I want to preface this lesson with an important concept. There are some people who believe that you have to suffer in order to draw close to God. I personally don't believe that. Please don't misunderstand me, there will be times that you suffer, because Jesus said, "In the world you will have tribulation..." (John 16:33). But I don't believe that God wants us to suffer on an ongoing basis. Some people teach that God likes to make us miserable, because that is what makes us grow spiritually. I don't believe that and I don't teach that.
Two Myths About Suffering And Tribulation
Jesus did say we would have tribulation in this world. But look at what else He said in the same breath. He also said, "In Me you may have peace..." and "...be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
Yes, there is tribulation. But in the midst of that tribulation, there is God helping us to overcome it, and giving us His victory. That is why we can encounter God in the midst of tribulation, trials and hardship.
We all get our turns in the "burning fiery furnace" of the "refiners fire." However, God does not abandon us when we are in the fire, and that is why we can encounter Him in the midst of our difficulty. And that is what I want to talk about in this lesson.
Before I do, I would like to address two hurtful misunderstandings about trials and suffering. The first is that we can only grow spiritually and develop our character through suffering and hardship, so God wants to give us lots of suffering and hardship. It is true that God can use suffering and hardship can develop our character, but that is not God's only tool for doing so. He can also grow us through intimacy, through devotions and bible study, through inner healing, through the conviction of the Holy Spirit and through may other things.
The second myth is that God uses hardship and suffering to force us to press into Him for His help. To paraphrase, He "hurts us" on purpose in order to make draw us close to Him. That is a lie of the devil and that goes against God's character. God is our good and loving Heavenly Father who wants to do good things for His children and doesn't want to hurt them. Jesus explains that in Matthew 7:7-11 and I encourage you to memorize that passage if you haven't already done so, because it will sustain you in the face of this myth.
Why Does God Permit Tribulation And Suffering?
The truth is that God doesn't usually give us difficulty or hardship just so we will be forced to run to Him for help. There are rare times when our rebellion and stubbornness may force Him to do that, but it is the exception, not His normal way of dealing with us. God is not a bully and He wants a love-relationship with us, not a fear-relationship. Likewise, God doesn't want us to be miserable. His plan for us is to that we live in His joy and victory. This is what He says in Jeremiah 29:11, "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"
Yes, God has good plans for us, not hurtful ones. However, the reality is that God does allow us to encounter testing, trial and hardship. That raises the question: How can that be? If God's plan for us is for a hope and a future, then why is there hardship and suffering in our lives?
I believe the bible gives an answer to that question in 1 Peter 5:8, which says, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." In short, we live in a war zone, and we have to deal with spiritual warfare on an ongoing basis. I wish that God would protect us from all of it, but He doesn't choose to do it that way.
We see this play out in Job's life. Job was an extremely godly man, and God was very pleased with him. Nonetheless, the Lord allowed the devil to bring all sorts of hardship and loss into Job's life for a season. Job's "trail" had absolutely nothing to do with anything that Job did wrong, and it was not caused by anything that he neglected to do. The bible tells us that Job was "blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil" (Job 1:1). Nonetheless, the devil singled him out and initiated an attack against him--and God permitted it. God allowed the devil to attack Job, but at the same time, He put boundaries on how much attack the devil was permitted to do: "And the Lord said to Satan, 'Behold, he is in your hand, but spare his life'" (Job 2:6).
Under the devil's attack, Job became absolutely miserable for a season. He suffered material loss so severe that he was thrust into instant poverty. At the same time, all of his children (who he loved dearly) died, and he had terrible grief to deal with. As if that were not enough, He also came down with a sickness so painful that he could not get physically comfortable and could not sleep at night. All of this caused Job to fall into a severe depression. He could not even turn to his support system for comfort, because his friends accused him of fault and played mind-games with him. Job suffered a lot, and he was completely and totally miserable. To make matters worse, he couldn't figure out why all this happened to him, because he hadn't done anything wrong to bring all of this suffering on himself. The devil attacked him, and it was a nasty attack. It wasn't fair, yet God allowed it to happen.
Job got so discouraged that he begged God to take his life; he wanted to die to end all of his suffering. But in the midst of all that hardship and difficulty, God never left Job. In fact, God gave Job an encounter with Him in chapters 38 to 42. Yes, in the midst of his suffering and difficulty, Job had an amazing encounter with God.
The next part of his story is very important--God did not leave Job in that place of suffering and misery for very long. God vindicated Job in front of his friends, and He restored Job to a place of prosperity, happiness and peace. The bible says that God gave job twice as much possessions and riches as he had before the attack. God also gave him a new family (the same number of sons and daughters that he had before, and each of them grew up to be beautiful and amazing people). Job 42:12 says, "The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning."
