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Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose
Those were heady times. They had such promise and excitement, and I’ve seen years of blessings as a result. …But something deep inside of me never got fixed.
I believe that the best way for me to review the first three books of this series is to write a brief prayer that shows how I felt in 1997. This was the time period just before the events I will describe in Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose. Though I didn’t actually pray this prayer, it will give you a feel for the sorts of feelings circulating in my heart.
Lord, I have a growing suspicion that my life is not what it appears to be. On the outside, everything is going well, but on the inside something is wrong. Perhaps that isn’t the right confession for a Christian, but I feel like I am fighting to keep from falling apart. I know that Your word says I am a new creation, and I pretty much live like one. Still, the emotional part of me seems very “un-new-creationish.” In fact, it’s a raging loony bin. I’ve tried everything I can think of to get it straightened out, but nothing works.
I guess this has been a problem since childhood. I was cutting myself with razor blades when I was ten years old.[6] That’s not exactly normal – but I thought I had gotten past most of that. I stopped physically punishing myself when I was eleven
That doesn’t mean I was sane, however. When I was twelve, the craziness of the smoking fetish started. What was that about!? It is still the major question mark in my life. Why is it that letting myself think about smoking is like letting myself think about sex?[7] What is wrong with me? And why can my heart turn anything that even reminds me of smoking – other people doing it, stress at work, burning leaves in the fall – into a sexual temptation?
I don’t get it. I can’t get rid of this monster within me. I’ve tried to leave it behind, but it won’t go away.
I am grateful that the laws have changed to prohibit smoking in public buildings. That helps me avoid some of the bigger temptations, but it hasn’t fixed whatever is wrong inside of me. I still almost constantly suppress the drive to return to the fetish.
I have become so protective in my attempts to stop myself from thinking about it that I run roughshod over my emotions. That sort of works. I can make the temptations lessen for a while by bullying myself into forced submission, but I suspect that the mental games I play are damaging me. I want to stop them, but I can’t just let myself fall back into dwelling on and acting out the fetish. …I don’t know what to do.
Back in 1979, You taught me about the fear of the Lord.[8] It was the one time I am sure that You got down and rearranged how I emotionally related to the fetish. Because of the work You did, I was able to stop smoking and privately acting out. It was a tough change – I compared my life to a “tightrope over hell”[9] – but I have never gone back to those habits.
Shortly after that, You helped me to understand from Romans 1:18-32 what had happened. I had exchanged Your glory for an image, which in my case was the false god of permissive-love.[10] He was a mental idol, and my worship of him had blinded me to truths about sin, wrath, and mercy. This had weakened me and made me too foolish to handle my sexuality, which led to the smoking fetish.
It all made so much sense, and it gave such direction to my life! It inspired me to set my heart to know You as You really are rather than as I wanted You to be, and that has been my heart’s cry ever since. The whole experience so impressed me that I wanted to write a book about it.
Boy was that a long time ago. So much has changed. The past eighteen years have turned into an absolute grind. With the way I feel now, I doubt I will ever write a book. Even if You suddenly fixed all of my problems, why should I bother? People want quick answers. My battle has been too hard for too long. I don’t have the sort of answers people want to hear.
But there have been other high points too. That OK Stronghold teaching still seems significant.[11] It got me through a tough time when I was fighting to avoid an emotional meltdown. I realized that I could see myself as You saw me rather than the way anyone else saw me.[12] Your blood made me OK apart from my performance.[13] My life was about knowing Your Son Jesus and having Him live through me rather than living up to anyone’s expectations.[14]
I came up with the theory that my thoughts and feelings were like a train that ran along tracks. My old tracks (my old thinking habits) took me to all sorts of problems. If I would work with You as You replaced them with new tracks, I would end up in the right places.[15]
It all worked so well at first. The new tracks took me to the book of Proverbs,[16] and as I studied it I felt like You were setting off “Holy Spirit explosions” in my heart. My view of the world changed every few weeks. I was constantly reorganizing everything I knew based on the insights that were entering my mind. The potential of the whole universe, both spiritual and natural, appeared to open before me. Just about anything seemed possible if I would follow Your voice of wisdom.
