How to Bounce Back from Losing your Ministry - Chapter 3 - Lion in a Pit on a Snowy Day

 

How to Bounce Back from Loss of Ministry

 

A lion in a pit on a snowy day

 

Chapter Three

 

 

 

God had got to take you on

 

Christianity puts terrific fight into a person so that he develops a resistance to defeat. Therefore train your mind never to accept the thought of defeat about anything. Have you ever noticed that when you face “stuff” it nearly always seem to come in threes? It doesn’t just rain, it pours! When you face something it never happens when you are ready for it; no, it always comes when you are least prepared. Hence the title for this chapter; you will have to face your lion most likely in a pit, and to make it worse, it will be snowing! Battles are unavoidable, unequal and untimely. But if it’s worth having, it’s worth fighting for!

 

“When trouble comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, “I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.”

 

“If God be for us, who can be against us?” Romans 8:31

 

I had enjoyed a quiet two years; as quiet as it can be for any mother who has to run teenage children around! But now I was looking for a fresh challenge. I felt a bit like an eaglet when its mother starts to pick the feathers out of the nest. I was starting to feel discomforted. God was stirring something inside of me. I picked up an old message about the Israelites’ Passover experience in Exodus. After the Passover, God took the Israelites out of their captivity and on a journey which would culminate in them receiving the Promised Land. God said, “this month shall be your new beginning.” It was the beginning of a fresh walk of grace and mercy. I found myself starting to pray the Prayer of Jabez. It was the right size book. I’m not one to revel in the “War and Peace” sized books! God found one book which was just the right size book to inspire me. That little prayer started to unlock some things that brought forth first small answers, but then bigger and bigger answers.

 

You must fight for your future

 

“I fyou stay free of offence, you will stay in the will of God.”

 

Every athlete knows that to get to the next level of competition takes hard work. All areas of life, whether work or personal, require effort to get to the next level. It doesn’t just happen. I found myself sitting in a meeting listening to a great preacher. In his message he touched on a thought about spiritual suicide. Now I know what you are thinking, no, my life wasn’t that bad! It is just that my life wasn’t moving in the direction I would have liked for that time. I had come to a dead end.

 

 

 

 

 

This was the first conference I had sat in for two years. As I listened, I found the tears welling up inside of me. I like to cry my tears in private not in the middle of a meeting. But this was unavoidable; the dam was about to burst. I was embarrassed. I just wasn’t about to have a little “cry” either. The tears were those big, loud things welling up inside of me. Yes, those ones! The ones, that when they burst forth, they burst forth like a flood and make everyone around you take notice. “Not now, Lord,” I’m thinking to myself, “this is not fair. I’m going to look foolish. I’m going to look weak.”

 

The preacher’s words rang loud in my ear, “find your future, or you will return to your past.” Here was I for the first time in my life, not serving as a senior pastor in a church. I found myself thinking that it would be easy to walk away from it all. I suddenly realized that the thirty years my husband and I had invested in church life was something worth holding on to. When God calls you to something you are never happy doing anything else. The mere thought of losing everything I had valued in my life, was all that was needed to make me reach out for it again.

 

About the same time, my husband had been asked to write several books for a friend. During the two months it took me to transcribe them, God spoke through them to me. I found myself on more than one occasion, talking to the writer about what God was revealing to me. His response during one of these conversations was, “God has got to take you on, and it’s only by His grace. Ask God for the ability to teach you how to truly release what is facing you and be restored.”

 

Do something

 

A key to living your life well is to keep moving forward. When life isn’t going well it is easy to initially withdraw and become inactive while trying to put the pieces back together. ~ One of the dangers of being relatively inactive is that the brain tends to work in “overdrive”, analysing and scrutinizing everything and trying to understand what happened and why. We can become experts in all the wrong things! Analysis leads to paralysis. It keeps you

looking backward. It’s hard to drive a car while constantly looking in the rear vision mirror!

 

Most of the time people criticize in order to forget their own weakness. Rarely is it worth what it costs to tell a man what you think of him.