God did allow Job to suffer for a season, and two important things came out of it. First, God met Job in that place of suffering, and He revealed His glory to him. Second, God did not leave Job in the place of suffering. Job did suffer for some number of months, but after that, God brought him into 140 years of blessings and prosperity. The book of Job ends like this: "After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. So Job died, old and full of days" (Job 40:16-17).
Likewise today, God does permit hardship, difficulty and suffering into our life at times, but that is not His main plan for us. We will not enjoy our times of difficulty and hardship, but we can have His peace as we walk through it. Jesus has made this available to us. John 14:27 says, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." We will have tribulation in this world (John 16:33) but we can experience God's peace and His presence as we go through it.
Finding God's Peace In The Midst Of The Storm
The bible makes many promises of God's protection and God's provision, which are intended to help us stay centered in His peace in the midst of hardship. Let's look at a couple of those verses.
First, let's look at God's provision:
- Philippians 4:19
- And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
- Matthew 6:28-24 (Jesus is speaking)
- 28 "So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 "Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
Now let's look at a couple of verses about God's promises of protection:
- Psalm 34:7 The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them.
- Psalm 91:3-7
- 3 Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the perilous pestilence. 4 He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
5 You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, 6 nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. 7 A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you."
God has left us wonderful promises in His word that we can cling to during those times of adversity and hardship. He did that for a reason. He wants us to have "faith encounters" with God in the midst of "things going wrong."
That is right, one of the ways that we encounter God is by clinging to His promises and trusting His goodness in the midst of difficulty and trial. God wants us to believe that His word is true and that He will take care of us and deliver us. This is not necessarily a "fun" way to encounter God, but it is am important way because it is where we learn from personal experience that He is faithful and He will come through for us. It gives us the ability to deeply know and trust Him.
So how do we do that? How do we have a faith encounter with God in difficult or times?
One of the ways that we can encounter God in hardship is to remind ourselves of those promises over and over again. We might want to write out bible verses with promises pertinent to our situation and review them often. As we keep reminding ourselves of His promises and keep choosing to put our attention on the solution to our problems (e.g., God), His presence and His goodness starts becoming very real to us that way. And of course, when we are on the other side of the difficulty looking back, we will be able to see how God was at work in our circumstances, bringing His glory and His deliverance into them.
I have more to say about encountering God in hardship/difficulty, so we will talk more about this in our next lesson...
Encountering God In Difficulty and Hardship
(Part 2)
We started looking at this topic in our last lesson. We discovered that God's plans for us are for good, not for harm. We also learned that when He does allow us to go through "the valley of the shadow of death," He never intends to leave us there for very long. He is not going to abandon us in our suffering, He is going to bring us through to the other side and put is in a place of victory.
But the fact remains that, from time to time, the Lord will allow us to encounter difficulty. And when we go through those times, we can encounter God in the midst of all that difficulty.
Faith Encounters With God
One of the ways we can do that is by tapping into Him through our faith, because He will meet us where we reach out to Him in faith. We looked at that in our last lesson. One of the ways we can tap into our faith is by reminding ourselves of God's promises to us and clinging to them. We can also remind ourselves of what the bible says about God's character and about His relationship with us. Then we choose to believe what the bible says and to comfort ourselves with His good promises to us.
[I did not mention this in the last lesson; but I'd like to throw it in now. There is another thing we can hold onto in addition to Scripture and that is the promises that God has made to us through personal prophecy. If you have words from God that contain His promises over your own life and destiny, then you might want to review them frequently. Listen you your prophecy tapes or transcribe them and read them often. War for your word by continuing to believe His personal promises to you even if the circumstances around you seem to be screaming the opposite.]
We know that God does not lie, so we choose to believe His promises in the midst of our difficulties. Then our faith raises up, and that is one of the ways that we can encounter Him in difficulty. But it is not the only way.
Seeking God In The Midst of Adversity
We can actively seek God in the midst of difficulty and ask Him to meet us in it. This was one of King David's favorite strategies.
David had more than his fair share of danger and hardship. A lot of that was caused because a demonized King Saul actively persecuted him and sought to kill him. All kinds of bad things happened to David. His wife was taken away from him and given to another man. He was forced to live in hiding as a fugitive and he frequently had to flee for his life, pursued by armies bent on capturing and killing him. There were many times when David had to hide out in caves and live a life of physical hardship and there were times when David and his men went hungry because they did not have food. But despite all the danger, all the hardship and difficulty, David still actively pursued God.
If you look at his psalms, you will see that many of them started out by complaining about how miserable he was, but by the end of the psalm, David had switched his focus to worshiping God, and God seemed to meet him in that. Take Psalm 22 for example. The psalm starts out with a bunch of complaints and a sense of feeling abandoned by God. Look at verse 1: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning?"
