Authentic Pain Vs The Counterfeit Self- Genesis 32

I made the critical error of asking God to reveal the depth of His love for me. Never do this if you want to maintain control over your perceived identity.

Love is always war- it rages against your misconceptions and brings your counterfeit self to its knees.

But He is prepared for us to hate Him in certain arenas on the long journey to loving Him. He knows that His hope poses a threat to the captive mind.

I am here to talk about how

sometimes holding onto God hurts,

but why we should do it anyways.

Why fight for a blessing that involves pain? Why trust in something that requires our submission to weakness?

Who in the world wants to be blessed in such a violent way, where the awakening hurts?

This week I am limping along with my brother Jacob through Genesis 32. We are searching for healing. And we need help to claim our authentic names.

I have begun to lift up this prayer:

God, help me to understand how much You love me.

And after I asked for this blessing, not much later I started limping.

Why? He is touching the place deep inside that is curled tight and hard, attached firmly to a false sense of complete control. He shows me how much He loves me by touching the strained places. He points right at the weakness and then something snaps- the sudden severing of self from sufficiency.

 

This is the inopportune ripping away of denial and suppression.

Also, I might be limping because I literally pulled a tendon in my hip this week. That, too, might explain it.

The timing of my very real injury in conjunction with my writing is funny, but it also really hurts, so I will smile but I will not laugh.

And I don’t want to sit here and heal, I want to get up and do all. the. things. that need to be done. I want to control my environment, make things perfect, and execute my self-worth through production. I am what I do- am I not? Contentment is buried far beneath the laundry list of success. My counterfeit self finds validation in production and performance - this is the essence of control.

Human validation has become

the fly in the ointment

of all our hopes and dreams.

God, we have an agenda already. Can’t you just bless us quickly while we run?

This is the kind of limp where you think, “Yeah I am broken, but not THAT broken. Not me. I can still limp and keep up with the same pace as always. I can heal on the go.”

We rage against rest. We pull back from healing. Hope is an offensive four letter word.

My brother Jacob and I are learning that no person on this earth could ever fix what has been broken- human validation will always fall short. If you need it to succeed, you are destined to fail.

Accepting our limp requires sitting still in the presence of God, admitting weakness, asking for help, navigating emotions, and surrendering our agenda. This is best learned the hard way.

But because we are stubborn and resist change, we will put up a good fight first. He will have to drag us kicking and screaming out of the hard place we are determined to serve.

The truth is, only God knows the true identity of our most authentic self- we might think we know, but we really don’t.  

Not until we start to wrestle

in the dark of night with our trust issues

does the real pain begin.

God, reveal to us the depth of Your love.

Last week I followed Jacob through major relational conflict- he stole his brother’s birthright and inheritance and then ran for his life. He grabbed his blessing, flashed the peace sign and skipped town for good. He left his community behind.

Time passed- twenty years, to be exact, and then he gets the call that everyone dreads: it’s time to have that hard conversation- it’s time to face the past, there is no getting around it this time. Things are going to get heated and complicated.

So we straighten our spine, lift our head and enter the arena.

We are prepared to fight our brother. We are not prepared for what happens next.

Angels gather around to watch the fight.

32 ^[a]As Jacob started on his way again, angels of God came to meet him. ² When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is God’s camp!”

Right away we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who cheer for our victory. We must never forget this. It renews our hope to know that we are all supported by angelic forces. This revelation will serve to prepare us for the dark and lonely place, where the only companionship we will have is our fearful thoughts and angel guides.

But there is still a great deal of doubt and fear. Oh so much anxiety.

So we compose all the reasons that justify and explain our position, trying to make up for a lifetime of offense with a persuasive abundance of carefully crafted words:

³ Then Jacob sent messengers ahead to his brother, Esau, who was living in the region of Seir in the land of Edom. ⁴ He told them, “Give this message to my master Esau: ‘Humble greetings from your servant Jacob. Until now I have been living with Uncle Laban, ⁵ and now I own cattle, donkeys, flocks of sheep and goats, and many servants, both men and women. I have sent these messengers to inform my lord of my coming, hoping that you will be friendly to me.’”

