the good the bad the ugly

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

unearthehome-vidMany of us have the patience of a baby that is hungry when we want things to just go our way. In my years of being so impatient I’ve decided to just be patient and let God work things out.

I’m not always perfect in doing this but it’s like training a muscle you have to start somewhere and eventually it becomes natural and a habit. Life will test your last nerves. It’s ugly and sometimes down right nasty.

But ask that we be patient and trust in his word and in his plan. That’s our hope. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, And in His word I do hope.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭130:5‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

God is always working things out for you. Don’t sweat the small stuff be patient and do you the rest will work its self out.

#thegoodthebadtheuglybiblestudy

Natural Born Sinner: Behavior, Patterns, and Darkness

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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This is going to be probably my most transparent post yet. Many of us don’t like to discuss this topic. It makes us feel uncomfortable, shameful, unworthy, angry, confused, and judged.

Unfortunately this is just living as a profess christian.

The next few weeks I want to explore the dangers of sin, its darkness, its pain and share my experiences of both sides as a former worldly man and now Christ follow.  I have no idea where this will take me. However, it is a place that God has asked me to go towards not only for me but for others who suffered the effects of a sinful nature.

People might judge me and that’s okay this is not for them it’s for those who want to learn and hear and change.

The Truth at Face Value

I want to be as objective as possible here for you as to not come across as a sour-puss Christian who’s perception of the church’s dealings is – well – a mess. The Truth at Face Value is – I ruined my ministry career before I even started. I sabotaged it by doing the most unpardonable sin any church leader can do… I sinned in the church. I hurt my family, my wife, and my community. But I am confident in God’s Grace, forgiveness and restoration.

The Things We Don’t Speak Of

There are many who have suffered more greatly than I have. Well at least publicly. I’m nobody famous. I haven’t written any books, been on a grand platform with famous Christians (funny), nor do I have a gargantua following of people just waiting for the next big thing from me. Just because I lack these things doesn’t mean my sin hurts any less. Sin hurts that’s just the bottom line. It hurts you and the people around you.

Everyone is affected by it.

The Unfortunate Truth

I am a natural born sinner. There is no getting around that. I have the ability to make the wrong choice at the drop of a dime just to satisfy a need, that I actually have no idea where it was coming from. Now, before you whisper OMG! I knew it! Know that my heavenly father knew as well. That’s why he called me out of darkness. Religious or worldly would say ” he’s a liar, a hypocrite, a fake” and the Christian would say ” “he was never a Christian at all” ” he deceived us all” “release him from our community”. All of this is correct. My sins did in fact conjure up all of these titles and actions. Sin hurts to the core. It doesn’t see color, race, origin, or creed.

But sin goes way beyond just doing the things we don’t want to or should not do.

This next few weeks will be like peeling an onion one layer at a time exposing the pain of sin. I can only do this by being transparent as possible.

Please feel free to hit the follow button and be the first to receive my next post in the up coming week.

The Same Ole’ Tracks : Patterns to Pain

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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When I was a kid one thing I remembered is that no one believed I would amount to anything. With my background, environment, and race I would statistically fail. From teachers to friends to bosses to colleagues I was reminded everyday how I was somehow inferior to others. Those constant reminders were imbedded in the sub-conscious of my brain and lead me to make decisions in my life that would echoes those words for years to come.

With these thoughts in my head and a reason to prove many wrong I went on with life, got married and had a family. Then it came crashing down as I self-destructed during the middle-age portion of my life. I had all this knowledge, degrees and accolades but inside I was a messed up, angry, lying sinner.

There were patterns that I could not break roads I would continue to take and sin that I continue to live in, all the while being a  “Christian”. Oh, I didn’t tell you about that part…? Somewhere between my adult adolescence ( that’s what I call late 20s somethings to early 30s somethings) I became a Christian… so did my wife.

Since then I have been called a liar, and a fake. I’ve lost relationship with friends and even relatives. I’ve hurt my wife, my children. I’ve lost jobs, been fired, been completely broke with no money to feed my family, spent many Christmas’s crying because I could not get my family the gifts they wanted or we could not enjoy Christmas like other families did. Couldn’t pay my mortgage and lost my house, couldn’t pay my rent and had to move out, had three cars repossessed and almost divorced my wife. Whew…. are you tracking with me?

