Wounded by God's People (13 page)

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink
.

Genesis 21:19

I
well remember when I found myself in the valley. It was a valley of deep depression, utter exhaustion, and spiritual dryness. Within a period of eight months, all three of my children got married. One month before my son was married, he was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer and had major surgery. Two months later, he began radiation treatment. During that same time period, my mother was rushed to the hospital five times with life-threatening conditions. Each time, I made the four-hour drive to be with her, saw her through the crisis, then returned home. A major hurricane ripped through our city, wrapping our home in 102 downed trees. We were without power for six weeks, and it took us over a year to dig out of the mess. Somehow, in the midst of everything, I maintained my writing and speaking schedule.

Finally, I cried out in desperation. My prayer was something like this:
God, I don't want to quit what I'm doing in ministry. I don't want to escape through taking the pills the doctor offered me or drinking the alcohol people say will relax me. I don't want to go on a vacation where I may be physically rested but return to the same overwhelming circumstances. I'm not even asking You for a miracle. Please, dear God, I need a fresh touch from heaven. I want a fresh encounter with You. Just give me Jesus!

I can't remember how I was led at that moment. All I know is that I opened my Bible to the gospel of John. I started studying the encounters Jesus had with individuals. As I worked my way through
the stories, something happened deep within, and I knew I was encountering Jesus in a fresh way. There was nothing mystical or spooky about it. I was just meeting Him very personally in the pages of my Bible.

And that's when my valley became the place of my vision. Because I looked up in my spirit, and I thought,
If Anne Graham Lotz, a preacher's daughter, could have a desperate heart's cry for a fresh touch from heaven, then could there be other people who have that same heart's cry? People sitting in church, going through the motions of Christian service, outwardly expressing their faith, yet inwardly desperate for something, just not knowing what they were desperate for or how to go about finding it?

The vision came into focus when God put it on my heart to offer arena-sized events for women called
Just Give Me Jesus
, for the sole purpose of bringing others like myself into a fresh encounter with Jesus through His Word.

So after three false starts over a two-year period, with lots of heartache and struggle and tears, I have now held over thirty-five revivals for the past thirteen years in major cities throughout the United States and the world. Some arenas have overflowed, some have been filled to capacity, some have been half-filled, but in every single arena,
without exception
, God has shown up! People have experienced life-changing revival as they have had a fresh encounter with the invisible Jesus, the Angel of the Lord, the same One who pursued and found Hagar by the spring in the desert.

I doubt that I would ever have had the vision to offer
Just Give Me Jesus
if I had not been in the valley myself.

If you are in the valley, open your eyes to what God may be trying to show you. Don't let your woundedness or weariness blind you to
the opportunity God has placed in your path. Let Him open your eyes.

God allowed Hagar to descend to the depths — to be stripped of comfort, security, honor, reputation — until she was literally lying in the dust with nowhere to turn and no one to turn to. She was hemmed in by mountains of sin — Pharaohs, Abrahams, Sarah's, her own, and Ishmael's. Yet the valley became her place of vision when “God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.”
¹

Did she slowly sit up, smear the dust in streaks across her face as she wiped away her tears, rub her eyes, then look again? Maybe like many desert wanderers before and since, she thought the water that she now saw was a desert mirage playing a cruel trick on her eyes. Maybe she stumbled over to it, certain it would vanish in the desert heat, only to find that she actually could submerge her hand in the coolness and splash her face with the wetness — water!
Water in the desert!
How could that be? How was it she hadn't seen it before? Had the well been there all along but she had been unable to see it because she was blinded by tears? Or had God supernaturally placed it there, bringing water out of the dusty ground as He would later bring water from a desert rock?
²

While we are not given the answer, we do know that God opened her eyes, enabling her to see something she had not seen previously. And she had to be willing to look—to see an opportunity, a possibility she had not seen before. Then she had to take it.

What is your valley? Is it a valley of …

despair or depression or desertion,

humiliation or hopelessness or heartache,

sin or shame or suffering,

loneliness or loss or lovelessness,

frustration or fear or failure,

grief or guilt or ____? You fill in the blank.