Fear is looming on the horizon- fear of the unknown, the dark possibility of a fresh wave of accusation and offense. Even after so much time has passed, anxiety is still firmly attached to memory. The past is haunted with grief and regret. It threatens to overwhelm us now.

⁶ After delivering the message, the messengers returned to Jacob and reported, “We met your brother, Esau, and he is already on his way to meet you—with an army of 400 men!” ⁷ Jacob was terrified at the news.

Persuasive writing cannot save us here. The fear is that all the strife has accomplished nothing at all, and an abundance of reckoning is about to be unleashed upon our finest hopes and dreams.

What exactly are we fighting for here? The question looms.

We realize that this epic battle is going to require a massive surrender of volition, and we will need to hold on tight to Him through the pain. Anxiety is billowing; the kind that rolls in slowly during the night and completely shrouds the future in mystery.

¹¹ O Lord, please rescue me from the hand of my brother, Esau. I am afraid that he is coming to attack me, along with my wives and children. 

We grapple with all the things that we want to understand, so that we can secure our victory, guaranteed.

 “I am afraid”

We are afraid of facing our authentic identity. We shield the places within us that are wounded and weak, preparing for the worst.

¹² But you promised me, ‘I will surely treat you kindly, and I will multiply your descendants until they become as numerous as the sands along the seashore—too many to count.’”

We remind God he owes us, because of what we have lost. “You promised me, God!” We rage at the sky. We shake our fist.

But I have learned the hard way to remember this when I demand deliverance:

The ones I feel opposed to

are not really my enemies at all-

they are just wounded prisoners of war.

The One I will wrestle with is much bigger and more powerful, and He is on His way.

Keep this in mind the next time you find yourself pushing hard against the limits of human brokenness:

Jacob thought, “I will try to appease him by sending gifts ahead of me. When I see him in person, perhaps he will be friendly to me.” ²¹ So the gifts were sent on ahead, while Jacob himself spent that night in the camp.

We instinctually know we will have to face this fight alone, away from all the distractions, so we can wrestle unhindered with our doubts about our true identity.

We must meet our opponent in the midst of solitude and silence, where we stand alone in the lonely place, separate from everything we had planned.

²² During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two servant wives, and his eleven sons and crossed the Jabbok River with them.²³ After taking them to the other side, he sent over all his possessions.

It is the dark of night and we stand alone, completely exposed. We cannot control this reckoning. The creation of our hands has now come to recreate us.

And then our Opponent enters the ring. And it’s not the enemy we expected.

We stand before our Maker.

He loves us too much to allow us into the arena with anyone less than Himself. And this is not what we had planned.

²⁴ This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break. 

Jesus.

What are You doing here? I came to fight my enemy. Where is the brother who hates me?

Jesus??

I brought all my best defenses- anger, wrath, vengeance, defense, excuse, a persuasive abundance of written words.

None of that will help me now.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

We have forgotten that

Love is war.

He has come to rage against my pride. Because it is the heights of arrogance that reveal the depths of depravity.

And I stand before God and I resist His name for me with all I have. I don’t want to be rescued from myself, I want to be vindicated from my hurts.

I refuse to be loved.

But His plans are imminent and divine, and they loom even larger than my regret.

²⁵ When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket. 

He points right at the anger and obsession, and with a single touch the realization rocks our world, because He is dead right.

Oh my God, it’s true.

I am my own greatest enemy.

Those wounded prisoners of war who I was prepared to rage against, they do not belong in this arena. All the forces of my defensive anger are deflated by a single touch.

We are abruptly undone, pulled away without warning from our assumptions about ourselves and our world.

Jacob and I thought we knew our authentic self, until reality came and wrenched our self-perception completely out of alignment.

 “Don’t fix my identity it if it isn’t broken” has always been the subliminal mantra of certainty. But counterfeit confidence is the enemy of blessing.

There are wounds in our mind that we want Him to stay the hell away from. But to be healed, this obsession and pride must be broken.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

Oh, but not like this.

Jesus!

