Seasons in Life and In My Relationship with Christ and His Church

In the past 30 years I have learned many lessons that can help you and I avoid a few potholes and ruts I have fallen into and to walk in the good things that I have experienced and I continue to learn the importance of and how to walk in increasing measure as part of the daily life of one who is in Christ and part of the Ecclesia.

What I am sharing can help us find the path that millions are walking on outside of the walls of institutional churches to find the real Jesus, the real Ecclesia, and therefore life as His follower as He wills it to be. According to George Barna of the Barna Group in his book, titled “Revolution” twenty-million followers of Jesus who Barna calls “revolutionaries” are finding alternative ways of walking with Jesus and in relationship with each other Christians outside of traditional churches.

Many of the lessons I learned over 25 years ago in a season of participation in relational life in Christ separate from the IC I was attending at the time. Father in His unfathomable love and wisdom allowed me to participate in this in spite of living a double life one where I desired to live for God on one hand and on the other totally living for self-gratification, and entrenched in the relgious system.

Further in this writing I am going to provide a rough time line of significant events and circumstances according to my best recollection. I will only include what I understand to have influenced my relationship with Father and other important relationships I have or once had. No doubt, much will be out of chronological order and dates may be a bit inaccurate, as I have chosen to write everything purely from memory. I am choosing to do it this way, because I believe it is the events and my perception of them not the order in most instances that is significant.

I’m 45-years-old as I begin writing this at the end of Summer 2008 and I did not repent of giving over to pornography and sexual promiscuity that I was in bondage to since 12-years-old until 8 years ago. Which means when you read about me in professional paid ministry I was living in full-blown bondage to pornography and during the time I was married I eventually cheated with prostitutes on my ex-wife. Out of love for her and her husband of 12 years and the relationship that my children and I have with them I will not use her name, as she is a changed and beautiful person today.

Some of the periods will overlap as I mark significant life changing events by giving the approximate year they occurred. However as mentioned before, I do not believe the actual times are significant, but the things that happened that affected me for better or worse.
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1963 April 26­­­_ The day of my Birth and adoption by my Mom & Dad: My birth parents were teenagers and thank the Lord placed me for adoption at birth. I do not know them and so far I have never had a desire to, but I love them for making that difficult and honorable decision.

1963-1979_ I lived in South Sacramento, CA with my parents: During this time, my mother was a stay-at-home-mom and my father was a Truck Driver driving the West Coast between Sacramento, CA and the Canadian border in Washington State Mon-Fri, but he was home most weekends. I enjoyed fishing, hunting, camping, and vacations to Hawaii, Victoria Canada, riding motor cycles and many other activities with my family. All I had to do is think I wanted something and more often than not, my mom and dad would buy it for me.

We spent every holiday with my mother’s extended family. Mom had nine siblings and they and their parents were very close. My father’s extended family had little to no influence or importance in my life.

Everything I received from my parents came with unspoken strings for the approval and acceptance of my mother. However, things that were exclusively part of my relationship with my dad we not like that. I always believed my dad’s loves was unconditionally. My mother’s love and approval was full of strings and since I spent more time with her, because my dad was on the road, I experienced manipulation and coercion more often than my dad’s unconditional love. Most of my childhood was spent smothered by my controlling mother insisting on making every decision for me, doing things for me that I should have done for myself, and making extremely clear that I was bad if I had different desires, opinions, ways of doing things, and preferences then hers regarding anything.

During this time, my hero was John Wayne and I watched every movie of his I had the chance. In addition, I also watched every episode of Lone Ranger, Bonanza, Gun Smoke and every other weekly TV Western available to us. John Wayne remained my hero until I met my cousin Jeff a real Cowboy in the flesh. My life goal was to be a real Working Cowboy! I wore Wrangler Jeans and “Cowboy Boots” most of the time and my Stetson Hat most every where my parents and I went.

