ARE YOU GOING THROUGH AN INVISIBLE BATTLE?

Raw letter to the legacy pioneers going through a heart surgery season.

If you’ve been reading our emails and prophetic words over the years, you know one thing about me: I wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m okay with being vulnerable. I’m okay with sharing my journey, the way God speaks it to me, and I’m so grateful over the years for how much of what God has shown me and given to me, knowing that much of what I’ve been walking through with the Lord has connected with so many of you. It’s always amazing to me to see how we are all connected on this journey with Jesus together

So, just a few days ago, I shared a brief word on Instagram that struck a chord with so many people. This was my exact post:

“The most difficult and painful journey of pioneering you can go through is not in doing something new in the Kingdom that hasn’t been done before, it’s in pioneering beyond where you have lived. It’s in the wrestle and agony of facing the trauma and wounds of your past, choosing not to stay disarmed by them, and against all odds, moving past them for the sake of legacy. But it’s just the less popular story. It’s the hidden story. It’s what people don’t see. It’s pushing your heart past its triggers and inviting God into the darkest places of your story so that He can break down the prison doors of your soul and lead your family to places that no one in your generation before you has gone. It’s the nights where your kids are sick and you are walking the home praying in tongues and exercising your authority. It’s in the hard marriage conversations, navigating broken trust, hurt, resentment, and forgiveness. It’s in dealing with your stuff when it feels like it’s too much for you to manage. It’s in choosing to fight at the feet of Jesus when you want to put out fires in the flesh. It’s in giving Jesus praise when the world around you is falling apart and you feel like you have nothing to praise Him for. This is real pioneering and where many are at right now.”

See, I’m a big believer in the fact that we don’t get to distribute anything that we don’t have in the first place, and we don’t get to lead people to places we haven’t been ourselves.

So how can we lead people to breakthrough we’ve never tasted ourselves? How can we lead people to health if we’ve never seen health ourselves? That’s why the greatest area of oil, and the greatest area of pioneering, will be in your own heart and your own soul.

That is the battleground. That is the place where God is continually pushing the envelope in your own life to increase you in health and spiritual capacity, so you are not only seeing health in your own life, your emotions, your mental state, spiritually, your family, your marriage, your kids, all of those areas. It’s so that you are able to have fruit to distribute to those around you. But it starts in the heart first and the home first. 

I think where we’ve gone wrong in the body of Christ over the years is that so many people have been focused on what they are building. They’re focused on the movement. They’re focused on the project, that program, that Kingdom expression.

But we’ve run from the areas of the heart, and therefore, it looks like we have something special that we’ve built, but we have nothing to give away to the next generation.

And I’ll be really honest here. One of the biggest frustrations I have had to deal with in my life, which Christy and I have spoken about over the years, is how we were brought up in Christian homes but only inherited a mess.

I’m in no way dishonoring our parents or the previous generations, but when we got married, we came from very messy, unhealthy, dysfunctional homes. We came into marriage, and we had to figure it out.

I was never given any kind of inheritance, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, or materially. I was given “mess.” I came into this world with a mess, and so when I began, I was already in the minus.

I was kicked out of my home at 14 and then again at 17.  I felt like we were handed a bag of generational curses, dysfunction, narcissistic abuse, and then told to figure it out. But I don’t say this to get a pity party. I say this because THIS IS SO MANY PEOPLE'S STORY! Right? Has this been your story?

But I’m not playing the victim card anymore like I did 20 years ago. Christy and I decided early into our marriage that we had to figure out how to pioneer family and health out of the red and into the positive. And that’s been one of our biggest battles, but it’s also been the place God’s called us to occupy the most. It’s been our main calling.

Have we done it perfectly? No. Are we still in process? Yes.

And that’s exactly why I made the statement I did. Because in my life, the greatest area of pioneering and the greatest area of fruit has always come from allowing the Lord to dig deep into my own heart and my own life and reshape me into the man of God that He always saw I would be, even when I didn’t see it in myself or because the odds were stacked against me.

And I know this struck a chord with you because you get it. You know it’s necessary but painful. And I believe we go through seasons and waves of this kind of process, where the Lord continues to upgrade us into the better wife/husband we’re called to be, into the better mum/dad we’re called to be, into the better general and leader we’re called to be.