Struggle? Yeah… Jesus where are you?

While I sat wallowing in my anguish, pain I said, ” father why has thou’ forsaken me?” I didn’t think about those hidden words that were planted in my brain and never dealt with or even expose. But expose they were through my life, my decision and actions. As I continued to walks down the same tracks and leave marks upon marks of pain. This is my doing. My struggles were the by-product of my emotional patterns planted years ago.

The problem was the tracks were getting old, tattered, rusty and just unacceptable. 

My life became a never ending “pattern to pain” scenario. It’s not always the “enemy” just a little tidbit, and not God always allowing it, another tidbit. 

It drives me crazy when Christian’s hide behind those two excuses for behavior. 

The little mortars planted in the sub-conscious of my brain exploded whenever I encountered a scenario that reminded me of something that caused me pain so my brain created a defense mechanism to combat that. The problem was… it was a very destructive strategy.

This was my theory and I was sticking to it!

I thought I was crazy, until I began studying science of the human brain and began teaching myself these life changing freedom skills. Eventually I found training for myself that would be in alignment with what I knew to be true. The human brain can be changed. All of this is the art of neuroscience, theology, and psychology findings. Here’s a short list of what I have learned:

  1. The human brain learns through patterns (roads & highways) that become super conductors through an experience (life event).
  2. The greater the experience the faster the pattern (roads & highways are built) and the stronger those behavior patterns are. 
  3. Habits are formed through experiences from environment to parenting to friend from teachers, television, and the list goes on. 
  4. The Human brain can be changed
  5. The bible speaks about this in Paul’s passage about renewing your mind. (Romans 12:2)
  6. Many Christian tend to leave emotions out of the change process 
  7. Emotions are not only the by-product (of experience), be also the source of change (meaning, behavior, and intellect). 

This was a game changer for me. As I had already begun working and learning on my own and changing my patterns now I had a place to turn to with others that were ready to learn, train, and be sent to help others just as I wanted to do.

5 things you should know:

  1. Your life (patterns) can be changed
  2. If you are stuck in a never ending cycle it’s usually because of some deep pattern (experience) formed in your brain.
  3. Your life is not your past
  4. We are free through Jesus
  5. You can learn new strategies to change and live in the freedom you already have.

Why I decided to write about this? Because I want everyone to have the opportunity to live the life of freedom that they already have. I want people to see life in a new perspective and have balance in both mind and spirit. I suffered a lot in my spirit and I learned a lot. I’m still under-construction but aren’t we all?

I leave you with this thought below,

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

 

 

 

 

 

Love thy Neighbor, With Anger?

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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If there is one thing that I’ve learned and have intentionally worked on is my temper. I have one, there is no denying that. My anger comes from a deep rooted fear of being abandon, blamed and pushed around (just being transparent). I protect my heart and ask questions later. Sometimes my words hurt others to the core. I know and understand this so now I intentionally stop, think, ask questions. I’m not always spot on point with this but I am conscious of it.

Even my disposition makes people feel uncomfortable, is he angry? no he’s arrogant? no he’s miserable, no he’s just rude. I can honestly say I’m neither of these. But I will say this, what you give to me is what you get in return (transparency again). Not the best but truthful.

I work from a trust and honor code. “Do what you say and say what you mean”  I don’t like to mix words and trust is paramount with me in any relationship (although I have made many mistake in this area).

What I’ve learned in my twenty years in leadership is transparency is paramount, especially if you want to lead effectively. It is also the key to having healthy relationships at work and in your personal life. Without trust comes doubt, then discontentment, then accusations, then gossip, then anger.

Anger is a toxic virus. It’s never acceptable in any place by anyone to be in a disposition of anger and vomit words that frankly are of no use to you, your spiritual health or theirs.

Here are a few things that anger incites:

  • Spiritual unbalance
  • Scars
  • Emptiness
  • Unforgiveness
  • Pain
  • Division
  • Strife
  • Gossip
  • Pride
  • Crimes

Of course this is not an exhaustive list.

