Posted on by Abe Austin

Redeemed Through Christ- Part Two

This last Sunday I was invited to speak to my congregation, where I shared my personal experience with redemption. I posted the first half of that message yesterday, now here is the rest of it.

Part Two)

There is another pairing I saw in my journey of redemption that I would like to share as well. It is the pairing of Jeus’s unconditional love for me, and my love for him.

Just before I began my path of recovery, and wrote that letter to my wife, if you had asked me if Jesus loved me, I would have said, “of course!” But just as with my testimony of his atonement, it was only something I knew in my head. I did not feel it in my heart.

It wasn’t just ignorance, either, I was actively keeping his love away. I did not love myself, did not see how anyone could, and I certainly did not want the love of the most perfect being in the universe. I didn’t deserve it, so I couldn’t receive it. It was my therapist who started to break those paradigms. His name was Corey Holmgren. 

When I first met Corey, I was already breaking down the facade I had so carefully built up, and was now identifying with the shameful me underneath. But Corey helped me to see that underneath the shameful me there was also a wounded me, and under the wounded me, was a Son of God. And it was that Son of God, not the facade, the shame, or the wound, who was the real me. And that Son of God was lovable forever.

Where this really hit home was when Corey introduced me to a brotherhood of men also seeking recovery, and I cannot describe how paradigm-shifting of an experience it was to tell that brotherhood all of my deepest shames and regret, all the things that I thought it would kill me to tell to another person, and to have them respond by still loving me and wanting to be my friends. I didn’t know that that could happen. We were actively testing the promise in James 5:16: “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed,” and we found that promise to be true. And by seeing that sort of unconditional love in other men, I started to  believe that that love could be in God and Jesus as well.

In time, I came to hear these messages firsthand from my Savior. He and I had long conversations, where He took my mind back to experiences in my past, experiences that had built a wall between me and Him, and He showed me how His frame of that experience was different from my own, and that the wall was only on my side, and that I could take it down now, if I wanted, because it was keeping out the love that He had always had for me.

I became much more confident in the love of Christ, but like I said, there is a pairing here. Being loved by Jesus brought me to a certain level of redemption, but being able to sincerely love Him back was what made it complete.

I learned this on my recovery journey when I had a relapse. By that point, I genuinely felt comfortable in the love of Jesus, I still felt sure of it, but for the first time I realized that it wasn’t complete. It was a melody that needed a harmony. I prayed for God to come into my cold heart, but instead I felt the impression to start looking for a hymn to sing. Very quickly, I was led to a hymn I had never heard before, it’s not even in our own hymnal, called My Jesus, I Love Thee. I knew I had to sing it, out loud. I’ll spare you the singing, but I’d like to recite for you the first verse of that song:

My Jesus I love Thee, I know Thou art mine
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign
My gracious Redeemer, my Saviour art Thou
If ever I loved Thee my Jesus ’tis now

This song was a redeclaration of my love to Jesus, and as I sang it, I felt my heart come back to life. The tears flowed, and I learned that just as there is a Son of God inside of me that can always receive Jesus’s love, that Son of God can always love him back, even in my lowest moments.

A one-way love is charity; but reciprocated love is a relationship, and relationship is what Jesus ultimately seeks to redeem us back to. Relationship, being known and loved by Christ, and knowing and loving him back, is the literal definition of eternal life. John 17:3: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” 

My experience of redemption is the most precious thing in my life. It is the story of me that I value the most, the one I hope to be most defined by. It isn’t just a story for me, though. It is meant to be the story of each and every one of us. And though this story can play out universally, in each instance it is totally unique. Every person’s story of redemption is their own, beautiful and different from any other. It is the most interesting story that any of us have to tell. 