God, the reckoning hurts like hell. There is a painful breaking of human arrogance in the divine revelation of God’s love.

He asks us to let go of the weapons

we think we need for victory.

He is going to reveal the depth of His love by commanding our brave trust in His insensible intervention. And this is madness. But what exactly are we fighting for?

²⁶ Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!”

The morning comes to light the dark inside of us.

This is the triumph of the Son.

The dawn of our realization is approaching. We are beginning to rouse from our offended slumber, and when numb things awaken they always flood with pain before they fully come to life.

If He asks you to let go of something in the dark of night, something you were positively certain  you needed to win the fight, do you trust Him to still bless you when you awaken with the sun?

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

When we ask for blessing, what we are really asking for is to be authentically loved. Jacob won’t release his grip on the physical nature of God, because he isn’t convinced of the Spiritual presence.

We still don’t trust that He will guide us if we let go. We were so certain of a particular type of victory- we had the outcome determined on our own terms, before He interrupted.

How can we win the battle against offense

if we fight against the people who offended us?

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

The breaking of connection between our identity and our grief will mean loosening our attachment to the regret of the past. The place within you that you withhold from Him, that is the place of pain that needs to be touched. And it will hurt like hell, because your authentic self is wounded.

He sees this and steps into the arena to save us from ourselves.

This is what it feels like to fight for a breakthrough- before facing your future you must be broken and blessed in the weak place.

It is time for a renaming of who we are, a declaration of our true identity.

What you call yourself is many names: hurt, broken, wounded, ruined, desperate, angry, offended, wronged, afraid. These are not the names He calls you. Can you cast down these crowns of pride and claim the humble title of beloved?

God will ask us who we are now that our weapons of defense have been broken and our false identity has been found out.

²⁷ “What is your name?” the man asked.

Now our Opponent has pulled out the ultimate weapon, one which ends the match in a single blow: a mirror. A question.

Who are we becoming in this fight?

We stare ourselves in the reflection and realize that our persuasive abundance of defenses have always been destined to become our undoing. We are our own greatest enemy.

Jesus did not enter this arena to replace our offender, He entered the arena to replace our pride.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

The fight we expected is not the one we are in. To spar with your counterfeit self is to wrestle with the demons of your past, present and future, all at once. So Jesus stepped in to take their place.

What is our true name, anyhow? What are we becoming in this fight?

We don’t know anymore.

He replied, “Jacob.”

As we stare into this mirror, standing here in the arena with our Creator, breathing heavy and wiping sweat from our brow, straining and striving against the healing, our reflection begins to look like that of a total stranger.

What is my authentic self?

Why do we need to go to counselors and life-coaches and therapists and pastors and friends and churches to understand the workings of our own inner mind? Why do we need to write angry blogs, make broken resignations, and pour out a persuasive abundance of painful words?

It has come to blows because I am too scared to admit- I don’t understand His love for me. Not at all. 

I have underestimated everything.

We want to choose our own identity- but our present dreams are too small to give us the dignity we deserve as eternal spiritual beings. Now that we are broken, here in the arena with our wounded pride, He wants us to receive our authentic name.

It’s time to surrender to His blessing. It’s time for a new identity.

²⁸ “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel,^[c] because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”

We did not realize we were walking into this fight to discover who we truly are in Him.  We did not know we would receive a new destiny. We did not ask for this blessing, but here it is.

Savor this breakthrough moment- it is the beginning of a transformation that will continue on for all eternity.

But don’t get too hasty- our character is not developed here, only our curiosity. We realize we were wrong about God all along, just as wrong as we were about ourselves. There is much training to be done for the fight still to come.

For with the rising of the Son we will face those who we intended to spar with on this night, and we will be asked to address them by their own blessed names.

The battle will never be the same after this.

God, who are You, to know me better than I know myself?  Who are You to wrench away my precious pride?

²⁹ “Please tell me your name,” Jacob said.

This unexpected opponent, He is going to exit the arena for now, but our questions have only just begun.

We are afraid for Him to go, now that we are leaning on Him for support from this pain.