There are many things anger incites even on a  Global spectrum like Genocide. Anger is evil there is no doubt about it. When anger awakes no one benefits. Emotions flare and people are hurt. It seems in America everyone is angry about something these days.

  • Anger can take away a blessing (Speaking from Experience)
  • Anger can create a situation at work and you can lose your job (Speaking from Experience)
  • Anger can bring your marriage to destruction (Speaking from Experience)
  • Anger can hurt your children (Speaking from Experience)
  • Anger can be in the way of you having healthy friendships (Speaking from Experience)

You tracking with me yet?

We have lost our sense of gratitude our sense of love. But why should we love or allow anyone to love us? We have been hurt so many times there are a multitude of scars. When hurt comes, trust goes out the door.

Even as a country, collectively we carry scars. Here are a few:

  • The Assignation of JFK
  • The Watergate Scandal
  • Vietnam
  • Son of Sam
  • Charles Manson
  • Columbine

The list can go on…

The bottom line is… men and women hurt other men and women. Jesus knew this and that’s why the scriptures say this:

But Yeshua did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all men,

John 2:24 ABPE

Jesus understood this and that was why he exclaimed when the disciples came to him and ask:

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 Jesus said to him,  “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 “This is the first and great commandment. 39 “And the second is like it:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  40 “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” 

Matthew 22: 36-40 NKLV

Anger is something that I work on on a daily bases, loving your neighbor is not always easy but submitting to anger always hurts our spirit and leaves scars. Let’s try to love better. Even in the mist of hurt and pain we need to find forgiveness and love thy neighbor.

God Bless.

 

Leave your comments below in the comment section of this blog. I welcome your thoughts that are uplifting and encouraging.

 

 

 

 

The Park Bench: Remember the Time?

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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Ever sat on a park bench during the fall season? The air was crisp, the smell of falling leaves permeated the air. The colors just bloomed changing from every angle you gazed.

I remember the fall growing up in the Bronx. I would constantly head over to my local park and walk around the perimeter looking at all the trees. The best part was running through them playing with my friends trying to catch each other through the colorful palette.

Back then you would see many park benches on the upper and lower part of the park.  Most of the time the benches were occupied with elderly neighbors just having a conversation and a cup of coffee. There wasn’t a Starbucks, no internet, no music. There was just neighbors that enjoyed each others company and shared a mutual common denominator.

Those days are far from few unfortunately. Things have changed.  But, our need for love has not.

Love is a connection. It’s an emotional state that keeps us healthy and gives us a drive for zest in life. It has no boundaries, no color, no location, no nationality. When two people care and love each other, friends, partners, lovers or relatives, memories are made.

The world has lost focus on this important aspect that our creator put in our genetic blueprint. Children have forgotten how to form relationship, how to connect, how to love and be loved.

Adults are snubbing friends, neighbors and co-workers because love is absent from our worldview. Arguments and fights are incited between random strangers and as close as family members.

We are all in survival mode and barely make room for someone to enter our lives, form a true relationship and despite how many of us could use a good friend we won’t take that leap of trust. No one wants to put work into a lasting friendship, nor family quarrels end with a simple “I’m sorry.”

There was a time when people would sit on a park bench and just talk, there was trust, admiration, respect, kindness and caring. What happened to those days?

I would  love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment below and tell me what you think has contributed.

Take care.

A

 

The Journey

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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Every October thousands of men and women make their way to a small town called St Jean Pied de Port in the in south-western France close to Ostabat in the Pyrenean foothills. St Jean Pied de Port is famously known as the starting point of one of the most popular pilgrimage called Camino de Santiago. [The way of James]

The Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) is a large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.

Thousands of people come to take this spiritual journey that travels 500 miles through four of Spain’s 15 regions, ending at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.

It is consider a sacred journey where people find peace, purpose, and meaning. It is a walk that challenges your physical abilities and test your mental fettle. But most importantly it is a journey where your spirit is elevated as you ponder and sometimes share [if you make friends along the way] your inner thoughts, feelings, and pain while finding resolve  and celebrating personal affirmations.

The Camino has been on my bucket list for about 5 years now. Each year  I watch videos of people sharing their own personal stories. Tears are shed, friends are made, old demons left behind along the way. It is certainly moving as inspiring experience.