For most of my life the principles of Redemption were ones that I believed in my head, but now I know in my heart that they are true. I hope that these things are true for you as well, or that they soon will be. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Redeemed Through Christ- Part One

This last Sunday I was invited to speak to my congregation, where I shared my personal experience with redemption. Preparing this message brought up some new ideas that I will explore in greater detail with upcoming posts. Other stories and ideas I have already covered in this blog. I don’t wish to bore you with redundant messages, but I did think that seeing my speech might be interesting to some of you. I’ll post the first half of it today, and the second half tomorrow.

Part One)

Stories of redemption, where people fall, and are then raised even higher, are woven all throughout our scriptures, our myths and legends, our history, even our books and movies. But of all the many stories of redemption, today I would like to focus on the one that I know best: my own. And I want to talk about it in terms of the pairings that it was made up of. The first of these pairings was the reality of damnation and then the reality of being saved.

My great demise came in the form of addiction to pornography. The whole thing started when I was about seven years old and progressed through various stages over the next twenty years. 

Now, from the very beginning I felt guilty about what I was doing, I knew it was wrong, I knew I had to repent of it. But I didn’t necessarily feel damned, because the whole time I insisted it was in my power to fix this on my own. So I tried, over and over, to just make myself be better. I kept telling myself that this next time would be the last time. I repeatedly prayed that God would just give me the determination to do things right.

And even though this approach never worked for me, I clung to it, because the only alternative would be to admit that I had become so lost that I could never find my way back again. And if you had asked me if I believed the atonement of Jesus Christ could rescue me, I would have said “yes,” but, looking back, I really only believed that in my head. I didn’t feel it in my heart. So, accepting that I was lost would include not having any confidence that anyone would ever come and find me.

Rather than accept that, I kept my addiction secret from everyone, even my wife, and pretended like I wasn’t damned. But no matter how I tried to hide it, there was a genuine darkness inside of me, and its nature was to damage me, and those closest to me. Thus, even as I was trying to preserve my life and my relationships, I was actively destroying them instead. When I finally saw this pattern, when it clicked for me, I finally decided I would rather be honestly damned than falsely holy.

So, one day, when I was alone in the house, I wrote a letter to my wife. In it, I shattered the facade I had been living behind and explained what was really going on. I left the letter just inside the entrance to the house, got in my car, and drove as far away as quickly as possible. I knew that I had to get far enough that she would make it back to the house before I could, because then I knew it was done. I couldn’t take it back, even if I wanted.

This is how I came to embrace the reality of my own damnation. At this point, for the first time in my life, I truly accepted that I was on track for hell and all that came with it. This was an absolutely necessary chapter in my personal story of redemption. I was never going to get any further without first taking this leap into the void.

What came next was a whirlwind of confession, surrender, and connection. My wife scheduled a meeting with our Bishop that very night, our Bishop recommended us to LifeStar, which does therapy for sex addicts and their couples, and my LifeStar therapist encouraged me to join a group of other men in recovery. Put simply, there was a long and difficult path of repentance and recovery set before me, one that I am still taking steps on to this day.

But while the journey has been long, redemption, much to my surprise, began immediately! Right from the day that I wrote the letter, I started to feel like my real self again. I felt like I had a soul! This was something I didn’t even know I was missing; it had been so long since I had felt it.

That rediscovery of the soul in addiction is not unusual, but what you might find unusual is that many of us addicts actually express gratitude for our addiction, even though we are in recovery from it, and we certainly don’t endorse it! See, from our perspective, if we hadn’t had something truly break us, we never would have sought out a real connection with God and the soul. And once we have found that connection, the journey that led us there, no matter how painful, is worth it, and we wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I like the way a good friend of mine put it: “if your sin isn’t real, your salvation isn’t real.” I would also say, “if you haven’t been truly broken, you don’t really know what it is to be restored.” Or as Eve, herself, put it in Moses 5:11: “Were it not for our transgression we never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption.”