David complains about his suffering and persecution in verses 6 and 7: "But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. All those who see me ridicule me; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head." We seen more of his complaints in verses 16 and 17: "Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They gape at Me with their mouths, like a raging and roaring lion."
But in the midst of his suffering, David begins to engage his faith that God will keep His promises and will help him. Look at verses 19 to 21. They start asking God to help and end with faith engaged that God will indeed heed his cry and help him.
- But You, O Lord be far from Me; O My Strength, hasten to help Me!
- Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog.
- Save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen!
You have answered me.
He goes on to talk about God's goodness and faithfulness and drops into active worship. By the end of the psalm, David is in an encounter with God, his hope and vision are recharged, and he is excited about God's goodness. Look at how he ends the psalm: "A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation, they will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has done this."
Not only did David encounter God in the face of his suffering and hardship, but God released spiritual gifts on David as he pressed into Him. In the case of Psalm 22, God released a strong prophetic anointing on David. David thought he was expanding on his own suffering, but a prophetic anointing came over him, and he detailed many things about Jesus' crucification, a torture that hadn't even been invented when he wrote this Psalm. Several verses describe what Jesus went through to redeem us, especially verses 14 to 18.
God is the same with us as He is with David. When we press into Him in the midst of our difficulty, He meets us and gives us an encounter with Himself.
Suffering Can Bring Spiritual Sluggishness
The problem is that we are not at our best when we are miserable, and that can make us spiritually sluggish. Or we can be in a "scary" situation that demands our full attention, where our focus of that moment is on "surviving the situation," and not on pursuing God. The good news is that God understands our weakness and at times He will make a point of being found of us even when we are unable to actively seek Him.
Let me give you a couple of examples from my own life. We had a rather forceful earthquake a few weeks ago. I was sitting on my sofa watching a television program, and suddenly a jolt shook my whole house, rattling the windows and shaking the credenza and moving my sofa about 6 inches away from the wall as I was still sitting on it. I recognized it as an earthquake and immediately jumped up, startled. I would have been ok if it was just one jolt, but there were three more. Each jolt was very strong and really jarred my house. I have been though some really bad earthquakes, and this one was strong enough that it scared me. I felt adrenalin surge through my veins and my heart began to pound. I shot up a quick "Lord, protect me!" prayer, but I wasn't really thinking much about God at that instant--I was scared and I was thinking about things pertinent to my immediate safety. We have a lot of floor-to- ceiling windows in our family room, at is is very unwise to be near glass windows in an earthquake. So I grabbed my two dogs by the collar and moved into the hallway, which had no windows. My 100 pound dogs weren't sure whether to be excited or scared--but I was definitely scared.
Fortunately the jarring stopped about 15 seconds after it started. I remained frozen for a few seconds, unsure whether or not the quake was really over. Then I took my dogs into the yard, because I knew that there are frequently aftershocks and sometimes the aftershocks are just as strong as the original quake. I figured it would be safer to weather them outside. We stayed out there for about 10 minutes, as did many of my neighbors, but there weren't any aftershocks.
It wasn't until after I went back in the house and then I finally started thinking about God again. I thanked Him for protecting me and my home, and I felt bad that I hadn't given Him much of my attention when I was in a potentially dangerous situation. It seemed like all I wanted at that moment was His help and not Him. I was concerned that maybe I'd offended Him by that, so I asked Him about it. He told me that He'd created the human endocrine system, including the adrenal gland, so that we'd be able to react quickly to dangerous situations. He wasn't upset with me because my mind and body had functioned the way He created me to function.
Sometimes God doesn't meet you on a cognitive level so much in the crisis as He does after it is over, when you are "looking back" and thinking about it.
The same thing goes (at times) for when we feel really miserable for short but intense periods of time. Some people are really good at pressing into God in the midst of their misery and experiencing Him in it. Most of the time, I am not one of those people.
I am more likely to "shutdown" my higher cognitive and spiritual reasoning, and go into an "endure and get through it" mode. It is not that I am running from God or intentionally avoiding Him in the midst of my "suffering"--it is that I may not be cognitively aware of His presence and of His sustaining me through the difficulty at that moment--but I become aware of it later on when I look back.
