What does it look like when we walk through seasons of trial and tribulation, when we carry pain and we choose to not avoid that pain, but we choose to let Jesus the way, the truth and the life, into those places? What does it look like when we allow him to utilize those difficult things for our good and for his glory.
Follow along by listening below starting at 27:21.
How to Lack Nothing
Gina:
This kind of goes back to pre-cross and old Testament. The law from a religious perspective was a heavy yoke and a burden that was weighty and difficult. So it’s even an oxymoron to imply that you would delight in it to a degree if you don’t know where it comes from.
I think that’s the thing that was so remarkable about David, is his understanding of the Father. That under the law in the old Testament, and pre-indwelling Holy Spirit, David knew he got it, and Saul didn’t. So Saul just was in this place of desolation because he didn’t see it through the heart of the Father.
As I was reading Kings, there’s this king who did evil in the sight of the Lord, and then this king did good in the sight of the Lord. And as you go on, it identifies a lot, and it’s pretty gnarly. They turn to witchcraft and sorcerers.
And we’re all hungry for that connection for spiritual things. In 2 Kings 19, this is when Hezekiah was in Judah and the word of the Lord comes through Isaiah, and he gives this word about Judah. And this just blew me away, in verse 30 he says, “The remnant of the house of Judah who have escaped, shall take root downward and will bear fruit upward.“
Justin:
So cool.
Gina:
It’s so beautiful and it’s so poetic, and it goes back to Jeremiah 17 and to Psalm 1, there’s something about being rooted and planted and going downward and deep and inward with Him — so that you can go up. Everything that you said will prosper.
That pain is a precursor to that prosperity. That willingness to lean in, and to feel the hard things, but to let Him meet us there, and let him be God, and demonstrate His love and His care and the intimacy with which He stands with us and pursues us. Then that allows us to prosper. That allows us to stand. That allows us to be complete, lacking nothing.
Justin:
We want to be complete and lack nothing, but we don’t want to work for it. So we want that tree without the roots — and then once I have that tree, then God, I’m gonna work on the roots, and we’re gonna be set. It’s gonna be awesome. You know, I’ll get really deep with you after you bless me on the outside, then we’re gonna get solid on the inside.
But pain has a way of planting us deeper into the Father, if you can deal with it in the Spirit. So you’re talking about Hezekiah, you were talking about David, and I think in regard to the pain and going deeper so that they could grow up. Psalm 1 isn’t necessarily attributed to David, but let’s just attribute it to him because most of these are, so you could assume. David knew about pain, for sure.
But what was it? He was anointed as a little dude, and then never installed as the king — is what it probably felt like. Never established, never attained the thing that he was anointed in a field to become.They tried to hide him from even being anointed. So his road to the external outward blessing was treacherous. It was insane. The things that guy went through.
So the process of him prospering before men and women on the outside, was pain on the inside. And through that pain, he learned how to abide. That was with every facet that pain brings the fleshly and the spirit response.
It was: Who am I? What am I doing? Why am I alive? God, would you just vanquish my enemies? Would you destroy them? Would you blot them out from any book that could ever be written? Would you just remove them from history? And this pain was actually part of bringing about the very promise that was given him.
Isn’t that why most people jump ship? Because God, why would you allow pain to come into my life? Why would you allow me to feel these things? Why would you allow this situation to put this dark cloud over my whole world for this many years?
When I know that you’re God and you know that I’m your son or daughter, and why would you allow the darkness to come? Why would you allow these things? Why am I not installed yet as this crowned child of yours or established before everyone else as this righteous? I guess you would just call it like this landmark for everyone to see, look at how beautiful this is and why have I not attained what you said I was supposed to attain?
God allows the pain to come to us knowing that if we abide in the spirit, that will become more than we could ever become in our flesh, and more than we could ever become by living in the land of blessing only.
How to Navigate Pain with God
Justin:
And how do you learn to identify pain as strange for us, but maybe ordinary in God’s sight? A strange form of blessing. Because the result of the pain, the things that it generates, trusting in the God who says we are sons and daughters through a season where I feel orphaned by others. Trusting in God that I am one of his chosen ones, even when I feel rejected.
Trusting that the joy of the Lord is supposed to be my strength when life has taken my joy. Who, who am I? And then you turn, and I think that’s why the Psalms talk about all sorts of things. It’s like turning to false gods, turning to other altars, turning to other temples, turning to other teachings, turning to other prophets. You see it throughout the entire Old Testament. You see it in the New Testament too, this way of teaching this god on this hill, this god on that hill.
How do we figure out how to find God in the midst of all of the things that could be the answer for our pain, when all along He’s telling us the answer: “Hey, walk in the way of blessing in your pain, don’t turn to the way of the wicked, the sinners, the scoffers, but delight in the law of the Lord, delight in the life-giving teachings of God, or the life-giving ways of God, and meditate on it day and night.