Do we trust Him to bless us in this way, through a breaking and renaming of our entire being? If so, don’t let go when strained things inside begin to break. Don’t’ fight against hope when it hurts. Keep surrendering.

Love wrenches away our masks when it sheds light in the dark places. When we hold onto God in the fight, we give Him permission to authenticate our brokenness.

And this redemption will feel like wrath,

because of our counterfeit perspective.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

He points at the hard place and it breaks suddenly away. This will leave a scar- and a limp.

And then His presence recedes so that we can rest. He will be hidden in plain sight all around us while we slowly heal.

He will not overwhelm us with too much authenticity at one time. He blesses our doubts and honors our needs. He knows when to walk away from the fight. We cannot self-regulate our passion.

More is to come, but He does not want us to strive any more today. It is time to rest from the struggle.

It is time to begin to heal.

He will answer the hard questions another time.

“Why do you want to know my name?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.

Did Jacob let go, or did God? Was it mutual?

The blessing came in the instant between the wounding and the healing, that timeless pause between defeat and victory, that eternal moment between letting go and falling.

And when He releases us, we feel like time stands still. It’s just the dark and the quiet and the empty hard place.

But we have an awareness now- this pain is a signature, a promise, full of authenticity.

We have seen a glimpse of our divine identity- we hold onto that blessing while we limp away.

Jacob and I, we search our enlightened thoughts for a Name to put to the new desire that is rising in our heart.

The pain of blessing radiates into our entire future. Now we have the power to give the fight inside of us a new trajectory.

³⁰ Jacob named the place Peniel (which means “face of God”), for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.” 

We thought we would not survive the surrender.

But we tasted holy victory, the kind that comes after waving a white flag in the wind. And now we have seen God, struggled with Him, glimpsed the futility of our counterfeit person and been strangely blessed.

And I believe that one day when we are least expecting it, long after we have surrendered in gratitude and relinquished all control, the authenticity of our deep healing will reveal itself in an instant.

We will discover we have the power to limp with compassion towards those prisoners of war who we had once planned to rage against.

This fight was not what we had planned, but it was greater than we could have imagined. This is the emergence of the authentic self.

³¹ The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel,^[d] and he was limping because of the injury to his hip.

Yes, the knowing leaves a scar. But now we don’t have to blame broken humanity for our suffering- rather, we can attach Divine blessing to it.

What once stood as a symbol of defeat

is now a war medal of victory.

He gives his beloved a limp that will be seen around the world, with a story that will go down into history as the glorious revelation of an eternal inheritance.

Dear readers, He has wrestled with me this week, and I have resisted Him. I have the limp to prove it. I can accept my weakness or curse it, but it’s a part of my story.

This is my story.

When God touched the strained and stubborn place, it sent off a chain reaction that has the potential to bless the entire world, one renaming at a time.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

Never ask for Divine blessing if you want to maintain control over your perceived identity. Love is always war- it rages against your misconceptions and brings your counterfeit self to its knees.

What is my fully authentic self?

I don’t exactly know yet.

I have no idea what I’m doing. None.

But one thing I do know for certain- He blesses my questions. He prepares me for healing. And He renames my entire being.

He gives my passion

a new trajectory.

I have come here today to talk about how sometimes holding onto God hurts, and why we should do it anyways. The greatest blessings involve pain. This means we must trust in Someone that blesses our submission to weakness.

But who in the world wants to be blessed in such a crazy-backwards way, where the awakening hurts?

Once I am done writing this, I will limp forward from the hard place with mysterious hope in my heart.

The kind of hope that hurts inside as a reminder of where the healing has begun.

And I will come forth into my authentic self, one limping step at a time.

And there, at the foot of the cross where His wounds bless my soul, I will kneel and receive the bread and the cup alongside my fellow prisoners of war.

We will worship the One who has met us in the arena and brought us to our knees in victory.

And one fight at a time we will rise together above our wounds and we will inherit our true identities in the blessed Presence of our Creator.

Our victory is certain, because all are blessed when Love is war.

This is the proud moment 

when our brave surrender 

becomes the catalyst 

for our victory.

