“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”
– Hebrews 11:6
Have you ever had something in your life that is a trigger. Anytime someone mentions a certain topic or person, you just start boiling from the inside out, and anyone in your path is going to get torched even if they have nothing to do with it? Well, I’ve got several things like this in my life, and I would like to blame it on being a ginger, but I’m afraid I cannot.
I was raised in the church, and I have seen the concept of faith so perverted that it renders people helpless, ashamed, and isolated. When I would see someone that Christ was alive inside of and actively working in their lives, I was filled with awe and a desire to possess what they had. As a result, I’ve had a recurring prayer in the back of my head to possess a faith that is authentic and not merely a ritual. Come to find out, in order to gain something, you have to experience it. But that’s okay, because anything worth having is worth paying for.
I’ve had one of these triggers stick out more than the others for at least the last four years. My husband and I’ve talked about this trigger, fought about it, prayed about it; but the anger and resentment around the issue just wouldn’t go away. I could pray, remind myself of the truth, and settle my blood boiling; but the next time it was brought up, the anger would just seep out with backbiting, comparison, and just in general, trying to steal joy from everyone around me. I hated it so much, I would just try to avoid situations in order to prevent the trail of regret that I knew I’d leave behind.
Long story short, I had to come to a resolve that it didn’t matter. Nothing in my life mattered except how I portrayed God. I couldn’t wait until I understood. I couldn’t wait until someone explained the answer to me. I couldn’t wait until the bitterness and resentment went away.
- I had to realize that, despite my understanding,
- God is with me (Psalm 23:4; Joshua 1:9),
- He loves me (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; John 15:13),
- and He’s sovereign (Psalm 115:3; Ephesians 1:11), and
- I am responsible for how I treat people regardless of how I feel (2 John 4:8; 1 Corinthians 13:4-8).
This wasn’t easy, but it was necessary before I could continue.
To be clear, I didn’t pretend the bitterness and resentment didn’t exist. For me, that’s the perversion of faith that I had understood from childhood. I had to give it to God and ask for help every time it came up over the last four years. There were times I had to do this at least a dozen times a day. There were days that I just wanted to throw in the towel and escape from the world. There were days I wanted to fight everyone even if they had done nothing wrong, and there were also days of relative peace even though the battle still raged.
It didn’t matter how many times a day I had to do it. I had to keep giving it to God and reminding myself that God was with me, He loves me, and He’s sovereign. I was also responsible for how I treated people regardless of my internal struggle. It didn’t take the storm away, but it took the turbulence. I was able to only focus on myself in the sense that I focused on what I could give out, not what I perceived was unfairly coming in.
When my cup was full, I had to have a Come to Jesus Meeting where I would often vent to Him. I don’t know about anyone else, but these moments are a super big part of my healing process when I’m recovering from something. During these moments, it is super important that I am completely honest. I have to open myself up to vulnerabilities. I have to admit that I’m angry, who I’m angry at (even if it’s Him), even admit what I’ve planned as vengeance. I have to lay it out there trusting that God will take care of me.
When I’m not honest, I’ve found that Satan loves this. A super sneaky tactic he uses is convincing me that something I’m trying to hide is not that big of a deal. Oftentimes saying those ‘little’ things out loud that seem so obvious are more helpful than I would have ever imagined. He also tells me that certain things are so shameful that no one needs to know about them. He convinces me that I’m not worthy to have a relationship with God or my family and that I can continue hiding from God. When clinging to my wrongness and not admitting these faults, the bitterness and anger continue to grow in the darkness, not heal (1 John 1:9).
The silly thing about this is that God already knows the truth, the worst of it. He just needs us to reconcile it inside of ourselves by first admitting we’re wrong and we need Him. He can’t do it for us, because He’ll never take our free will. I think sometimes that’s the faith: knowing that He’ll still be there even though He knows that I know that I’m a rotten, filthy, selfish, little human that thinks I know better than everyone around me, including Him.
In the past, the perversion of faith that I had seen was that you had to believe that God was in control and just say that over and over expecting all struggles and trails to end if you had enough faith. When your feelings came back, you had to pretend they didn’t exist, because a good Christian wouldn’t struggle. The belief was that someone with “real” faith could make life joyful all the time, and that’s simply not true.
Life is full of struggle to give us opportunities to turn to Him and not rely on ourselves, because He’s preparing us for His perfection, not ours. Hell is the reward of continuing to choose selfishness on earth by telling God that we don’t want Him. As any loving father would do, He finally says, “I love you. I respect you. And although it kills me to let you go, if you want to go on living for yourself, I’ll let you . . . for eternity.”
So all that to say, during one of my recent meltdowns, I finally said some fears out loud that I’d been trying to hide. In the midst of me saying them out loud, along with God’s perfect timing, something broke in me. God let me see a new perspective on my struggles and another side to my resentment that I’d not been able to see. I am now able to talk about this subject without tears and boiling blood. There’s still healing to be done, partly due to me having to rebuild trust where I’ve let my anger get the better of me, but I can now begin the process of talking so that I can restore damage and quit living in shame and isolation.
There are many triggers left in my life even though I’m a Christian, and I’ll continue to refine them as Christ sees fit until He says, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). Until then, I’m going to rejoice and be thankful (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) for this recent revelation and the opportunity to actually experience God being with me and loving me in His sovereignty.
During this process, I was reminded that there’s nothing I can do to have calm or peace in my life. There’s nothing I can do to take away struggle in my life. There’s nothing I can do, period. I can simply choose Christ, let Him walk beside me (He wants to anyway), and know that’s He’s a loving father guiding me through this test on earth, this proving ground, this tryout for another world.
– Written by Kati
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