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When God Hurts Our Pride
10 November 2013
Episode #361
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Jennifer Wentzel and Jacquelyn Nawrocki
(Jennifer) John and I were talking the other day about how counter-intuitive some of the deepest dealings with God can be. Specifically, going into the places in, in our lives and usually in childhood or teenage years, you know, is when we really are the most vulnerable. And going the places where, I will say it this way and then wrap it up, where God hurt us enormously. And I will say that because He was capable of preventing every hurt that came, and when He didn’t, His hand was over it, allowing that hurt to come in. And sometimes I’m not just talking about hurt. There are places in my life where I was utterly annihilated as a person, shredded, just broken. And it’s such a strange thing, because humanly we would stand and accuse God and say, how could You? I would never have allowed such pain to come to my own child, to someone I cared about. I would never treat them that way. It’s just monstrous to inflict that kind of annihilation on someone’s person. But counter-intuitively, when you come to that place, if you surrender to His goodness in that place and say, “Yes, You are good. You had a purpose. It was love. I bow to that and I thank You for it;” completely counter-intuitive to what we do humanly. But when you do that, it’s like the heaven’s open up in that place, and suddenly that lingering annihilation, that pain, whatever it was, its just ‘cheuuuw’. That’s what frees you from it. It’s completely, completely the opposite of what we think. And I was thinking about in terms of discipline, and we, I think most of us have had some sort of dealing with wrong discipline. I don’t think there’s anybody alive who hasn’t been disciplined cruelly, or unjustly, or with no regard what-so-ever or love for our person, with every intent of squashing and smashing our person. That’s who we are humanly, particularly barbaric when we’re younger. You can see a pack of little kids, and I call them a pack because they are. They’re tiny little animals, psycho’s and vicious, vicious things. It’s amazing that half of us manage to get through puberty in one piece. But I was thinking about that, and even that is something that the Lord allowed and had His absolute purpose in it. If I was meant to receive respectful, kind, and loving correction my entire life, I would have received it. If that is what was required for me to have the destiny God planned for me, I would have had it. So the fact that I didn’t, the fact that in many cases I had the exact opposite of loving correction, incredibly painful correction, meant that that is what was required to bring me to this place; to this place where I have a relationship with God, where He is coming in and healing me in all these different places. It is part and parcel and essential to my journey to get to Him. And whatever aspect that played in breaking me was necessary, was perfect, and was love. So I look at it now, and I see somehow that surrender to the agonies in my life, to the pains, somewhere in that surrender when the heavens break open there, I am, I am freed. There is a transaction that I’m, I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t say. I can’t put into words because I don’t know, because it’s so divine and so beyond my understanding. And all I can tell you is that it happened, that the exact opposite of what of you’d think would be necessary… We always say ‘let’s talk through the pain.’ Let’s talk it through, you know? Let’s bring it out into the open. And there’s a place for that. There’s a place for acknowledging the hurt. But then you have to move. And I’m seeing that as God knew exactly who I was. He formed me in the womb, knitted me. He knew my proclivities. He knew how I would respond to any given situation. He knew the size of my pride, the power of my flesh. He knew all the generational sins that were coming down from my, my ancestry on both sides, mother and father, and it does count. It does matter. He knew the strongholds that were buried down on me while I was still a baby. He knew all of those things, and He set up my life perfectly to do what was necessary, to break and bring to heal every last part of me. And there is such freedom on the other side of my seeing that, it being so completely counter-intuitive. But the freedom came from the surrender, the surrender that said, this is not I would do this humanly. This is not how I would have done it, but I say ‘yes’, ok, this is how You did it. And to see His divine love in the hand that broke me, because that was the size of what was needed. Because that was, (she laughs) the size of rebellion of my flesh, the level of, of hate and anger and propensity for evil that I was born with, and that I was, I was choosing from the time I was in the womb, uhm, and had a heart beat. So, I don’t know. I just, I see that as His divine chastening all the way back somehow in them.
(M) Ah, Jennifer that’s, that’s fabulous. I was working with someone over a period of years, living under tyranny, and I said to her, “The size of your oppression and tyranny is the size of your pride.” And how do you think I know that? The size of my suffering is the size of my pride. What it took to begin to annihilate my pride and my, and my opposition to God that He evoked out of me, that I didn’t know how much I had. None of us knows how we, how we kill Jesus. None of us know how we hate God for being God, and not letting me be god. And so those terrific blows start early and, and evoke the very resistance that is latent in us and in our nature. So thanks, that’s a good aspect of it, thanks for bringing that.
(Jacquelyn) This opens a can of worms, parental issues, because I see that with my parents, God gave me the parents that I needed to deal with my tremendous pride. And if I had not been forced, I’ll have to say that, to go back and deal with my parental issues, I would never have been able to accept the correction of this Body. They’re so intricately entwined.
(M) Oh, Jacquelyn, bless you. That word ‘submit’, struck me in that scripture today like never before, that we have to submit to get the correction.