Instead of struggling, resisting, beating your fists against the confinement, pain, and injustice, would you look up? Open your eyes. Maybe, just maybe, your valley could become the place of your vision.

When Danny and I left our church in support of the young pastor who we felt had been unnecessarily wounded and mistreated by the elders, we went into exile, as I previously shared with you. Yet had Danny and I not been in that spiritual valley, we would not have had the vision to help plant another church. And without our help, it would have taken the new pastor a lot longer to launch what has become a thriving ministry. And a lot of people whose lives have been radically saved and transformed during those first few years, at the very least, would have postponed their connection to Jesus, which the church helped them to make.

Over and over again in my life, God has brought blessing from brokenness. But first I have to open my eyes to see. In some ways, the wounds themselves can be called a blessing because I've discovered that I need to be wounded in order to offer true comfort to others who have been wounded too.
³
Wounds hurt, but they also …

deepen my compassion,

strengthen my faith,

refocus my perspective,

enlarge my heart,

broaden my understanding,

and increase my discernment.

Even when I haven't experienced precisely the same wounds that others have, the brokenness and pain in my life seem to soften me
and release the sweetness of God's love and grace to others who are suffering.

While writing this very section of Hagar's story, I asked God to open my eyes to others who may be hurting — people to whom I could extend a hand and help to lift up in their spirits. He clearly brought three people to my mind. The first was a woman who has been my Spanish interpreter for over twenty years, who had just finished three months of daily radiation for cancer of the cranium. The second was a young pastor who had recently left a ministry position with the Bowery Mission in lower Manhattan to plant a church in Hunt's Point, the Bronx. The third was a man who had lost his only son in a tragic skateboarding accident nine months previously.

Because each person lived in faraway states, I extended my hand through phone calls. I was able to reach each one the first time I called. I listened to their pain, shared a word of Scripture, shed tears, and prayed with them. At the conclusion of each conversation, I felt the person's spirits were lifted. I do know that I carried all three in my heart throughout the night in prayer. And I am convinced that had I not also experienced the valley firsthand — if I had not been in the pit from time to time in my life — I would not have been able to direct their eyes to the glory of the stars overhead.

I understand what it's like to be so weary and wounded that entering into one more person's suffering is almost more than I can take on. And yet, that very opportunity may bring me relief from my own pain and joy in the midst of my own brokenness. So I pray,
Lord God of Hagar, open my eyes when I'm in the valley
. And He has. And He does.

One morning when I went to buy a cup of coffee, God opened my
eyes to see a weary, wounded expression in the eyes of the barista who often served me. When I inquired, her lips trembled, and she rang up my order without responding. Then she called out my order to another woman behind the counter while she motioned for me to step around to the side. She confided that her husband of more than twenty years had just informed her that he was in love with someone else. Adding insult to injury was the fact that he had just signed a new lease with her for their home, even though he knew he no longer loved her or wanted to remain with her. She was trapped. When she investigated canceling the lease and moving so she would not have to live with a man who now openly voiced his passion for another woman, she found it was out of her financial reach. With tears beginning to spill down her cheeks, she said, “Anne, I don't know what to do.”

I put my arms around her and we wept together. Then, right in the middle of the coffee house, I called on the God of Hagar to see this dear woman, to hear her cry, and to provide the means to enable her to take care of herself and her teenage son.

Day by day, week by week, I touched base with her when I went into the coffee shop. Once in a while, if there were no other customers in the shop, I asked her how she was doing. Each time, I continued to see the pain in her eyes and the lifeless expression on her face. Again and again, I told her I was praying. I reminded her that sometimes we have to give God time and make room for Him to work.

About six weeks after our initial conversation, I was waiting at the counter for my coffee when she walked out of the back room, came around the counter, and threw her arms around me. With sparkling eyes and radiant face, she told me God had heard her cry and answered her prayers! A local pastor who also frequented the shop
had heard of her predicament, presented her need to his church, and the church had made it possible for her to move into a new home with her son. I hugged her again, gave her a high-five, and left rejoicing in the goodness and generosity of God's people who had been Jesus to her, lifting her out of her desert experience and opening her eyes to the joyous comfort of His loving provision.

