In this season of testing and refining... “What looked like a full blown assault from the enemy was really a preparation process for the Church." Pete Garza, Quote from Elijah List.
In recent times, many prophetic words have said that the church as we’ve known it will no longer be the same... What could that even look like?
It’s easy to look at the prophecy regarding the church as an institution — like our church or the church down the street, but WE ARE THE CHURCH. So that means that we will never look the same! If we are to be internally changed, God’s going to mess with us and our ways! Ouch! One way God gets our attention and begins to bring change to us is through our circumstances.
The pandemic we are currently experiencing is creating change in all of our lives and circumstances. For example, one young man that I know who has always worked at home and has not been particularly a people person, has not had his life altered dramatically. However, an important component of his mental health has always been working out at the gym, and when the gyms closed down, the lack of exercise that kept his brain emotionally healthy caused him to struggle with depression. We are all affected, some more than others, but it certainly messes with our expectations and what we’ve looked at as our entitlements.
Questions to ask myself: How am I expecting my life to look that’s not working?
What am I feeling as a result? What do I trust in or depend on to give me “life”?
EXAMPLE: Do I look to family or other relationships, work, ministry, my religious systems, having good health?
Do I get angry that I can’t just do as I please?
Do I get fearful when I listen to the latest news?
Do I escape into fantasy or simply distract myself on the Internet?
What have I used to escape feeling my emotions produced from the pandemic? We might have used even good things, but things unknowingly used (except by the Enemy) to avoid the discomfort, and therefore the healing changes God wants to bring within us. Our escape can come from the good side (not the evil side) of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but not from the life-giving Tree of Life. As those things in our lives get shaken, what happens inside of us — what emotions are we feeling?
EXAMPLE: I had a big struggle with a very small thing that God used because of the Pandemic in my life. Through what I believed was irrational fear, the pool has remained closed in my community. That pool is an important part of my life because I need the exercise and it’s the only exercise I’m physically able to do. It enables my body to function well and gives me the stamina for the things I’m involved with. My initial response was anger because I felt it to be an irrationally motivated, fear-based decision that was unfair, and I was powerless to change it. I took the power I did have to text, speak up, etc., but no amount of logic or suggestions of ways to deal with the problem was acknowledged. (You can’t use logic in dealing with emotional decisions.). My only power was to find other pools for exercise, which God has graciously provided, but God also used it to bring me to a place of surrendering my angry, demanding heart to Him and to grieve the unfairness of the loss, leading to ultimate forgiveness.
Many people are functionally “off” right now emotionally —they are edgy, prickly, not themselves, off-balance because of not processing what they are struggling with emotionally.
Our emotions need to be owned and processed to get past them. When we push them down and refuse to feel them, we get lost, shut down, irritable, anxious, and even depressed. We get stuck.
For example if you’re going on a trip, you must know your starting place in order to get to the right destination. The same is true with our emotions. What emotions are you feeling in this Pandemic? As I talk with people from all around, I am hearing emotions expressed like:
LOST, CONFUSED, POWERLESS, OVERWHELMED, DISSATISFIED,
FEARFUL/ANXIOUS, EMPTY.
The emotion I struggled with was EMPTY. The fullness of life as we’ve known it is no longer here and we can’t change it. However as I struggled with that negative emotion and accepted the feelings of the emptiness, I began to see that EMPTINESS is the beginning of true FULLNESS. Emptiness when embraced becomes real hunger and thirst, and if we don’t try to fill it with lesser things again, we begin to be truly hungry for Jesus and the living water that only he can give.
Our negative emotions when owned, embraced, and worked through to a place of surrender to God’s ways become positive, life-giving emotions.
For example: anger worked through becomes courage, fear and anxiety faced, owned, and released to God becomes peace, despair can become true hope in God’s goodness, and facing our emptiness opens the door to the in-filling flow of living water that satisfies the hungry soul.
“On the final and climactic day of the Feast, Jesus took his stand. He cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way,’ “ just as the Scripture says, John 7:37 MSG.
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”
“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.”
“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat,” Matthew 5, The Message Bible.
Pat Stark
Pat Stark is the author of Born to Fly: Pursuing the Life You Were Meant to Live…Free, Lost Heart: A Guide to Living From Your Heart in a Broken World, and The Story of Life: The Life We All Try to Find,” available on Amazon, as well as The Covenant Center bookstore. Her message brings freedom and hope in the midst of a world of uncertainty. Her desire is to see people restored to who they were originally created to be before they were wounded by the hurts of life. She is gifted in dealing with root issues lying beneath the surface that have kept people trapped and unable to experience true freedom. Pat has worked with people for over 40 years in the area of deep spiritual and emotional healing. She is an ordained minister through The Covenant Center, Lakeland, Florida.