Everyone seeks to find a purpose. I know in my own life I have constantly searched for that meaning, that purpose, something I was always striving to be. That fictitious goal that I created to keep telling myself “I’m not there yet.” I haven’t reached it. Im still healing and learning.n-LIFE-JOURNEY-628x314

When we have pain we are in a constant cyclical race to find our true self.  [ what ever that is] Somewhere along our journey we got injured and lost a piece of our spirit. Somewhere along the way something changed the person who we were to the person we have become.

The problem is that sometimes that person we have become is fragile and breaks easily along the journey. When this happens we begin to seek and search in people, places and work to find this piece of – what we believe will make us happy.  This is a painful way to live. It shows in our decisions, our work life, our moral codes, and our behavior patterns.

How do we heal from this pain that debilitates us day in and day out? We surrender to something greater than ourselves. This week I told my students [ I am a middle school teacher ] that the greatest feeling that anyone can have is the feeling you get when you put yourself second for someone else’s needs.

You surrender to what you know you have been called to do. Then when you do this, you live it! You make it the strength that drives you and you continue to move forward to the goal that was truly designed for you. Everyone has the Camino de Santiago. [The way of James] inside them. When you go on your journey to realization of your God given gifts, then you will experience your purpose. The one that’s only designed for you.

 

 

 

Photo Cred: Goutami Mishra

Photo cred: Jeff  Pioquinto

 

 

Life is but…?

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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It’s been about four months since I’ve written a post and I hope most of you have not given up on me as I went through some personal emotional stuff which came about because of the wounds that I had not dealt with and the sin that grew in them.

If anyone deals with any strong hold you know that the first thing a strong hold does is make you feel shameful, keep us in fear, thats it’s only power – fear.

We are ashamed of what people would think of us if they found out about our sin. We think we can fix it ourselves but we cannot. We are afraid we will be judged – and we will, make no mistake. Have we brought judgement on ourselves? probably, but that shouldn’t stop us from healing and speaking about our sinful nature and what we struggle with this is a testimony to what God can do in our lives.

I think that life becomes jaded after living through repetitive cycles. How many of the bad decision can I make until my sinful nature is ripped our of me. How long can this pain continue until I begin to fall into a deep depression to the point that I want nothing to do with the world anymore?

That old melody rings in my head sometimes ” merely, merely, merely, life is but a dream” At times I feel like it’s a bad dream, a wicked one, and worse it doesn’t change. But is that because we make bad choices or our sinful nature has gotten a hold of us so deep we don’t know how to fight it it anymore.

I wake up every morning feeling like a stake is being driven through my heart. It hurts deep and at times it feels incurable.  I am left asking myself “is this what life is all about?” Is it? God?

Many people suffer from many disease  from depression, to anxiety just to name a few but all of us suffer from the greatest disease – sin.

Don’t get me wrong there is pain, hurt, suffering and we all have wounds – all of us. But wounds are entry ways for sin to take shelter, and wounds left unchecked is where sin grows like weeds penetrating, and compromising every aspect of our lives. We must draw near to God’s word and use it as it is – a weapon! if we want to win this war.

We see this example from Jesus in the temptation period. Jesus uses the word of God to fight back when Satan tries to trick Jesus into doing his own will much like we do when we think we have it all together or we can solve our strong hold ourselves.

I would be a lying if I said it’s easy, it’s not, especially if we have really strong holds. This is when we really need to check our wounds.

Author Robert S. McGee says this in his book The Search for Significance – Seeing your TRUE WORTH through GOD’S EYES:

“Many of us are hurt emotionally, relational, and spiritually, but because we are unaware of the extent of our wounds, we don’t take steps towards healing and health. Our problem is not stupidity but a lack of objectivity. Because of this, we fail to see the reality of pain, hurt, and anger in our lives”

I believe that this is spot on true and because of this we fall into a deeper sin and we lose touch with reality sometimes when it’s to late.

My word of encouragement for anyone battling something that is a strong hold. Find someone you trust and talk about what you are dealing with, that’s when you stop giving into fear.

Then focus on your healing not what others think, that’s the hard part because we do not want to seem like this plague that no one wants to be around. Unfortunately we must understand that they all suffer from a sinful nature as well.

