Don't forget how far you have come and the process it has taken you to get to where you are

https://youtu.be/_0J61NsHStI

Just some of my thoughts after stumbling on this old YouTube video. 6 years ago I embarked on a crazy journey. I choose to not have a job for 4 months so I could go to my church's ministry school. At the begging of this school I thought I was doing it so I could pursue after a career in full time ministry. But what really happened was God began to pull me closer into His presence. That school caused me to look deep inside myself and deal with the things that were holding me back from Him. It was one of the most challenging times in my life. It was me constantly dealing with the issues in my heart I was holding onto. Fast forwarding to now I look back on this process some days feeling like I have taken steps backwards.  Sometimes I feel like the stuff I dealt with in that time keep coming back to haunt me. Some days I feel like I let that 21 year old me down, like I let God down. The reality is that sometimes I have taken steps backwards sometimes I have changed my opinion on the world and what life looks like in it. Sometimes I have made all the wrong choices. But God has never stopped desiring me. God has never left me. Some of the layers of my heart really have been pealed back. These is even some walls I don't know exist yet. But God continues to stay beside me healing my heart and taking it back. And He desires my whole heart. Someday Istill don't know how to give it to Him. But He never leaves in fact His heart is still the same for me as it was before i even took my first breath. He knows me and loves me. If I could talk to that 21 year old Nathan I would say things look a lot different than you would have expected. There things your heart was holding onto then that you still are to this day but God hasn't left you in fact He delights in you. I proud of how far I have come in life. Even though some days weren't like I expected them to be I feel like I am giving Jesus more of my heart each day I breathe. Don't forget where you have come from don't forget what its taken for you to be where you are. Don't forget that Jesus truly does love you. And He delights in you and desires to walk with you it's what He has always desired. Sometimes you will loose faith sometimes you will forget everything you have learned everything you hold as truth. But continue to abide in the Father more as you go along this journery. Trust and follow Him. He is good and He loves us. I proud of where I have come even the mistakes I have made because in the end even the wrong has pointed me back into His heart. Even my incapability to love myself points me back into His heart. 

New updates soon to come

I am going to start using this blog again soon if you want to know what's going on in my life

941 Sharpe Ave

May 2010 was when I moved to Nashville. I had been searching for places to live before I moved down here. A friend of mine put me in contact with a guy named Corey Pigg. I had made plans to move in with Corey. My first day in town was the first time we ever met. I moved in that night. The house was an older looking house. It was falling apart but it had so much character. Corey had lived there for a year. Him and I were talking about living there for two months until the end of the lease. We then were going to find a new place together. I fell in love with this house. It had an awesome old style front porch a built in bookshelf in the den and some much other cool things. I talked him into us staying there. We lived there through the summer with a few other random roommates coming and going. In the fall Corey and I both had decided go through a ministry school our church ran. There was some other guys who were going to go through it as well. We decided to let them move in with us. Also in this time we met this guy named Francy. Fracy was from Canada and played in a band. He crashed on our couch at first. The house started with Corey Pigg, David Jolly, Andrew Brostrand, Francy and myself. A brotherhood began to form. We laughed together, cried together, fought together, and cooked together. This was my family. I always wanted to grow up in a house with many siblings. I feel like I finally understood what that felt like. We would have bible studies together and watch family guy together all in the same nights. Andrew and I shared a room. I never understood the depths of Andrews patience and love with me. It is simple I am kinda messy he is not. I would come home sometimes and he would have made my bed and cleaned up my side of the room just because he cared. We would watch red box movies at midnight and go to Kroger to grab snacks. When ministry school was done Andrew moved back to Atlanta. My good friend Kyle from Indiana moved in with us. Andrew moved back in a couple months later. We made a couple makeshift bed rooms out of our den and laundry room haha. We would have party's on a porch and have big hangouts. That house was many things for me but first it was a home then it was family. I loved my year in that house. But those guys they are my brothers they will always be my brothers. As the past few years have gone by we aren't always as close but we will always have that bond. And we will always have the memories of the time we spend living in the old falling apart, no heat house that is 941 sharpe ave. 

