One of God's Greatest Gifts

Good morning everyone, my name is Alan Maner, and I am beyond grateful to be with you today.

I have been married to my wife Deidra for 15 years – together for 20 – and we have four children ages 2 through 11.

I was raised in a “religious” Jewish home, regularly going to temple, observing holidays, and participating in traditions. And I had zero real relationship with that God of the Old Testament. So, it didn’t take long for the appeals of the world to be all that I lived for, far from God and becoming more and more enslaved to the patterns I had developed and the things I thought would bring me life. On that list were greed, materialism, anger, unforgiveness, and control. But, lying underneath it all was something bigger that God was determined to show me.

Part of my story includes repeated infidelity, hurting my wife in both our early dating years and even into the beginning of our marriage. Jesus crashed into my life in a radical way in late 2008 and led us to Watermark at the beginning of 2009. God began to heal and transform me and my marriage as well. But, the secrets of my infidelity remained hidden. However, God disciplines and corrects those He loves.

In 2015, we had the joy of being part of the beginning of this incredible body of CityBridge. Not long after the campus launched God used conflict between my wife and I, conflict between community and I, a lunch with Kyle Kaigler and some other simultaneous circumstances to give a profound conviction and courage to confess to Deidra my hidden sin that had existed in the many years prior.

The aftermath was devastating – pain for my wife, hopelessness for me, and a burden placed on our community that desired to care for us the best they possibly could. But that was a hard season: My wife struggled to trust God and instead attempted to heal herself, often disregarding counsel. My sadness, discouragement, and impatience produced often-reflexive reactions to conflict stemming from Deidra’s hurt and inability to heal.

This made it very hard for the community that loved us to be able to shepherd us.

We began re:gen and over time, God peeled back the layers of my heart to reveal how deep wounds and scars from the past never healed, but instead produced fertile ground for lack of trust in Him and taking matters into my own hands.

If you had asked me whether I thought I struggled with pride during that season, I would have responded with the greatest humility that I did not…. (after all, I assuredly must have graduated from it during regen commencement)….so basically I struggled with a ton of pride.

One of the kindest things God ever did for both Deidra and I exposed that sin and have us remain in that struggle.

A cycle of conflict between Deidra and I continued, and we began re|engage here at CityBridge at the beginning of 2017. Around this time, that community shared that I was constantly defending myself, trying to prove their counsel wrong. I was convinced they did not properly see the full picture of any situation. They shared that Deidra was apathetic and lukewarm in her faith. On the other side, to Deidra and I, it felt like our community increasingly distanced themselves from us: we could be on the receiving end of hard conversations, but we couldn’t be together to enjoy our friendships. The hard truth is that that is a natural byproduct of fractured relationships that go unreconciled. And we had done a lot of the fracturing.

At one point, my hurt and frustrations became so severe that I remember talking to one of my closest friends and mentors on the phone – Cliff Aldredge – who was also the shepherd for our community, and yelling over the phone about our right to leave the group. Cliff wisely widened the circle so that a few weeks later, we were meeting with Rob Barry, Cliff, and all community. We were excited. Deidra and I honestly entered the room convinced we hadn’t been sufficiently heard yet and were about to be vindicated. That is not what would happen.

Instead, we were pointed back to perfect Truth like Psalm 141:5,

“Let a righteous man strike me – it is a kindness; let him rebuke me – it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it….”

Spoiler Alert: At first, we refused it. The poison of my heart that spilled over that day had Cliff in tears, no doubt hurting for the way he knew my heart was not well. The outcome of that meeting was leadership outlining that we had lost the right to argue and calling us to a season of demonstrated repentance. The world could look at that as harsh and rigid: We look at it as one of the greatest gifts God ever gave us….just not at first.

Afterward, Deidra and I actually had a conversation about whether it was time to leave Watermark – the church we had come to know and follow Jesus with – since we didn’t feel loved or understood. This was one of those times that the phrase “Feelings are real, but often aren’t reliable” rings true.

I rarely feel stressed, but I was experiencing suffocating anxiety and sleepless nights because of the conflict and wrestle. It felt like it would be much easier to hit eject and put an end to the discomfort. James 1 became very real to me: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” I remember sharing with Deidra that this was a fork in the road moment for our faith: We could abandon ship and seek comfort, or we could trust that God was at work in our trials and persevere. By God’s grace, we leaned into His sovereignty.

Quickly and continuously, the scales fell from our eyes as we saw our hearts, destructive patterns, pain, and sin more clearly. God used that to humble us and began to refine us. It was this humility that the Lord used to draw out Deidra’s secrets of prior infidelity in confession that drew us together in greater intimacy and truly began to heal us profoundly through re|engage, where we had amazing leaders, Chris and Celin Baird. Deidra has been open that she believes it was in this season that she truly experienced and accepted Jesus’ saving grace as she finally understood her need for it.

If it hadn’t been for our community and CityBridge leadership moving into conflict and taking seriously the call to loving, corrective discipline, we would have missed out on so much joy, excitement, love, and awe over the past several years.

We have had the incredible privilege of being part of the group of families to plant the Frisco campus of Watermark, where we now get to continue the adventure as a new independent church, combined with another church. We have gotten to help launch and serve in re|engage at the Frisco campus and see miraculous things the Lord has done and continues to do. We have seen our friendships with former community restored and strengthened, where it is indeed a joy to be together. We have seen the Lord resurrect our marriage and make it something more beautiful than we could have dreamed. And we have seen Jesus take us by the hand, and help us to abide more closely with Him, showing us where real life is.

And this is why: 2 Corinthians 12:9, in reference to a burden that Paul pleads with the Lord to take,

“But He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Thank God for weakness and His faithful servants that show it to us.