Justin:
And we trade that for other things that are quick satisfactions, for the pain that we’re feeling. Because we want to rush the process and get to the blessing so fast on the other side. When we don’t allow the Spirit to generate the qualities of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, because we want to hit fast forward.
I watched it happen with a lot of people, and I’ve watched it happen in my own life, in the past. And none of us are free from having to struggle with this. We’re bound by it. It’s pretty interesting when you start unpacking it.
Gina:
Totally. And it’s interesting too, because when we get so caught up in looking at what we want, we’ve completely missed the provision in His presence right here. You know, there’s such a gift of Presence that’s totally different when you’re in that place of forced dependence. This is all a part of the truth that God does work all things together for our good and for His glory. This is redemption.
Justin:
It’s redemption now. Do you think David wasn’t waiting to be crowned by humans, when he had already been crowned by God? Do you think in his waiting, that he wasn’t wavering, wanting to stand in the council? Weren’t you the guy that was anointed? Aren’t you the son and daughter of those famous Christian people? Shouldn’t you be walking in the blessing of your friends?
They all have this and that. I’m sure he wrestled with the way of the wicked, way of sinner, and the way of scoffing. I’m sure he wrestled back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The resolve here is obvious, to delight in the life giving ways of Jesus, or the Father God at that time. So there’s a lot here.
The Gift of Repentance
Gina:
The thing that’s crazy in all of that, is that because of His kindness, and because of who He is – that even if we find ourselves in that place of standing, walking, or sitting – All it takes is a simple heart posture of repentance and you’re immediately restored back. You’re immediately replanted.
Justin:
Repentance is obedience, so it’s something that builds your faith. So even in the fact of saying I’m wrong and I suck, and God do what you can only do in my life, I turned from the things that are false and I plant myself back in the truth.
“Holy Spirit, give me the grace to do this thing, with your power, your strength, not my flesh.” It’s all Biblical. So by declaring that, you’re declaring the truth, then you walk in it, you have to walk in. Repentance, in so many ways, unlocks so many of those things.
Gina:
It’s more than just a rule book, or a get-out-of-jail-free-card. Repentance is about reconciliation of intimacy. It’s about relationship. I think the enemy has unfortunately done such a brilliant job in hijacking repentance and distorting it, that now it’s a “bad word”.
Even in the church, people are scared of it. My least listened to podcast is the one titled “reclaiming repentance”. And I’m like, “I should have titled it something else”. I think there’s that fear, repentance harkens to shame and condemnation, which the enemy’s version of it does.
Justin:
Have you thought about how little you actually repent for anything? It’s crazy. If you did like a survey of your spiritual life, how little we repent. We’ve categorized it as an original repentance, and then for people who have been backslidden for a long time.
Like how little you actually repent, you know? And it’s really weighty to imagine how much I actually could be repenting for things. Because how easy is it? How easy is it from my pain, that I can just dip straight into governing my motives for every decision that I make.
Gina:
I think we underestimate how much our pain can become our identity, and our pain can become a comfort zone. So when I start to allow my pain then to construct and formulate my world, then repentance is a threat, letting God too close to that is threatening because I don’t know who I am outside of that. I’ve seen that a lot over the years, of people who keep running into that same wall because they haven’t allowed the Holy Spirit into that place.
Justin:
They’ll let people like you and me into that place. They’ll talk with us, and then before you know it, we’re working over time to try and be the Holy Spirit in their lives. The next thing you know, we withdraw, and then they withdraw from the Father. And we’re like, “Man, you can’t build your house on someone that’s spiritually “Godly.”
You have to get the Holy Spirit in there. It goes back to, “I know God has a plan for me, and I haven’t been appointed king yet, but I know He’s anointed me for something special. I am going to burn inside while He is forming me on the inside and forming those roots. People are scared to go through the process, and I’ve got a couple really specific areas in my life that I absolutely am the same way.
I would rather stand on the foundation of another human that’s encouraging me than stand on my own two feet and let God break me down into forming those root systems so that I could finally sprout on the outside. But I’m more comfortable constantly talking about the things that hurt – constantly talking about the things that are broken and suck.
Because of that, I formed this identification and this relationship I have with certain people where that’s all that I’ll do. So it’s been a long process of me peeling off some of those relationships that I’ve put other people in with me, and saying, “Hey, we gotta stop talking about that every single time that we hang out. I need to form into something else, from glory to glory. The old glory needs to go, like the new one needs to come.” I think it’s just one of those pieces for me that I’ve wrestled with.
Gina:
Well, and that’s a big deal because you can risk losing those relationships too, because when those relationships are built on that, and then one of those people starts to get healthier and starts to see and starts to pull away, then, it’s gone. It’s over, it’s hard. But, can we trust and believe that God is going to restore all of it?” And he always does.
Justin:
Hopefully in this life. If not, He’ll do it in the other. We’ll all be singing the same songs next to each other anyway, but I think that’s a massive piece of it.
Check out the rest of the conversation: The Transformation of Pain & Pain – The Beginning of Prosperity
Check out the Dwell Meditations