 

As you travel down life’s path, mistakes are made all the time. If you look at the world’s most successful men you will find their pathway littered with mistakes. And their mistakes not only hurt them, they can be devastating to those in their department and beyond. The ultimate mistake is to blame those who have hurt you. The ultimate challenge is to rise out of devastation and succeed again. We learn from others failures. Making mistakes and failing is nothing to be afraid of. Fear of making mistakes or looking foolish though stops most people from ever starting something new.

 

Peter and I have lived a very full life. We have taken on many challenges and succeeded at some, and failed at others. In the end we have each other, our family and our health. Life is about the journey from beginning to end. It is not fair to pull out a section of your life and despair over it. When seen as a whole, trials are just a small portion. Our responses to trials more than the trial itself will direct your life and enable you to move on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t run for the corner

 

Proverbs 18:1 “he that isolates himself rages against all good judgement.”

 

The natural tendency for the wounded is to withdraw and go back to that which is familiar. People tend to “close ranks” and withdraw. It may be natural and needful for a short time, but in the long term, it is not helpful.

 

In the midst of trouble you want to run. But God has you in a pit, and you can’t get away. You must face your circumstances. There is no alternative. The good news is God is with you and wants you to win! It brings glory to God when you overcome something that, without His help would have devastated you. If you take something on, take on something big! Something that, without God’s intervention would not be possible to overcome.

 

Never be deceived by thinking that by withdrawing, you will recover. Many people don’t recover. They die disillusioned and alone. The truth is, if you are going to live life you are going to get hurt. It is human to hurt. But whether you stay hurt or fully recover is really up to you.

 

A lion in a pit on a snowy day

 

My time had come to finally take on the lion. You know it’s coming, but you keep trying to put it off. It’s time to rise up, exert a little effort and take on the thing! But have you ever noticed that the enemy never plays fair in battle? When you have a fight looming it is always unequal, unavoidable and untimely! So you think to yourself, do I really have to tackle this? Well, yes you do. We all do at some stage. It may as well be sooner.

 

Beniah was one of King David’s mighty. He was the talk of the kingdom. He was a fighting man who won many battles, which included killing two lion-like heroes and a lion. He was not afraid of the heat of the battle. If anyone’s picture was on King David’s palace walls, then his certainly was!

 

“Beniah was the son of Jehioiada, the son of a valiant man, from Kabzeel, who had done many deeds. He had killed two lion-like heroes of Moab. He also had gone down and killed a lion in the midst of a pit on a snowy day.”

1 Chronicles 11:22

 

My husband preaches a message about a lion in a pit on a snowy day. When bad things happen or trouble comes it never comes at a convenient time. It’s bad enough that you have to face a lion which is an unequal match to start with, but you have to face it in a pit where it is unavoidable and on a snowy day, which is untimely. We never get to pick our battles. They come when we least expect them or want them and often when we are least prepared to cope with them. When the time comes for you to deal with what confronts you, don’t be afraid.. You may have been sitting quietly under the trees for a while minding your own business . Trouble has ceased for a while and you’re enjoying a rare period of calm. Then it finally comes to an abrupt end. It’s time to move forward. Suddenly you find yourself; where? In a pit with a lion! You look to the Lord in exasperation! What does God say? “Do something!” You respond, “Lord, don’t you see what I’m down here with? It’s a lion! And there’s no way out!” The Lord responds, “Yes I know. But you can deal with it!”

You sigh and say, “Oh! Great! Thanks very much”

 

Don’t you just hate it! You know it is true, but you don’t want to get involved. Beniah had to fight the lion. You have to fight your battles. God will put you in a place where you have to get involved, sooner or later.

 

Words Failed Him - Until he learned to Ask for help

 

When confronted with circumstances which are beyond our natural capabilities, we must learn to ask for help.

