I have come to realize some of the greatest advancements in
life begin their journey from within a place of personal brokenness. At first
this doesn’t make sense because it is so contrary to what is spoken in our culture
and sadly, in some parts of the Church. I found that within each of these painful
experiences is hidden a resurrection truth waiting to be discovered. Once
discovered, that truth has the power to roll away our stones of disbelief.

In all our years of serving God together, Jan and I have
learned that whenever a broken and painful experience visited our lives we knew
that somewhere in all of the mess there existed a revelation about God’s goodness
waiting to be discovered. The discovery of His goodness always took us to a
higher level of understanding and anointing. Unless we believed this to be true
we would have wasted the remainder of our lives in a state of sorrow not
believing a new way forward was possible.

There are barriers to this discovery of goodness that will
take a person down a path even sadder than the event that created the sadness
in the first place.

Here are the top three barriers I have seen:

1 – Believing the lie that says you have the right to not
forgive another person because they treated you unfairly. In this deception you
make your self into a smaller version of God thinking your judgment is without
error. This allows you to self-righteously position yourself above another
person defining them as your enemy while the real Enemy smiles with satisfaction.

2 – Believing that revenge is an acceptable response against
anyone who hurt you. This lie carries a hidden promise to take you down a path
of spiritual derailment because you will have to follow the perpetrator(s) of
your pain down their path of deception in order to catch them and enact your
revenge.

3 – Finally and possibly the most dangerous of these
barriers is to believe the pain and sorrow you are experiencing is somehow an
expression of how God feels about you. This lie attacks the very nature of God
and will shade everything you are going through with the deceptive dark cloud
of an orphan spirit.

You always have a way forward with God. In His Kingdom there
are no dead end roadways only opportunities for growth. This may not make a lot
of sense when you are experiencing deep pain and sorrow, but it will always and
in every situation, lead you forward toward resurrection life.