What is Spiritual Spackle, you may be wondering. Spiritual Spackle is the way that the Holy Spirit works in our lives to help us through the ups and downs that this world throws at us. It is how, through a partnership with the Holy Spirit, we can have the ability to: put down the beer, the heroin, the third helping of chocolate cake, or the credit card. It allows us to let go of the anger, shame and insecurities. Through this relationship we can stop having premarital sex or affairs. We can focus on ourselves and what we need to change instead of focusing on everyone else. It is what supplies us with faith, hope, compassion and love.
Later in Chapter 16 I will get deeper into defining the meaning of Spiritual Spackle, both what it means and how it works to overcome addictions and heartaches (life consuming issues). Spiritual Spackle has it’s own chapter because it is that important to overcoming our hurts, addictions and other things that keep us separated from God. And yes, I do believe that we can separate ourselves from God, he never leaves us but we can have actions that remove us from Him.
This is not a book that will tell you that once you are saved, you are always saved. The Bible dispels that myth numerous times, such as in Matthew 16:27 where it says, “For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what he has done." and 2 Timothy 2:12 states, “if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us.” and finally in Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” If you want fluff, you will be better off reading a romance novel.
I believe that God loves us, and because He loves us he wants us to put Him first in ALL that we do. Not some of what we do, but in every aspect of our lives. Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27 and Mark 12:30 say that the most important commandment is to love God with all of our heart, mind, strength and soul. God comes first and foremost in our lives.
In this beginning part I want to explain why this book was written and what makes up the 20 plus chapters that it contains in brief. It contains an autobiography of my life: from growing up a Jehovah’s Witness in what I considered to be a normal family, to becoming an abused child who liked to fight and enjoyed pain, transitioning into a drug addicted agnostic convict and from there to a realization that I was a child of God that was promised eternal live if I accepted Christ, made changes and lived my life right.
My life story is juxtaposed with how Christ and the Holy Spirit have worked in my life and the changes that God has wrought through out my life to allow me to no longer look at myself as an addict or a convict. It also contains the theories, both Spirit given and Biblically founded, that were the biggest factors in my life changing. With the help of God leading me I came to realize that I wasn’t born to be a good example of how NOT to live one’s life.
Mercy Me, in their song entitled Beautiful, say “You’re Beautiful, you were made for so much more than all of this. You’re beautiful, you are treasured, you are sacred you are His, you’re beautiful.” That is how I see my life in its’ entirety. In my child hood and early adulthood, I was made for so much more than what I had become. In my walk with Christ I have came to realize that my life was bought and is no longer mine, that I was created in the image of Christ and that makes me a beautiful child in God’s eyes.
I have heard this quote several times attributed to Ethel Waters, “God don’t make no junk,” and I agree with her. We were created to be perfect and we chose not to be. Even though we are not perfect we are still not trash to be thrown out. That said, both the things that happen to us and how we live our lives could make us feel as if we are junk if we allow them to. I allowed my past to control my present and to insure that I did not have any hope for a future. I was known to brag that if there was a hell, that is where I was going.
Now that I am positively living my life by putting Christ first I want to share how that transformation was made possible, how what I thought was impossible became a viable option. In fact, living life well and enjoying it became the only option that I could see once my blinders were removed. It was not easy at first, but then I would tell you that there is rarely anything in life that does come easy. Ultimately, it was a lot easier than I tried to make it.
I tried to make living my life better a much more difficult task than it really was. I tried to take control of my life to enact the changes I felt needed to be made, and I wound up making my life a complete sham. If nothing else, I made my life worse. I lied to all of those who were close to me, I was afraid to tell people who I truly was out of fear that they would reject me, that they would not like me for me. What I found out was quite the opposite. My true friends respected me more for being honest and open with them. In the end, my being honest with people, accepting that God had a purpose for my life and the realization that it was not for me to know what it was but to stop asking questions and start making changes that began with the addition of one primary rule in my life that the miracle happened.
I will get into that one primary rule that really helped me begin living my life as a Christian in Chapter 15. It is so simple but yet we can make it very difficult. I have had to learn to swallow my pride, which was much larger than I had ever realized. I took pride in my criminality, in my drug usage, in being violent, in being a drug dealer, in sleeping around, in being classified as having an antisocial personality disorder and in having multiple mental health diagnosis. I was proud of my deficiencies because it was all that I thought I had.
I hit rock bottom several times. Several of my rock bottoms were cavernous, what some would see as Grand Canyons. I would always come back up somehow, and then find ways to make my previous rock bottom look like a shallow hole. I could not, by using only my self and the prescribed generic Higher Power of my understanding that I was equipped with as an agnostic, keep myself out of trouble. In fact I am certain that it kept me in trouble.
I was still miserable; I could not really stand myself. I had to figure out somehow that my life was worth something, that all of the horrific things that had either happened to me or that I had done to others had a purpose. The writing of this book, how I live my life now and my goal to travel and speak both motivationally and inspirationally at conferences/churches/recovery centers/halfway houses/homeless shelters/schools/colleges are a major part of that purpose.