But it takes complying with the Lord. It takes surrender. And yes, it takes being teachable. And it takes being unoffendable, because it’s a very deep process.

The other reason I wrote this post is that over this last year, this is the process I’ve been in. I’ve been in another round, you could say, of “deep legacy pioneering.”

At first, I thought it was burnout, but it was the Lord actually going deeper into my heart and my life and getting me ready for something I was about to step into.

And when God does that, He’s gentle and He’s a Father, but there’s also this ferociousness, where He doesn’t allow you to stay stuck.

He’s like a really good gym coach who’ll push you and push you and push you because He knows what’s in you, and He wants that Godly man/woman that is in you to come out. He wants that fighter in you to come out. He wants the double portion anointed believer in you to come out.

And that’s where the fight is. Especially if you’ve been through a season where you’ve just been passive and you’re starting to lean back into that place of rejection mentality, or that rejection role. You’re leaning back into the trauma of your past, and that little boy/girl, that little orphan in you, wants to just lie in their sick bed and wallow in shame and fear.

And then Father yells and says, “Get out.” And He uses life to do it. He uses those uncomfortable situations to draw it out. Yeah, it is painful, but it is necessary.

It feels like an impasse of sorts. Like you get to a point where your triggers and your pain and your trauma are trying to linger and hold onto you, and your past is trying to scream at you, and you have a decision to make. Am I going to stay stuck in this? Or am I going to lean into the fire?

And that’s what true pioneering is. It is the unseen. It is the invisible battle. It is unpopular. No one really gets to witness this. There are no cameras. There are no lights. And it’s not glorious. But it is the most crucial decision and process you could ever lean into.

And I know so many people out there right now are going through this, where God is pulling you up higher. He’s pulling you out of the place of hopelessness and despair and hope deferred that you’ve been in.

This is why, in the last year, so many issues and problems have come to the surface. Not because God’s trying to expose them to make you look bad. It’s because there’s something greater in you that needs to come out.

God is drawing the general in you out. He’s pulling you out of dysfunction. He’s pulling you out of the pit. He’s pulling you out of despair and the cycles and patterns you’ve been in that are killing you. Can you see this?

That’s why you’ve been in a year of confrontation and constant warfare against your life, against your marriage, your finances, your health, your relationships, your ministry, and your kingdom calling. It’s because God sees the greater you that He called you to be, that He’s anointed you to be. It’s like Elisha getting that mantle thrown around his shoulders, but he had to make a decision. Am I going to burn this old junk, or am I going to stay here and die at this level? Am I going to level off here when there’s so much more of this mountain I can climb?

That is the decision we all get to make in life. So if that’s you, we know and we understand it’s been intense, and the struggle’s been real.

It’s invisible, and people don’t see it. Or maybe they don’t understand. Maybe even in the context of your own marriage and relationships, it feels like an invisible battle that you’re not able to truly convey or communicate, and it’s crushing you. And you’re just like, “God, do you see me? Do you really see me?”

We are praying for you because I’m telling you - while we have only been experiencing the struggle up until now, we are about to see the fruit 

Keep pioneering, my friends. Don’t back down now. You’re not crazy. You’re not weak for feeling weary. You’re just in a battle that very few people talk about because it’s not shiny or platform-worthy, but it is holy ground.

It is legacy territory. It’s where the generational curses end, and the generational blessings begin. It’s where the cycles break. It’s where the orphan spirit dies, it’s where sons and daughters rise. This is that sacred space where God turns weakness into strength and shame back into authority.

And remember - You’re partnering with heaven in building something eternal, something your children and their children will benefit from. And it might not look like much right now, but in the spirit, it’s massive. It’s costly. But it’s powerful and it’s worth it.

Stay the course. Don’t despise the process just because it feels hidden. Heaven sees. The wilderness seasons may not be glamorous, but they are where kings and queens are forged and where authority is cultivated. It’s where the oil gushes, and it’s that very oil that breaks the yoke, not just for you, but for those around you.

So again, if that’s where you’re at, we’re standing with you. Keep pioneering. We’re praying for you, and we believe the best is yet to come.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” - Ezekiel 36:26

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” - James 1:2-4