering God’s call on my life.

You see, when I was in high school, I felt God calling me into youth ministry…then I proceeded for about 8 years to ignore it…then I finally broke down when I was between jobs and started a youth ministry and it was during that time that I truly felt like I was right where God wanted me.  Then all of a sudden, my proverbial carpet was yanked out from under me and I lost that ministry.  My flesh could only assume that, “Maybe this wasn’t my calling after all” and I set it aside for another three or so years.

I woke up one day after I had been praying for clarity…and clarity, I had… God quietly reminded me about the feeling I had during my ministry “golden years”, and also pointed out that my professional life had become a pursuit of earthly things and my calling had returned.  I promptly enrolled in Bible College and informed my church leaders I wanted to be a youth pastor.

Since that day…God has become more real to me than ever before.  My prayers have since changed from God help me be successful in business to, “God, break my heart for what breaks yours.  Give me YOUR eyes for just one second.”  My wife now teases me because of these new “soft spots” in my heart that somehow have caused me to become an emotional wreck, but I just blame my baby boy Eli…having a son brings the sacrifice of Jesus into a real bright light.

I hope as you read this, you see yourself listening, waiting for God’s call.  If you’ve heard it, I challenge you to pursue it.  Jesus said “take up your nets and follow me.”  What ever that means to you, I pray that you take up your net and follow Jesus.  I can’t describe this compassion that has been givin to me…I can’t explain the peace I feel…I can just tell you to follow that urging in your heart to be better and to open your heart to a light and love that only Jesus Christ can give you.  Ask God to break your heart for what breaks His…and when you hear Him call…Answer that call.
Blessings,

Jeremy Wilson

 

The Pain of Letting Go of Your Dreams

From the time I was 20 and involved in my Quixtar business til I was bout 27 I had my life figured out.  Network marketing was my gig.  My one way ticket to the life of my dreams.  I’ve talked about this a bit in previous posts, but I truly created my identity around my business and the dreams I was positive it would provide.

I had my dream boards up.  I had my affirmations written and posted everywhere.  I had the picture of a house on my steering wheel!  I had little toy versions of my dream car on my dash.  On my video game, Need for speed I designed every piece of my dream car.  I meditated on my dreams.  I prayed about my dreams and let me tell you….

I’ve never been more excited than chasing after those dreams KNOWING I was going to achieve them some day!

Then one day…reality round house kicked me in the face like a bad Jackie Chan movie and my world was turned upside down.  I wasn’t only chasing my dreams, but I was helping others find their dreams and I was able to encourage them to go after their dreams, but when we found out the opportunity wasn’t what we hoped it was and that it was actually getting worse me and my team were devastated.

But no fear because our leadership was going to find us the next great company so we didn’t have to throw our dreams away.  So we painfully waited out our 6 month non-compete clauses and those of us who remained jumped on board a new boat destined for Dream Island!  We weren’t super excited about the product until we started using it and we got after it again.

This HAD to be the golden ticket!  Great product amazing comp plan, super leadership, amazing vision…all the ingredients for an amazing dream generating business….so we thought

After a couple years we were able to grow the team to a little over 300 then suddenly…it stopped.  The excitement was gone.  It seemed like all at once, the whole team gave up and I fell from cloud nine flat on my face.  I tried all I could to pull it back together, but it seemed as if everyone had given up.  I kept asking, how could two businesses fail…they are my destiny!  They are my train ride to freedom!  And now…nothing…and let me tell you…a depression like I’ve never felt set in.  I couldn’t do it again…I couldn’t hype myself back up and rally the troops and in the blink of an eye…I had given up my dreams.  I settled into the fact that I would never achieve the life I had once held as a certainty.

The pain that was caused when I stopped believing was downright brutal.  I may as well have just had someone murder my pet in front of me.  I got mad at God….”God why would you give me dreams and desires and then take from me the very vehicle that was suppose to attain them for me?”  I’m a Christian!  My focus was truly on making other people successful!  I AM DOING THIS BECAUSE YOU SET IT BEFORE ME!!!!