 

“I will be with him in trouble. “ Psalm 91:15

 

Tom Harken won the Horatio Alger Award. This award is given each year to an individual who has overcome tremendous adversity to achieve greatness in their field. The night Tom received his award he confessed a secret he’d held for nearly 50 years — he had been illiterate nearly all his life. He was now a self-made millionaire, entrepreneur and owner and franchisee of a chain of restaurants, but his beginning was not so auspicious. While most children were in school, Tom was in hospital. He’d suffered polio and later contracted tuberculosis, which caused him to fall behind in school. Tom always ordered cheeseburgers in restaurants because he couldn’t read the menus until one day a waitress snapped, “What’s the matter with you, can’t you read? We don’t serve cheeseburgers.” It was one of the countless humiliations Tom experienced nearly every day of his life. Tom couldn’t read the signs on freeways, but he could read the signs in his life. He knew that until he learnt to read, he would not succeed.

 

The first most painful step was to ask for help. “Nothing is impossible if you are humble enough and desperate enough to get the right people to help you.”

 

Tom Harken, like most achievers does not regret the hardships of his past. It was those hardships, he said, that revealed his strength. Now he travels the world giving speeches about the importance of literacy. He tells young people they may get lost sometimes along the way and they may become confused and angry, but there is always someone willing to guide them from word to word, from shame to pride. (from “Unstoppable” by Cynthia Kersey: Sourcebooks, Inc Naperville, IL 1998)

 

A young wife and mother needed $53,000 for a new cancer treatment or else she would die. Her husband was humble enough to ask for help. He went to a television station with their story. He was planning a “footrace” to raise money and asked people to sponsor him. He did, and he succeeded. If you admit your need, people will respond with all kinds of help.

 

Agree with God no matter what

 

In their journey through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land, the Israelites had won some battles. But constant wars had left them ‘battle weary.’ Battles tend to do that to you. One battle at a time is manageable, but more than one at a time is a tough call in anyone’s books. Fight after fight finally wears you down.

 

“And the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” Numbers 21:4

 

The heathen King Balak, had seen all the Israelites had done to the Amorites and he was afraid. He was afraid they would take his land off him. So the king sends a message to a prophet, Balaam, and asked him to come and curse them. He says, “they are too mighty for me. For I know whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed. “Numbers 22:6

 

Balaam goes with the messengers to the king’s camp, but when asked to prophesy and curse God’s people, he couldn’t and only blessing would come out of his mouth. The king was furious. Why couldn’t this prophet curse the people of God? They were already blessed! God had ordained blessing and they were blessed. In God’s sight there was no battle. It had already been won. As far as God was concerned they were blessed already. They may have been in a tough spot, but it didn’t change the fact that they were blessed. They were weary, but God said they were blessed.

 

When you find yourself in a tough situation, it doesn’t change God’s Word to you. You are blessed. You may be exhausted, but you are blessed. The tough situation will change; God’s Word to you never changes. You may feel weary, but don’t let your mind run away with the negatives of what you are in. It will change!

 

“God is not a man that He should lie, Nor the son of man that He should repent. Has He

said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Behold, I

have received a command to bless;. He has blessed, and I cannot reverse ~

Numbers 23:19;20

 

Battles will always come at an inconvenient time; it will always be beyond your ability and you can’t avoid it. That’s just the way it is. However, the battle is already won! We are blessed and not cursed! By staying in agreement with what God has said and drawing upon His grace you can get through it.

 

Weakness is not necessarily a bad position

 

Being weak is not a bad thing, but to stay weak is. The recognition of your weakness is a starting point from which great growth and development come. It’s an opportunity to develop an inner belief system, which says, “God can be great through me. I can’t do, but God can and He will. I’m going to let Him use this situation for His glory.”

 

The Bible says that after you have gone through trials your faith is refined and comes forth as pure gold. Trials make you strong; they build your spiritual muscles. You don’t have to flex any muscles when things are going well or you have no challenges to face. But after you’ve gone through something, people can look at you and say, “I know that person and without God’s grace in their life they wouldn’t have overcome.” People don’t focus on your weakness. They see God’s awesome power doing something great through someone who although weak, has learnt to draw on God’s grace.