1973-2004_ I became a part time Working Cowboy and Rodeo Cowboy: I was 10-years-old and my cousin Jeff was a Working Cowboy and Rodeo Cowboy who rode bulls in professional rodeo and competed with his father-in-law and occasionally his wife in Team Roping. Jeff’s father-in-law’s legal name was Tough and he owned a working cattle and horse ranch, riding stable, and Rodeo arena. We would often visit and Jeff and Tough taught me how to ride, rope, and work cattle and horses Texas style.

Easter week Tough hosted a yearly professional and Jr. Rodeo together. In 1973 my parents, me, and all my aunts, uncles, and cousins on my mother’s side plus Nana and Pop all camped out at Pine Mountain Ranch.

To my parents dismay Jeff entered me in the calf-riding event only he never told them before my first ride, because he knew my controlling mother would have put a stop to it. Jeff simply said with his southern drawl, “Tommy is going to be with me behind the shoots with the rest of the Cowboys!” When we got back, there Jeff put a pair of chaps on me from when he was a kid and put one of his own trophy buckles on my belt and informed me I would be riding a calf. I was so excited! Mom and dad found out by hearing my name announced as they sat in the grand stands in disbelief as I came out of a “buck’n shoot” on the back of fresh calf that bucked me off after a couple “crow hops.” According to my dad, he had to stop my mother from climbing the rodeo arena fence to stop me.

After that I was hooked and to my mother’s and my father’s dismay, because of being entered in that event, we kept getting fliers in the mail monthly during the Jr. Rodeo season announcing upcoming Jr. Rodeos. Between Jeff’s promises to teach me how to be safe as possible and my never-ending begging mom and dad reluctantly gave in by paying the fees for me to ride several times a year.

During this season my mom and dad bought my first horse and it was kept at Tough’s ranch where Jeff and His wife and small children lived in a separate house from his in-laws. Every visit I practiced roping with Jeff and got to help move and gather horses, cattle, and I got participate in the Spring and Fall branding and castrating of new calves.

That all ended when Jeff ran off on his wife and children when I was 12-years-old. At that point, I had to give up my horse and stop rodeo. I figured I would never get to do either again, because the one thing I desired most, my parents would never do, that was move onto acreage out in the country where I could keep my own horses and cattle. My mom would often tell me it is for the best, and because she did not like it neither would I if I had to live and work on a ranch every day. She said that about everything she did not like that I showed interested in and my dad would just ignore the idea, because he grew up on a ranch and did not like it.

1975_ I was 12-years-old and my “Best Friend” showed me his mother’s boyfriend’s teen pornography magazines that the boyfriend kept stuffed in the mattress of my friend’s mother’s bed and from that moment forward I became obsessed with pornography, and the fatasy of having sex with beautiful young women. Two years later, I became sexually active at age 14. Furthermore, I remained in bondage to pornography and sexual promiscuity for 23 years.

1975-1979_ A Cowboy in the Top 5 in State of California in Artistic Roller Skating: When I had to stop spending my time with Jeff at Pine Mountain Ranch I took up roller-skating. I met a girl who competed in Artistic Skating so to get her to like me I decided to try it. I took lessons, started competing, and came in first or second place in every event in the Cal/Neva region in Dance and Freestyle and came in 2 place my first year in the Cal/Neva Regional Championships and First place the next year.

Being obsessed with pornography and sexual promiscuity, I made nearly every dicision with the motive of seeing those desires become reality. Competition skating never led to sexual encounters with the first young woman I was interested in or others I met through the sport. As a result, I had gone as far as I was willing in competition roller-skating so I quit to begin riding bulls in High School Rodeo, because I discovered there were girls the Bull Riders crudely referred as “Buckle Bunnies” who would do anything a Rider wanted just to become the “Girlfriend” of a Bull Rider.

1977_ (In the mean time) Jesus Found Me then I “Went All the Way:” Until high school except for Kindergarten and 1st grade, I attended private schools. For 2 years I attended a school named Melvin Smith specializing in teaching children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyper Active Disorder. That was the only school in which I enjoyed the learning process and succeeded academically. After leaving there 2 years later I was completely unsuccessful academically from then on, I believed I am stupid and that I cannot learn therefore I hated school. I believed that lie until I was 21-years-old. After Melvin Smith my mother enrolled me in an Episcopalian School named Saint Michael’s, then Gloria Day Lutheran School, and then in the eighth grade Sacramento Christian School where John Mays who was also an Evangelist in Prison Ministries was my teacher.