Those were heady times. They had such promise and excitement, and I have seen years of blessings as a result. …But something deep inside of me never got fixed. I don’t know what it is, but it scares me. …And I’m mad about it too! I try to be grateful, but I’m slipping. I’m fighting harder all of the time to hang on to what You have given me, and I still feel like I’m losing ground. I don’t understand what is happening. It shouldn’t be this way! How can a committed Christian have these kinds of problems?
Please help. I want to continue to serve You, and I don’t want my family to suffer because of my failures. Take me and do what You want. I put my hope in You.
The following analogy from Exchanged Glory III: Wise as Serpents is a picture of what was happening to me.
An analogy that I find helpful for understanding my situation pictures me as a man who had been locked in a prison. God had come to me and liberated me saying, “Come to an airstrip that I have prepared for you, and I will help you to build an airplane so you can fly away to safety.”
When I got to the airstrip, He worked with me to build the shell of the plane, but I was having trouble with its engine. My former captors came and began to throw rocks and bricks at me while I worked. The shell of the plane gave me some protection, but the rocks and bricks broke the windows and struck me. I found myself being wounded while my former captors called for me to return to them.
In this analogy, my freedom and the shell of the plane represents the victory God had given me over the outward expressions of my sexual sins. I had found some protection from ongoing temptations and accusations (represented by the rocks and bricks), but it wasn’t a permanent place of safety.
My trouble with building the engine represents the fact that I didn’t know what to do with the war that still raged in my heart. I endured it, but I found no way to rise above it. Flying symbolizes a mature understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit that would have enabled me to find freedom from the frustration and pain. I struggled as I tried to walk in it.
To continue the analogy, God had provided a manual which told me how to build the engine. The manual represents the wisdom of God that would allow me to more fully walk in His Spirit. He had also provided all of the materials I needed to complete the plane, which represents the work of Jesus Christ in making me a new creation.
Everything was in place, and God was working with me. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to read the manual. Even worse, I didn’t know that it was necessary to know how to read it. Then as God tried to teach me, I couldn’t understand Him.[17]
Exchanged Glory III: Wise as Serpents described how God taught me, during the 1990s, to read the manual and build the engine. During the summer of 1998, just before most of the events I will describe in Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose, He put in place the last major pieces of that engine. I was now ready to fly, but I didn’t know it. In fact, I had trouble understanding what it meant to fly. I had survived for so long on the ground that I wondered if flying was really possible.
How was God going to shake me from my discouragement and get me into the air? He used a tactic I didn’t expect. He allowed my former captors to charge my plane in a violent assault. This flushed my emotional problems into the open and forced me to deal with them or be dragged under by them. I was left with only one good alternative – to turn on the engine, throw the plane into gear, and rise to the safety of the sky.
The book you are reading describes this time in my life. It starts with a description of life on the ground and the assault (Chapters One through Four). It continues with the last major piece added to the engine (Chapters Five through Nine). Finally, it describes how the plane took off into the air (Chapters Ten through Twenty-Nine).
This won’t be a typical Christian book. I have never heard anyone describe the Christian life in the terms I use, but I have no interest in sharing a story that isn’t honest. Following Jesus has been perplexing and frustrating beyond my human ability to bear. At the same time, I have found Him to be by my side every step of the way. His Spirit has been my Comforter and Helper in the middle of my temper and confusion. His word has been a lamp to my feet. By a thousand miracles He has sustained me and brought me into a joy that goes beyond outward blessings.
This book tells the next part in that story. I pray that God will use it to open your eyes to His incredible love, which He feels for you even if it seems as if He has abandoned you for years. May you hear Him speaking in ways that uniquely touch you, and may He surprise you with what He does in your life. I pray that you will experience what you had previously only read about in the Bible.
Bill Cadden
2012
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