If I can share with others how I went from me being considered both by others and by myself the dregs of society to a life that others are inspired by where I am guaranteed salvation, where I am no longer owned by addiction than I have lived a great life. If sharing that brings one Christian into a closer relationship with Christ, or gives one addict the courage to accept Christ into their life, or gives one convict a glimmer of hope that their life can change for the better than that is one of my purposes for life………..and the sole purpose for writing this book.
Later in Chapter 16 I will get deeper into defining the meaning of Spiritual Spackle, both what it means and how it works to overcome addictions and heartaches (life consuming issues). Spiritual Spackle has it’s own chapter because it is that important to overcoming our hurts, addictions and other things that keep us separated from God. And yes, I do believe that we can separate ourselves from God, he never leaves us but we can have actions that remove us from Him.
This is not a book that will tell you that once you are saved, you are always saved. The Bible dispels that myth numerous times, such as in Matthew 16:27 where it says, “For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what he has done." and 2 Timothy 2:12 states, “if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us.” and finally in Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” If you want fluff, you will be better off reading a romance novel.
I believe that God loves us, and because He loves us he wants us to put Him first in ALL that we do. Not some of what we do, but in every aspect of our lives. Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27 and Mark 12:30 say that the most important commandment is to love God with all of our heart, mind, strength and soul. God comes first and foremost in our lives.
In this beginning part I want to explain why this book was written and what makes up the 20 plus chapters that it contains in brief. It contains an autobiography of my life: from growing up a Jehovah’s Witness in what I considered to be a normal family, to becoming an abused child who liked to fight and enjoyed pain, transitioning into a drug addicted agnostic convict and from there to a realization that I was a child of God that was promised eternal live if I accepted Christ, made changes and lived my life right.
My life story is juxtaposed with how Christ and the Holy Spirit have worked in my life and the changes that God has wrought through out my life to allow me to no longer look at myself as an addict or a convict. It also contains the theories, both Spirit given and Biblically founded, that were the biggest factors in my life changing. With the help of God leading me I came to realize that I wasn’t born to be a good example of how NOT to live one’s life.
Mercy Me, in their song entitled Beautiful, say “You’re Beautiful, you were made for so much more than all of this. You’re beautiful, you are treasured, you are sacred you are His, you’re beautiful.” That is how I see my life in its’ entirety. In my child hood and early adulthood, I was made for so much more than what I had become. In my walk with Christ I have came to realize that my life was bought and is no longer mine, that I was created in the image of Christ and that makes me a beautiful child in God’s eyes.
I have heard this quote several times attributed to Ethel Waters, “God don’t make no junk,” and I agree with her. We were created to be perfect and we chose not to be. Even though we are not perfect we are still not trash to be thrown out. That said, both the things that happen to us and how we live our lives could make us feel as if we are junk if we allow them to. I allowed my past to control my present and to insure that I did not have any hope for a future. I was known to brag that if there was a hell, that is where I was going.
Now that I am positively living my life by putting Christ first I want to share how that transformation was made possible, how what I thought was impossible became a viable option. In fact, living life well and enjoying it became the only option that I could see once my blinders were removed. It was not easy at first, but then I would tell you that there is rarely anything in life that does come easy. Ultimately, it was a lot easier than I tried to make it.
I tried to make living my life better a much more difficult task than it really was. I tried to take control of my life to enact the changes I felt needed to be made, and I wound up making my life a complete sham. If nothing else, I made my life worse. I lied to all of those who were close to me, I was afraid to tell people who I truly was out of fear that they would reject me, that they would not like me for me. What I found out was quite the opposite. My true friends respected me more for being honest and open with them. In the end, my being honest with people, accepting that God had a purpose for my life and the realization that it was not for me to know what it was but to stop asking questions and start making changes that began with the addition of one primary rule in my life that the miracle happened.
I will get into that one primary rule that really helped me begin living my life as a Christian in Chapter 15. It is so simple but yet we can make it very difficult. I have had to learn to swallow my pride, which was much larger than I had ever realized. I took pride in my criminality, in my drug usage, in being violent, in being a drug dealer, in sleeping around, in being classified as having an antisocial personality disorder and in having multiple mental health diagnosis. I was proud of my deficiencies because it was all that I thought I had.
I hit rock bottom several times. Several of my rock bottoms were cavernous, what some would see as Grand Canyons. I would always come back up somehow, and then find ways to make my previous rock bottom look like a shallow hole. I could not, by using only my self and the prescribed generic Higher Power of my understanding that I was equipped with as an agnostic, keep myself out of trouble. In fact I am certain that it kept me in trouble.
I was still miserable; I could not really stand myself. I had to figure out somehow that my life was worth something, that all of the horrific things that had either happened to me or that I had done to others had a purpose. The writing of this book, how I live my life now and my goal to travel and speak both motivationally and inspirationally at conferences/churches/recovery centers/halfway houses/homeless shelters/schools/colleges are a major part of that purpose.
If I can share with others how I went from me being considered both by others and by myself the dregs of society to a life that others are inspired by where I am guaranteed salvation, where I am no longer owned by addiction than I have lived a great life. If sharing that brings one Christian into a closer relationship with Christ, or gives one addict the courage to accept Christ into their life, or gives one convict a glimmer of hope that their life can change for the better than that is one of my purposes for life………..and the sole purpose for writing this book.
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