Mr. Mays was the first person I met besides my dad I felt loved me unconditionally and accepted me for the unique person God created. As I alluded to before I spent most of my time outside of school with my mother. That relationship was filled with coercion, shame, guilt, fear of rejection, and indulgence to control and manipulate me into loving her and choosing to have the same opinions and preferences as well as to completely depend upon her as well as on me, doing or saying whatever I believed would appease her regardless the truth.

I was only 14-years-old, but my vocabulary was mostly vulgarity and obscenity. I had also experimented with smoking pot with my “Best Friend”, I was also a very angry young man, and I learned in elementary school that I was proficient with my fists and I resorted to using them most anytime I had a confrontation, disagreement, or felt offended by a peer.

So in short order I ended up in the principal’s office. She was a sweet gray haired elderly woman of God who was the second person whoever demonstrated the unconditional love and grace of God even though I deserved punishment. She also taught me that every decision has a consequence. I knew she “meant business” even when she demonstrated grace and mercy. I knew she had my best interest in mind and like my dad, and John Mays genuinely liked me. That is significant, because I cannot look back to any time that I can remember feeling my mother accepting or loving me for the unique individual God has made me.

Sacramento Christian School required chapel service weekly and some weeks or months after the start of 8th grade John Mays was the speaker for chapel. For the first time I heard and understood the Gospel of the Kingdom. I was convicted of my sin and I placed faith in Jesus as my Lord and Savior that day. The following Sunday I convinced my parents to give me permission to attend the Church where the school was located. From the beginning I felt the thing I wanted more in life than anything including being a Working Cowboy or having sex was to learn to live for Jesus and to teach others.

The pastor of that little Fundamentalist Church mentored me, because I kept bugging him to teach me and for materials, I could read and study about Jesus. It was there at only 14-years-old that I learned how to study the bible, began learning how to pray, and unfortunately, I became a modern day Pharisee. I was also full of guilt and self-loathing over my sexual immorality, because when I read in scripture my conscience felt convicted of sin.

Now I understand that all the “spiritual disciplines” I engaged in were an attempted to earn Gods love even though I said I believe his love is unconditional. I somehow did not authentically believe I did not have to earn it, by doing things I believed the bible told me He desires. I did not grasp until recently that all he wants is relationship with me and desires more than I do to walk with me every hour of every day and loves and actually likes me them same regardless of my performance.

I met a girl at church and we became sexually active for my first time at 14-years-old since my introduction to hard-core “teen” pornography 2 years earlier. That relationship ended within a few short months.

1978_ I had to leave Sacramento Christian School, because it only went as far as the 8th grade. So I requested my parents to enroll me in another private School that was ran by a man who attended another of the Churches that was part the same religious system as the Church whose grounds Sacramento Christian School was located on. Due to the nature of my experience at that school and the fact that I do not know if this man is still alive or whether he has repented, I will not use his name or the school’s name. I will only refer to his title, Headmaster, which is a reflection of his lack of a charitable and gracious demeanor and interaction with others.

This school like Sacramento Christian School had weekly chapel services, which was the highlight of the school week for me. I told the Headmaster about how I came to faith and convinced him to invite John Mays. The following week Mr. Mays came, played his guitar, and shared the simple Gospel and I “shared my testimony.”

To my utter surprise, the Headmaster for no apparent reason called my mother into his office when she came to pick me up after school that day and he told her lies he fabricated about Mr. Mays and the Pastor of the Church I was attending. He told my mother who does not know God that Mr. Mays and the pastor of the Church I attended were turning me into a fanatic and that my mother needed to keep me from John Mays, because he is a PENTECOSTAL and that makes him dangerous. To which she replied "Sir I do not believe the same as you about God and I do not believe what you have said about John Mays or the Pastor as I have met them both on numerous occasions, and just because John Mays believes different then you that does not make him dangerous."

