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Exchanged Glory V: God Meant it for Good
I now believe those years of frustrations, discouragements, experiments, failures, successes, and grueling decisions made up one of God’s finest moments in my life.
My approach to getting along with people had always been based on a few simple principles. I tried to be gentle and loving, I didn’t put people down when I thought they were wrong, and I sought to lay my life down for others. With as wonderful as those principles were, I didn’t know how to make them work when I disagreed with others. The emotions that showed up when I thought I was right and others were wrong took root within me and spun in a merciless painful cycle.
If my church conflict had followed my normal pattern, I would have handled it by turning against myself and descending deeper into emotional turmoil. It always seemed easier to try to convince myself I was wrong than to take the risk of confronting others. God’s work in a recent experience at work, however, pointed me in a different direction. I had moved from the frustrating large project I mentioned in Chapter Thirteen, “Job Difficulties,” and had joined a smaller project. I became team leader, and this gave me a chance to once again indulge my creativity. I came up with an ambitious software design, and as was usually the case with my designs, my coworkers thought it was too complicated. I listened to their concerns but pushed my ideas through anyway.
As the work progressed, I learned a good deal about myself and others. Ideas that seemed easy for me to grasp eluded my coworkers. I could sort through conflicting possibilities while they usually felt the need to simplify (and in my opinion over-simplify) the problems. I could intuitively sense answers and proceed in spite of uncertainty when they thought there was too much risk to continue on the path I had laid out.
Eventually I decided that the only way to implement my vision for the product was to do a good deal of the work myself. I put in long hours, which was poor team leadership on my part, but it got the job done. The project was finished on time, and it worked so well that no customer found a defect in it. In addition, it contained a large number of reusable parts that saved us a great deal of work on our next project.
One coworker, who had spent a good deal of time complaining about me and undermining my authority, came to me after we were done. He told me he had opposed me because he had no idea I had the talent and drive to accomplish what I did. He wasn’t thrilled with my team leadership, but he wanted to complement me on an amazing job of pushing my ideas through to completion.
This work experience affected my reaction to what was happening at church. Once again people thought I was taking an approach that was too complex, but my job had given me some confidence about my ability to do this. The cold, hard logic of silicon and electricity had let me know that my ideas made sense. It didn’t matter how many people disagreed as long as the computer agreed.
I felt that God had designed me for this sort of task. I explored subjects even when I wasn’t trying; I was always thinking …searching …reinterpreting past knowledge to make it fit with new information.
People tended to believe I thought too much, but I now suspected that they simply didn’t understand who God had made me to be. Playing with ideas was so much a part of me that my attempts to stay away from doing it had usually backfired. Rather than allowing me to be like others, my mind had spun into deception and craziness. My experience at work caused me to suspect that if I took the time to study thoroughly, all of that “spinning” would result in helpful expressions of truth.
Though I knew I shouldn’t separate myself from others (Proverbs 18:1), I decided I needed time by myself for independent research. I could stay connected by remaining at church and presenting what I learned in a simple way, but I would have to do the reading, listening, and thinking largely by myself. I was convinced I should at least give it a try. Where some felt that I thought too much, I decided to see if the problem was actually that I didn’t direct my thinking well enough.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized the importance of this decision. It kept me from backing away from what I believed at church as I had done too many times in other areas. It inspired me to see the Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow I felt over the conflict as motivation to spend hours memorizing scriptures, studying theology, and learning about everything under the sun. I set my heart to either convince myself that I was wrong or to gain the wisdom I needed to learn how to share with others.
At the same time, I tried to focus on what I knew was important. I did my best to humble myself and serve my brothers and sisters in whatever way I could. I’m sure my frustration came through somewhat, but I attempted to keep my pain-related emotions from ruling me. I wanted to help people, not hurt them.
