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Exchanged Glory V: God Meant it for Good
In an instant, I realized that I had misunderstood. What I had thought was a temporary expression of my weakness was in many ways a sign of my growth. I wasn’t being sidetracked from the heart of God – I was discovering it!
One of my goals in writing this book has been to shed light on the hedge of thorns behind addiction. In the first ten chapters (Into the Hedge of Thorns), I wrote about how our inner life can be led astray into a mindset that binds us into a lifestyle of pleasure and pain. In Chapters Eleven through Nineteen (Out of the Hedge of Thorns), I described how God reclaimed my inner life from this bondage.
I have used the Emotion Commotion Chart to paint a “big picture” of the sorts of emotional issues we face along the way. Different parts of our heart tend to become confused in different ways, and we may need unique wisdom to recover each area. Using myself as an example, chapters Eleven and Twelve described how God gave me the wisdom to recover Fear and Guilt. Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen described a different process for Anger and Sorrow. Chapters Fifteen through Nineteen described yet another for Brokenness.
We need the Holy Spirit’s help to navigate the recovery process. With each person and each part of their heart, He may have unique ways to reclaim what has become distorted by sin. Our growth is a fruit of our relationship with Him.
I am now ready to move to the final box in the Emotion Commotion Chart, Contentment. It represents a mature healing of our emotions. When we are Content, we feel at peace with God as the Ruler of all of life and with ourselves as His children. The next twelve chapters will look at how He brought this about in my life.
In 2001, I was in the early stages of Brokenness. I was allowing myself to feel my dysfunctional emotions, but they were still largely a mystery to me. One day while this was happening, something occurred in my family that grieved me. I began to mourn and felt so sad that I lost my desire to eat. I decided to fast for a couple of days, not so much because I thought it would change anything, but because I wanted to express my Grief.
Allowing my heart to ache in this way was rarely my first choice; it reminded me too much of self-pity. I figured that if my heart was set on giving without demanding anything in return (Luke 6:35), disappointment would never be much of a problem for me. I also preferred to take action and press into the future rather than to be upset about the present; life was too dangerous to waste time whining. Rather than mourning, I tended to stir my heart to seek Jesus and search for His answers.
I was finding, however, that my aggressive approach didn’t always work well in relationships. I would find answers that seemed good to me, and I tried to share them with others, but they would brush them off. Then my heart would sink as I saw opportunities pass by and losses mount. This came to a head when the situation in my family saddened me, so I grieved before God with fasting. After a couple of days, the Holy Spirit seemed to tell me that sometimes there was nothing more I could do.
Later in 2001, I attended a conference on prayer taught by David Smithers. In his first sermon, he stressed that God is an emotional being, and in order to know Him fully, we must come to know His emotions.
I was intrigued. For the past year, I had been trying to get to know my own emotions. It suddenly occurred to me that it was even more important to get to know God’s.
The sermon explained that there was a difference between knowing about God’s emotions and actually knowing them. It is like the difference between knowing about a person and being able to sense their heart. With friends, we feel what they feel and are touched by what touches them, and with God our experience should be similar. He wants to impart His burdens to us by His Spirit so our heart can beat as one with His.
When David Smithers described his prayer life, he said that he felt times of such deep sorrow over people that he wept before God. As I listened, my own sorrow and pain began to rise within me. Instinctively, I pushed it down. I didn’t want anything to distract me from what I was hearing. Then I sensed the Holy Spirit impress on me that the pain I was feeling wasn’t mine alone; He was stirring it within me. He was letting me know how He hurt so that I could join with Him and pour my heart out in prayer.
As has often happened in my relationship with Jesus, I was surprised. I had thought of my pain as a sinful reaction to what was happening in my family, a sign that I was an impatient and imperfect parent. I thought it was there because I didn’t trust God enough to rejoice in the face of disappointment.
Even though I had allowed myself to Grieve during the past year, I didn’t think of this as something that God was inspiring. It was more like a necessary sidetrack from the real Christian life of victory – something that I had to do to get my emotions where they should be. I expected that once they were healthy, it would stop.
In an instant, I realized that I had misunderstood. What I had thought was a temporary expression of my weakness was in many ways a sign of my growth. I wasn’t being sidetracked from the heart of God – I was discovering it! I was learning to mourn because He was mourning.
