Receive Everything by Admitting You Deserve Nothing

May 18th, 2015

Life is More Than Fair

God keeps giving me breakthroughs. I don’t know how much I can do for other people, but I do try to share. People don’t have any real motivation to listen to me, and there are all sorts of competing voices out there spreading sweet-tasting nonsense. I can’t do much about that, but I can say a few words once in a while.

I turned back to God because life didn’t feel right, and I was under stress. I felt some guilt, which is commendable, but I was largely motivated by a desire to have a more pleasant experience here on earth. There is no reason to lie about it. I didn’t wake up one day with a burning urge to help God do his work.

In my pursuit of blessings, I was strongly encouraged by the charismatics I looked to for teaching and support. My old church was a silly, embarrassing fermentation chamber of selfishness and denial. Then there were the characters on TV. Some TV preachers told me that what God really wanted was for me to be rich, and that he would make it happen in exchange for donations to their ministries. Other TV preachers said that what I really needed was motivational training, to provide me with the encouragement and willpower to make things happen with my own strength.

My influences were awful. But I knew one thing that was useful. Back in the 1980s, God had made me understand that if I prayed in tongues a lot, everything would work out. So I stuck with that. Unfortunately, most of the teachers who influenced me were working against God, and that slowed me down. I listened and tried to reconcile when I should have walked away.

I knew the money-lovers were wrong. I had been burned by them in the past. They are complete idiots. But I still thought it was important to donate a lot. I also thought it was important to volunteer at church, and that it was important to help build the organization. In addition to these things, I was highly motivated by the idea that when I was aligned with God’s will, things would generally go well in my life, so if I gave money, volunteered, and did what seemed right according to the Bible, I would presumably have a blessed life.

I wanted to do what God wanted me to do, but really, I was thinking about the external blessings more than anything else.

My life improved a lot, but I could not truthfully say that I got satisfactory results.

I started to realize that it was very important to get rid of iniquity. I came to understand that human beings were full of dumb ideas and bad habits which came from external spirits and our own flesh. That was important.

People at my old church did not want to hear about it. Anything that smacked of repentance or correction was considered “legalism,” “division,” and “condemnation.” They seemed to believe that God wanted the Wilkerson family–the pastors and their offspring–to be very rich and highly admired, and that the purpose of the people who attended the church was to submit without question, to give and do without complaint or restraint, and above all, to smile and shut up.

I understood that I needed to change, but I still didn’t have a heartfelt love of change. I was glad that God had helped me to be grateful, and that he had delivered me from eating too much, but I did not have a burning enthusiasm for improvement. Mainly, I wanted the power and help that come from improvement.

I don’t know if I can be blamed for that. I was raised in a dysfunctional family, and I had all sorts of scars. I wanted an ordered and peaceful life.

I kept praying in tongues and receiving new knowledge. During 2014 and the last few months, things started to shift. I had a list of people I prayed for every day, and I started praying a lot for internal change. I asked God to remove our iniquities and put the heart of Jesus in us. I asked him to put his ideas, urges, and emotions in us. Since I started making these requests, things have broken loose.

Over the last few months, I’ve developed a genuine love of correction I have started asking God for it, explicitly and fervently. I have started to crave it. This is a major change, and it has made my life much more pleasant.

Correction, which is another word for righteousness, sounds like an unpleasant thing. It sounds like I asked God to hit me with a stick or take away everything I enjoyed, but that’s wrong. Supernatural correction is just healing and straightening. It enables you to do the things you want to do yet were not able to do in your own strength.

I have always had a lot of weaknesses. I was disorganized. I worried. I was afraid, usually of things that were extremely unlikely to happen. I was bitter because I felt that I had been cheated in life. Even if I rejected bitterness and refused to indulge it, it was still inside me. I had issues with crabbiness, even though I did not like being crabby. My work ethic was bad. I was messy. I procrastinated. I didn’t connect with people as well as I wanted to, because past mistreatment had put barriers and limiting chains inside me.

If you listen to most preachers, they’ll tell you to fight problems like the ones I had. Fighting is swell, if you can’t get rid of the problems. God wants to take your inner problems away so you don’t have to fight them. There is a difference. It’s better to be good than to try to be good.

You can argue all day about whether a person who is good without trying is as praiseworthy as someone who fights his negative traits every day. It doesn’t matter. We are not supposed to be good through willpower and determination. After all, the Bible says our righteousness is like rags used for cleaning people’s rear ends. It’s somewhat better than nothing, but it’s weak and failure-prone.

Think about the people you know who have tried to change. What percentage of people who diet stay thin? What percentage of addicts stay clean for life? Have you ever known anyone who continued to work out and eat right until his death? I think Jack Lalanne managed it, but he was one in millions.

Sometimes we succeed in changing certain things about ourselves, but generally we fail. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger let himself get fat, weak, and flabby at least once, and his self-discipline is legendary.

Correction means relief from your weaknesses. It can come through supernaturally imparted knowledge. It can come from deliverance from spirits. It can come from the power of the Holy Spirit. However it comes, it’s very, very good, and the shocking thing is that it even feels good. It feels better than receiving money. It feels better than meeting your one true love. It feels better than success or physical healing. Once you start receiving it, you’ll understand how good it is, and you’ll want more. As the Bible says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Nothing is as convincing as experience.

Once I started feeling correction happening inside me, I got very excited about it, and I found that I wanted it more than anything. The peace it brings is magnificent. It feels like the peace of accomplishment, but unlike that peace, it is neither temporary nor illusory. It comes from God, not you, so you can’t claim credit.