When my mother informed me of all this conversation I became so bitter, I decided if Christians were like this man I did not want anything to do with them. I naively figured the Pastor of the Church I attended must be like the Headmaster and I just did not see it since he recommended this school. After that day, I stopped “going to church” and since on many days I took the bus to school I often skipped school those days and I barely graduated 9th grade as a result. Thank God, that was toward the end of the school year so I did not miss much. The following year my family moved to Elk Grove, CA. and I was enrolled into public school at Elk Grove High School in the 10th grade as a Sophomore and I remained there till graduating as Senior in 1982.

1979-1982_ I entered public High at Elk Grove High School in Elk Grove, CA: There I met friends who lived on ranches and were on the schools High School Rodeo team. To my mothers and fathers dismay, I returned to Rodeo only now to ride full grown Bulls not the calves and smallish steers I had previously ridden. I worked on ranches owned by the families of these new friends and bought my own horses that I boarded at one of them.

Anytime I had classmates who claimed to be Christians, I mostly ignored them. Nevertheless, I took notice of seven students who I knew were Christians, because I could sense the presence of God surrounding them and his life within them, from the moment I first saw them at a distance before I ever saw or heard them say or do anything. I felt something around every one of them that no one else had that I recognised before who claimed to be a Christian. Their lives convicted me and I reacted by harassing them to get a reaction from them, but they only responded with genuine kindness.

Later that year which was my first year at Elk Grove High School during summer vacation, I was in a Bull Riding accident at a Bull Riding School in which I broke my arm.

Leading up to this I had already been riding Bulls and I became friends with all the guys who were the best Bull Riders at our school including one who was the National High School Rodeo Association World Champion Bull Rider who became my closest friend for years.

We were all riding well that school year so during that Summer Break we wanted to get be even better so we signed up for a nationally recognised Bull Riding School at the end of Summer a week, before the School started.

Also during the school year and the summer break, I had had a series of short sexual relationships with girls I met at school and Rodeos. My mind and emotions were so warped that after having sex with a girl I felt like I was in love with each of them. However, the girls I spent more than just a “one night stand” with were smart enough though they were as desperate as I was for genuine love and acceptance to quickly figure out I was only using them to please myself, so the relationships always ended quickly. Every time a relationship ended even though I often had more than one girlfriend at a time, I felt devastated.

On my first bull at the Bull Riding School, I ended up having a freak accident that broke my arm. Breaking an arm in the sport of Bull Riding is common, but the way it happened to me was very unusual. That is not the point of this so I am not going into those details. The orthopedist at the emergency room that set my arm explained that due to the type of break I might never be able to ride bulls again by using my left hand to hold the Bull Rope, because I might not regain the needed rotation to hold the rope.

1981_ Broken hearts, Broken Relationships, Broken Nose, and New Beginning with Jesus: The next thing I knew I was back at school and my arm is in a fiberglass cast. During a break between classes a strange confrontation happened with another student. He grabbed my cast in a spot where it was flexible this student had been trying provoke me into a fight for several weeks before I was in the cast. He began to squeeze which hurt and I yelled, because there was a school security guard nearby expecting he would respond, but all he did was stand their watching this young man hurt my arm.

Fearing my arm would be made worse I finally ripped it out of his hands and that made the other student even more motivated to harm me so even though I was unable to defend myself he proceeded to beat me in the face even after I was on the ground. All the while, the Security Guard stood just watching. It turns out he was a man that I did not recognized as having been employed by my father as a security guard at night during the summer and was fired for sleeping on the Job, but he recognized me and therefore decided to let this happen. That same summer I worked for my father in our family business part time and worked on ranches and Rod Bulls in Jr. Rodeos too.

Fortunately other students had witnessed the security guard just standing there watching so he was released from employment by Elk Grove School District and as a result of the high school’s report and one by my father who recognized him and his Security Guard license was revoked.

In addition, Elk Grove High School permanently expelled the abusive and troubled student who attacked me.