For instance, I came down with a mild case of Salmonella late last August. Please don't misunderstand the use of the word "mild"--I felt horrible beyond what I can describe. I had a piercing headache, fever with chills and shakes and hot flashes, upset stomach, bad intestinal cramps and a lot of diarrhea. That bad part of the symptoms lasted about 36 hours. I wasn't sure what caused it, so I threw away all of my breads and vegetables. I started to get hungry again about 48 hours after the initial onset. I wanted to be careful about what I ate, so I had a broiled chicken thigh. To my dismay, the symptoms started again about three or four hours after I ate...it turns out the chicken was the thing that was tainted and it had accidentally been undercooked. I got much sicker the second time. Hubby was away on a business trip and I was alone in the house. I felt so bad that I actually toyed with calling an ambulance to take me to the emergency room. But I prayed briefly and asked the Lord if I was seriously sick and He replied, "No, it only feels that way to you. But in truth what you have is not serious, just unpleasant."
I spent the next 30 hours or so trying to sleep if off (when I wasn't running to the toilet). I felt so miserable that I almost wanted to die. I wish I could say I used the time to pray and press into the Lord--but the truth is that I felt too sick to do that. I did sort of remind Him about that verse about poison not hurting us, and I suggested that He instantly heal me. I got some of my friends to pray for me, but it soon became clear that He wasn't going to that--and I just had to endure the symptoms. I promise you that being sick with Salmonella was not a spiritual experience for me. It did not really draw me and close to God. However, once I was past the worst of the symptoms and almost starting to feel "human" again, then the Lord began to meet me. He also began to dialog with me a bit. He asked me why I ate the chicken the second time after it had made me sick the first time. I told Him that was because I did not know it was the chicken that made me sick. I also assured Him that I would not be eating it a third time!
Then the Lord began to use my experience to launch into giving me some teaching on inner healing, and how we will face the same problems over and over again if we keep repeating the behavior that causes them. I did not feel at all spiritual or close to God in the midst of the strong salmonella symptoms. But once I started feeling better again, the Lord really began meeting me and speaking to me.
You might be one of those lucky ones who has the constitution to really press in and draw closer to God in the midst of intense suffering. If you are...good for you and I wish I was like you. But if you are more like me, then look to the Lord to begin meeting you as you start to walk out of the suffering and back to normalcy.
Even if you have a delayed response like I do, it is still possible to encounter God in the midst of your suffering...especially when you are in the tail end of it and just starting to feel better.
Encountering God In Apparent Failure
None of us like to fail at things, but there will be times when we do. When this happens, we tend to feel 'bad' things like embarrassment, shame or possibly even anger. Most of us feel dirty or slimed by our failure and would like to crawl into a hole and hide. Encountering God in the midst of our failure is usually the last thing on our mind.
But God thinks differently than we do, and He wants us to run to Him in the midst of our apparent failure. If we do, He will meet us there. In fact, God is the great transformer, and He can turn our failures around and somehow manage to bring His glory into them.
Many of us feel "dirty" when we fail at something. As a result of that, it is easy to assume that God is disappointed or angry with us because of our failure. That type of thinking can make us want to avoid Him for a short while. That is why many of us have the tendency to run away and hide from Him instead of running into His arms for comfort. A part of us 'knows' that if we came to Him at these times, He will encourage and comfort us. But the sting of failing can make us feel so bad about ourselves that we feel the need to avoid Him until that sting wears down a bit.
The truth is that God wants us to encounter Him in our failure. He does not feel repulsed by us, and He wants to meet us there.
Let me give you an example from the Apostle Peter's life. Peter had a very major failure--probably worse than most of us will ever experience. He was one of Jesus' three 'best friends,' and he had just sworn his loyalty to Jesus, saying he was willing to die for Him. Then a few hours later, Peter was put in a position where that might actually happen. Jesus had been arrested and was going to be executed, and Peter was in the courtyard of the place where they were holding Jesus. Someone accused him of being one of Jesus' disciples--and he denied it. In fact, he denied that he even knew Jesus. He didn't just say the words, he cursed and swore while he did it (Mark 14:71). And just as Peter did that, Jesus turned His head and looked directly at him (Luke 22:60). Not only did he deny Jesus, but he was caught in the act and he realized that Jesus knew he betrayed him. Matthew 26:74b-75 tells us, "Immediately a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus Who had said to him, 'Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.' So he went out and wept bitterly."
This was a huge failure for Peter. He was ashamed and saddened at what he had done. He was probably really mad at himself for doing this. From Peter's perspective, he had let down his best friend in a way that probably ruined the relationship, and he also messed up his relationship with God at the same time. Peter might have believed that he lost his salvation, because he probably remembered what Jesus said in Luke 12:9: "But he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God."
So, what was Peter's first response to his failure? He ran away from God. He had followed Jesus to the courtyard so he could be close to Him. But as soon as he failed, Peter ran away from that place--he ran away from where Jesus was. The sorrow and shame of his failure caused him to try to put some distance between himself and God. That is not an uncommon response. Many of us run away from God when we first realize that we failed.
