Rise Up A Warrior, Part 3: Vengeance Is Not Yours

"Christians can trust God to redeem even the greatest of tragedies and most desperate of situations."
-Franklin Graham 

My dearest warrior,
 
I love finding out more about God’s nature. I love finding out more of who He is and what He is like. I love discovering who He is for me. One of the most incredible discoveries is that my whole life is His. Every aspect, every part of my life belongs to Him. That seems like a really obvious statement, however, I have found that though this is something we may think we understand, usually we don’t have the faintest understanding of what this really means. The reality is far more beautiful than you probably have begun to realize.

Most people who talk about God’s place in their lives order things in a certain way. They say God comes first (or they acknowledge that He should), their spouse or family comes next, career after that, and so on. I’ve listened to Bill Johnson talk about this a number of times, and yet I am always struck by the reality: he says that though this is good list because it shows your priorities, he has found that this list is impossible to live by because it is really difficult to divide your time. “The best answer is that when God is number one, there is no number two. I actually get to love my wife as unto the Lord and He receives it personally.” (Click here to watch. It's a 5 minute clip, and it is wonderful teaching. )
 
Once you realize that there is no list of priorities in you life, but that all things belong to Him, a shift begins to take place in your life. Let me explain: you can say “God, my life is yours, but I don’t have enough time to go to church/ spend time reading your Word. I trust You, don’t touch my finances. Money is tight and I don’t trust You enough to tithe. You have my life, but I’d rather keep You and my career separate. I belong to You, but if someone hurts me, I am taking vengeance. I will take matters into my own hands, and make things right.” Do you see I mean? Though we may say that our lives belong to Him, we actually put very little into practice because we have not had the revelation that quite literally every. single. little. thing in our lives is His. All of it, it all belongs to Him. We are bought and paid for by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and there is not one single piece of our lives that we can say is not His.
 
Think about the wonderful implications of this: if your life belongs to Him, then you can trust Him with every single thing in your life, no matter how big or how small, because it’s all in His hands. He will handle every situation with great care, because to Him, every part of your life is precious (even if you have been sloppy with your own life). He is trustworthy and He is faithful. His love and kindness are relentless. His mercies are new every single day. You get to start fresh and live each day anew for Him!
 
You can trust Him with your relationships, with the hearts of those you love, with your career, with your ministry, your time ...and with vengeance. Though you may have thought about trusting Him with those you love, or that He will provide (a job, money, food, rain and sunshine), there are some things that are not always obvious. Vengeance is one of these things. We may trust God with a slew of things, but the moment someone does us wrong, slanders us, wounds us, hurts us or does us wrong, we immediately take matters into our own hands. We don’t even think about trusting Him with it! But the Lord says, “Vengeance is mine.” Why would God not care about the times when we are wronged? Why don’t we realize that He wants to make the wrong things right?
 
I have been struggling with some wounding as of late, and in the middle of that, God told me to trust me with all the areas of my life where I have been wronged, and to wait on Him to intervene. Some of these things have been incredibly bitter, and extremely difficult. I have wept more hours than I care to count, and I have felt more heartache in a few months time than I ever wanted in a lifetime. There have been times where I have been so overwhelmed by my desperation and the depth of my sorrow that all I could do was scream at God until I lost my voice. But in all of that time, He asked me to trust Him. He told me to wait upon Him, to grow from the wounding and not to waste my suffering. He told me never to take vengeance into my own hands, because it would only make matters worse. I would only make a mess of things if I tried to do it myself, and would end up even more hurt than I already was. I knew He was right. He gently scooped my heart into His hands and told me, “It’s okay, darling; I will make everything right. I will make it all worth it. I will mend your broken heart, but you must not become bitter, and you must trust Me to intervene on your behalf.”
 
