“Experience is the friend of wisdom, but it can be an enemy of faith. ”
For a year and one week, I avoided writing because I did not know how to minister from prosperity. Which sounds crazy, but as a reformed cynic and pessimist, I truly did not know how to be happy and write about it. And how to not hold my breath while thinking, “it won’t last long, so keep it to yourself.” (sounds full of faith, huh?)
So when I started going through throes again (because I mean “as a man thinks, so is he” Prov 23:7) — I knew the decline was coming; negative begets negative. Again, I did not feel anything I wrote would be from a dynamic perspective “in the middle.” So I found ways at every turn to allow life to happen to me and muzzle my voice. And from this year of undulating faith, trials, and triumphs… I have learned that… for me and others…
We have the faith to get through bad situations and see God in our deliverance, but we don’t have the faith to walk out good things. Or believe the God capable of rescuing us, is the same God that can provide us with what we desire the most or beyond what we felt to be fathomable.
I find that it is actually much harder to steward a victory season, you’ve relentlessly prayed for in other seasons, than a wilderness season. It’s hard to accept a win and keep winning at it. Especially when some of that winning is interposed with favor and mercy, and not necessarily your works. It is hard to not question your happiness, your worthiness, your stewardship— and further— His grace, His mercy, and His sovereignty. We, in our humanity reach the point in happiness, where we start looking for culpability (be it in ourselves, circumstances, or others) and for things to reproach.
It’s because of our experiences. We are supposed to learn in our long-suffering how NOT to mishandle victory. However, we lose long-term faith instead. We make our beds with suffering. We’ve told ourselves if we expect the bad and look for it— it hurts less. We say this behavioral compensation is “wisdom.” And maybe so...in discontinuing things of detriment; but your experiences can trap you in a retrospective lens for an anterograde God. This risk-averse self-governing and avoidance of fallibility is not how you’ll obtain the promise of God. The wilderness prepares you, yes; but you still have The Promise over your life to live out.
Your life is to end with victory. A victory you’re supposed to have faith will arrive.
Why question it, when it does?
“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,”
Ephesians 3:14-20 NKJV
We are okay with His spirit strengthening our inner man, and through faith having Him dwell in our hearts... the part that seems most difficult is being “rooted and grounded in love, may [we] be able to comprehend with all the saints [the boundlessness of Christ’s love] which passes knowledge and [allows] us to be filled with the fullness of God.”
You do not need to understand why you were blessed, you just need to steward it accordingly because you asked for it and He provided. He is Jehovah Jireh, Genesis 22:14 “The Lord Will Provide.”
Therefore, to comprehend His omniscience and grace, so that you are freely able to operate within it, you must be rooted and grounded in love FIRST. Before one can even get to the power that works within in us, making way for the fullness of God to be bestowed upon us.
"This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us." 1 John 5:14
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. [...] But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. [...] And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.”
Colossians 3:1-2, 14, 17, 23-24 NKJV
“For thus says the LORD: After seventy years [...] I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:10-11 NKJV
You can’t have hope in the future God promised to you, if you live your life like your past experiences are your God. There is no such thing as pragmatic faith. You either have faith or you do not. So believe in the life you deserve and that you can and should be walking in victory— afforded to you by Christ’s life.
You are allowed to be happy. We are allowed to be happy. It is written.
Food for thought:
What kind of roots have your experiences given you that are choking out the love you’re supposed to be grounded in? Unforgiveness? Of past versions of you or others?
Why do we believe with ease the bad things that happen to us, but we question the good things— incidentally implying that we deserved the bad? Do you believe for you, what God believes for you?
What retrospective lens do you have on a new thing God is trying to do in your present life that reminds you of an old season problem? Are you not a new you? A you that God has graced to lay hold and maintain this time? Do you not trust God’s timing?