Tea with Wisdom
September 4, 2024
Malcolm’s Combat Boots
Stephanie began, “Malcolm is here. He has a shoe in his hand. What is that, Malcolm? I feel like you're about to smack a bug with it or something. What is this shoe?”
Malcolm replied, “This is a combat boot.”
“I'm not quite ready for that. We have had a lot of combat,” Stephanie answered.
“No, silly. They're combat boots.” He countered.
She responded, “Okay. I know what combat boots mean: typically, war.”
“It's not what you think.”
“Are you giving them to Ron? This is hilarious, Malcolm. I just can't with you today. He has on Bermuda shorts and combat boots as he's sitting on the beach with the water lapping up around him. So, I'm going to sit down next to you because I like the beach. I love your beach, Malcolm, and this water. What are we doing here?”
Malcolm answered, “You know you can be in combat AND be at your seat of rest at the same time.”
“Yes, I have heard.”
Ron interjected, “Stephanie, look at your feet.”
“I am looking at my feet, oh, ha-ha, I have on combat boots!”
Ron quipped, “We style’n, aren't we, Malcolm?”
Malcolm countered, “Ron, look at your shirt.”
“Hawaiian shirt,” Ron noted.
Stephanie added, “You have a Hawaiian shirt on, and you have on combat boots. What is happening?”
Malcolm responded, “The best wars are fought in the seat of rest.”
“He stood up and he’s stretching as if he doesn’t have a care in the world,” Stephanie described.
“In this space there is so much peace that there is true rest for the spirit, soul, and body,” Malcolm elucidated.
Stephanie queried, “How do we get to this? How do we tell the people how to get to this place?”
Malcolm explained, “In communion with God. He can bring them here. It's His love that sustains this place. Bring them here.”
“I will. What else do you want to show us about this place?”
“There are no regrets here.”
Stephanie commented, “This is a short little clip about where to bring people, Malcolm because there are a lot of people that are going through some real hardships. It's difficult to rest in that time because your mind goes everywhere. But this is a sanctuary. I see a sanctuary. I can hear the water. It is peaceful.”
Malcolm stated, “The Lord means it when He says He'll fight your battles for you. Warfare is rest in Him.”
Karen Wheaton once said:
Trust is the highest form of worship and rest is the highest form of Warfare that there is. When you pray through something to a degree that you know that you can rest knowing it may not look like what you want it to now, but you are resting on the fact that you have a word that someday, God is going to answer you.
Regret with King Solomon
Stephanie spoke, “Can we be transparent tonight? I mean really transparent. How many of you have regrets? If you say you don’t, I encourage you to get before the Father and ask Him to search the matter out. Are you willing to let Him search your most inward parts? I don’t think I truly understood that phrase until recently. Most of us do have regrets, and in a true healing journey, you have to face them. Most of us push them away because we can’t change the past. Let’s. see what Heaven has to say about it.
“As I stepped into Heaven, I believed I was going to meet with the Father, I am in an unusual place. It is very much like a kingly palace and inside, I see pillars about every 15 feet, but behind it I see blue sky and clouds. I realize it's an open area and arena. There's a throne in front of me and a man got up. I realized it was King Solomon.
“I'm honored to meet you, Solomon. What do you have to share with me?
“I'm taking everything in. The columns are also to the right and the left. I know that the Lord had you build the temple. What is your advice, Solomon? What do you have to teach me about regret?”
Solomon answered, “It's a foolish ideology. It's the epitome of self-hatred.”
Self-hate ranges between a feeling of self-disappointment to self-condemnation. We look around at others and compare ourselves and we don't measure up. We hate ourselves for how we look, how we feel, what we’ve done, what’s been done to us, or what we keep failing to accomplish. It often lives under the surface of our lives because it has never been named and identified. Some Christians perpetually feel like losers and seem to continually struggle with anger.
This is self-hatred and it can fuel self-condemnation and feed all sorts of false attempts at self-atonement.
And while the spiritual implications of this struggle are huge, not much has been written for Christians who struggle with self-hate. What about those who feel self-hate for something they have brought on to themselves, some personal sin or personal failure? [1]
Stephanie asked, “Can one not regret decisions that they have made?”