Finding myself again in the eyes of God

Recently I have been realizing a lot about myself. For so long I have wanted to be seen by others. I have wanted to be someone great in the world. Mostly because in my head for so long I was not a great person. Many will tell you I am nice or kind. Others will tell you I am to focused on myself. The beast of self hatred is a crazy thing. Even though you hate yourself you become the most prideful person out there. Recently my eyes have been open to my pride. It is like you finally realize you have had broken leg but never knew it. The Lord has been speaking a lot to me about this this past week. When I get consumed with what others see I focus only on me. When I focus on what I want I don't see what others need. Sometimes your leg is broken and The Lord created you to run. So I have started allowing The Lord to rebreak my leg so He can reset it. I am starting to see with out The Lords affirmation in my life I am nothing. I don't need to have others tell me the things The Lord has been telling me to do and I have to trust Him with everything and stop trying to fix it on my own. I am realizing if everything else was gone and stripped and Jesus was all I had my life would be complete. God is in control He is king. I am His son. I am really starting to live in the freedom of His kingdom. I am Gods child and He has already given me all I need. I am begging to take my eyes off of me and on Him. And I have never felt so secure in my life what do I have to fear He has it all in His hands. I am His and He is calling me to love and bring Kingdom to earth. So I am trying to keep my eyes fixed on Him. He is the only one who can validate me and tell me who I am.

The battle between darkness & light

Please prepare yourself, this is going to be a long post. But it is my heart and it is worth expressing. 

For years I have thought about writing this out, I have never known how. How do I talk about my dark feelings and thoughts, how do I talk about my addiction to porn. Yes porn I said it, since I have been eleven this has been a part of me. I am not writing this to show off my brokenness. I am not writing this out for me, This is for all of my brothers & sisters out there that has let this rule their lives for far to long. We do not have to hide any longer. The Lord is waiting with open arm for us to break off our chains. In this post I am going to be honest and open with my struggle so please read my story and be encouraged that God is a healer. 

I will start at the beginning. On my eleventh birthday I had several guys over for a party. We were young and did not really know anything about porn. We were on my parents computer and we typed in cute girls. We were not really thinking about seeing naked cute girls. But back then on a search engine 10 websites down was a porn-site. The first time I saw a women naked was at 11. I did not look at porn again for another 6 months. Once I finally had I was home alone and it happened. As soon as I had clicked the mouse I called my Dad in tears. He calmed me down and told me to pray and ask the Lord for forgiveness. 

In middle school I had some family stuff going on. With that being said I just felt abandoned by a  someone in my family who was a female. In middle school porn filled those wholes of abandonment. When I was really young I was always attracted to girls and always liked them. I use to pass notes to girls all the time in grade school. But when I was in middle school I became very timid with girls. I know that porn objectifies women and I know there is no respect in it but I felt safe when looking at porn. They could not leave me the could not abandon me. My parents were blind to my addiction at first. My dad caught on finally, and I do not think he was prepared for this. I could tell he did not want to shame me but he also wanted me to know why it was wrong. I began to talk to some friends about it and the problem became less and less. 

When I entered High school times were different. Freshman year was filled with seeing less clothing and more vulgarity then I had ever experienced. It was really hard to not go home from school and look at porn when] you saw people dry humping the cafeteria. I was to insecure to get a real girlfriend because I never saw my self as good enough. This went on until 11th grade just looking at porn after school when I was the only one home. I saw everything you could see on the internet. I literally was just trying to fill an emptiness inside me. This emptiness was all lies telling me that I did not deserve real love and the girls on the screen were all I needed. These women did not seem real to me. I use to spend countless nights onxxxchurch.com. This is a website created to help stop addiction to porn. When I felt convicted I would go there. One day I was reading a story on there about this porn star who accept Christ. Her name was Crissy Moran. xxxchurch posted her testimony on their website. I began to weep she had been abused and rejected and abandoned all before join the porn industry. All of sudden these women were real, they had stories they were people who had been hurt and rejected way worse than I ever had. Around that same time I had gotten so addicted that I was failing a class because I had watched porn instead of doing my homework. This was not a full addiction I could not stop on my own. My dad helped me the best He knew how too but It was so large I could not stop it, I was no longer safe. My family had changed churches around this time. This new church was weird and vulnerable. They really relied on the Spirit and it freaked me out. I had been playing worship in church ever since My addiction began but playing here was different. I could not just play worship like everything was fine. I could not live a lie anymore. The Lord told me here that if  I was going to worship Him I had to leave porn outside. Around the same time our church was doing a series on sexual addiction. It blew my mind that our whole church was pressing through this. I had always heard the message to 15 year olds but not 50 year olds as well. Then I saw this was not just my darkness but others around me. That series was about how purity was not about not having sex. Purity is about letting nothing be in the way of the Lord. at thins point for 5 years i had medicated pain that Jesus wanted to heal with porn. This go my family talking I became vulnerable with my parents and they were vulnerable with me. My parents and I began to really tackle these issues and walk forward in true purity allowing God to be our healer. 

