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Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose
“How could You have let this happen!? … I’ve been bleeding for decades. How much more blood do You want!?”
Before I continue, I should point out that what I was about to do was dangerous. With no one but God to guide me, I was going to let a huge amount of strong emotion surface in one day. It would have been much safer to work with a mature friend or counselor. Intense emotion can lead us to foolish actions. Competent help can steer us away from mistakes we will later regret. I had been a Christian for almost thirty years at this point, however, and God had prepared me for this day.
Several days after the experience of previous chapter, I let my feelings out of their cage. At first, it was a little scary but not too bad. I said to myself, “How come other people get to dump their emotions on me, and I never get a chance to dump mine on them? Why do I always have to be the one who quietly listens as they tell me what I am doing wrong?”
As the day went on, anger and depression came on me in waves. I pulled myself together for a church meeting in my house that evening, but I made the mistake of asking people to pray that I would be able to forgive people who were affecting my children. When my friends probed a little, I realized that my short request had told them much more than I wanted to reveal.
After the meeting, my wife told me I shouldn’t have said anything. She was rightfully afraid that my words would derail the good that had been done in the last few days. Though I understood her concern, I felt like no one was considering my needs. Everyone just assumed that I could handle what was happening. I felt alone in my pain, and it upset me that I wasn’t even allowed to ask for prayer.
I did something I had never done before – I walked out of the house. It was a symbolic way of saying that I couldn’t be strong any more. My family was too much for me, and I needed to step away from it for a little while to talk to God. As I got out the door, I looked at my car but decided that driving away was a bad idea. I might go too far and not make it back for the night. Walking was safer.
I wandered for about a mile and then sat down under a tree to pray. I can’t give you an exact description of what I said, because I used the f-word in almost every sentence. (In fact, sometimes it was the only word in a sentence …sometimes it was the only word in two or three sentences in a row!) I said a lot of words that night I don’t normally say. Nothing else seemed honest. If I was going to let my emotions surface, this was what they were.
I figured it was better to unburden my heart to God than to dump on anyone else. He knew how to handle me and bring me to repentance. I had for years acted the way I believed a Christian was supposed to act. I worked hard at being loving, wise, and patient, but something wasn’t working for me in that. I decided to express the part of me in which it wasn’t working, using honest words, no matter how messed up or insane they seemed. I hoped that God would touch me and help me to find answers.
I started out by expressing my pain and anger against the people who were influencing my children toward sin. It wasn’t a pretty prayer, and I won’t share it in this book. I wanted to call down fire (Luke 9:54-56) on people for the crime of carelessly tempting my children to stumble.
"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!”
As my words poured out, I saw how bitter I was. I didn’t even care if the fire came down and consumed me. My life seemed like a waste. How could be in the state I was in after serving Jesus with my whole heart for almost thirty years. I began to sob:
Father, I don’t feel like You have given me the kind of grace I have needed. I feel like I have built my life out of chewing gum and tooth picks – taking a little bit here and a little bit there and pasting it together into something that keeps me going.
I couldn’t overcome sin, so I cheated it. When it overwhelmed me, I disconnected from my emotions and wrenched myself from the longings of my heart. I outlasted it by choosing over and over to suffer rather than to give in. I outthought it by studying and learning more than almost anyone I know.
Where is Your power? How could what I experience be an expression of Your love?
But at least it has kind of worked; sin hasn’t really hurt me. There was always a way to escape, and it seemed that as long as I didn’t fall, I was alright. That’s not going to happen this time. I won’t be able to cheat sin. It has moved into my house and damaged us like never before.
How could You have let this happen!? I gave You everything! I’ve lived in pain for so long – and if that hadn’t been enough, I would have suffered more. I tried to hold nothing back. How could You let the influence of these people come in and ruin my life? Wasn’t it enough for me to walk a tightrope over hell? Wasn’t it enough to live a street-fight? I’ve been bleeding for decades. How much more blood do You want!? I can’t take it anymore.
When it comes to reaching out to people, I quit! (Actually I said, “I f’ing quit!” It’s hard to get the full effect without that extra word.) Did you hear that devil? You win. I quit! I don’t care about people who resist the truth. Let them go to hell; they deserve it. I’m tired of trying to help people who don’t want to be helped. It’s crazy. It’s too painful. I’m through with it!
As I prayed, I remembered the dream about the razor wire cage. I knew I was in it now, and I almost wanted to die. The dream was a comfort in the middle of that. It had shown me that Jesus and others were with me. I wasn’t alone.
I prayed like this for perhaps an hour, letting my feelings rise in painful waves. Then I walked home, sobbing as I made my way through the neighborhood. I kept a close watch on myself. My emotions were flowing freely now, but I was ready to lock them up again if I tried to do anything stupid like hurt myself or someone else. As cars passed, I imagined them veering off the road and hitting me. I wanted something to end the pain, but I kept enough control to make sure I didn’t jump in front of them.
I was glad to see that years of soaking in God’s wisdom had given me enough discipline to be able to express powerful feelings without making major mistakes with my actions. This turned out to be an important part of my healing. If I had started to lose control, I would have decided to protect everyone by shutting down the experiment.
For the first time in my life, I was experiencing my worst inner struggles without running from them. The Fairytale Stronghold[59] had made it difficult for me to discover this place of growth before. It told me that knowing Jesus should quietly transform me into a beautiful person. Instead, my feelings contained so much ugliness that they had made me feel unclean when I expressed them. They didn’t have the fairytale purity I expected a Christian to experience, and that frightened me. I couldn’t imagine that dealing with their hostility was part of allowing the beauty of Jesus to shine through me.
At a younger age, my current experiment would have seemed as if I was toying with temptation, or even worse, indulging my sin-twisted heart. I was now ready to try a new approach. I was going to walk through the ugliness as part of learning to let the beauty shine.
I knew that the blood of Jesus cleansed me from every sin I was committing, and I trusted that God would speak to me through His objective and subjective voice. The success or failure of what I was doing depended on both His forgiveness and His guidance. If He worked with me, I would find His way through this mess. If not, I would have little choice but to return my emotions to their cage.
His lessons had already started. The first revelation was that self-control and self-expression weren’t opposites. Instead, self-control could guide and enable self-expression. It guarded me from actions that would cause damage as I honestly let my heart be what it was.
I had previously protected myself by saying, “I’m a jerk in my emotions, but I won’t let that ruin my life.” I was now seeing that God valued all of me, including my emotions, and He would teach me how to handle this previously forbidden part of my personality. Several years after my night of anguished prayer, I had a dream that summed up the change that had started.
I was driving my car using a steering wheel that was above my head. There was another steering wheel in my lap, and I felt as if that was the one I should use. Then the wheel above my head moved down to my chest, and the one in my lap moved up to join it. I steered the car with this new combined wheel.
The car was symbolic for my life and the steering wheel above my head for my intellect. The steering wheel in my lap was my emotions. The combined wheel at the end of the dream showed that God was joining my intellect to my emotions so that they could work together as one.
I didn’t know, however, that this was where my inner life was headed as I sobbed through the neighborhood. I just knew that for the first time in a long time, I had embraced a part of me that seemed too insane to be of any value to anyone – and the Holy Spirit seemed to be with me as I did. I sensed Him affirming my emotions, telling me that they were an important part of me. He didn’t want me to lock them up; He wanted me to express them to Him as He reshaped them.
I went to bed thinking that the first day of the experiment had gone well. It was intense, but I felt better after crying. I was also pretty sure that I was going to be able to walk through whatever came my way. I was eager to see if God had anything to say through dreams. Would He rebuke me? Would He give me guidance? What did He think about what had just happened?
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