Now, here is the interesting thing. Jesus was not repulsed by Peter's betrayal the way that Peter assumed He would be. Instead of pushing Peter further away, Jesus invited him back into intimate relationship with Himself the first change that He got. There was a time delay because Jesus was busy being crucified, dying, being buried, and raising from the dead. But when the resurrected Jesus first appeared to the disciples, He did not exclude Peter or treat him any differently than He treated the others. Then Jesus went out of His way to have a special one-on-one encounter with Peter, where He completely restored him from the denial. You can read the details of this encounter in John 21:15-19.
The point is that when we fail and feel miserable about our failure, this is a time when we feel like avoiding God for a season. But it is the time when we really need God's restoration and reassurance, and it is a time when God is very likely to give us an encounter with Himself. God is not put off by our failures and when we do fail at something, He wants us to come to Him instead of crawling off into some corner to "lick our wounds."
Along the same lines, there will be times when we think we have failed at something, but we really haven't. For example, we may do what He tells us to do, but the results turn out drastically different than what we expected them to be. We don't understand what went wrong, and we assume that we have somehow messed up. (Sadly, if others happen to be watching, they may make the same negative assumption about us). It reality, we haven't failed, but it feels like we did. And that type of situation can make us just as miserable as an out-and-out failure.
Moses had one of those when he first started out in ministry. You can read the full story in Exodus chapters 5 and 6, and I will give you the "abridged" version. God drafted Moses as His spokesperson, and sent him with a message to Pharaoh to "Let My people go." Pharaoh heard the message, but he did not respond to it the way everyone expected. Instead of letting the people of Israel go, he increased their work load.
Moses and all the people of Israel expected things to get much better, but they got much worse instead. We see their reaction in Exodus 5:21. Basically, they bawled Moses out and suggested that God should punish him for what he did to them. They said, "Let the Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us."
Moses felt terrible about this and he thought that his leadership effort was a failure. But instead of running away from God in shame, he ran to God and asked Him about it. God met Moses, and explained what He was doing. In fact, God explained his strategy to Moses in detail and instructed him to pass that information on to the children of Israel (Exodus 6:1-8).
Do you see what God did here? He gave Moses an encounter in the midst of apparent failure, reaffirmed him and sent him back to work. God did not disqualify Moses; He did not yank his anointing and calling. Remember that next time you fail--God met Moses and then He sent him back to work.
Failure did not disqualify Moses from his calling and destiny, and it will not disqualify you either.
If you think to yourself, "Yeah, but Moses is different. He didn't really fail, he just thought he did," then remember Peter. Peter did fail. He denied the Lord and swore that he didn't even know Him. But God did not disqualify Peter because of that failure. Instead, He restored him and set in place as a senior leader in the early church. God anointed him with all sorts of power, so that even Peter's shadow healed people when it fell on them as he walked by.
God does not hold our failures against us, and He does not want us to hide from Him when we fail. He is very gracious about failure.
Unfortunately, the children of Israel were not nearly as gracious in their response to Moses. Exodus 6:9 tells us, "So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel; but they did not heed Moses, because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage." I bet that made Moses feel like even more of a failure as a God-appointed leader. I personally believe that Moses through he was a failure and not a very effective leader, because the people he led were always complaining and inciting insurrection against him. I don't think he had any idea how well he did while he walked on this earth, and I bet he was in for a huge surprise when he got before God and got his "well done!"
The thing that made Moses so successful as a leader, despite all the apparent failures, was that he kept running back to God each time he thought he'd failed. He would bring the apparent failure back to the Lord and then get directions from Him on what to do next. The one and only time that Moses got in trouble in his entire leadership career was the one time that he handled things on his own instead of bringing them back to God for direction. (That was when he got angry at the people's murmuring and struck the rock with his staff instead of doing it the way God wanted him to do it.)
The point of all this is that God does not look at failure the same way we do. We see it as terrible, disqualifying and we feel shame when we fail. That shame makes us want to pull away from God, because we thing that He is disappointed or displeased with us. But the truth is that God wants us to press into Him when we have a failure, so that we might have an encounter with Him. He will set us back on track and He will not disqualify us, so long as we listen to His directions and do what He tells us to do.
Having said all that, I personally find that I am very hard on myself when I fail at something. I am used to succeeding at most things that I do and I really don't like to fail. I know (head knowledge) that God is not going to disqualify me or punish me. But my heart believes the lies and accusations that the enemy hurls at me, and they feel so real that I find it hard to press through them and run to God. It often takes me hours (sometimes even days) before I stop feeling that God is mad at me for failing at something.
