Steps of progress

God's Word transforms lives. There are words no truer than these. I have been in God's precious Word more the last couple of weeks than I had been in months. Two or three days ago I had about a 3 hour quiet time sitting out on my front porch. I awoke about 3am with tons of energy and refreshed as I was on my way to a complete recovery over inflenza (which had made the previous 4-5 days VERY difficult to say the least). During this quiet time, I finished reading the book of Luke (read about 12 chapters), prayed and simply contemplated life on what was a beautifully cool morning. That morning was the type of morning I desire to have all the time. I was at peace.

With my mind not racing and being focused on Christ, I could hear His still, small voice much more clearly than I had been able to recently. One of the things this helped me to do was realize that I needed to not just stop my Warcraft subscription (which I had done almost a month prior but my paid time had not finished up yet) but to actually delete all of my characters. This decision did not make me sad, nor did I really have to struggle with it like I thought I would have. It was like God made my path perfectly clear and in stead of experiencing regret over deleting characters I had spent many hours building up, I experienced a sense of relief. You see, one of the things I realized in the still of the night was that this game, which is simply a game, had become to me something that was actually causing stress in my life.

How can a game stress one out? Well, for me, since I had multiple characters there was always something I needed to do for these guys. In a sense I was juggling the 'lives' of these guys and making decisions. Well, by my very nature, if I have a decision to make, I will think and research that decision ad nauseum. So, my daily thought life was becoming filled with planning and decision making for fictional gaming characters. Sounds silly as I type this, but that is what was happening to me. So, when I made the decision to actually delete these characters what I felt was an actual release of my mental energies. So, now, without the perceived need to think about or research for a game, I have been able to refocus my mind on Christ.

Here is another amazing side effect of this decision. Since I had a lot of stuff these characters had amassed, I gave it all away. I felt like what I might imagine a dying cancer patient must feel when he knows how much time he has left. All of those things I once worked so hard to obtain became to me nothing. So, I gave it all away. That process was one of the most fun times I had playing Warcraft. I gave a lot of stuff to a guy who I had known for about 6 months. I don't think he is a Christian but I encouraged him in the Lord numerous times. I sent him an in-game mail and gave him my email address to write to me if he ever wanted to know more about eternal salvation. I saw him on-line last night as I was deleting my guys and he expressed an interest in staying in touch via email. Who knows, perhaps this is part of how God is bringing him into the Kingdom. The rest of my stuff and a lot of my gold I gave to a guy I had basically just met. As I was saying goodbye to my guild-mates and explaining why I was leaving the game, this guy starting chatting with me about the Lord. He and I instantly hit it off. We have already made email contact with each other and he has been a great encouragement to me. I had a few others encourage me in the Lord and tell me they would pray for me and one guy who really asked I pray for his job situation. Amazing - you are playing a game and around you there are believers everywhere but nobody really knows it. So, in the end, I have developed a true friend in Christ and someone who perhaps I can lead to Christ. How awesome is that?!

Well, almost 6 am and have been working on this blog for almost 45 minutes. Gonna get out my Bible and sit by the fireplace (only 30 degrees this morning - the other day was just a little glimpse of spring being around the corner) and spend some time with the Lord.