Since my point of conflict had to do with what it meant to be led by the Holy Spirit, I spent a good deal of time looking into issues related to that. Questions of law, grace, flesh, and Spirit became extremely important to me. I considered how the Old Testament was connected to the New Testament, and I searched for answers about the relationship between the word of God and the Spirit of God.
My studies shone a light on a spiritual battle that had raged within me since childhood. Two groups of deceiving spirits had taken root in my internal Parent. The first group pushed me towards self-hatred and depression. These demons took biblical truths about law and attempted to use them to push me into a state of panicked hyper-drive in which I worked myself into burn-out. The second group of demons attempted to seduce me into an unhealthy self-love. They reacted to the first group by telling me that any God who required me to obey commands that didn’t automatically spring from my heart couldn’t be a God of love. They said the best approach I could take was to let myself slide into sin and self-serving spirituality, waiting for the Holy Spirit to miraculously pull me out.
I studied to determine why both groups were wrong. I looked at the ways in which I had died to the Law (Romans 7:6) and yet still had to obey God’s commands (John 14:21, Romans 13:8-10). I considered what it meant to be led by the Holy Spirit rather than by my flesh. There were questions about whether it was possible to allow seemingly negative emotions like Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow to motivate me without them being a form of relying on my own strength. Also, what part did my mind and will play in being led by the Holy Spirit?
I wanted to finally settle these issues. I hoped to discover answers that would satisfy me at a deep, emotional level, but those sorts of answers eluded me. I was willing, however, to settle for intellectual understandings if that was the best I could do. I was suffering from a manageable yet difficult case of both mental illness (confused thinking) and emotional illness (confused feelings). If I could at least escape the mental illness, it would be an improvement. I would trust God to straighten out my emotional issues in the future.
As I studied, it was like a veil was being lifted from my eyes. I was able to recognize the different ideas in my mind and to determine which were right and which were wrong. I became equipped to explore subjects in ways that had never before been possible. In the end, I felt I had enough answers to counter the demons that harassed me. I was no longer torn between the “self-hatred group” and the “self-love group.” Both sets of lies were exposed by truths from the Scriptures. I still had major breaches in my defenses, like the way I mistreated my emotions, but there was a clear-headedness I had never before had. I was able to make my way through much of what had previously been so confusing.
In Exchanged Glory III: Wise as Serpents, I compared studying theology to building a woodpile.[50] Just as wood takes time to cut, split, and dry in order to prepare it for a fire, so our study of God’s word often requires time before it is ready for the fire of the Holy Spirit. My studying didn’t immediately produce emotional freedom, but it was preparation for that. It was a way of slowly gathering and stacking one truth after another to get me ready for a time of the Holy Spirit’s power.
The principles I learned eventually became fuel for a personal revival that has burned in my life for over a decade. God took the doctrines and used them to produce the transformation I will describe later in this book. He gave me the wisdom to face my complex emotional issues and find freedom from my inner turmoil and bondage.
Unfortunately, the more I learned on my own the less happy I became at church. I didn’t seem to fit in anymore, and I wanted a place to share what I was learning. Our emphasis on following the spontaneous prompting of the Holy Spirit was out of step with my point by point exploration of God’s system of truth.
I found a church in which I felt more at home when I was occasionally invited to speak at a local denominational church. They loved my Proverbs-based message with its emphasis on truth and practical theology. My visits were always well received, and I wondered if I would be happier there.
When their Pastor resigned in order to move to another church, I was the first guest speaker invited to fill their pulpit. At the end of the service, a man from the congregation came up and said, “That was great! Maybe you should be our new pastor.” …It was a possibility. A key man on the selection committee was a friend of mine, and he was eager to see me leave the Charismatic movement. He was willing to present me as a candidate for the position if I wanted the job (although he joked that he was a little afraid I might start babbling in tongues sometime).
There were some obstacles, however. I had no credentials, so I would need to go to Bible College part time while pastoring to get a degree. I would also need to back away from my belief in the use of spiritual gifts in church services, something which I wasn’t ready to do. Still, the congregation liked me, and I considered whether I should let the selection committee know I was interested. This was my chance to leave behind my troubles at my home church – and to finally make a living doing what I loved!
