230 – I Perceive a Grudge

November 14, 1986

Something really ‘clicked’ this morning.

God showed me a great boulder, a stronghold of a GRUDGE against Him, which has transferred to Dan and the boys as discontentment. PRAISE GOD.

The GRUDGE resulted in double-mindedness, which Joyce mentioned briefly a couple of weeks ago that her prayer group had received a revelation about.

This is it: I have not released the standards of the world (something I have always judged in my best friend!). My family has always upheld: security, position, home, money in the bank, nice clothes, nice car, having a comfortable life with the world’s goods.

Jesus says that for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven is very difficult. That it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Matt 19:23. That just came to mind and it makes a lot of sense.

A huge stronghold, not discernable to me until now, has been forming in me. It has worked against my missionary mindset! It has caused angst. In fact, right this second I see that part of the attraction of going to Japan was because the missionaries we visited there all had quaint comfortable houses and had not FORSAKEN ALL THINGS.

You knew it, Jesus, and that is probably why you let us visit Japan. So I could SEE that I could identify with being there in clean Japan. Not in a dry land in a dusty hut with bugs and cooking over an outside fire. I believe You work with us and that it’s fine if I don’t care to go to the jungle or the tundra.

It’s always embarrassing to realize the depth of my SELF. But it is wonderful to be free of its secret hold on me as God brings it into the open.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Ps 139:23-24