A Lesson Learned During the Pruning Season
…God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Hebrews 12:10-11
“My faith is to rest not in the outcome I think God should work out for me; my faith rests in who God is…the quietness of my heart is the fruit of an absolute confidence in God.”
~ Elisabeth Elliot
* * *
An oyster shell, sitting at the bottom of the sea, is occasionally invaded by a clump of sand. This is an unwelcome visitor to the oyster. It is uncomfortable and irritating. The oyster shell will attempt to expel it, but if it fails, it will do something extraordinary. It will take the clump of sand and transform it, over a long and painful process, into something precious and priceless – a pearl.
Our lives are similar to oyster shells. When we encounter trials, we often attempt to expel them. However, when it is apparent that they are not in our power to expel, we have a choice to make: to despair, or to allow the trial to produce something precious and priceless inside of us.
I was confronted with this choice during the summer of 2015.
During the previous summer, I had one of the most supernatural and empowering experiences of my life. God had led me far out of my comfort zone and proven His sufficiency in the midst of my incredible weaknesses. He had called me to do something impossible, and proved His trustworthiness as I obeyed Him [for the full story, see blog Out of the Comfort Zone]. After the summer, however, I found myself transitioning from this exhilarating season into a long season of pruning.
As the fall progressed, I became increasingly aware of a sudden lack of empowerment. I was working with the same kids as during the summer, and yet was overwhelmed by the sudden starkness of my failures each day. When given an opportunity to speak publicly in a different environment (which God had consistently enabled me to do in the recent past), I was overcome by a lack of peace while presenting. In a new social circle, the confidence that I thought was based on a growing trust in God crumbled when I felt a lack of acceptance. These experiences shook my faith and made me question whether it is always God’s will for us to live overcoming, supernatural lives.
I fell deeper and deeper into discouragement before I remembered something remarkable. A number of months earlier, I had begun to pray the following regularly:
Lord, help me to want You beyond Your benefits. I want to want You for YOU, not just for the success and happiness You bring to my life!
Was God answering this prayer? Perhaps He had placed it in my heart months earlier to prepare me. What if this season was purposefully planned by Him? I felt Him sifting my heart and showing me areas that needed to be changed. But I had no idea how to change. All I knew was that I was becoming increasingly aware of the deeply entrenched sin that He was attempting to root out of me.
Lord, I want You. But so much of me wants You for selfish reasons still. I want You for the peace, success, acceptance, and purpose You bring to my life. When You remove these, I do not seem to want You as much. How do I fix this?
I felt Him whisper in response:
Come to me, and allow me to do the rest. Allow me to take your selfishness and purify you. Allow me to work one day at a time.
And so I trusted Him to do what I could not do in myself. He continued to lead me through days where my inadequacy was on display for others to see, which seriously hurt my pride. As the summer of 2015 approached, where I was returning to work at the same day camp as the previous summer, God prepared me with the following quotes:
“True faith has to be founded on the character of God, not on a particular outcome.” ~ Elisabeth Elliot
“Faith dares to fail.” ~ A.W. Tozer
The summer of 2015 was characterized by one catastrophe after another. More than one child tried to run off property, more than one adult approached us threateningly, difficult home experiences were brought to our attention, and some of the volunteers were asked to leave. As the supervisor, I was legally responsible for all that happened at the camp, yet these situations felt so outside of my control. I felt like I was failing miserably as a leader, and others thought so too.
In a journal entry, I wrote:
I am so done! There has not been one week this summer when I was not yelled at for failing to do my job. I feel like I have done everything in my power to make this a safe and fun camp for these kids, but clearly my everything was not enough this summer. I feel so alone in this supervisor position. It is too hard. I want to leave so that I do not continue to fail. Why are You letting me fail, Lord?
It is ironic that through this continued failure, I began to learn how to trust God more. He did not prevent chaos from occurring, nor always provide a way out in the midst of it. Yet He gave me the strength to persevere and step out again each day. He cultivated a deeper trust within me for His character and His will, despite the appearance of His lack of empowerment.
In a later journal entry, I wrote:
Lord, You are showing me the way to trust You to be enough, even when it may not look like you are to my own eyes. I know that You are up to something, and I know that it is going to be good!
Human approval and admiration are stripped away. Joy in circumstances is impossible right now. Confidence in myself is absurd. I try to avoid situations like these, yet You are using this to prune my selfishness away and purify me. I feel Your closeness even in this valley!
Lord, I cannot change the circumstances. I know that You will continue to allow challenges to happen. Enable me to see that You are still in control and that You are changing me through this experience. Help me not to be defeated by the circumstances and my responses to them, but to be able to soar on Your wings above the storm.
Remind me that You are the One that is writing this story, and that I am not in control. Lord, I will step out and trust You tomorrow again. Not because I enjoy the challenges You are throwing my way, but because I know Your character – You are teaching me to trust You without benefits! An answer to many prayers this year!
Though I do not wish for these challenges to occur again, God used them to change me. He stripped me of human approval, joyful circumstances, and self-confidence to show me that these are enslaving. He began to show me that I can find approval and joy and confidence in Him regardless of the circumstances, and doing so produces an incredible freedom. He used pain and discipline to pour greater amounts of love and freedom into my life. He truly began to teach me to want Him for Himself, and not just for His benefits. How else could I learn this except by having the benefits removed?
God cares more about our hearts than I realized. He is willing to allow apparent external failure in order to produce internal success. But even in this, He is always worthy of our trust because He is always working for our good and for His glory.
Reader, do not fear the discipline of the Lord. It is yet another chance to experience His relentless love for you.
Comments