Both my wife and I decided I wasn’t ready to be a Pastor of a traditional Protestant church. I had spent the past twenty years in a free-flowing Charismatic setting. What did I know about leading a church that used an entirely different approach? I also had buried emotional issues that would have led to trouble. All things considered, I chose not to offer my services, and the selection committee hired a more qualified candidate.
I fairly quickly learned a good reason to be happy about my decision. A church split occurred shortly after they hired the new Pastor. If I had taken the job, I would have blamed myself for it and been crushed.
My choice to remain in my church led to years of working through my Fear, Guilt, Anger and Sorrow issues. I complained to God and my wife; I cried out in prayer; I thrashed back and forth between wanting to attack my friends, attack myself, return to the smoking fetish, or run and hide. I wasn’t sure how to talk to anyone in our congregation without being divisive, so I could only open my heart to friends from other churches. This left me feeling isolated from my closest spiritual family, and I looked for some way to resolve that …something to say …something to do …anything to put the whole mess behind me.
I couldn’t find it.
I now believe those years of frustrations, discouragements, experiments, failures, successes, and grueling decisions made up one of God’s finest moments in my life. I doubt I would have been freed from my sexual issues without them. I was learning about one of the root emotional issues behind the fetish, the feelings that showed up when I became involved in a conflict, especially a fight for truth that involved my biological or spiritual family.
I didn’t know this at the time, however. It was hard to see past the feeling that I was being robbed of the chance to share the gifts God had given me. I was bottling up a message I believed would have been appreciated by ninety percent of Evangelical churches in America. Who wouldn’t want to hear from someone who was memorizing his way through books of the Bible, learning theology, and gaining the ability to describe the foolishness of worldly philosophy? Yet I had somehow ended up in a church that didn’t respond to those subjects in the way I hoped they would.
I also didn’t feel much like an overcomer. It seemed as if I was gutting it out – relying on my mind and will to force myself to do what was right – falling short in love, peace, and joy.
Fortunately, my friends at church were gracious and loving. They were also as committed to remaining true to the written word of God as I was. They supported me, and we learned to work together in spite of our disagreements.
The situation slowly changed. I began to regain a hunger for prophetic experiences, and some friends reworked their views on various theological subjects. One of the leaders in the church even made a major shift that affected his whole ministry. I gained confidence that God was working.
The big breakthrough for me came one day when I heard someone make a quick comment about Deuteronomy 18. Fairly quickly, the fruit of years of perseverance and study came together into a new piece of theology that transformed me. I suddenly felt I understood the balance between the written word and the prophetic word. I saw where I had been wrong and where I had been right.[51] Much to my surprise, I now had a viewpoint that would allow me to share much more openly in church.
I had just about given up on that ever happening. My struggle over the work of the Holy Spirit had continued for more than five years, and I had grown accustomed to dying to my desire to open my heart. In fact, I had laid my gifts on God’s altar so many times that I wondered if I had accidentally lost them there. God now seemed to be handing them back to me and saying, “Now you are ready to speak.”
As I put my new understanding of the balance between the Scriptures and prophetic insights into practice, I found that the years of struggle had been worth the trouble. While groping through perplexing questions, God had been with me the whole way, and He had given me the best of both worlds. I didn’t have to give up any of what He had taught me about theology and wisdom, and I was also able to walk in powerful prophetic experiences. They were every bit as valuable as my friends had told me they were.
Beyond this, perhaps the most important emotional aspect of what had happened was that I had learned that strained relationships didn’t have to be the disaster I feared. I now had a positive experience of standing up for truth in the face of conflict, and this counteracted the lingering trauma from my failures with my parents. I saw that interpersonal struggles could help everyone, which was a major blow to the Unprotected Heart Stronghold. God could make me into a blessing as He taught me how to be myself while serving others.
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