Nevertheless the truth is I had treated others as abusively as this young man had treated me therefore I beleive I reaped what I had sown.

Resulting from this I ended up with a severely broken nose that required extensive surgery and I was unable, because of the nose and the arm to ride bulls again until my Senior Year at Elk Grove High School.

These hard times brought me to the end of my rope and somehow God used this to open my heart to see that even though people had let me down my Heavenly Father never did and I needed to turn from living for myself to living for Him. I cried out confessing I had chosen to walk away from relationship with Father, because of what one man claiming to be in Christ had said and done.

Believing that to walk with God requires I had to be part of an institutional church and since I had only knew the one I attended at Sacramento Christian School or vice versa I went back there the following Sunday. Afterwards I spoke to the Pastor who was a different man that I had not met before and we prayed together that Sunday Morning.

The next day I was at a local “Christian” bookstore and I ran into one of the young men, named Danny, who I had given a hard time, because he was a Christian during our Physical Education class at Elk Grove High School. His first response immediately made me think of the initial response of many of the saints in the early church to Saul after placing faith in Christ. I explained to him how I’d placed faith in Jesus 2 years earlier and then turned away from walking with him the next year and that I had just repented and turned back to walk with Christ.

Danny told me about a group of 30 students that met in the Band Room at Elk Grove High School, early before school. I was surprised there were that many I told Danny that I knew only about seven Christians at school and he was one of them. He invited me to join them and so I did. Sure enough, those 7 students and 23 others were there and it was obvious the other 23 students considered those 7 all who attended the same church and youth group the leaders of this group.

This group of seven were of course the same students in whom the first day I saw them l I sensed the life and presence of God, as I had never before. The other 23 I had seen at school and some where acquaintances whom I had just assumed were Mormons, because Elk Grove, CA has a large active Mormon population and some others I’d seen at the same illegal drinking parties I went to and being as conformed to the world as I was until I returned to faith in Jesus.

At the first opportunity, I found those who were the most mature among the seven. I explained to them the difference I noticed the first time I saw them. Then I asked what made them different then other Christians. They explained two primary differences where the other students had a different belief regarding whether or not someone could lose/give up their salvation if they were truly born-again. The second of the two differences was that these seven believed and sought to experience everything of God that is within the pages of the New Testament. This including baptism in the Holy Spirit with power and accompanying spiritual gifts, signs, and wonder that were active in the life of Jesus and the Church while the last of the 12 Apostles were still alive on this earth and ever since. They had named their church youth group “Acts 29 to reflect their belief that everything that the Ecclesia experienced and exercised in Book of Acts is the normal experience of Christians today even if it is not typical.

I immediately recognized that the second difference was the only one that could make the difference I had taken notice of months earlier and since. After they explained that much since my first church experience was in a church that believed what the other 23 did on both of those topics I was even more uncertain.

Strangely the Pastor of the little Church that I first attended after placing faith in Jesus and I had many discussions on the topics of Baptism and power of the Holy Spirit, and Spiritual Gifts. I would go to talk to him, because I was always confused about how what he said and the pamphlets he gave me could be true. I could never see where Jesus or the writers of the Letters to the Churches said anything about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, signs and wonders, or Spiritual Gifts would cease at the death of the last living member of the twelve first Apostles. Looking back, I know now that the Holy Spirit was giving me wisdom and revelation even at the young age of 14-years-old.

I went home after talking to these seven students and that night and the following used my Strong’s Concordance to find every scripture I could within the New Testament on the topics of Holy Spirit, Filling, Baptism, and Spiritual Gifts reading them all. When done I prayed and confessed, “I do not know what to believe, but I know one thing I want everything you have for me, I want all of you and all that that means.” I had no idea what to expect or whether to expect to be able to know if something or when whatever happened. I do not remember if it was that night or a day or so later, but I was alone praying in my bedroom one night when spontaneously I began praying in Tongues…

The next significant incident is where the beginning of my recognition of participating in Institutional Church and religion begins. Since that is part of the main topic of this writing, I will pick up the topic in the following chapter.