Facing the Place it all Started. By Matthew Scott

Facing the Place it all Started. By Matthew Scott

This whole week has had a theme of enduring storms, going through hardships for temperance and how suffering is the best cleansing agent for the old to bring in the new. I've been experiencing, writing about and teaching of the experience of these things for a while but it seems that today was a landmark I pray that will catapult me into the healing side of the theme.

I really would like to write about more positive things and I do have a good outlook despite my experience and believe God is bringing good things. Let it be noted that I try very hard not to complain and I don't focus on the negative. With that said I feel God is using my experiences mixed with a gift of conveyance through writing to reach and relate to broken and hurting people and to shed some light and hope that these things will pass.

If you want a disgustingly happy and almost unrealistic approach to achieving happiness and "Your best life Now" then read a Joel Osteen book. No disrespect to Mr Osteen, he simply has a different ministry than I. His family has done much for the kingdom of God and their testimonies have changed many lives. His mother Dodi's is especially amazing. She believed God and his word so deeply that she was delivered of terminal cancer by literally standing on God's word.

What you will find in my text is brutal and often painful truth. Hopefully through the counsel of The Holy Spirit truth that will set you free.

For me, experience combined with wisdom (which is the application of knowledge) is the best remedy along with trust in what Jesus did for us and prayer that never ceases.

I went for my four mile walk today at the place I usually go. What I had forgotten was that before this trail was constructed, the place it all started was somewhere along that path. I'd seen it many times and knew it was there and would just remember to myself and keep walking.

I was even trying to talk myself into a nap instead of going beforehand. I'm glad I didn't because God was up to something.
I'll come back to this but need to go over the events leading to re-discovering the place.

In preparing to go to CFNI in Jan I knew there were a few lose ends that needed to be tied up in the physical and ethereally. One of those things was finding my two cats that I kept from the divorce a home. Tito and Maddox. Never was a cat guy but these two boys were my buddies. They helped get me through the hardest parts of the divorce.

Tito, my closest little buddy went to his new home last night and I've been tore up ever since. I knew I wouldn't wake up to him pawing at my face to feed him. Then this morning Maddox went to be with the former Mrs. which just added to it all. Heck even as I write this I've got tears streaming down my face but that's just the best time to get it all out.

I know it sounds funny that a 210 pound, heavily tattoo'd man is crying over cats that are not dead but relocated is ridiculous. The irony of it struck me yesterday. Which made me realize that it wasn't really the cats I was upset over. Sure I'll miss them but I just do better without pets.

When that marriage ended those two cats were all I took besides my clothes and a few other things. Everything else was left to her. I wanted nothing. No visual reminder. The cats were an exception because I was in no state to be completely alone.

What I realized yesterday is how much of my failures prior to the marriage, how much pain and regret and wishing things had happened different and anger and sadness and resentment and brokenness I had poured into those little guys. Not directed at them but they enshrined all that mess. They were the last link to my former life and thought I had dealt with it all and was pretty solid in my emotional state.

Well the last few days dredged every bit of it up completely out of the blue and hit me like a ton of elephants falling out of the sky and directly onto my heart. So now I understand where the tears are from. Apparently there was still an opened wound just under a very thin scab.

I've been more and more prompted to find them a home and now I see why. That had to happen for God to get the rest of the poison out of this wounded heart. That was the trigger for the explosion that otherwise would have stayed below the surface.

As I was walking I passed the place it all started I knew I would get off the trail and go down there and spiritually cut and kill the beginning of many years of self destruction on my way back up the path.

I allowed some music to continue ministering to me as I prayed for clarity in this. I wanted nothing skewed. I wanted to remember the event that started the downward spiral of the last 21 yrs of my life.

This is the place I had started smoking which led to pot, which led to sex, which led to acid, which led to meth-amphetamines, which led to alcohol and so on. I've been off of nicotine since the 4th of dec cold turkey. Which is completely Gods doing. The other stuff has been gone for years minus a brief excursion with pot.

Before these things I was still very tenderhearted to the things of God and heard Him speaking to me. After all the addictions kicked in mostly all I heard was their beckoning me for the next fix. I still retained a part of me but I was spiritually incapacitated. God has been reaching out to me for a long time but I wanted to do it my way and look what happened.

Sure I was still saved through it all but that was it. No power, no authority to trample serpents and scorpions, no peace, no direction, complete and utter confusion and darkness shrouded my heart and mind. And all that led up to many experiences that have made my life very adventurous to say the least. And that led to my marriage and the bad choices made in it and again not hearing God that I wasn't supposed to marry then in the first place.

I could have avoided years of pain if my mind and spirit were clear to hear but I'm so thankful to be alive and for His grace and protection. Do I regret those years? I wish I had done things different but I don't regret it. Those things made me who I am now and have formed the mold of my ministry. And through that God had used those experiences to reach people. I've been honored to see many people come to Jesus because of my testimony and what I've been through.

If just one person was reached and found salvation through any part of something I went through then it was all worth it so that person never has to spend eternity in Hell apart from God after a physical life of hell.

When I was up on that cliff today watching the shadows of yesterday pass before my eyes I was filled with a gratitude to be alive and a deep humbleness that God never lifted His hand of protection off of me even when in the practice of sin. I didn't and don't deserve it.

I lifted my hands to the sky not caring if anyone saw and worshiped Him right there. I asked Him to cut the tie and let me never go back down the road that was first built on the very ground I stood over 21 years before. I affirmed that I was free and delivered by His hand and confessed it on once cursed ground. I gave all the years of pain and hurt and disappointment and my self-sufficiency to Him and thanked Him as I walked away free.
Funny how God uses little things like cats to get us to give Him the burden and let go of it all. I'm still upset but I know something supernatural happened today that stopped the past from becoming the present ever again. My heart will heal now the right way and have room now for all the good things that are coming. It is very freeing and liberating to know that all the garbage is out in the open and had fire set to it at the very place it first started collecting.

It is painful but so worth it to face the place where it all started and let all the garbage go. I encourage you to do the same weather your place is physical or inside a moment. With God you can go back there and let it all go and reverse the destructive cycle that has held you down for so long.

You may not feel like you're doing much and maybe even a little crazy but God takes that seriously and like I said, there's something supernatural about facing the place that it all started.