Yes, I am talking about you.

Dear tiny tribe of readers.

May all beings be peaceful and happy, even when it hurts. Amen and amen.

~*~

With deepest gratitude

for my tiny tribe of readers-

Rebecca

To read Pearls and Presence, click here.

To read my story, click here.

Shame and Abel- Genesis 4

When you are underestimated you have more freedom to be yourself because nobody is looking.

I said something this week that revealed where I am on the journey to self-awareness and healing:

“My sacrifice is perfect, God, so what the heck is wrong with Your altar?” –me. Yesterday.

Because I was reading the story of Cain and Abel, and I immediately identified with the ashamed murdering brother. The one who works his rear off to put together an epic offering to present on the altar- the kind of offering that was built by himself, with his own two hands. 

He was immensely proud of presenting to his Creator something that he made by himself, with bare hands and brazen pride and deaf ears.

I was going to publish the next chapter to Pearls and Presence, because that was the plan, and it was a good one. But now I am going to write about Cain and Abel for this blog, because it’s on my heart.

Here is why: I want to write about shame. Because shame is cultivated in silence.

So readers, we need to talk.

For the New Year I have started re-reading the Bible from beginning to end for the third time in my life. I do this because after I am old and grey I will give my children my entire library of books and journals, and I want them to see that their mother underlined and marked up every single page of every single bible she ever owned. This will be a testament to them that even though I had a lot of setbacks on the journey, I was always seeking God. I was always trying to know Him more. I was always searching for more of Jesus, every day. In both good times and in bad I needed more of Him and I always knew it.

I always want more Jesus, even when I present my hard work to the altar and it gets turned down. Especially then, when I realize there is a hard line I have drawn between me and God that looks a lot like my own prideful agenda. 

I had expectations for Your response, God, and You didn't meet them!

So I write all over my bibles because I want visible, physical proof of this for my kids. I want them to know how much I lean on God’s love as I walk through this life, through mistakes and victories alike. Sometimes my parenting isn’t great, sometimes my choices aren’t admirable, sometimes I get lost or relapse into old hurts, sometimes my bitterness threatens to turn into full-fledged hatred, but my heart always returns to God and His Word. For every page that God penned His words through men, there is a page where I underlined, highlighted, and asked for Guidance.

A place where I returned to the altar with open hands, instead of closed ones grasping tightly to the things I think I own but which really own me.

When I am old I will give my children these scribbled up bibles and they will see markers of what I learned during my personal journey. That way as they are walking through their own stories as adults, they can learn from my mistakes and follow my lead- to never give up on God’s promises. To approach the altar and try again. And again.

To come to the altar with questions instead of answers, or even to show up silent with open hands.

My library and my writing will be the most important physical treasures I leave behind me. These were the first things I grabbed when a fire threatened to burn down my house last year. Second only to my purse, they were the next physical item in the house I grabbed on the way out the door. That’s how I came to realize their value.

The first time I read through all of scripture it took me about 5 years. The second time it took me one year. I’m not going for any records in speed, but now I am going for some improvement in content retention. So this time around, I’m stopping early on to contemplate and reflect. Which brought me to Genesis chapter 4, the story of Cain and Abel. The story of two brothers who bring sacrifices to the altar of God of vastly different origin.

The story of how shame led to death, because it always does if we don’t heed the warnings in our body, mind and soul.

If I am going to be as raw and honest here as I have been so far, then this is what I would say- I have started out the New Year arguing with God about my new ministry of service.

“God”, I would say, “why aren’t You using my giftings, why doesn’t anybody notice the quality of my service, what is the point of wasting the things that YOU gave me in the first place?”

Do you know how many times I have felt like an idiot in the past 6 months? Read my story. Know how many times I have called myself one since starting this journey to healing? Too many to admit. And I feel like an idiot when I realize that I argued with God- again.

"My gifts are perfect, God, why are you letting them go to waste? Did I show up at the wrong altar, what’s the problem here?”

Perfectionism leads to shame which leads to blame, which is the reason Cain murdered his brother. Because he couldn’t live with the shame of being caught in his prideful arrogance.