I realized that I had been unwittingly fighting Him for years, and this had eaten away at my inner life. It had stirred up a good deal of the misguided Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow that weighed so heavily on me. Later in his message, David Smithers mentioned that some men fall into emotional problems because they don’t handle God’s burdens correctly. I understood; the Holy Spirit had already preached that part of the message to me.
The curse-word-filled prayer I mentioned in Chapter Twenty, “Reclaiming Brokenness,” began to make more sense. Much of the pain I had felt had been godly emotion that I had resisted because I hadn’t understood it. This had caused it to become distorted to the point where it came out in an ugly flood of profanity. What I needed to do was to start treating my emotions as more than simply expressions of my own faulty heart. I needed to discern when they were also expressions of God’s heart. Then I could embrace them in the way He intended. I could feel His pain and let it unite my heart with His in prayer at the throne of grace.
Some of King David’s prayers also began to make more sense to me:
Shall they escape by iniquity? In anger cast down the peoples, O God!
When I was young, David’s words seemed overly harsh. I tended to be peace-loving by nature, and the frustration and anger I found in the Psalms didn’t fit my vision of godly character. Over the years, however, I noticed that when I just about lost control and expressed my anger in prayers similar to David’s, I saw results. For example, within two months of the curse-word-filled prayer I mentioned earlier, significant changes for the better came into my family.
I believe my prayers became more effective because I was finally working with the emotions God was stirring within me. I let His hot zeal flow through my veins, and He moved with zeal.
Other parts of my life began to make more sense also. I saw that God’s emotions had been a problem for me from the beginning. For example, it took me years to come to grips with the Fear of the Lord and with Guilt. Then I had wrestled with Anger and Sorrow for more than a decade. God had been stirring His intimate feelings within me, but I lacked the wisdom to know how to work with them.
The prayer conference helped change that. I gained a better understanding of what it meant to have God live inside of me. His Spirit was united with mine, so His feelings were being injected into my heart – but that required me to sense what was happening and let Him reshape my heart. I had to become more like Jesus, Who was able to express the sorts of burdens that came from heaven.
When the city came into view, he wept over it. "If you had only recognized this day, and everything that was good for you! But now it's too late.”
(Luke 19:41-42, The Message)
When Jesus looked at Jerusalem, He felt the pain that had been in both His heart and His Father’s for generations, and it overflowed into tears. He knew the horrible judgment that was about to fall on them – the slow starvation of a city under siege, the anguished cry of mothers bereaved of their children, the cruel brutality of a conquering army. He allowed Himself to feel the despair and weep over it.
What kind of a Creator would create a world which makes Him feel like this? What kind of a King is all-powerful and all-knowing and yet puts up with this sort of heartache? If you or I were in control, we would likely make sure we didn’t suffer. Our selfishness makes it hard for us to comprehend God’s emotions. He patiently bears with a world that makes Him weep.
In His wise complexity, He is capable of feeling both wrathful Anger and sympathetic Sorrow at the same time. Though He judges, He weeps over those He destroys.
Therefore I will weep bitterly for Jazer, for the vine of Sibmah; I will drench you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh; for the shouting over your summer fruits and your harvest has fallen away. And gladness and joy are taken away from the fruitful field; …for I have made the shouting to cease. Therefore my heart intones like a harp for Moab, and my inward feelings for Kir-hareseth. (emphasis added)
(Isaiah 16:9-11, NAS)
We can clearly see from these verses that though it is God Who makes the shouting to cease, it is also God who weeps bitterly. The Judge of the universe firmly upholds truth by removing gladness and joy, but He suffers as He does so. He drenches us with tears as His wrath is poured out. He would much rather bring prosperity than suffering.
As I considered these sorts of thoughts, I remembered something that had happened to me several years earlier. While attending a meeting at a church conference, strong emotions rose within me, and I began to sob over the many people I had known who had turned from the word of the Lord. I thought of all that God had given me and how much I wanted to share it with them, and my heart was broken over what I knew would come on them for refusing to receive a love of the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10).
This tearful experience was a brief foretaste of what I was now growing to understand more clearly. God’s sorrow, which I had usually misinterpreted to be my annoyance, had risen to enable me to cry out with heartfelt mourning and prayer.
Understanding God’s emotions changed how I viewed people. I mentioned in Chapter Thirteen, “Job Difficulties,” that Joseph’s time in prison forced him to face the truth about human hearts.[64] His fellow inmates weren’t the sort of people who were interested in doing what was right, and he had to learn how to handle them. This was something I had to learn also, and I had struggled with it for my entire life. Fortunately, my newfound Brokenness was combining with insights about God’s work in my emotions to rework my feelings in this area.