Several months later, the barista once again greeted me with another broad smile. She shared that she was moving forward with her life in a new, promising career. And she did.

As Hagar “went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink,”
⁴
she was making the decision not only to open her eyes, but to move forward into the future God had for her. He had not only brought Hagar to a critical turning point, He had given her vision in her valley. But it wasn't just the vision of a well; it was a vision of her future.

As God instructed Hagar to lift Ishmael up, to reach out and touch him, to take him by the hand, He added the startling revelation, “I will make him into a great nation.”
⁵
It almost seemed a quietly spoken postscript given that what she needed most in that moment was water. But that was when her eyes were opened to the promise of hope for their future.

I first read about this kind of hope that is seen from the valley in a little volume that has become a classic,
The Valley of Vision
. The book is a compilation of prayers prayed long ago and written down by Puritan church leaders. I keep it with my Bible in the place where I meet the Lord each morning. These prayers have been a source of rich blessing as they often eloquently express my own feelings and thoughts.
⁶
The following prayer is one that has helped me understand that sometimes the wounded, broken heart is the blessed, healed heart.

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,

Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,

Where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights;

Hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Don't miss the vision in your valley. Ask God to give you eyes to see the stars that shine brightest when you are in the deepest well.

God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt
.

Genesis 21:20–21

D
o you find yourself mired in guilt, constantly tormented by the if-onlys of what could have been, should have been, so that your vision of the future is blurred by your unrealized expectations from the past? We can be so bound by bitterness, anger, and resentment that we ruin our lives at present and destroy any hope we might have as we give in to despair. We can even pinpoint by name those who set all of this in motion — the wounders — as we seem to wallow in our unforgiveness.

I recently watched a televised interview with John Ramsey, father of JonBenét Ramsey, the six-year-old who was tragically and mysteriously killed in her own home on Christmas Day in 1996.
¹
Her murder remains unsolved to this day. Mr. Ramsey could have justifiably answered yes to the above question. He described the litany of pain he and his family had endured. A few years before JonBenét's murder, his oldest daughter had been killed in a tragic car accident. Added to the excruciating agony of parents losing two beloved daughters were the wounds perpetrated by police and the public at large who blamed him and his wife, Patsy, for JonBenét's death. Twelve years after the murder, DNA evidence absolved anyone in his family of guilt, and the local authorities issued an apology for their inept handling of the case. Tragically, Patsy died of ovarian cancer in 2006, two years before her family was publicly cleared.

After describing so much that he and his family had been through, Mr. Ramsey then made a stunning statement. He said he had forgiven
his wounders. And the reason he gave was that forgiveness was a gift to himself. While acknowledging that his forgiveness may have had no impact on those who had wounded him, he said forgiveness set him free to move into the future. And he desired to help others who had been deeply wounded to do the same.

John Ramsey knew what many wounded people seem to miss, and it's this: the danger of looking back is that you cannot see to go forward when you do. If you insist on driving forward by looking in the rearview mirror, you're going to destroy your future and possibly that of your family and loved ones.

This life lesson is illustrated in Abraham's own life when he left his country, family, and friends to move forward into the future God had for him. He took along his nephew, Lot, who had the same opportunity to move into the future that Abraham did. But Lot never really pursued God. He just seemed to be tagging along with Abraham, pursuing adventure. The biblical account of his life gives the impression that he wanted God's blessings — especially the material and financial ones — but he didn't really care as much about a relationship with God.

Lot's priorities led him to immerse himself in the lifestyle of Sodom, a culture so evil and wicked it provoked God's judgment. When God revealed to Abraham the impending destruction of Sodom, Abraham prayed earnestly for the salvation of those who lived there. Although the city of Sodom was beyond redemption, God answered Abraham's prayer by sending His angels literally to drag Lot, his daughters, and his wife out of the city before it was destroyed. The angels gave very clear instructions to Lot and his family: “Don't look back … or you will be swept away!”
²

As the earth trembled beneath their feet, the heavens above were
opened with the roar of God's wrath, and the fire of His judgment rained down. Everything in Sodom and the neighboring city of Gomorrah was destroyed, including people, buildings, and vegetation. With thick black smoke burning their eyes and sulfur choking their throats, Lot and his family ran for their lives. “But Lot's wife looked back.”
³
She just couldn't let go of the life she had been living. And so she lost everything—including her life and God's blessing on her children and grandchildren for generations to come. Lot's wife teaches us that we can't move forward while looking back. If we do, at the very least, we'll stumble.

