By Giles Davis — The first year and a half of being Area Director of SEND Spain has been a difficult time for me. I won’t lie. Many times I have found myself on the verge of giving up.
This wearing down was not so much because of how hard the work itself was, but because of how I reacted to it internally. During that first year as Director, every two months I would find myself getting bitter inside. It shamed me and frustrated me each time that I had to admit that it was so. I deeply wanted to be able to do this job with a joyful heart and not a grumpy one, but try as I might, that bitterness would build up until I had to face it and confess it.
This cycle was not only discouraging but exhausting as well. If you’ve ever found yourself trapped in bitterness, you will know that it eats you up from the inside, consuming your thoughts and energy.
As I was experiencing these struggles, God was speaking to me strongly through Ephesians 5:18
(be filled with the Spirit) and Galatians 5:22-23 (the fruits of the Spirit) pointing out to me that I was seeking to be filled with joy instead of simply seeking to be filled with him. It struck me that I had been crying out, “God, fill me with your joy,” since this was what I thought I needed in order to be able to serve him properly. Instead, God wanted me to cry out, “God, fill me with your Holy Spirit,” and then he would fill me with just the amount of joy he felt I needed.
: “Then the Spirit of God came powerfully upon Saul, and he became very angry.”It surprised me to think that the Spirit of God had actually filled Saul with anger. Yes, anger. Righteous anger. Anger against God’s enemies. I had never really thought that anger could be one of the things God’s Spirit might fill me with. It certainly doesn’t seem to fit in the list of the fruits of the Spirit! Yet Jesus was certainly filled with anger when he saw the abuse of God’s temple.
God showed me how quick I was to get angry when someone cut me off in traffic, but when Satan attacked my family and Christ’s Body, the church, I barely reacted. I had it all backwards! He was looking to fill me with his Spirit, and with that, his anger against these attacks!
One day, the oppression grew so great that my wife, Deb, and I dropped to our knees in our kitchen and prayed against the enemy. I was struggling under such extreme feelings and emotions that I seriously questioned being able to continue. We prayed, but I have to confess my lack of faith. I did it as an act of desperation, not out of a firm belief that God would move.
Yet there on my knees in my kitchen, with Deb kneeling at my side, I felt the fog lift as we rebuked the enemy in the name of Jesus and proclaimed our dedication to our God and his work.
I stood up from that prayer feeling as if a month had passed since we first fell to our knees, astounded that such radical emotions and feelings could be changed so completely in such little time.
It was at that moment that we realized the full extent of the spiritual battle we had been in, and it was then that Deb wrote our supporters, asking for “WARfare prayer.” We are thankful for all who prayed that we would stand strong in the battle and that the enemy would not burn us out or wear us down.
At the time we did not know if this relief amidst the battle would be momentary, or lasting, and it is with great joy that I can say, months later, that God has granted us continued victory against the enemy. It fills me with gratitude to the Lord to be able to say that I personally have not fallen back into bitterness again since late summer. That may sound like nothing to some, but for me it is a milestone. A breakthrough. A breath of fresh air in the midst of a battlefield. God confirmed all this in a time of prayer. I wrote out my prayer with him as if it was a conversation between us. This is what I heard:
God: Giles, listen to me. You are doing fine. You are where you need to be for right now. Don’t assume that you know where all this is going. You do not. Take each step in me or it will be a misstep. You are like a dizzy man walking in the dark. On your own you cannot hope to walk a straight line. Even if you think you know where to go, you will not be able to walk straight there. You would never have stepped toward being Director of SEND Spain on your own. There are still more steps to take that you would not have taken. Don’t assume that since you said yes to being Director that I will not ask anything else from you. Are you willing to go where I lead?
Me: I think so. (I had to pause here a while to really consider my answer.) Yes, I am willing. I hope my heart can follow my mind quicker this time without having to fall into bitterness again. But I will go wherever you lead, Father.
God: Good. That was what I wanted to hear. This whole process has been about breaking you, Giles, in order to reform you. You were a bone that had grown crooked. I asked you to be Director largely because I knew you did not want to do it. You had this idea that you would follow me anywhere but that I would never ask you to do anything you didn’t want to do. Your bitterness over this past year has been the death throes of that belief dying. You believed that you had the right to serve me doing what you loved doing. That was how you believed the Body was supposed to function. All of that still remains true. It is not an either/or. I want people serving in their gifts, and that brings me joy, but at the same time I want people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for me. That kind of devotion also brings me joy. This was what I needed you to learn. You needed to see that you could do whatever I asked you to do, and that I could ask you to do whatever I wanted. This is true surrender. This is what you give me now.
I offer this prayer to any of you who might find yourself in the same place as I have been. If you find yourself sloughing through bitterness in your heart, may God grant you freedom as he has granted me. It may require breaking you like correcting a crooked bone, which does indeed hurt, but the strength and flexibility that comes from that bone being straightened makes it all worth the while.
