Moving Through Change Without Bitterness

 The other day I was spending time with the prophet Ezekiel. He was a priest who had been exiled from Jerusalem during the first deportation of Judah. The great siege and destruction of Jerusalem was yet to come. Ezekiel was now without purpose and a job, confused with everyone else in exile. But Yahweh needed prophets for his people in Babylon and he had set Ezekiel aside for this purpose.

We always focus on the great vision of Ezekiel and for good reason. Each prophet brought a different revelation of Yahweh and putting them together gives us a fuller understanding of Yahweh. But this is not a path Ezekiel would have chosen for himself.

People today chase after the office of the prophet because it is different from the Old Testament Prophet. Prophets today are part of the five-fold, the trainers in the Body of Christ. Back in the day before the Holy Spirit was given to all believers, the prophet was the voice of Yahweh, bringing his word and will for that day. This did not give the prophet favour with the leadership or the people because the prophet often had a word of correction to bring, and no one likes correction.

Ezekiel would have known Jeremiah or known of him, so he knew of the bad things that were done to this dear prophet in Jerusalem. And Ezekiel also knew that this was the norm for the prophets of Yahweh. When chosen, that person lost his old life and comfort and now stepped into the privilege of intimacy with Yahweh and a very punishing life of service. So it should not surprise us that after receiving his anointing and commission, when the wind picked him up to carry him to the deportees, we read this:

“Then the wind picked me up and took me away. With the Lord’s power pressing down against me I went away, bitter and deeply angry, and I came to the exiles who lived beside the Chebar River at Tel-abib. I stayed there among them for seven desolate days.”  Ezekiel 3:14-15

So the result of this vision and encounter, of the call and commission : “I went away, bitter and deeply angry.” Ezekiel knew what this was going to look like. Remember, he wasn’t asked if he was willing, he was simply told to go. Too often we put all the emphasis on the benefits of our relationship and so we are unprepared for the cost. There is always a cost.

Several times in my life the Lord called me to something that caused my world to shift. I knew I would have to say good-bye to what I knew and what I was comfortable with, to step into the obedience of Father’s purpose for me. There was great cost. But there was also great benefit, and the benefit far outweighed the cost. But there was a cost.

I could compare it to having a baby. There is great cost to the mom. Her life will never be the same again. There will never be another moment in her life when she won’t be a mom. There is pain in the birth. There is pain in the difficult nights, giving up plans for a sick child, and the tons of work involved in raising a child. But the benefits of having that little person pouring out their love into your life far outweighs any cost.

If we forget his benefits we run the risk of having bitterness and deep anger filling our hearts and clouding our perspective. Change is never easy. Many of us struggle with change. But change is also filled with exciting possibilities. The thing that is important to anchor yourself to is the truth that our Father never changes. Even in the chaos of the change that he is bringing about he is our anchor. We must remind ourselves of his benefits. We need to review our many testimonies of his goodness. We must declare our trust in the darkness. We must hold on to him because he is the only one who makes sense of life and provides the strength we need.

We are given the honest reactions of prophets, psalmist, servants and kings so that we can see that these are normal reactions to unusual times. But we are also given the example of how they confessed these things to the Lord and then confessed their trust in him. This is given so we know that this is how we get through life-shifting changes without bitterness and deep anger taking route.

What To Do When You Are Discouraged

It doesn't matter who you are, we all face discouraging times. Be as holy as you want to be, put on whatever face you want to put on, create a facade if you want but the truth is discouragement is real for all of us. So then the true question is not how to pretend you are not discouraged but what do you do when you are. Let's consider a man who faced a boat load of discouragement in his live; king David.

David was a man of faith and trust but the psalms he wrote give us the privilege of seeing into the reality of his heart. That reality shows that David faced all kinds of emotions but he did one thing with them all; he made the decision to trust. Now when I say he made the decision, I mean he forced his spirit to worship by making declarations that he bent his will to believe:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)

I am sure that as David declared this he brought back to his remembrance all the good things, all the victories, all the incredible interventions Yahweh had done for him in the past. It times of discouragement, doubts and fears we need to force ourselves to remember the personal goodness of the Lord. What has he done for us in the past? We need to remind ourselves who he is, what he does, what he has promised and that, because of who he is, we have nothing to be discouraged about. What is more important, the values of this world or those of the Kingdom?

Misplaced priorities may be the cause of some of our discouragement. Maybe we got knocked off the path of holiness because our flesh had a desire that replaced the spirit. Renew your first love and you will remember what is important to you, as David did:

One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple. (v. 4)

The Temple represented the presence of the Lord. We are that temple now as the Holy Spirit dwells in us. The presence of the Lord is what we value and we want to be aware, sensitive, to his presence. In David's great psalm of repentance his greatest concern expressed was that the Lord would cast him out of his presence. Our great desire should be to "dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life". When that is our desire and we live to permit that to be our reality, discouragement soon flees from us because it cannot take root.

Of course we can't fool ourselves into a mindset if we don't believe what we are trying to convince ourselves. If we do not believe the promises; if we forget what has been done in the past; if we don't believe that Jesus cares for us in our circumstances then we will not be able to de-root the discouragement that has laid siege upon our heart and mind:

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living. (v.13)

Read that first line over a few times until the reality of it sinks in. David's reality was shaped by the fact that he did believe. Sometimes this world tried to overcome his belief, his trust, his knowledge and experience of the Lord but David forced himself to remember. He forced his spirit to rise up over his flesh and praise Yahweh. He forced it by making these declarations. I only gave you a small taste of those declarations here; go back and read the whole psalm. And consider how he ended it:

Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord! (V. 14)

You can decide who David is speaking to, us or himself, but consider those words. You can try to dispel discouragement with lies you tell yourself about this world. You can try to avoid the discouragement by hiding behind alcohol and drugs. You can try to distract yourself by entertainment but you are still going to be left alone with your thoughts in the middle of the night or when you wake in the morning. There is only one way to vanquish discouragement and that is by encouraging yourself in the Lord.

Wait on the Lord, says David, and be of good courage. Praise him. Declare his goodness. Declare your trust. Speak it out loud and feel the strength return to you because when you declare trust in the Lord he shall strengthen your heart. Go ahead, says David, wait on the Lord!