As time went on It happened here and there but I had learned how to repent and give my pain to God. In 2009 my dad became sick with cancer and passed away. I was destroyed, I have wrote a lot about this before but my dad was my best friend. Literally everything I had learned fell away It was on again my addiction was back. As I had my own job I began to actually pay for porn. In the fall I became very sick for a week and literally did not sleep but looked at porn every night and every day. I began to overdraw my account because of porn. My mom did not fully know what to do she did the best she could to encourage me and love me. In the winter one week she was out of town and I was watching porn at home alone and it was not enough anymore. So I got in my car and drove to a strip club. I spent 15 minutes there watching these girls dance. I was broken I left weeping, my fantasy was a reality right before my eyes and i felt empty. When I got home I got on my knees and wept on the floor crying out to God. This was one of the first times since my dad died that I actually talked to God. He showed me Psalm 51. Psalm 51 is King Davids prayer to God when he was in same posture I was that night. He had nothing left but the Lord. He had an affair and had the woman's husband killed. That prayer of repentance became my song. I began to live that out I picked my self back up and began to walk again. The Lord started breathing life into me again. He filled my emptiness and began to heal me. I moved to Nashville around this time. I still struggled here and there with it. But my Church family here really showed me that porn was not my problem but the fact that every time i choose to medicate with porn I was not allowing the Lord to heal my heart. I began to walk this out with a group of brothers. Somedays we sat around and sulked in our brokenness. But most days we pressed through it together helping each other we were worth more than our addiction. God wanted to walk with us, He wanted out intimacy and to heal us. In 2011 I embarked on a new journey and moved to Portland, Oregon. Oregon was beautiful and filled so many incredible things. But for the first few months I struggled with emptiness. I did not know what I was doing I had lost myself. One day I was lonely and just wanted to medicate my brokenness I went to a strip club and began talking to one of the girls who worked there. We began to flirt and we fooled around. This is not easy telling you this because it is not my proudest moment. Before anything serious could happen in the back of this strip club I heard the voice of the Lord It was loud and clear. He said "Nathan Get out of there right now I love you way more than this brokenness could ever fill you." I got up an ran out. That day is forever in my memory I made a huge mistake but God came after me. He wrapped me in His arms and said Nathan I am here. To this day I still do struggle with this medication. But the times are fewer and far between. It really just happens when I do not give my whole heart to God. Every time I come running to Him He wraps me in His arms and heals me. 