Hagar now had the opportunity to move forward. She must have staggered to her feet and limped unsteadily over to the well to fill the empty “skin with water and [give] the boy a drink.”
⁴
Surely she splashed water on her face as she drank deeply. As the cooling refreshment began to revive her, I wonder if she had a moment to reflect on what she had just heard. Did God's words begin to sink into her sun-scorched mind? With her brow furrowed and her eyes staring off into the future with concentrated thought, she must have stopped splashing and drinking and begun to ponder what God's words about Ishmael might actually mean.

Years before, when Hagar fled from her abusive mistress, God had promised her that if she would obey Him by returning and submitting to Sarah, He would give her descendants too numerous to count. But what was it that God had just said? In her eagerness to give Ishmael water and to drink some herself, she may not have paid close attention to the promise that was included with the instructions. Did it now come back to her with startling clarity? God had just stated that He would make Ishmael into a great nation.
⁵
A great nation! That was more than just lots of children and grandchildren. A great
nation meant honor, position, respect, and power. That implied they might both have a future with purpose and hope and blessing!

As she surely thought over and over about what God had said, the meaning must have unfolded as quickly in her mind as the bloom on a desert cactus after a spring rain.

Hagar's faith, and the hope that came with it for herself and for Ishmael, was now established on God's Word.

Leaving Abraham's household was not the end of everything; it was the beginning of God's unique plan and distinct purpose for Ishmael. Ishmael's life would count for something — he had not missed out on God's blessing for his life after all. The God of Abraham was also the God of Hagar. The God of Isaac was also the God of Ishmael. God was not only the God of the inner circle, but the God of those on the periphery!

Best of all, Hagar now knew with certainty that God loved not only Abraham and Isaac, but also loved her and Ishmael. Hagar's heart surely filled with joy and hope, even as she took Ishmael's blistered, sunburned hand in her own and they walked together into the future. I wonder if she whispered through dry, cracked lips,
Ishmael,
listen to me. My God — our God — has seen us, heard us, and provided us with a well of water. And He has given us a promise, Ishmael. Come, we have a future after all
.

There is no evidence that Hagar ever looked back. She did not live bitterly imagining what her life would have been like if she had not been exiled from Abraham's household. She gives every indication that she fully embraced the future God had for her and for her son, even though it was vastly different than what she had imagined it would be. Hagar had to let go of the past and of any plans she may have had for her life in order to enjoy all that God had for her. And so to claim God's promise of descendants and hope for Ishmael's future, Hagar “got a wife for him.”
⁶

God kept His promise to Hagar. Ishmael married and had a family of his own. Included among his descendants are the majority of the Arab peoples living around the globe today and all Muslims. While many of Ishmael's descendants in our world today live in poverty, no one can dispute that the nations they have established have been richly blessed with almost unlimited natural resources at their disposal. And while many of Hagar's descendants today are suffering, her God is still standing by, patiently waiting … because God loves them.

But to receive the fullness of God's promise and purpose for herself and her son, Hagar had to proceed through life by looking ahead. She could not go forward by staying focused on the past any more than you and I can drive our cars forward by looking in the rearview mirror.

When you and I were young, we often had a picture of what we wanted our lives to be like when we grew up … a picture of our career, our family, and our children. What did you imagine your life
would be like today? Has the canvas of your life's painting turned out as you expected? Or has it been marred — slashed by a handicap, hurts, injustice, illness, bankruptcy, betrayal?

