Teach Me to War | Module 2, Part 1
In the first module of Teach Me to War, I talked about repentance and the need to come before God with a humble heart if we want to experience deliverance from the things that have kept us in bondage. Repentance is necessary, but we also need to understand that deliverance is not always an easy process. Sometimes it requires us to be brought to a place where we recognize just how helpless we are without the Lord.
When we refuse to humble ourselves, we can find ourselves going through circumstances that expose the pride and self-reliance in our hearts. I know this because I’ve experienced it in my own life, and when I look back, I can see how the Lord was dealing with things in me long before I fully understood what He was doing.
Moses and the Humbling Process
When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, He led them through the wilderness, where they experienced a humbling process. We also see something similar in the life of Moses, who had been raised in Pharaoh’s household and knew there was a calling upon his life.
Moses understood that his people were suffering under the Egyptians, but rather than waiting upon the Lord, he took matters into his own hands. He killed an Egyptian and eventually fled into the wilderness, where he spent the next forty years tending sheep.
Think about that for a moment. Moses had gone from living in Pharaoh’s household to becoming a shepherd in the wilderness, a position that was looked down upon by the Egyptians. His circumstances had changed dramatically, and the man who had once lived among royalty was now caring for sheep.
I believe there was something God needed to do in Moses during those years, and as I began looking at my own life, I could see that the Lord needed to do something similar in me.
The Pride and Religion in My Own Heart
I’ve shared before that I was a very proud man. I was arrogant, lustful, and religious, and those things had caused tremendous grief and heartache for my wife throughout our marriage. Yet for a long time, I didn’t experience that same pain because I was enjoying the very things that were causing so much damage.
“That’s something we need to understand about sin. We can become comfortable with it, and when we’re enjoying what we’re doing, we don’t necessarily want to give it up. We can continue in those things while convincing ourselves that everything is fine, even when the consequences are affecting the people closest to us.”
derek mcleod
Religion can become part of that problem as well. We can become so caught up in being religious that we fail to recognize the selfishness and pride in our own hearts. That was where I had been for many years, and the Lord had to bring me to a place where I could no longer ignore what was there.
But before that humbling process began in earnest, God had already started dealing with things in my heart that I hadn’t even realized were there.
The Hurt I Had Carried Since Childhood
Sonia and I were living in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and I remember sitting at our kitchen table one evening when I began talking about some things that had happened to me as a child.
When I was younger, my parents had moved away with the rest of our family, leaving me behind so I could continue my education. At the time, I didn’t understand how deeply that experience had affected me or how much hurt I had carried from it.
Before that happened, I had been a very good student. I enjoyed school and had been receiving excellent grades, but something changed after my family moved away. I began losing the desire I once had for school, and I didn’t understand why that change had taken place.
It wasn’t until years later, as I sat there talking with my wife, that I began to recognize what had happened in my heart. As I spoke about those experiences, the Lord began bringing things to the surface that had been buried for a very long time.
There was a root of rejection and abandonment that had gone deep into my heart, and I hadn’t realized how much it had affected me. I began to cry as that pain came out, and it was a very difficult thing to face because I was dealing with hurt that I hadn’t understood or acknowledged for years.
Looking back, I can see that the Lord was beginning to open up my heart and show me things that needed to be dealt with. I didn’t understand everything that was happening, but something was beginning to change.
Satan Has Desired to Sift You
During those years in Yorkton, Sonia and I would sometimes go for drives together. We would talk, pray, listen to sermons, and simply spend time together.
I remember one particular drive when we were praying, and it was as though the manifest presence of Jesus Christ had entered our vehicle and was sitting there with us. We both knew the Lord was speaking something very specific to us. It was this:
“And the Lord said, ‘Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.‘” Luke 22:31-32
At the time, we didn’t fully understand what those words were going to mean for us. They meant something to my wife, and they meant something different to me, but neither of us knew just how much we were going to go through in the days ahead.
After everything we had already experienced in our marriage, there was still more that needed to be dealt with. I was continuing to hold on to things in my heart that I wasn’t willing to confront, and eventually those things would lead us into one of the most difficult periods of our lives.
What I didn’t understand then was how much the Lord was going to use those circumstances to humble me and bring me to a place where I would have to learn to depend upon Him.
The Lord had begun dealing with my heart, but the humbling process was far from over.