The inner correction led to outer manifestation. I saw it in my surroundings. My house was gross. There was disorder everywhere. There were places where the dust was a horror to see. I had junk I needed to get rid of. Things needed to be moved. When I started receiving correction, suddenly things started changing. I used to be intimidated by cleaning and organizing, but they became pleasant hobbies.

I bought various cleaners and tools. I got excited about microfiber and HEPA filters. I threw things out. I moved furniture and mopped under it. I washed things that had never been washed. I finally learned how to get a bathroom to look the way it should, instead of being satisfied with bleaching the floor and toilet.

I got back into electronics. I brought my old calculator back to life, and when I couldn’t get the display to work right, I replaced it. I found myself compiling and synthesizing information from various sources. I did homework for several hours a week, and I put everything in a big notebook.

I developed a crazy system of exercises I designed myself. They take about fifteen minutes a day, they require no equipment, they’re easy to do, and they work.

I got off of carbs, caffeine, and sugary drinks, and I started eating more fat, protein, vegetables, and fruit. I feel better. I don’t have carb headaches or caffeine irritability.

I am better able to manage the tasks of an orderly life. I feel like Hercules, cleaning the Augean stables, or Alexander, cutting the Gordian knot.

The funny thing is that I’m being blessed, which is what I wanted back when I was misguided. Isn’t that wrong? Should I be so quick to conclude that the good things that happen to me are indicative of success in my walk with God? Doesn’t this make me a bad, blessing-obsessed Christian? No! I’m getting these things as the result of the inner change which is now my primary goal. As Jesus said, you have to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness first, and then the other stuff will come. Now that the little things are less important to me, they come more easily.

If you can get to a state in which you really love correction, the way you love pizza or following your favorite sports team, you will receive correction, and with it, you will receive external blessings.

The message is not that blessings come through correction. The message is that correction is the blessing.

Last week, I moved another step forward. God made me realize that I deserve to be in hell. That sounds bad, right? It’s not. It’s liberating.

Every human being above a certain age deserves to be in hell, suffering terribly, under the authority of vicious beings that torture and abuse without rest. Think about that. If that’s true, can anyone on earth claim to have been cheated?

Earth is the rim of hell. It’s a terrible, corrupt place, filled with suffering. But it’s not hell itself. People in hell would do anything to get back here. We can’t imagine how much they want to be anywhere other than hell.

If these things are true, then every bad thing that has ever happened to you has not only been fair; it has been much, much better than what you deserve. Maybe other beings had no right to mistreat you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.

Life is not unfair. It’s just not. Life is way more than fair. We are not victims.

Maybe you’ve been raped. Maybe you’ve been imprisoned unjustly. Maybe you have cancer. Your problems may be horrible. But you’re not in hell, and if you could choose, knowing what hell is like, you would beg to be here, with every problem you have, before you would agree to spend one day tormented in the pit.

We have a tendency to complain to God. We think we’re supposed to have good lives, whether we do anything for him or not, simply because other people seem to have good lives. If you can’t find a spouse or a good way to make money, or if you have an illness you can’t get rid of–if you have any problem which seems unusual to you–you may feel cheated. In your heart, you’ll say, “It’s not fair.” But it is fair. Actually, that’s not true. If life were fair, you’d be in hell, and Jesus would never have been tortured to death. Do you really want fairness?

God gave me something to say to myself. I say, “The worst things that have ever happened to me are much better than what I deserved.” These words have supernatural power. When I have a problem that seems like a big deal to me, and I start to feel cheated, I say these words to myself, and I feel the power working in me. Tension leaves me. Bitterness goes. It’s wonderful.

I have been asking God to destroy my pride, and these words are among the tools he gave me to help him get it done. Job suffered until he admitted he could not say he deserved better. We are in the same boat. The Bible clearly says God is the enemy of the proud, and that includes proud believers. It includes people who preach and run churches. It includes proud people who run Christian orphanages. If I think I’ve been cheated, I’m proud; I’m saying I’ve earned something better. As a result, God will fight me, and he can’t lose. If I admit I’m getting a much better deal that what I have coming, he will fight my problems, not me.

It works. It’s not a joke. You have to try it. Say, “I am not a victim,” and mean it. Realize you deserve evil, not good. Get out of denial. Stop comparing what you have to what your “blessed” neighbors have.

If you will put this stuff to work, you will get a result. If you defend yourself and claim God will reward you bases on what you do, you will remain stuck in the swamp of pride, spinning your wheels and sinking. Don’t do it. No one has the standing to defend himself before God. It will poison your future and ruin your success.

I hope someone who reads this will try it.

4 Responses to “Receive Everything by Admitting You Deserve Nothing”

  1. Ruth H Says:

    I hope they do too. This is a great witness, your personal testimony given from your heart. I appreciate it.

  2. baldilocks Says:

    It works!

    He works.

  3. Eastern Kentucky Guy Says:

    As always, this has been a blessing to read. I hope you realize that what God shares with you keeps on blessing those you share it with like this. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.

  4. Steve B Says:

    Loved this. You always seem to kick these out right about the time I really to hear them. I am at a big life turning point, and the concept of seeking correction, and radically cleaning up my life, both in a physical and spritual sense is timely and appealing.

    You wonder about the size of your ministry, but I think some people plant seeds, while others may reap the harvest.

    I remember once hearing the “faith as small as a mustard seed” idea explained that the mustard plant can grow in austere places. It’s roots can find the smallest cracks in rocks, and as it grows, the roots can actually crack and split the rock open. So a tiny seed can crack a stone. Maybe your words bear fruit in a few hearts, but maybe one of those hearts is changed through your words, and God uses it to great affect in ways you couldn’t have imagined.