“What if…”: An ungodly belief
It’s hard to put into words what the last few weeks have meant to me, it has been a bit of a profound time to put it lightly.
For a little context, since lockdown and all that went down, I have been yearning for some time away. In solitude. With just God and some of my big questions.
I have been needing a little bit of oasis and quiet to process some of the bigger issues of life, because I could feel my compass pulling a little. Subtle, but importantly away from God and goodness and general peace. I would wake up most mornings with a low level concern that would gnaw at my edges. “What is the point?”
Life is fleeting, here today and gone tomorrow. Literally.
Man creates and destroys on a floating, spinning rock, with a fervence that defies logic for a creation that is heading to ultimate destruction.
We believe that all will be restored, and that at the end of time God will make all right again. But in the day to day, in the face of suffering, that belief was starting to feel a bit more like a fairytale than anything else. And the effect was deeply derailing me. Like a bath with no plug, good and healthy things were being poured into my life, but without wrestling with my core understanding of God and the meaning of life, it was all just running away from me as fast as it was being poured in.
I was in desperate need of a reset. And not just in between nursery runs and last minute food shops.
I had been yearning for a while, and then in February my sister-in-law and I took our girls for a week away just to hang out and spend some good time together. It was in the after hours chats with her over that week, that I found I could be honest about how deeply that depression was affecting me. She is a fearsome prophet of a woman and she saw straight through all of my carefully constructed facades. She prayed and recommended a ministry that her friends in Wales were involved with, and the wheels were set in motion for some intentional time out to wrestle with God at RTF.
RTF stands for Restoring The Foundations. It was established in 1990 and I had heard of it a few times before. My Dad had been for a week’s session in the years prior and it was beneficial for him. So I was tentatively hopeful.
Skip forward to the end of August, (the ministry has a six month waiting list) and I drove myself the four hours off to the Breacons for five days of little responsibility and a lot of time to think.
I was initially pretty nervous, I had put a lot on this time in terms of figuring out all of life’s issues, but it actually didn’t disappoint. It was just a lot less dramatic than I thought it would be.
Everybody’s experience of a ministry time like that would obviously be different, and it probably isn’t for everyone, but in five daily sessions of a few hours each, with a two-on-one approach, we journeyed through some of the places that the enemy might have gained some legal ground. Going through generational sins and the resulting curses, ungodly beliefs, soul hurts and demonic oppression, it all sounded a bit intense, but as we spoke it was all very peaceful andlogical, and honesty pretty normal. No real woohoo or tears at all. The thing that really felt revolutionary for me though, was uncovering my ungodly beliefs.
Sarah and Mike, the ministry leaders, had previously prayed and identified some areas in which they felt I had believed some ungodly things.
Basically big fat lies.
Maybe more small, subtle, life changing lies.
For example, the belief that God’s blessings will one day run out. That there was somehow a cap to his blessings. A seemingly small lie, but when left unchecked I’m out here living my life with a spiritual limp, limiting God’s ability and the things I ask for without realising it, even though he clearly says that “he has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3)
You spend some time identifying these things, then some time repenting of them, then some time letting the Spirit replace it with truth. In this case God showed me waterfalls, “Do these ever stop flowing?”. He showed me bountiful harvests, “Does the earth ever stop producing food?” We basically spent a while going through the things that never run out, as He compared His blessings to these things, with the promise that he is not a frugal God.
A life changing axis shift.
And then they identified the ungodly belief of “What if…?”
What if what?
Nope, just what if…
This was a bit of a big one for me. And once again it is a bit more than I am able to unpack in a single blog post, as well as the fact that I am still walking out the truth of this one, and what it actually looks like in my life. But in essence, if God has said, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.” and goes on to say “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:25-27) Then when we worry, it comes directly against what God has commanded for us. Worrying about the ‘what if…’ immediately says “God probably won’t, or can’t”. An ungodly belief.
It isn’t about the thing we are worrying about. “What if our cat dies?”, “What if this birth is difficult again?”, “What if I’m spending too much money at Rockwater?” It’s the subtle questioning of it all. It takes the conversation away from God, and into trusting things into our own hands. What has God said about our cat? I will believe and trust in that. What has God said about this birth? I will believe and trust in that. What has God said about our finances and extra croissants at Rockwater? I will believe and trust in that.
As a concept this is scratching the surface of some deep and theological explorations, but it was very simply summarised for me when I asked God what to replace this derailing lie with.
He said “Lou, what’s the best that can happen?”
The challenge to spend my time meditating on that, over the worst that can happen.
So simple.
Yet the walking out of it is actually, tangibly changing my day to day life.
I hear it in my head all the time. “Dr. Pepper, what the BEST that can happen.” The nineties jingle reimaged. And I am trying to think about those things, and ask God for them, and honestly it is going great.
There is so much more to share, so much more revelation and life and day to day peace. I no longer wake up in existential anguish over the meaning of life. Depression no longer lives at my core. I don’t spend my days endlessly worrying about all things, (maybe some things, but I am working on it) And all it took was some intentional time with the Spirit. Yay!
And now “What if..” Is slowly being replaced with, “What is the best that can happen.” And it is honesty making my internal world a much nicer place to be.
Praise be to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ever ask or imagine.