The silence in my head was so loud!  The joy and excitement that once fueled my engine was dried up and nowhere to be found.  I became cynical.  I started listening to the religious say that it was a sin to desire wealth.  And I flat out justified my giving up.

I write all of this to let you know…I found a fresh perspective and I’m alive again.  When I set aside my dreams and was going to “Settle for”, I died…I was no longer the happy optimistic me I used to be…but I’m back.  Here’s the perspective I got…

When God made Adam…was Adam not wealthy beyond measure???  Did he live in poverty?  Nope.  God supplied Adam with all the abundance a man could ever dream of!  He never “wanted” for anything.  That is how we are wired.  For success.  For Abundance.  It is not holy to be poor and impoverished!  Being poor can cause the same greed for money that being rich can if your heart isn’t right.

Once I understood this I was able to believe that we have the capacity and the hard wiring for success and that if I didn’t give up, but rather kept the goal in front of me…it would come to pass!  IT HAD TO!  One of those things I’ve spoken of previously HAD come to pass in that I get to be home with my son raising him rather than a daycare…that was the one part of my dream that had come true.  I wouldn’t be able to have the rest come true if I gave up on it.  I’ve never given up on the full time dad part of it and it had come true…I was able to get my dreams back off the shelf again and use them to spur me on.

I encourage everyone…find your dreams…find your passions in this life…and through love of God and love of your neighbor go after it with all you got…because I know from first hand experience…if you aren’t striving for a worthy goal or dream or if you’ve given up on your dreams…it will cause way more pain in your life than simply believing that God created us for greatness, for abundance and success, not for failure.  I dad never wants his kid to fail.  He wants success for each of us, but we have got to know what that looks like for each one of us and we have to get creative and get after it.

You will never be more happy in your life than when you are in hot pursuit of a worthwhile goal or dream.

This pursuit is what is going to define YOUR dash…chase your dreams and make your dash count!

Relationships that have gone South CAN fly North again

I want to share with you a snippet from mine and Heidi’s relationship in the early days.  A lot of people think we got it together…the ones who know us know we don’t!  But I learned some things along our journey together that I thought I’d share because I see an ever increasing amount of failed Christian relationships and I hope my story can prove that even though the relationship may have gone south…It CAN fly north again…but the road is not easy and it requires longsuffering.

Heidi and I have been together for 10 years.  5 1/2 dating…coming up on our 5 year wedding anniversary.  I will be the first to tell you…we should never have stayed together long enough to see this anniversary…well technically we never should have made the wedding, but by the grace of God and a father who modeled earthly marriage commitment we are here today…as in love as ever.

When Heidi and I started dating, she was newly turned 17 and I was 20.  Her oldest brother and I had become best friends and quite frankly, she was my best friend’s annoying little sister.  There was no interest there, at all.  However, nine months into knowing her, something happened…I’m pretty sure that since no girl had showed me any attention in over a year living in Boise, that the first sign of attention from Heidi was a welcome gesture.

Shortly after we started dating, I turned 21.  My friends at the time were horrible influences on me and to the bar we went just about every night we had off.  Now at first, Heidi didn’t care.  She trusted me, but she was bummed I was leaving her behind so often to go out, but never once did she guilt trip me or give me puppy dog eyes to stay with her.  I took full advantage of this and was out most nights drinking and carrying on.

I will also point out here that Heidi was on cloud nine and loving our relationship.  For me however, because she was still immature, there were a lot of things she did in front of my friends that quite frankly embarassed me.  So through this “phase” of our relationship I really didn’t care and she was more of a convenient girlfriend and I hate to say this…potentially temporary depending on how the “clubbin” worked for me so I wasn’t as “High” on the relationship as she was in the beginning.

I like to display this visually with this image

The lines are the indicators.  Heidi is up in the relationship…I am down.

