Podcast: Download (10.6MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Podcast (podcast-mp3): Download (7.0MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Life Situations Lead to a Trigger
Episode #808
5/29/2022
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
With special guest: Dave Wentzel, Jacquelyn Nawrocki, Ladonna Spears, Joan Wentzel
This is a continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #802
Life situations and failure can be a real common trigger for all of us.
Dave:
The Lord’s been taking me back in my story opportunities, things that He has tried to show me and I didn’t listen to, I didn’t hear Him. I’ve shared some with you, Martha. This one came to me because I’ve seen it many times in my life and recently.
I was sixteen working on a farm and I had spent three twelve days in hot son on a tractor harrowing a field going back and forth getting the field ready for planting. It was the end of that holiday in the evening and the farmer came and said, “Ok bring it all in. We’re done.” I said, “I just have one more pass. I’ll come in after I make the pass.”
I went to the end of the row and in Pennsylvania all the field are small and they have trees, woods all around. There was a tree that was laying down and part of the tree extended close to the field. This was summertime and the dust was like greased lightning. It was an old tri-tractor; not a four wheel but a three wheel. I had gotten a flat tire on a harrow which meant as I come to end and make the turn normally you lift up so the weight wouldn’t drag and you make a turn. I couldn’t lift. I had to use my brakes. As I started to make the turn it started snow plowing going straight instead of turning. This tree that was sticking out, no branches that I could see, it was just sticking out and as I hit the brake and it turned and as I turned it caught in the front of tractor, just caught just the tip of it and broke it off and I was like, “that was close.” Made the turn and ran to the end of the field. As I was getting to the end there was steam coming out of the front, so I jumped off and there was a little spike of a branch and it poked a hole in the radiator.
I made it back to the farm and told the farmer and I don’t know if he was triggered but he was extremely angry. I didn’t do anything malicious or careless. It just happened. I worked there three more years and I was never allowed on the tractor again. It was one of those things that has always been on my mind. It made me angry but it hurt deeply. It was an accident but it was like he never forgave me. He just wouldn’t let me on the tractor.
When this came up with the books the only way to get these things off was on a tractor that I haven’t been on since that time. I’ve off loaded trucks in a fork lift but it was scary. I didn’t want to fail because I have great fear of failing. I worked on your plumbing and I failed. I didn’t do it maliciously. Helped in the office. I failed. I realize now that I never forgave the farmer for doing that but it affected me big time. I am afraid of failing. I mean well and I want to do well and when I fail, it’s like boom! The consequences! You will pay for this the rest of your life. That’s how I feel.
The Lord has brought me to a point to know that He has to enable. I was proud in that I could do and I would work hard and I would do the best I could. With all the recent experience He has brought me to a place to know that He has to make clear if it’s something I need to do, something He is calling me to do. If He is calling me to do it, He will enable me to do stuff that I have no experience doing. I have no qualms about that. But right now, I’m kind of in a whirlwind.
Adding driving the truck up the mountain just kind of……what are we doing here and what am I supposed to do. I am backed into a corner that I know that He is able, He will take care of it, He will give me the capability. I know that I probably need to step back and forgive and be forgiven. That has been a trigger for me.
Martha:
That’s well said, Dave. That’s how it is. It’s all about your feeling about yourself. That’s great. Thanks for being willing to share that.
Jacquelyn:
Ecclesiastes 3:15 NLT
What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again.
Martha:
I have never read that.
Jacquelyn:
God makes the same thing happen over and over again.
Martha:
What is the reference?
Ladonna:
In the NASB that verse reads: That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by.
Failure is a real common trigger. It certainly is a common trigger for me. But a dear woman I love told me twenty-five years ago, I can’t even remember what I had done that I was so devastated over, and she said, “Oh, you will do a lot worse things than this before it’s all over!”
Martha:
How encouraging.
I want to still be on me as the example. As you know, I’ve been through months of sickness not really knowing what to do with it or about it or what it even was. I’ve been to the emergency room twice legitimately and needful. There was a little session about my heart. As the doctor did what they knew to do John and Joan here listen to God for me. And they said, “Her problem is not the heart it’s sleep deprivation. And when I got into definition, I got in touch with all the pain and fear I experienced as a child that I thought, “Shut up and get over it. Quit whining.” I would talk to myself so bad.
But there was an awful lot of fear in my childhood even though I had joy on the second floor of a tree that was on my terms, I guess. If you grow up under an alcoholic, usually there is a lot of anger and misbehavior and so forth. But the Lord showed me at one point not to despair over all of it because I was being trained to help other people. He said, “All your life you will take this little girl and you will relate to humanity by your memories. Everything is orchestrated for a purpose. Who got that scripture? That scripture you read! Oh, my goodness. It’s worth hearing. I want to hear it too.
Jacquelyn:
Ecclesiastes 3:15 NLT
What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again.
Martha:
It’s because God is making you into what you want to be yourself. What happens in your childhood especially if it’s about terror and being afraid…
Sometimes my precious daddy would come around the corner and be yelling at me and I didn’t know what I did. I was just minding my own business. The terror was never over something real but over something I didn’t do or whatever.
I know that one person I was confronting her with a number of things that were wrong and I came back to her and said, “You are being made into the Bride of Christ. Don’t worry about it. Something wonderful and precious is happening to you because God is making you fit to be the Bride of Christ.”
That’s where we all are because the end result of humanity, the end of the world will be the Bride. And so, everything has meaning and everything is preparation and everything is very carefully orchestrated by God. And when you have that perspective, you may not have a clue of what is happening but you are being formed sovereignly for your eternal destiny; not for this life. We are all focused on this life. We should be focused on the next life. You and I should be aware of eternity. Things settled here are for eternity. They are for Christ in me the hope of glory. We are destined for glory which is the light of the presence, visible presence of the Lord.
It’s worth knowing yourself. It worth going into and doing, taking care of what wasn’t resolved. I’m still learning how much I am driven by fear and how much Jesus…He would let His disciples be ambitious, fight, whatever but when they were afraid, He said, “How dare you” in so many words. Fear not!
I’ve even done a series on how not to fear. It’s a whole lot more to the story. Your story lies in your childhood and if you don’t know your story, you don’t become you. You are being formed. It says He will do for us what He requires of us. He will do it Himself. The secret to that is abiding in Him and resting in Him and I’ll talk about that another time. But the acceptance without understanding, accepting yourself and your circumstance and your childhood…And I say in that little book I’ve got that we sell a lot of. Accept, accept, accept! The Great Lie. The great lie is that God is not good. That’s the lie. And because we suffer and we have to endure things we tend to be angry at God about it.
Joan:
I see that when we suffer, we accept that lie easily that Martha’s talking about that God is not good.
Life Situations Lead to a Trigger – Episode #808 – Shulamite Podcast
What is happening now has happened before and will in the future happen again. Life situations and failure can be a real common trigger.