I wish I did not have a recent example to pull out of my hip pocket and share with you, but I do. Something happened yesterday and it is the reason that God had me sit down and write this lesson. (The topic of 'encountering God in failure' wasn't even in my lesson plan until after yesterday's experience.) Let me tell you about it in our next lesson, and I will also share how God managed to turn my failure around into an encounter with Himself.
An Example of Encountering God In Apparent Failure
I talked about two types of failure in our last lesson--real failures and apparent failures. (An apparent failure is where you do precisely what God told you to do, but the results turn out very different than what you expected, so you think you have failed when you really have not.)
It doesn't matter if the failure is real or perceived, it feels terrible. There is often shame or embarrassment and it is easy to think that God must be either mad or disappointed with us. Those feelings make it harder for many of us to run to God in the midst of our failure. In fact, they often drive us to want to hide from Him for a brief season.
The truth is that God knows in advance what we will succeed at and what we will fail at, and He is not caught off guard when we fail. He doesn't stop loving us and the thought of 'disqualifying us' for our failure never even crosses His mind. [Don't take my statement as some sort of permission to disobey God or to disregard His instructions. That is something entirely different. God does, at times, disqualify people for intentional disobedience or for premeditated sin. King Saul is an example of the first, and Ananias and Sapphira are example of the latter.] But God doesn't disqualify us for having a failure, especially when we are doing our best and trying to serve Him.
The devil, on the other hand, will do all he can to beat us up over our failure, and to try and get us to disqualify ourselves. He will use the voice of accusation the voice of condemnation, speaking these things into our own thoughts to make us miserable. If he gets an opportunity to do so, he will also try to use other people to speak those same things to us. He wants to feel that God is either mad at us or so disappointed with us that He doesn't want us round Himself. The devil does all he can to try and keep us from running to God in our failure because he knows that God wants to restore and encourage us. Most of us "know" in our head, that God is safe and approachable, but the enemy's strategy against us slows us down and delays us for a season from having our encounter with God.
I wish I could say I was immune from this, but I am not. In fact, I got hit by this just the other day. I am going to share it with you so that you get an idea of what it looks like and of what God does to make it possible for us to encounter Him in the midst of our failure.
Saturday was a very busy morning for me. I had to teach my advanced prophetic class (via a conference call) from 7:00 AM until 8:30. I also had to be at a large church hosting a woman's conference at 8:30 AM because I was part of the prophetic teams ministering to women during the morning session. That church was a half hour drive from my house, so I had to drive there as I taught the last 1/2 hour of my class by phone. I finished the class as I stood outside the church door, and then ran into the ministry session as soon as I hung up.
It was a rather intensive session. My partner and I were scheduled to minister to 15 women in just over a three hour period. As soon as one left, the next arrived, and there wasn't much of a breather between people. Since I was the more experienced member of the team, I was to go first so that my teammate had a few minutes to press into the Lord for a word. I usually had only seconds from when the person was seated and the "session timer" started until when I had to begin prophesying over the person.
Also, I was considered one of the most "senior" prophetic voices there, so the people organizing the event tended to send a lot of the leaders to me--including the conference speakers and the wife of the Senior Pastor (also a pastor and strong leader in her own right), staff pastors, etc. There were also some "regular women" thrown into the mix. I had not been to any of the sessions of the conference, so I did not know any of the speakers and senor leaders by sight (except for the Senior Pastor's wife).
Most of the time, stuff came right away and it was easy to prophesy. But there were two ladies where it was a struggle for me to get a word for them. The problem is that this whole ministry session was very 'time constrained" and appointments scheduled down to the minute, so I did not have time to take 2 or 3 minutes to press in for a word--I had to start prophesying right away.
One time an immaculately groomed lady sat down in front of me, and my ministry partner rushed to start the timer before I was ready. As a result, I was pressured to start before I had anything to say. I threw up a 'Lord...what do You want to say?" prayer. In response, God called my attention to her carefully manicured fingernails. (She looked really nice, by the way.) It reminded me of Queen Esther, who had been taken into the palace and carefully groomed and prepared for her night with the king. Then a part of one of the verses from the book of Esther seemed to jump out at me. It was Esther 4:14, which said, "Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
That phrase "...for such a time as this" kept running through my thoughts. I felt God was grooming and preparing her for something significant, and she was sort of His secret weapon, being unobtrusively placed in position so that then the timing was right, she could rise up as a significant presence for God to accomplish His purposes. I had the sense of her as a secular singer making it "big" in the recording industry and then speaking up for godly principles from her position of popularity. But I wasn't sure if that was specifically what God was going to do with her, or if it was just an example of the type of thing God might do. Since I had started shakily and since I wasn't too sure how to process this detail, I simply omitted it.