The way to healing, the way to freedom from the wretchedness of the pain, is
not
revenge. It is not giving
them
— the ones who wounded you — the silent treatment, or cutting them off, or cutting them out. It is not rejecting God and losing your faith. It is not blaming others and claiming to be an innocent victim. Vengeance, slander, self-defense, finger-pointing, and blame-giving will not ease your pain. God tells us exactly how to be healed. The remedy is simple but radical: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
⁷

Would you be willing to forgive? To release your hurt to God by forgiving those who have hurt you? Often that's the last thing you and I would ever think of doing. Somehow we're afraid that if we forgive them, they will somehow get away with what they have done to us. By holding on to our anger, we feel we are somehow making God pay for what He has allowed. But those very injustices and wounds God allows into our lives can go beyond hurt and become spiritually self-destructive if we refuse His healing remedy. Remember, you can't move forward while looking backward.

I was reminded in a fresh way of the need to forgive in order to move forward at the end of a recent dinner conversation with two couples, both of whom had held strategic leadership positions within Christian organizations and had been deeply wounded. One couple had pastored a large, influential church, only to be moved out because they had become “too evangelical.” The husband of the other couple had held the presidency of a Christian college but had
been removed when he was caught up in a power struggle within the board of directors. We had finished our meal when one of the women mused rather wistfully, “Anne, one day when we have time, I would like to ask you about forgiveness.” Then she paused for a moment, took a deep breath as though drawing in courage, and said, “Actually, I want to ask you now.” I was somewhat familiar with the circumstances of the extremely painful and humiliating experience she and her husband had endured at the hands of Christian leaders on the board of directors, so I shot up a silent arrow prayer, asking God to give me His insight and wisdom. I knew she was trying to move forward but was struggling to overcome this major obstacle. She was asking for help.

She related that someone had told her she had to forgive those who had essentially erased twenty-seven years of accomplishment from her husband's life. Of course, she affirmed, she knew she was supposed to forgive.
⁸
But then the person who told her she needed to forgive added something else — that the evidence of her forgiveness would be when she could love the wounders as God loved them. The look in her eyes tightened slightly as she confessed, “I don't think I can do that.” While I knew she and her husband had moved forward professionally by taking another prominent leadership position, I knew also she was personally and spiritually stuck in the quicksand of wounds from her past.

I candidly responded that if I were in her shoes, I couldn't love the wounders as God loved them either — not in myself. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Love is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the other person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
⁹

Love is a choice — a decision we make to put the well-being of the other person before our own. And forgiveness is also a decision. It is
not pretending that I have not been wounded or saying that what the other person did was not wrong. It is not letting them get by with it by not holding them accountable.

I have been asked repeatedly, “Anne, how have you experienced healing of your wounds? How have you been able to move past them?” The answer, which may seem simplistic but is the one that works, is that the healing antidote to wounds is forgiveness. But I don't stop with just the decision to forgive. Once I have made the decision to forgive, I move forward by doing something for the person who has hurt me.

I've learned that forgiveness is an intellectual choice I am commanded to make. If it were a feeling or an emotion, I couldn't obey the command since I can't necessarily control my emotions and feelings. It's a choice, pure and simple. If I only offered forgiveness to those who ask for it, or those who deserve it, or those I feel like forgiving, there are, to be honest, some people I would never forgive. But it's a decision that I make because I am commanded to forgive for one simple reason: God has forgiven me. As an act of grateful worship, I choose to forgive others.
¹⁰

But then my decision to forgive needs to be followed with an act of love that's sacrificial in nature. I need to do something for the person I am forgiving — something that is costly. Something I would do for no other reason than it's my act of worship — worship of One who laid down His life for me as His own act of sacrificial, loving forgiveness.

As dessert was served, I shared with my friend the story I related in chapter 8 about choosing to be rebaptized when my church canceled the Bible class I taught. I had already made the choice to forgive the church for removing Danny and me from leadership and teaching.
My submission to immersion baptism was my way of acting out my forgiveness with a demonstration of sacrificial love. Although it seemed to make no difference to the church, I know it made a difference in me because to this day I harbor no ill-will, bitterness, or unforgiveness. I have just let those feelings go. In fact, I recently found myself in a working relationship with the very man who had presided over the congregational meeting when my husband was removed from church leadership. I didn't find it difficult to work with him because, over time, my choice to forgive years ago had led to authentic feelings of forgiveness.