 

“When l am weak, then Jam strong, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:10

 

When you are at your weakest you feel like surrendering the leadership of your smart head to your ‘smarting’ heart. But, don’t do it! Be led by the Spirit of God, not your emotions. The Bible is full of insights that help us overcome bitter experiences. We are encouraged to look at Jesus and consider what He went through at the Cross.

 

“For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. “Hebrews 12:3

 

Take time to think about Jesus. Consider Him. Look at the Blood. That precious blood was shed for you. Imagine what He went through for you. Close this book now and meditate upon the blood for a few moments. You regain perspective by looking at Jesus.

 

Hebrews 12:1 says, “let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which o easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race.” Wait a minute, the sin, what sin? Let me explain it again. If you are experiencing this chapter, realise the reason you are where you are, is not because someone else put you there. Take some responsibility. Confess your own sin. It’s your own fault! There. I said it. I am where I am because it is my own fault.

Some bad things happen to good people where it has not been their fault. But people’s reaction to bad things is certainly within their control. Paul tells us to lay aside the sin, yes, the sin that so easily besets us! It so easily besets us! Yes, it does. It doesn’t take much to get offended or hurt. The responsibility is on you. Even if circumstances were beyond your control, and some others are partly to blame for where you are, they are not responsible for you staying there!

 

It’s not the big offences that spoil life. It’s the little things. And little things so easily beset us and get ‘under our skin’. In the grand scheme of things, they don’t really matter. In the light of eternity, they are nothing. If you are married, do you remember the first year when all the “little” things caused the biggest arguments? Not putting down the lid of the toilet seat, squeezing the toothpaste from the middle, or not putting the top back on, leaving the milk out on the bench! Come on now, you remember! I can just see you standing before the Throne of God, “but he wouldn’t put the lid down on the toilet....!”

 

What we go through is nothing compared to what Jesus suffered. Get on with it!

 

“Pursue peace with all people and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord; looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God: lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.”

Hebrews 12:10-15

 

Develop the ability to look beyond present pain. It is temporary. Look at Jesus. Keep things in perspective. There are so many passages in the Bible where God blessed men and women while they were in the land of their affliction. Suffering doesn’t have to be bad. Life is ultimately enriched as much by bad things as the good. Bitter and sweet experiences weave together to form the tapestry of your life. If you think you can get through life without pain then you haven’t lived yet. In the grand scheme of things, suffering and pain find their place and we see it in perspective. It’s never pleasant, but if we acknowledge that no experience is ever wasted, God will help us learn from it.

 

Thrive despite adversity

 

When our twins were born, they were premature, and I nearly died. But God gave me a promise (in between the dying and the living part!) which was:

 

“The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree. “Psalm 92:12

 

The palm tree of the Middle East has a straight trunk and grows to a height of 75-9Oft. It has no variance of crookedness from its trunk to its leaves, and it gives off fruit the year round. The early part of the year it yields milk from its fruit and the rest of the year the fruit itself is eaten. The roots of the palm tree are so steadfast that the tree withstands all storms. It might bend when the wind howls, but it always straighten out after the storm. It needs no cultivation whatsoever; it just thrives on the soil and moisture from its roots. Its purpose is to produce fruit and to supply the needs of others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sounds like what God wants for all of us really! But when God gave me that for our girls, He was saying, the twins will thrive despite adversity. Prue and Bree contracted CMV virus in the weeks after they were born while still in hospital which left Prue with seventy-five percent of her hearing lost, and Bree fifty percent. This alone set them up for a difficult but not insurmountable pathway. Palm trees actually like adverse conditions. I don’t know whether I could say that about Prue and Bree! But they have thrived no matter where they have been and what they have had to face. Our girls have been a delight to raise.

 

Palm trees are planted in a desert. They thrive in it. They bend in the storms and need no cultivation. Be a Christian who needs very little “tending” to thrive and who bends in storms. Too many Christians snap in trouble, and need far too much “feeding”!