The reason I wrote this is to tell you that you can not run from porn on your own. Most of the church will tell you to put on christian music and make a picture of Jesus as your background and you will not do it. That is not true. Others will say you look at porn you are a dirty pervert, that is also not true. There are men out there who take it to a farther extreme and abuse women and treat them like they are nothing. But sisters I am here to tell you this is not always the case. Porn pulls you in if you are lonely and broken and rejected it will be your best friend. I fell for its trap early in the game. But it is not the issue in  your life. It is not reason why you feel empty or broken. It is an action of the emptiness to fill a void inside you. But here is the truth my Brothers and Sisters God sent Jesus to this earth to live as a man and die for us. With ever click of the mouse with every empty actuation God died for that very moment. He took on all of our sin and He healed it. The only thing that will stop porn the only thing that will change the hearts of God's children is HIm. He will take your wounds and heal them. He is our Father and He has taken all of our sins and He carried the weight of it all. God is the only thing that will change us He is the only one who will mend our wounds. Porn does not have to rule your life anymore. Go to you Father and allow Him to bring out the stuff you have been medicating for years and let Him heal them. It took me 12 years to realize this. Twelve years of battle and the Lord never left my side He is always there. Go now my friends and give it all to him no matter what your addiction is give it to Him stop medicating and let Him heal you and walk in the freedom of His Kingdom. Enter His thrown room and trust that He is God and He is good. Be vulnerable with Him and with others. Bring your darkness to the light. Dear sisters know I value and respect you and I hate that porn and lust has created you guys to self medicate with your own darkness. You all are beautiful and created by the King. Do not change yourself based on the brokenness of man. This Story is no longer just mine to keep to myself but to share with you all to show you how easy it is to let porn kill you. Please send this to some one if you know they are struggling and feeling hopeless. There is hope Jesus is our King and He wants to purify us from all blemishes. 

Grace & Peace 

Closing Time

I am closing tonight at the shop. Closing is one of my favorite times to work. Simply because I can blast music while I close. Some nights I love playing bands from high school. Some nights I love playing some jazz. A confession I have is some nights when I play jazz,I sit on the couch and imagine myself sitting in a jazz club in the 1920s. Everything is so elegant and clean cut. No technology or Social media to distract me from having a great night listing to jazz. It takes me to another world. Music makes sense to me I can close my eyes and go back in time. Last night I was playing some Thrice and I was 13 again not a care in the world. Music has been my language for so long I get so lost in it. Today my patient dear friend Jade started to help me with my grammar and my English skills. I am horrible with this stuff because for so long  I didn't care how my words where communicated. I was embarrassed at first because we were working out of a English work book for fourth graders. But I don't really care I want to understand English like I understand music if that makes any sense. I want to get this, I want to be able to clearly communicate my words and have people understand me. So I will listen to Thrice and work on my fourth grade home work. Maybe someday I will be able to write a sentence without some one correcting me. But even if not the one thing no one can take from me is music and where it takes me when I close.

The Beggining

This is my first posting on a blog in a really long time. I use to write everyday but stopped over a year ago. I guess I will start this first blog off with a brief summary of myself. I am 24 years old I live in Nashville Tennessee. Smokers Abbey is where a work. It is a quaint beautiful cigar shop in East Nashville. It isn't just a job it is a home. I have had more laughs shed tears listened to stories and watched football games that I don't want to watch than any other job I have ever had. The shop is ran by two of my closest friends which is a beautiful thing and at times a difficult thing just because we have to separate the business minded ness out of our friendship sometimes. They are two of the most incredible beautifully spirited people men I know. Chris has been like an older brother to me for the past four years. He is filled with so much life and beauty. Josh is a guy who to some can be intimidating but I see him as caring loving man who has a very very tender heart. I am sorry I could talk about my job forever but I will save that for other posts.

I am starting this blog to tell stories from my life may they be from the past or as they are happening write in front of me. I have walked through many things in my life and I just want to share my experience with the world so it may hope to anyone who reads it.

The reason behind the name of the blog is because I am obsessed with the nautical life. I know it is a trendy thing right now in our culture but seriously have loved it since I was young. I was never a big reader when I was little but the books I could get lost in were tales of the sea. In the third grade I had been reading the Chronicles of  Narnia by C.S. Lewis. When I got to his book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader I was hooked. The next year I picked up Moby Dick,  Robinson Cursoe, and Treasure Island. I see a lot of the events in my life like the stories I read as a kid. Maybe journey to overcome evil or a journey to find and kill the prized whale or maybe I am stranded on a dessert island or sailing for treasure. I experience storms and I experience the thrill of adventure or even just hope for the day because l didn't crash upon the rocks. I want to tell you my stories and the good days and the bad days. My heart is to share these stories to help you on your journey.