I had always known intellectually that there would be people who would refuse to repent, and I had done my best to come to grips with that. My emotions, however, always got in the way. To the extent that I cared for others, my Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow would rise for their sakes and drive me to look for ways to turn them to God. But when they continued to make bad decisions, I wasn’t sure what to do. My feelings intensified without relief and made me want to yell at them or try to force them to change. When I wisely chose to remain quiet, my unexpressed zeal festered inside me, damaging my heart.
In order to avoid this, I tended to emotionally back away from people. I played mental games to protect myself from caring about them. Perhaps the biggest game was to minimize their sins. I told myself that I didn’t know how hard it was for them, or maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought, or maybe they just needed someone to love them.
Unfortunately, I still knew that they weren’t doing what needed to be done, and to the extent I cared for them, I felt driven to work harder for their sakes in order to make up for their weaknesses. I tried to become a good enough example of Christ’s love to turn them around. I turned my concern into pressure on myself.
I knew, of course, that I was expecting far less from them than I demanded from myself. As I learned about God’s emotions, it seemed good to consider why I did this. I saw that with myself, I refused to excuse sinful attitudes and actions. I held God’s seemingly impossible standards before me and said that all things were possible with Him. His grace was enough to enable me to keep His commands:
For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.
If that was true when Moses spoke it, how much more was it true after Jesus came? His life, death, and resurrection gave us everything we need to walk with Him:
But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, "'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
I believed God’s word and put it into action. If I didn’t find human help, I looked for Him to help me directly. If that seemed to fail me, I chose to believe it must be my fault. He loved me and could never let me down no matter what the circumstantial evidence might say. He would show me His way of escape as I pressed deeper into Him.
No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it.
(1 Corinthians 10:13, The Message)
I held myself to God’s standard, yet with others I couldn’t seem to do the same – even when I believed that it was the loving thing to do. Why? I concluded that it was because my concern plunged me into levels of Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow that I couldn’t seem to manage. If it was myself I was concerned about, I could use those emotions to direct me toward God’s grace to take action. But what was I to do when I cared enough about others to feel the same emotions, yet they refused to take action? The best I seemed able to come up with was to play mental games to suppress or avoid what I was feeling.
My turning point in this approach came as I decided not to play mental games when people started hurting my family. With my children’s future at stake, I chose to care for my children in the same way I cared for myself, even though I had no clue what to do with the storm it stirred within me.
Making this decision eventually led to Brokenness, which allowed me to feel what was actually in my heart rather than what I was trying to force to be there. And as I now learned about God’s emotions, I was taking another step. I was seeing that what I was feeling was not my own heart alone.
God’s emotions were working in me, demanding that I give others no more excuses than I would give myself. Were they from non-Christian families and societies? So was I, yet I had followed Christ even when my parents and friends had disapproved. Did they have weaknesses? So did I, yet I had trusted that God was greater than my weaknesses. Were they tempted? I doubted that any of them had faced anything close to what I had faced from a fetish that turned everyday life into pornography.
I concluded that the Bible was right. The problem was not that anyone’s life was too hard; it was that people loved darkness.
"This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won't come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is."
(John 3:19-21, The Message)
I was at last able to face the reality of human sinfulness and weakness. Gaining an understanding of God’s emotions was enabling me to hold to my convictions without being overwhelmed by my emotions. I now knew that when someone’s unwise choices stirred my Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow, God was calling me to pour out my emotions in prayer and Grief to Him.
…casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
Doing this allowed me to face the futility of the foolishness of the world. I could look straight at the sinful choices of people and know that Jesus would give me the ability to love them without being overwhelmed. He would enable me to have the same kind of concern for them that He does – one that feels pain – one that sometimes weeps – one that constructively works for change. His Grief and Appointments would enable me to bear His burdens as I let them unite me with Him, trusting that He would work His good plan.
Previously, the Unprotected Heart Stronghold had made me feel as if some people were too dangerous to love – that my concern for them would drive me insane. My internal Parent wasn’t up to the task of handling the emotions they stirred within me. Now I had powerful new tools for this struggle, Brokenness and an understanding of the emotions of God. They gave me the ability to share in His care by casting it back upon Him.
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