(Jacquelyn) And I keep, I keep thinking of this. The Blood is enough. I don’t know who said what that reminded me of this, but when I repent and ask forgiveness, I remember you teaching me that it goes back. I’m thinking about my sins against my children and repenting of what I did and did not do, and grieving of what I did to them, and how do you resolve that? And you telling me the Blood is enough. When you repent, the Blood covered them, and the Blood was healing to them.
(M) Oh, I’m just sitting here looking at my Bible. At the end of Hebrews in chapter 13, this is the prayer of Paul. I’m going to read verse 21 first. It says, he is saying to the Hebrews, which we assume it’s written by Paul, “I call on you brethren to listen patiently and bear with this message of exhortation and admonition and encouragement, for I have written to you briefly.” So that’s what he says as the last thing. But his prayer is this, “Now may the God of peace, Who is the author and the giver of peace, and I ask you to join me in praying this for all the listeners, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood that sealed, ratified, the everlasting agreement, covenant, testament, strengthen, complete, perfect, and make you what you ought to be and equip you with everything good that you may carry out His will, while He Himself works in you and accomplishes that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ the Messiah; to Whom be the glory forever and ever through the age of the ages. Amen. So be it.” Isn’t that wonderful?
(J) I wonder if we could look at our parental issues and our past, our breaking, so to speak, if we could look at it as the key to unlock His Life, rather than the condemnation that we would typically receive from it. I mean if I can look back and I can say, all these pains that were in my life that I had to struggle through, that we all struggle through, and to the degree that’s all individual, but to see it as really His unlocking and breaking of my pride so I can see Him, that’s, that is really amazing. That’s huge. And you know, it does hurt my feelings that the pride was so h-u-g-e (he emphasizes ‘huge’) that He had to, you know, do what He did. But, uhm, the fact is. is that He’s willing, and then my pride was that huge. And all of our pride is huge. And the damaging of the pride is, is offending. It’s an offensive and it hurts us. We’re like ‘ouuuu’, and we get our feelings hurt and we go away, pout and whatever, but the blows of the Lord, regardless of what they were, the blows of the Lord is kindness to get rid of that. And pride stands against God and keeps me away from God, and I want that wall broken down. I want that wall broken down so that I can go, and I can dwell with Him, and I can see Him, and I can reign and rule with Him for all eternity. And if I stand on this side of that pride wall, and I get into heaven and I say, ‘my goodness, I literally allowed this nothing, this insignificant puny little stupid thing to stand between me and God. God help me. Uhh!
(M) While you all were talking, I was thinking of some, some people I have worked with and who had the most horrific suffering in childhood; far more than anything I remotely had. And I remember my oldest son, when he went to college, he called me one day in a lot of anguish. He said, “I’m discovering the family of some, what some people live through, that I never had to live through.” He said, “Their horrible family childhood situations that I’m discovering.” And he said, “Mom, why did God give us so much, and I suffered so nothing, compared to these people.” And I said, “He gave us that so that we might help those.” And so he went on to become a doctor and work in homeless clinics and other things. But I think his mission in life is to rescue the perishing.
I usually love the podcasts and they usually feed me, but yesterday’s podcast seemed off the mark somehow and left me feeling unsettled. As I tried to figure it out, I came to understand that the problem I had was that the discussion about evil treatment seemed to leave no room for the fact that there is oppression of the enemy. All that happens to us is not necessarily God’s chastening; it can sometimes be satan’s oppression. Scriptures such as Jer 19:5 (…burn their sons in the fire… a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind) and Ezekiel 25:12-13 (Because Edom has acted against the house of Judah by taking vengeance and has incurred grievous guilt, and avenged themselves upon them , therefore … I will stretch out My hand against Edom) and somewhere an oracle against some nation where God says in effect “I raised you up to do this much to Israel but you did way more than what I had said” lead me to think that sometimes the evil we experience is not God’s correction – it is just plain evil, because we have an enemy who hates us. Especially when we have not yet come into the protection afforded by the blood covenant through Jesus’ death, we are vulnerable to the evil one.
What do you think?
I hope this doesn’t come across as criticism because I love your ministry and as I said, it usually feeds me.
Dear Sheila,
I wanted to respond to your comment. First let me say, I totally agree with you that some evil treatment is oppression of the enemy rather than chastening of God. We just aren’t speaking on this aspect during this podcast. Next week we go more into the healing and God’s purpose but still not about evil oppression. The point I think we are trying to make is that regardless of the source, God is able to be God in these situations and bring forth His purpose. Like Joseph says, “What was intended for evil, God intended for good.” I have utmost security in the fact that God can use it all to bring me to Himself.
It’s just really difficult to be exhaustive in 15 minutes. But I hear your point. Now that it is interjected, let’s see how the Lord leads to address it in the weeks to come.
Bless you Sheila!
John