However, I did tell her that her calling was not in the church but outside of it, where she would have a profound effect on people who would not set foot into a church. I also told her not to feel pressured to do the things that church encourages people to do, but to pursue what God put in her heart to do. E.g., she may find herself in some secular activity instead of participating in a church-sponsored outreach or evangelism activity.
I told her that her time had not come yet, that she was still "hidden" and God was setting her into place for "such a time as this." I told her that when it happened, she would end up accomplishing more in a very short time than someone who is in full time ministry all of their life. I explicitly told her that she is not called to minister inside the church so much as she is called to minister outside of it. I went on to say that she was sort of like a godly version of one of those "terrorist sleeper cells" where they plant someone and that person goes about their life looking and acting perfectly normal and unobtrusive until they are activated--then they are in place for a specific mission. I told her that God had a mission for her that would incredibly impact the secular world for the kingdom of God at precisely His right timing. I told her that it might feel like she is doing anything for the kingdom until she is activated, but not to worry, because God has something very significant for her to do.
There were other aspects of the word as well, dealing with things like inner beauty and godly character. She seemed to receive those parts, but I could tell from her body language that she was uncomfortable with the part about "for such a time as this" and being called to minister outside of the church instead of inside of it. I did not feel that strong inner confidence that I normally have when I give a word and I had been sort of groping for a word when I first started. I hoped I had gotten it right but I was not 100% sure.
My partner and I each shared twice for her and the timer went off just about 2 seconds after we finished speaking. The lady said, "You guys are good." I assumed she was referring to the words and felt a surge of relief that she was confirming my word to her. I said something like "Thank you. Actually God is good--He is the one giving the words."
She replied, "Oh, I wasn't talking about the words, I was talking about how you finished right on time."
I am sure she did not intend it that way, but it felt like a slap in the face, as if she was saying, "I did not like the word you gave me." If I am absolutely positive it is a God-word, then I don't really care if the person likes it or not...but in this case I had stretched to get started and I wasn't 100% sure of the word. I hoped I'd done a good job of representing what God wanted to say to her, but I wasn't sure. I did not feel entirely good about the word I'd given to her.
They gave us lunch after the ministry time, and the afternoon session was about to start as lunch ended. So I decided that I'd stick around for a bit of the worship session before I went home to hubby, who was waiting for me.
That was when I found out who this lady was. She was the worship leader for the conference--someone involved in full time Christian ministry who they had imported especially for the conference. In fact, it turns out that her picture was on the fliers for this conference. And I had told this worship leader that she is not called to minister inside the church but outside of it.
I cannot tell you how small I felt at that moment. I realized that I must have missed it when I gave her that word...and I felt so bad. No wonder she hadn't liked her word! I hoped that the word hadn't annoyed or upset her in a way that made it harder to lead the women into worship. (I am not used to making mistakes when I give words. I "know" it can happen to anyone, including myself. But it is the first time in as long as I can remember where I blatantly missed it on a word. If that wasn't bad enough, I had to miss it with one of the main leaders of this conference.)
Then the voice of the enemy began accusing me. He called me a false prophet, and his accusation felt "true" to me. I never intended to misspeak for the Lord or misrepresent Him to someone, but I had somehow managed to do that. I felt bad and embarrassed, and I slipped out of the conference and drove home. But the enemy did not stop accusing me just because I left the building. He followed me home and kept on working on me, doing all he could to make me feel miserable. And he succeeded.
I tried to apologize to the Lord as I drove home, but I had this sense that He was mad at me. It made it hard to really press into Him and I felt sort of afraid of Him. I got home and spent a couple of hours with hubby. Then he decided he was tired and went upstairs to take a nap. As soon as I was alone, I was again reminded of how I had missed it on that word. I felt so bad and miserable. I tried to pray but I felt like God must be mad at me for misrepresenting Him, so my prayer time was not very successful.
So I tried to watch some television, but I could not really get into it. My "failure" kept running through my mind over and over again. And the accuser of the brethren began saying things designed to make me feel hopeless. He asked how I could possibly teach an advanced prophetic class when I missed it so badly. He also suggested that maybe I did not have a "right" to continue sending out corporate words on my prophetic- word list. After all, if I missed it, then I must be a false prophet and how could God possibly trust me again to speak through me to others? I ended up going to my PC and playing mindless computer games. And I felt miserable the whole time.
Now I knew that the enemy is a liar and if I thought about it, I could have figured out that the things he was saying to me were lies. But at that moment, the "felt" so real. I wasn't used to failing and I did not like failing and some part of me agreed that I should be punished for failing. When I went to bed that night and did my usual evening prayer, I told the Lord something like "I imagine You are sort of mad at me, and I will understand it if You don't want to spend much time with me tonight." It wasn't that God wasn't willing to meet me, it was that shame made my prayer time only half-hearted at best.