In this time, God introduced me to a sweetness like I have never experienced—and that I could not have ever experienced had I not been faced with the most bitter circumstances of my life. I found that we must know bitterness to know His sweetness; we must know anguish, sorrow and suffering to know true joy; we must feel pure vitriolic hatred and put it off in favor of His love to know the depth of the heart of Love—to know His love for us and for those who do us wrong. He has taught me to love where I have desperately wanted to hate. We must face the harshness and hardness of the world to know His gentleness and to understand how soft His heart is towards us and those around us; we must weather the most dangerous and the deadliest of storms to know how truly trustworthy He is and to understand what it means that He is “good.” Truly, you cannot understand God’s goodness until you come face-to-face with Him and fall to your knees, trembling before His beautiful, terrifying glory!
 
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In ALL your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones.”  – Psalm 3:5-8
 
In this time of heartache and growth, God directed me to David. As I began to learn about the life of David, I found myself enraptured by his story, and by what he had endured throughout his life. This man endured more injustice in his lifetime than most people could even begin to imagine. We all know him as a man after God’s own heart, as a king, as the shepherd boy who had mad skill with a slingshot, the boy who took on Goliath and killed him, and we all know his psalms. Though I knew he had been on the run from Saul, I did not realize how dramatic those events were. David was hunted by Saul (who was demonized) and his army of 3,000 men for about 7 years! Can you imagine being a fugitive, running from cave to cave with your own army of around 800 to hide from the man who is the head of state, head of law enforcement, your boss and father-in-law—all because he got it in his head that you want to kill him, even though you don’t? Saul was creating laws that made David a criminal, so that he would be hunted down and killed. That is a difficult, complicated situation.
 
What really struck me was David’s heart towards God in all of this. Here he is on the run from an army of 3,000 for 7 years, and he says “God, into your hands I commend my spirit.” These words were so powerful that Jesus later repeated them on the cross. As Mike Bickle explained, what makes this statement so profound is not that he was saying when he dies that God can take his spirit into heaven. “He meant the things he cares more deeply about; he commits to God his money, his reputation, his ministry, his key relationships. [He was saying] ‘I put them into your care and I invoke your involvement in these areas of my life.” Suddenly everything made sense.
 
When we trust God with our lives, we trust Him with everything. We trust Him with our time, money, efforts, energy, relationships …and vengeance! We can trust Him to take the places in our lives where we have been mistreated, and to make the wrong things right. But, as Mike Bickle said, the law of the spirit is this: only one of you can take vengeance; it’s either you or God, it cannot be both. If you take matters into your own hands, God will remove Himself from it and will not intervene. However, if you trust God with your circumstances, He will take make the wrong things right. It is either His will be done, or our will. Trust that He will right what is wrong, and know that it will be in His time, according to His will and done His way. He will probably not do it the way you would have wanted it, but trust Him to know better than you do.  
 
My heartache was difficult, and I definitely felt like I could relate to David. It made me realize how small (though not insignificant to the Father) my own trials are, and that if David could trust God with every part of his life, then so could I. One thing that caught my ear, and also made me laugh was what Mike Bickle had to say about personal injustices: everyone in the whole world is mistreated throughout their life. “You are not being picked on in a special way!” Though this is not a particularly profound statement, I think we often get so caught up in ourselves that we feel like we are enduring the worst trial to ever be seen on this earth, and that no one knows how terrible it is that we have to go through this. While I will not discount your trials or mine (they are designed specifically for our growth, and are not going to be more difficult than we can handle; some people can handle more than others, but each trial is specific to that person—do not discount someone else’s trial because it does not look as hard to you as your own), it is comforting to look at something as insane as David’s trials and to think “if he could respond to such injustice and mistreatment in a godly way, so can I.”
 
Trust Him with the heart of the woman He showed you would be your wife; trust Him with the one whom your heart loves; trust Him with the heart of your spouse who was unfaithful but is making things right; trust Him with your boss who slandered you; trust Him with the people who ripped you off; trust Him with the money or property that was stolen from you; trust Him. He will take care of it. Don’t doubt His goodness.
 
My dear warrior, don’t take vengeance. Vengeance is not yours. Your King and Commander is trustworthy. He has given you direct orders. As a warrior, when your King and Commander gives a direct order, you follow through. Don’t establish your own justice, but rather give place to God’s wrath, give place for Him to break in and set things right. You must trust Him without taking it into your own hands.
 
Live in the battleground,
Warrior Beloved
 
 ©Michèle Aimée, 2016