 

Bitter ‘plus’ Jesus ‘equals’ sweet

 

The Lord’s Prayer starts with “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. In the Hebrew culture a name revealed as aspect of a person’s character. God has many Names and each one reveals an aspect of His Divine Nature. If you learn the meanings of His Names, you can more fully appreciate His true character. Jehovah Rapha means The Lord my Healer or, the One who makes bitter experiences sweet. He is the one who can turn bad experiences into sweet ones. No experience is ever wasted in God. Even if it is painful for a time, you can use it to develop your own character and grow closer to God through it. It yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness for those who have been trained by it.

 

In the Old Testament Jospeph was sold into slavery by his brothers. Not the kindest act of brotherly love. I remember my husband telling me of when he put his whip around his brother when he was a kid. He thought it was a great joke, but his mother took his whip off him for a week! Joseph’s brothers really had it in for their little brother. They were consumed with bitterness and resentment. They were cowardly and they him into a pit which was meant for his demise, but God had a plan. Joseph was found by slave traders and taken to Egypt where he served in Pharaoh’s house before being thrown into prison for upsetting the bosses wife. Joseph never got bitter, he only got better. In the end, God used him to save his family from starvation. Joseph in Genesis 45:5 said, “For God sent me before you to preserve life. “ He was able to see past adversity. He had developed the ability to look beyond. He could see the bigger picture. God’s plan came to pass in time.

 

God has a plan for your life too. He can see the beginning from the end. When you walk through trouble it is like you are walking “blind” for a time because you cannot see where you are going or what the end will be. If you were flying a plane, you would rely on your instruments to guide you out. To put it in spiritual terms, you would put your life in God’s hands, and by faith trust Him to walk you out of it.

 

It’s all about perspective

 

Your perspective becomes distorted and you cannot see things correctly when you are in trouble. You have to rely on God and on others to help you through. I was resting on my bed one afternoon, reading my Bible and meditating upon the names of God and how big He was. With my Bible in my hand I waved my arm across the bedroom window obscuring it for a moment. My Bible is the size of a small book and as I looked, sure enough, it obscured this large window. God said to me, “how is it that something so small can cover something that is so big?” I then got up from my bed and walked over to the window. My Bible no longer obscured the window but was seen in perspective against the window. It was a small Bible and a very large window. To answer God’s question, I realized as I stood there that what was larger depended on what I was closest to. God said, “how can your problem which is so small, obscure Me who is so big? I realized that if I was closer to the problem, then the problem would look bigger, but if I was closer to God, then God would look bigger. What are you standing closest to? God or your problem? Get closer to God and your problem will not seem so big.

 

In adversity, there is a seed

 

I don’t like adversity any more than the next person, but we all face it in one form or another somewhere in our lives. When you develop a belief system that says in every adversity there is the seed of an equal or greater benefit, you cannot help but learn from the experience and be hopeful about the future. Every obstacle that I have ever faced or will face is ultimately there to serve me.

 

When Joseph’s two sons were born, he called one of them Ephraim, which meant, “for God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Joseph not only could see the higher purpose of God, he could see that affliction was no obstacle to receiving God’s best for his life. He lived close to God. Living close to God gives you clarity and insight which is especially important when you’re in trouble.

 

Jehovah Sabaoth is one of the Names of God. Essentially it means that He is the Lord God of the armies of heaven and earth. That means nothing happens to me that He is firstly not aware of, and secondly is not ultimately in control of. That is one of the most comforting things I have ever learnt in my Christian life. I can walk through life and embrace everything that happens to me. I don’t love EVERYTHING that has happened, but I wouldn’t change a thing because it makes my life, mine. And it’s great! Don’t live your life with regret. Embrace everything life has to offer; take on challenges and learn new things.

 

Read Chapter Four “Be blessed! Ignore Complaints” coming in the next few days.

If you would like more of Peter and Lindsay Earle’s teaching go to www.pastoralministrytraining.com