When I woke up in the morning, I knew that I wasn't really a false prophet and I knew that God wasn't going to rip the GodSpeak ministry out of my hands for this one mistake. But the enemy's lie that He was still angry with me "felt" so real that I had trouble getting through my morning prayers. I did pray a desperate, "Lord, please reach down and help me, because I'm a mess!" prayer. I knew that at some point God would answer that prayer and restore me to intimacy, but I did not think it would be that same day.
God said something interesting to me that morning. He said, "Now you know what it feels like for others when they miss it on a word." I had a sense that part of the reason He allowed me to go through this was to build empathy in me for others.
God began to meet me as I drove to church that morning. The first thing He did was to ask me, "Teresa, did you intentionally misrepresent My word to this lady?" I said, "Of course not!" He said, "Did you pre- determine what you were going to say to her, or did you seek Me for My word?" I had sought Him for His word. "So then," He asked, "why do you think I would be mad at you?"
I thought that He would be mad at me because, despite my best effort, I had gotten the word wrong. I had said "God is saying..." and then proceeded to misrepresent what He wanted to say. At the moment, that felt like the worst possible crime that I could do--and I had done it. God told me that things were not as bad as they seemed, and then He suggested that I share my "failing" with one or two of the people on my team and see if they thought the offense was as bad as it seemed to me. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that, because if I confessed that I missed it on a word, they might think poorly of me and not want to serve on my my ministry team any more. But at the same time, God is the God of all truth, and if I have really blown it to the point where they shouldn't trust my leadership anymore, then they deserve to know.
So I ran into one of the ladies and she asked me, "How did it go?" I told her about my mistake and sort of braced myself for her response. Her first response was that maybe the word was correct and the Lord is calling the person out of church ministry and into secular ministry. I told her that I thought I'd missed it and given a wrong/false word. This was her reply, "Oh well, I guess that will help to keep you humble." My mistake was not nearly as big of a deal to her as it was to me. Then the Lord whispered, "See, I told you so..."
A bit later, I saw the lady who had been my prophecy partner on Saturday. I told her who the lady with the manicured fingernails was and about how bad I felt about giving a "you are not called to minister in the church" word to the conference worship leader. Her response was that it was not a big deal and that I shouldn't feel bad about it, since I'd done my best.
The condemnation and accusation of the enemy began to loose its power as I saw that others were not nearly as horrified with my failure as I had been. Then God whispered to me and said, "I am not horrified with it either, and I am not at all mad at you." I asked Him if He was disappointed with me and He said, "I am not disappointed with you for the word. However, I am a little disappointed in you for buying into the enemy's lies and accusations against you, and for being hesitant to come to Me about it."
The Lord met me on/off during the day Sunday, to restore and encourage me. It was not any sort of dramatic encounter, but He kept speaking to me in His still small voice and He kept dispelling the lies and accusations of the enemy against me. He also instructed me to write lesson 7 (about encountering God in failure).
When I went to bed that night, God was waiting for me. He asked me, "Well, Teresa, are you going to let this separate you from Me longer, or are you willing to come and meet Me now?" I was kind of surprised because I thought that He'd be the one not wanting to have intimacy with me, when in fact it was my issues that pushed Him away. I told Him, "I'd like to come to You Lord. I don't want to feel separated any longer."
In the back of my mind, I still thought that maybe He did not want to spend that much time with me and that probably little (if anything) would happen during my intimacy time with Him. I was wrong.
The Lord met me very tangibly and I had a wonderful encounter with Him. In my case, the Holy Spirit came and caught me away to be with Him. There were no angels present, just me and God. But His love and His nearness were strong and tangible. I am not going to share a lot of the details of this encounter with God, because it is very personal and very special to me.
But the Holy Spirit began reviewing my life with me, especially emphasizing relationship things we had together and some covenants that God had made with me. He reminded me of some promises He had made to me. He did not do that by recalling them to my memory, it was like I relived the moments where He made the these promises. I ended up experiencing many special times I'd had with God a second time as He reviewed them with me. They were just as real and just as tangible in the review as they had been when I experienced them the first time. When He was done, He put me to sleep and I woke up in the morning feeling incredibly refreshed and knowing that there was no separation between Him and me because of Saturday's mistake.
The way that God meets you may look different than the way He does it with me, but He is just as willing to meet and restore you as He was to meet and restore me. Failures are no fun, but when you have one, you don't have to be afraid to come to God. Look to Him expectantly, and He will meet you in the midst of your failure. He will nullify the lies and accusations that the enemy is telling you and He will find a way to refresh and encourage you in the midst of your apparent failure.
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