Solomon answered, “Sure, you can be sorry for those decisions, but regret is a core issue. When you allow it to settle, it is similar to a root of bitterness; it is toxic at its very core. Most people don't realize they're seething with regret. It's very subtle at first like something you can push down or push away but as each regret in life stacks one on top of the other, it becomes a living thing, and it can shape character. It will even bend the rules. At its core, it looks like this. You go before the Lord and ask for forgiveness of your sins knowing that He does. But you, YOU, Stephanie, have kept score. Keeping score is unforgiveness. I had many regrets in my life, and you can see them when I wrote Ecclesiastes.”
Ecclesiastes, like much of life, represents a journey from one point to another. Solomon articulated his starting point early in the book: ‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity’ (Ecclesiastes 1:2), indicating the utter futility and meaninglessness of life as he saw it. Nothing made sense to him because he had already tried any number of remedies—pleasure, work, and intellect—to alleviate his sense of feeling lost in the world. [2]
Also:
In his deep depression he does what many have done since in the passing of nearly two millennia: ‘I said to myself, enjoy yourself’ (2:1) and because he was fabulously rich, he could do anything he wanted.
He wallowed in ‘wine, women and song’ and built palaces and gardens to beautify Jerusalem and to surround himself with artistic treasures and every pleasure. Indeed the first eleven verses of chapter 2 depict a whirlwind of hedonism and a flourishing of artistic creativity; and it was no wonder that the Queen of Sheba was absolutely stunned into silence by the opulence surrounding her. [3]
Stephanie inquired, “Solomon, how do we remove regret? Because I feel like I have repented. I feel like I have given these things over, but there is something so deep and I want to be free.”
“Are you willing to let Him tell you the truth about your life? Are you willing to take what He says as authentic and that everything else is a lie?” Solomon countered.
She responded, “I am willing. In this place, Lord, I give you all of my regrets in my life. Where I feel like I paid a huge price and have been angry about it, I also blame myself and I don't want to do any of that anymore. I don't want to blame anyone else either. These matters are in the past and I can't change it. I take responsibility, but I choose to forgive Stephanie. All of the Stephanie’s and all of the times that I walked in sin, transgression, and iniquity, I give You all of those times. I ask that You take these regrets, every one of them, away and remove the demonic entity and the principality that has been sitting here. Take the rage, the regret, and the shame. Jesus, will you tell me the truth?”
Solomon approached and spoke, “Shame and regret lead to sorrow.”
Stephanie said, “Jesus, I don't know how to properly give you my regret, rage, sorrow, and shame, but I stand here and willingly say, take it. I don't want it. “
“I see angels coming. I commission you to sweep up all of the spiritual debris, residue, and essences from all of these things regrets, shame, and rage that were left behind, in every dimension, in my spirit, soul, and body realm. Jesus, what do you have to say to me? I want to hear the truth.
“The scene has changed. Jesus is here in my room, and He has chosen to sit on the edge of my bed. He allowed me to grab His arm, lay across His chest, and weep. While He was still seated, He said, ‘Come Here’ and he pulled me, turned me to where I was seated inside of Him, back-to-back with my face looking out of His chest.”
Jesus voiced, “There there, I've got you now.”
Stephanie explained, “Honestly Jesus, I wish my life was different. That's what I wish. Not with what I do as a ministry but with how my life turned out. I sometimes wish my life was different, bearing no shame and no regret. So what is the truth you have to say to me?”
Jesus answered, “I gave you an appetite to love and now the right relationships can come. I am not your accuser, and I can take all things and make them for good, for My glory. Truth is stranger than fiction and I will make this supernatural. Your latter days will be greater than your former. And I will give you wings like eagles. You will run and not grow weary; you will walk and not faint.”
Stephanie remarked, “I love you, Jesus. Also, I love you, Stephanie, He's going to change everything. I give you, my heart, Jesus. I want your heart. I see that there's no more blackness in my heart and that there's this little sliver of pink. Jesus just touched that.
“Now I can work with that!” Jesus observed.
Stephanie prayed, “I'm asking that innocence be restored to my heart. Where my heart has been broken, where I gave it away, and where people stole from it, I ask that it would be healed tonight. Thank you, Father.”
[1] https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/gospel-hope-for-self-haters
[2] Chuck Swindoll, https://insight.org/resources/bible/the-wisdom-books/ecclesiastes
[3] Dave Allen, https://www.methodistevangelicals.org.uk/Articles/523151/Ecclesiastes_Dark_Days.aspx
