SAYING GOODBYE TO SECRETS - from When Lost Men Come Home, not for men only

Saying Goodbye to Secrets

When we are ready to accept the grace God and others have for us, our secrets become like broken kindling which help build warming fires of joy and comfort for us and those around us. Isolation becomes joyful fellowship. It is replaced with relational assurance and confidence. Not like the temporary, intoxicating feelings our addictions gave us, but a deep, profound sense of goodness, openness and oneness with God and the world He created. When we say goodbye to our secrets, we become honest and free men. We grow to become more like Jesus.

 

We hide what we know or feel ourselves to be (which we assume to be unacceptable and unlovable) behind some kind of appearance which we hope will be more pleasing. We hide behind pretty faces which we put on for the benefit of our public. And in time we may even come to forget that we are hiding, and think that our assumed pretty faces is what we really look like.

Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Traditions

 

            For me, admitting my faults was like a desperate grasp for life, because the life I had been building with my secrets had been killing me. For others in Operation Integrity, it was more of a powerful claim for personal freedom. In either case, it is a breaking away from the secrets and addictions which deceived and buried us ever deeper into a world of increasing self-deception and isolation. Getting real with God and another person is an opportunity to receive supernatural help and human assistance together. It is our personal way of reaching out, revealing ourselves — confronting, exposing and then ultimately accepting the faker-impostor that’s lived inside of us. Allowing others to know us thoroughly brings us into humble alignment with God, Who will delightfully breathe life into the true and honest person we hope to become. By getting real and being honest, we make ourselves available to be loved.

This is an excerpt from When Lost Men Come Home, not for men only copyright, david zailer 2012

Click link to purchase

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=when%20lost%20men%20come%20home%2C%20not%20for%20men%20only