You must do your part and listen to what God has called you to do. The further and deeper I walk this journey I hope that my courage never gives in and fear doesn’t hold me hostage.

God Bless and walk in Grace.

Deep Roots

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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Many of us wouldn’t like to admit that we have scars, deep ones. The more scars we collect the higher the water rises until we no longer trust or allow anyone to penetrate our shield. Often we use this defense mechanism to hurt the people we care about the most. We flip from one person to another, it’s almost like having a split personality.

The truth of the matter is most of the times these scars are deep rooted from a time that we seldom want to go back to, our childhood. While most of us would love to go back to our youthful physical appearance, most of us would rather leave out the memories that mode us into this person we have become. Transparency moment, I spent my childhood being a victim to verbal denigration I believed I was never going to amount to anything, that I would never do anything useful with my life and I was always getting into trouble. Even when I did nothing wrong.

I spent the next 30 plus years crafting and creating this person that I wanted everyone to believe I was. I wanted to be the good guy, the successful guy the guy that proved everyone wrong.

This caused more pain and more suffering than I could ever imagine. I had all different kinds of mask for every occasion and I refused to allow myself to deal with the pain that was deeply rooted inside of me.

Is that you?

Having a life means dealing with those dark days. It mean claiming victory over the things that chained and bound you. It means allowing yourself to let the pain surface and expose it until it’s squeezed out of you and no longer a problem. That’s when the healing can begin. Healing can only come when we allow ourself the permission to feel the pain and forgive ourselves and the people that may have hurt us.

Until we do that we will never live. Peace.

On Life, Lost and the In-Betweens

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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Last week I had the pleasure of teaching my ministry students about the in-betweens of life. Those moment when you are in the NOW and you can’t see your FUTURE. That dismal part of your life when everything you ever hoped for comes crashing down and you don’t know how to fix it. You know you are suppose to fix it but opposing wills just don’t always work. You feel like your heart has been ripped to shreds and there is a pain that you never felt before in your life.

Now you sit and try to move forward and remove the pieces of shrapnel stuck deep in your heart afraid to ever fight for something you truly cared for. Life seems ever so challenging. Lost becomes your neighbor and the In-between now becomes the dragon that needs to be slay.

The in-betweens of life are in constant motion. These are the hardest moments in our lives. These are the moments when wish we had a Crystal ball to tell us how things will turn out. We all hate waiting to see what the future holds but in reality that’s all we can do is live and wait… or just live.

Our story is never over. It’s always evolving into something better preparing us for our next journey in life. Sometimes the people we meet are also for that purpose while others are meant to stay but decide to leave to soon. This is lost. This is the place of confusion when we ask the question over and over again “why?”

In this thing we call life we are always in a constant battle of the in-betweens, never really knowing what life has for us down the road but one thing is for sure we have someone that is working for us someone that understand lost and pain. Someone that has given so much more than we could  fathomed, and someone that is still working on our behalf at this very moment. so don’t give up EVER!

Allow yourself to feel the in-betweens it is there where true love is.

 

Deserted

/ Anthony Ortiz / Leave a comment

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Sometimes I wake up terrified that my heart is at time a depiction of this photo. It shows the deepest darkness of what has happened to many of us when we allow sin to linger.

If we are not careful one decision can send us into dark areas of life that we should never have been. Where the room is cold, dark, and we see a glimmer of light and know we should run towards it but lost ourselves in this dark deserted room and now the darkness seems normal.

This devil is uncanny in keeping us on the cusp he knows just how to lead our hearts to a place just like this photo – deserted. It usually starts off small and begins to infect every part of us until we are left with a dark and cold place in our hearts.  Our sins can keep us in a dark place confuse us and in fact trick us to believe it is better than what God has for us.

In the book of Isiah 1:18-19 it say this,

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land”

God makes it so easy for us to come back to him. To clean our minds and hearts and begin a new and fulfilling life. A life full of happiness and purpose. But if we tethers on the line the devil will continue to have a strong hold on our minds and our hearts. I don’t know what sins you are dealing with today but I do know that God is bigger and forgives. Don’t let your heart become a desert where dust and decay live. You were born for so much more.