So when I land on the story of Cain and Abel, this reality hits home. If you were to look it up, you would find the setup for the perfect shame-story:

“When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd, while Cain cultivated the ground. ³ When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. ⁴ Abel also brought a gift—the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift,⁵ but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.”

Ok, stop right there. I have been in Cain’s position far more often than Abel’s. How many times have I done something, said something, written something that was perfect and yet God did not receive it how or when I wanted Him to. 

And I immediately argue, saying “well my sacrifice is perfect, God, I labored over it for hours and days and months, there is nothing wrong with it!” And yet, I don’t get my way. I have to submit to the lesson of walking away and rethinking and seeking what God really wants of me and then trying again.

Well when the sacrifice you bring to the altar does not get accepted, whatever that looks like for you, then there are two options: fear or love. That’s it, only two choices.

You can fear God’s judgement, which leads to shame. Or you can love God’s judgement, which makes you Abel to fail well and try again.

In the past year I struggled with presenting the wrong things before God. Granted, they were good things, perfect things even. But they were my things, created by the work of my weary efforts, scratched from the hard ground of my circumstances by my two bare hands.

The brothers had two differences: Abel was a shepherd. Cain was a farmer. In other words, Abel hung around with animals in the field all day, playing a harp, throwing rocks at predators, and writing poetry. While Cain was busting his butt farming the hard ground, a job that goes from sunup to sundown with a ton of physical labor. So when he brought his sacrifice to the altar, he was really proud of his hard work. Damn proud, with his chin held high and his pride puffed up real big.

I imagine that God probably saw that stubborn, independent arrogance, and he told Cain “if you continue to bring me the wrong sacrifices, you will sin.” Why? Because shame is sure to follow a fall when you have built your self-worth on what you produce. If your value is only as good as your product, then it has to be perfect and perfectly received, otherwise shame gets a foothold. There is no room for human error, for humility, for love.

Cain could not understand that God wanted to love him for who he was, not for what he did. He wanted to earn his Father’s love by the work of his hands, which cheapened the gift.

So if you read the chapter, you will see that Cain becomes so ashamed of God’s rejection of his offering that he eventually has to take out his brother, because every time he looks at him he is reminded of his own embarrassing shortcomings. He sees rejection where he once saw a human being. Instead of trying again, he gives up and gives in to hate.

God did warn Cain of the price of unhealed shame- "Why are you so angry? Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be it's master." (v6-7)

Shame always causes disconnection. Which is why the first punishment for Cain's murder is that he is will no longer be able to work the ground. The second punishment is banishment. Cultivating will not be fruitful. As his father Adam was exiled from the garden, Cain does one better- he becomes a fugitive on the entire earth. 

He would never again be allowed to earn God’s love- he would be forced to spend a lifetime realizing that God loves him because of who he is, not because of what he does. Not because his offering looked perfect.

It was not really Cain who killed Abel- it was shame. We all fail at some point, because we are human and we are flawed. But God loves us anyways. He just wants to make us ABEL to receive love, and if we choose otherwise, we choose shame.

            My husband said to me the other day, “Read your blog again- find the part where you talk about being a perfectionist.” This was right after my argument with God about the problem with His altar. So I regrouped, reread, and came back to Jesus with totally empty hands and a whole lot of questions.

And God said to me “My beloved, in your anger do not sin because then shame gets the last word of that conversation. Let ME love you, come empty and receive my love. Do not be ashamed of who you are. I love you yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Give Me your shame and I will give you an abundance.”

When you are underestimated you have more freedom to be yourself because nobody is looking. 

But take note that God and His angels are always there, cheering you on and walking along with you and knowing the exact value of your true worth as a unique and powerful being- that is why He is completely fascinated with your soul.

Never settle for shame- you are Abel to receive love if you forgive and come back empty and try again. Try again, beloved. Try again.

Amen and amen. Today is another day to be reborn.

~*~

 

To read my book Pearls and Presence, click here.

To learn more about my own personal story of redeeming love, click here.

With gratitude for all my readers- 

Rebecca