Over time, I start being more like my friends and becoming a different person and really started being a jerk to Heidi because again, I really didn’t care.  However, she did.  Over time the graph changed.  Heidi’s relational satisfaction started dropping.

This is a good point to let you know that all this while, I was trying to become a better person so I could make lots of money at my Quixtar business so personal development was super important to me.  This is the year I read over 250 books.  As Heidi was falling off the “Love Graph”, I had read a couple of books that, in the long run ended up saving our relationship.  One was “Leadership and self-deception” and the other was “Attitude is Everything”.  I don’t know why but these two books rocked me and opened my eyes to the jerk I’d been.  I set out to change and change I did, but was it too late?

The graph shifted…I fell in love with Heidi all over again and really wanted to make the relationship awesome, but she wasn’t on that same page.Now I was high and Heidi was low.  We had switched positions which made me changing, that much harder.  Now I was trying really hard to be sweet, to say kind things, to do kind things…and she wanted none of it, which was extremely frustrating.  If you’ve ever experienced it or seen “Fireproof” you know what I mean.  I thought about ending it, but God got ahold of me and said, if you want to know that you can be successful in marriage, you have to treat this relationship as if there is no back door because one thing my dad taught me is your vow is your vow and on your wedding day, when you say that vow…you remove the back doors.  So I kept after it.

Things seemed to be getting better after some time…but something interesting happened…I came down off my high because it’s hard to stay there and Heidi came out of her slump because when the relationship is operating the way it should, you can’t stay low, so we met in the middle.

Now the key here isn’t the graph or that I read books….those are parts of the overall scenario.  What I want readers to take away from this is that I was on a mission to “be better” to “develop myself” into the man I felt I wanted to be.  I was able through the reading of the books to accept responsibility for my actions and attitudes that sent Heidi into the dumps of our relationship.  I didn’t try to make excuses or justify my treatment of her.  I admitted that I had screwed up and I wanted to be a better man.  On the flip side of the coin.  Heidi, who had every right to hate me and break up with me allowed me time to become that better man and then accepted me even though I had so wronged her.  This, in my opinion, is how a south bound relationship can be sent north.  Accept responsibility, set out to change yourself and allow your significant other time to change and then accept the changed person.  We did this and we have an amazing relationship now based on realistic standards and a true love and respect.  Is it challenged from time to time…absolutely, but we proved we could work through the really hards stuff so we are able to safely navigate the waters of life.

People Pleasing and the Power of NO

Now that you know a lot of my general background, at least the bad destructive stuff, let me share with you one of the many problems that arose out of my poor self image/worth.  From early on I became a “People Pleaser”.  Since I got my self worth from my ability to get people to like me and to keep them liking me, I would do anything for anyone…I couldn’t say no.

In many respects this isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you are doing it for the right reasons.  But I was doing it to feel good about myself.  I got my self worth from people liking me which lead to people using me and people using me made me feel worse about myself.

Not only did I feel worse about myself, but I actually started to dislike and resent people.  My inability to say no made me angry at the entire human race.  I started seeing people as greedy users of people who take advantage of people for their own gain.  Problem was that that was where my self esteem came from.  A nasty cycle I didn’t know how to break.  Here’s what I’ve recently learned.

There is only one source for our self-worth, self-esteem and self-respect…it’s God.  God of the universe.  God who knew you before you were born and knitted you in your mother’s womb.  God who has the hairs on your head numbered.  God who loves you more than any earthly human ever could.  A God who sent His one and only Son to DIE FOR YOU!  He loves us that much and if you truly grasp that…then and only then can you shift your source of self worth to the One who made you, who breathed life into you.  You are special.  You are made in the image of almighty God…you are a son or daughter of the Most High King.  Wear that proudly and know that if He is with you, then who can stand against you.  Get a proper self image and the correct source and you won’t desire to please people, but to please your maker.

Set it in your heart that your Daddy loves you and you want to please HIM.  If you run decisions through that filter either you will be empowered to say no to those situations that don’t please Him…or when you say Yes…it will be to please HIM!