I'LL DO IT AGAIN
What do you do when you’ve been trying your best to follow God, and He calls and convicts you to do something hard? And you wrestle and you wrestle, but you do it. But there’s seemingly no reward. Everyone talks about “oh yea, I trusted God and the moment I did, He gave me all that I was striving for!”
But what do you do when you trust Him and it just hurts? What do you do when you decide not to give in to sin or in to gossip or in to insecurity, and instead of feeling His presence, you just feel vulnerable.
Last November, this is where I was. My career had me on cloud nine. The ministry that I had birthed was now my full time job, I was getting calls to speak and utilize a gift I didn’t even know I had. I had launched a podcast for young leaders in ministry. And I had all the connects.
However the longer I serve in ministry, the more this pattern seems to ring true. Often when we feel safety due to our “success” according to man’s standards, we take off the whole armor of God - that Paul instructs us as he instructed the church and his young protege Timothy - to wear to guard the good deposit that Christ has made in you. As we do that, the flesh within rises as it now is no longer constrained by a breastplate of righteousness or a belt of truth or a helmet of salvation of boots of peace. The armor is not just defense from the external, it’s a container for the internal. Our flesh expands until it suffocates us from who God created us to be.
November 2017, I found myself in a situation I never dreamed I would be in. Compromising my integrity, my witness, my leadership, and my “success”.
In the middle of that situation I woke up. Violently and suddenly, I ran from that situation with a decision to make. “Do I hide this? It would be pretty easy, no one would find out. You know you won’t do it again anyways. It definitely wasn’t as bad as your peers in ministry, just move on.” OR, “Do I confess? Do I submit? Do I repent? Do I obey?” I don’t know why, but I chose the latter. Yes, because I was heartbroken, but also because I figured doing the right thing would lead to the right result. “There’ll be consequences sure, but I’ll get to keep my “success”. God is a God of grace, after all and I’m sure it’ll be quite easy to bestow that grace upon me as I stopped it before it got bad, and have chosen to bring it to the light.”
I was right in the long run, but disastrously wrong in the short run. I lost everything dear to me. I wept something bitter. I was mad and I was mad. Anger and craziness compounding. “God, I did the right thing didn’t I? You told me you would cover me and instead you let them shoot me. This was not the right result, this was not justice, this was not proportional. This was an annihilation!”
I was broken, but in the fullness of time, with each passing day I was able to look back with more and more clarity to see that God was being faithful, He was still full of grace. And slowly but surely, all that “success” started to trickle back. In fact, He started doing more through me. Me?! The mess up. The unfaithful one.
I reasoned in my heart of hearts that while it didn’t look how I wanted it to, God did take care of me, and I had passed the test! I would never have to give up everything again. I had proven, as painful as it was, that I was obedient and God was pleased with me because of that.
Except a year later, here we are. And again, He has asked me to give up, everything. Not because of some sin, but simply because He has asked. “God, what are you doing?!? I already passed that test, didn’t I? Didn’t I conquer this last year? And now you’re asking me to again get on the altar. I’m not in the “world”, I’m doing things for you! Why can’t I just do that without all these complications?!”
He heard, but did not respond. What do you do when you’ve passed the test, but God tells you to go back, do it again, and this time, show your work?
Abraham was well acquainted with this God. As hard as it was, He gave up one son when the Lord told him to. Yes he made a bad decision, but he had been faithful since. Still, God said “I want you to send your first born son, Ishmael away. Put him on the altar.” Abraham wrestled, but He did it.
He passed the test.
But God was not done. After giving Abraham another son, God wakes him up one day and says “I need you to sacrifice your other son, the only son you have left, that I gave you.”
Oh to be in Abraham’s head in that moment. “God I already did and now I’m down to just this one and I love this one, don’t take this one. Please. Anything else.”
But Abraham does it and God steps in at the last minute, and that’s often used to preach the concept of, when God knows you’re willing to sacrifice for Him, He’ll step in and provide your hearts desire. But what about when He doesn’t step in?
Over the past year, I’ve been able to utilize my gifts in ways that I couldn’t dream of before I “lost everything”. But about a month ago, God said, Do It Again. Limit your speaking, make less money, submit, give up the platform you didn’t build for yourself but that I gave you.
This time, I didn’t wrestle as much. Because now my hope is not in my ministry “success”. My worth, my value, my trust are not tied to that. No. Like Abraham I’ve gone from trusting in what I can see, ito trusting the God I can’t see because He is too big for me to ever fully grasp.
It says in Hebrews that the reason Abraham was willing to sacrifice His son, again. Was because He believed God could raise from the dead, because He had pretty much received Him from the dead.
That’s the kind of faith I want with whatever God asks me to put on the altar. Absolutely. Why? Because whatever gifting, anointing, calling, or platform I have, I did not birth of my own sovereign self, but it was God who gave it to me.
As I grow in ministry I’m realizing more and more that among peers who are powerhouses on stage, this notion of our dreams being too big or people not recognizing us, has the same root sin issue as someone struggling with pornography addiction or lying to make a tough situation a little better. We don’t believe God is good.
But He is good. Really good. Not only possessing, but being infinite wisdom, He calls us to the altar again for our sake’s. He tests us to build our faith.
Paul realized this in the new testament. He was in prison and what God had called Him too, God also seemed to have blocked Him from. And Paul says one of my favorite phrases in all of scripture as he sits there confused and hurt, “but I know WHOM I have believed”. What I have believed isn’t looking too good, but whom I have believed is as sovereign as ever.
When you come to an understanding that when you’re truly faithful and you don’t open doors for yourself, but allow God to work in you, God can do more with your submission than you can with your ambition. You realize that you can say yes to a season of isolation, of playing the background, of making someone else’s vision happen, of not getting credit or recognition or accolades or even a thank you. Because as you come under the hand of the Almighty, at the appointed time, He’ll lift you up.