Now, this isn’t meant to say that we all need to get enslaved to an addiction, but I would say that we all need to exercise our awareness of the hopeless state that we would be in if not for Christ. Sooner or later, each one of us commits a sin that is a deliberate and willful violation of our own conscience. At a certain point, each one of us sacrifices something that we know is good, for something that we know is wrong. This is a fundamental betrayal, and when it happens, something inside of us breaks, and we can either run from that, or hide it, or we can go into that broken place, accept the reality of damnation, and there meet Jesus.

To be continued…

Posted on by Abe Austin

Thought for the Day- God’s River

No matter how far you venture in,
You will never pass over to the other side
Of the river of God’s love

Posted on by Abe Austin

Thought for the Day- What Makes You Weak

You push so hard
to always be strong enough








And that
is what makes you weak

Posted on by Abe Austin

Thought for the Day- A Child to God

To the world
we may need to make ourselves
strong and wise and fearless

But to God
we must always be
His vulnerable, little child

Posted on by Abe Austin

Thought for the Day- Keep Myself

God will change my life when and how He chooses

In the meantime, I must keep myself



























Posted on by Abe Austin

Thought for the Day- Winning Makes You Lose


Don’t fight a fight
Where winning makes you lose

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 32:3-5

3 And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the country of Edom.

4 And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak unto my lord Esau; Thy servant Jacob saith thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed there until now:

5 And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and menservants, and womenservants: and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight.

It had been twenty years since Jacob had seen his brother. Twenty years is a lot of time for people to change. Certainly, Jacob was not returning as the same man as when he first left his father’s home.

Even so, Jacob had not forgotten the hostility that Esau held towards him when he left, and he thought it wise to send servants ahead with a flattering and humble message. Note that in his statement Jacob calls himself Esau’s servant, refers to Esau as “my lord,” and states that his desire is simply to find grace in his brother’s sight. When Jacob had stolen his father’s blessing Isaac had specifically promised that Esau’s descendants would serve Jacob’s, thus it was particularly prudent for Jacob to show that he did not consider himself as above his brother here and now.

Jacob also included in his message a description of the many animals and people in his entourage. Perhaps this was to alert Esau to the fact that there were many innocents who did not deserve to die for Jacob’s past transgressions, or perhaps to let Esau know that Jacob was independently wealthy, and thus wasn’t coming to take Esau’s living from him.

And now Jacob has only to wait and see what answer is brought back to him. He has knocked on the door of his own home, but he does not know if it is a sword or an embrace that waits upon the other side.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Discussing Spiritual Differences- Matthew 10:16-17, 22-23; 1 Samuel 8:7

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues;
And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

COMMENTARY

They will deliver you up to the councils, and ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake
But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another
Jesus did not mince words when he told his disciples what to expect when carrying his message into the world. And one of the points that he stressed in particular was that they were going to be rejected…a lot. Though the disciples would work miracles, though they would speak with power, though they would dedicate their lives to this work, though they would convince many of the truth, there would always remain those who would not accept their message.
Recall that even the master orator Paul, after he had borne a masterful testimony to King Agrippa, was only able to elicit a response of “almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”

For they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me
But is it any wonder that the disciples would be rejected when their master was as well? Jesus was turned away from cities, disputed against in the synagogues, and given up to death by his own people. Was it just because he didn’t know the right words to say, because he fumbled in his delivery, because he wasn’t skilled enough in the preaching his own message.
No, of course not. He and his disciples faced rejection for the simple reason that people have their freedom of choice, and some just choose to reject the gospel message and that’s all there is to it. It doesn’t have to be that the one proselyting did anything wrong. They might have said exactly what they needed to, but the person hearing the message just didn’t want to receive it.
And that is an important truth for us to remember whenever we try to champion the right. I have known those who believe that if they can just find the right, magical words they will be able to unlock anybody’s heart and that simply isn’t true. No one has to accept what you to say. Anyone is able to turn you down, no matter how perfect your reasoning is. If you feel that you spoke with the words that were given you, that the point was made, that the truth was evident to any who would see, then you have done your part. Anything after that, acceptance or rejection, is out of your control. Whatever the outcome is, you must just accept it and move along.