September 29, 2024 • 25 mins
In this episode Rodney Olsen sits down with Rachel Jobe, a missionary who shares her powerful story of transformation and surrender. After years of striving for perfection in her work, family life, and ministry, Rachel faced severe burnout and a health crisis that left her bedridden. Through this difficult time, she experienced a profound encounter with God that led her to reassess her priorities and embrace true surrender, discovering that His plans are far lighter than the burdens she had placed upon herself.
Rachel's journey is a testament to the dangers of serving false masters like personal expectations and the pursuit of perfection. She explains how God gently recalibrated her heart during her time of stillness, revealing the freedom that comes from releasing control and fully relying on Him. This episode is a deeply personal reflection on faith, surrender, and finding rest in God's presence, with insights that will resonate with anyone facing feelings of burnout or frustration in their own spiritual journey. WEBLINKS
Let Go! By Rachel Jobe Jim and Rachel’s website Rachel Jobe on Facebook
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
Keep the conversation going by connecting with Bleeding Daylight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or other social media platforms.
(00:29):
You'll get the links at bleedingdaylight.net.
And as you listen, consider one or two other people who need to hear this episode and then share the link or share on social media.
That'd be so much appreciated.
Could a strong sense of obligation and service become an idol for us?
(00:49):
Today's guest found that what she thought was all about serving God was actually making her sick.
In this episode, I'm joined by Rachel Jobe, a dedicated missionary who, along with her husband Jim, has been serving in an underdeveloped region in Asia for several years.
(01:14):
Rachel has walked a powerful journey from burnout and frustration to a profound spiritual transformation.
After facing intense struggles with anger, depression and a health crisis that left her bedridden, Rachel experienced a life-changing encounter with God.
Her story is a testament to the importance of surrendering control and allowing God's plans to take precedence in our lives.
(01:37):
I'm so pleased she is my guest today.
Rachel, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
It's so good to be here with you.
Thanks for inviting me onto your show.
Many of us have ideas of what we want to do with our lives from quite a young age, and I understand that for you, it was always about becoming a missionary.
What do you think it was that drew you so powerfully towards missionary work?
(01:59):
You know, I don't know.
I loved the Lord from a young age.
I wanted to serve Him, and I wanted to serve Him well.
Even right now, it's making me kind of teary-eyed thinking about it, thinking about, as a young child, I was passionate and driven.
I really wanted my life to matter, and I wanted to serve the Lord.
So tell me about your faith in those early years.
(02:20):
What sort of a faith upbringing was it for you?
My parents are godly people.
They love the Lord, and they taught their kids to love the Lord, to honor Him, and to serve Him.
I'm so thankful for that upbringing.
They definitely laid the foundation for my faith and my life, my spiritual journey.
So how did that journey begin for you towards becoming a missionary, deciding where you were going to serve and how you were going to serve, and what were the preparations leading up to that?
(02:49):
I remember as a teenager hearing about unreached people groups, people that just didn't have access to God's Word in their language, and that really captured my heart through my teenage years and young adult years in college.
That's what I had in mind.
That was my goal.
I wanted to go to an unreached people group and translate the Bible into their language.
In college, I met my husband, Jim.
(03:11):
He also had a desire to be a missionary.
When we got married, we started looking at different mission organizations, found one that matched our passions, and started training with them.
That's kind of what set us down the path that we ended up on.
So you had this opportunity, finding a husband who was like-minded, and then starting the training and heading towards becoming a missionary.
(03:34):
Can you remember what it was like when finally together you set out on that adventure to go to a different land, to start to meet with people that you had never met before, with the intention of sharing your love of Christ with them?
What was in your mind?
What was your thought of what a missionary would be?
(03:56):
I think we all have in our mind this idea of what the perfect missionary life looks like or what the perfect ministry looks like.
At least I did.
Growing up and heading overseas, I had in my mind that the perfect missionary checks all these boxes.
I was driven to check all those boxes.
(04:16):
I wanted to be as fluent in the language as I could be.
I wanted to live just like my neighbors.
I wanted to be a good mom and make the best meals and make homemade snacks, be a perfect mom, and a perfect missionary, and a perfect neighbor, and a perfect wife.
I was just still very driven.
I had these goals that I wanted to attain.
(04:38):
It just didn't work out for me.
I found that I could not meet those goals.
I couldn't be perfect in anything.
Actually, it drove me into the ground.
Within a few years, I ended up just being burnt out and depressed and frustrated that I couldn't measure up in anything.
I felt like everything was one step forward, two steps backward, or at the very least, two steps forward, one step backward.
(05:02):
Well, life didn't measure up to these expectations that I had in my mind of what my life should look like to make an impact.
How soon after getting your feet on the ground did you start to realize that this idealized version of being a missionary wasn't going to be what you were going to experience?
(05:22):
My life was actually turned upside down to come to that realization.
It didn't come easily.
My health broke down, and I became bedridden.
For a determined person like me who thought that my worth came from doing and achieving and then suddenly being bedridden, unable to accomplish anything in my mind according to the way that I thought of it, that was devastating to me.
(05:45):
I felt like my life was worthless, but the Lord really met me there in a powerful way.
I found that the very things that our enemy intends for evil, the Lord delights in using those things against him.
He uses those to bring about powerful change in our lives.
When I was bedridden, I could move from the bed.
(06:08):
Sometimes I was able to sit in a chair for hours during the day, but I really couldn't do anything.
I had nothing to do besides just be still.
The Lord, during that time, really recalibrated my heart.
It didn't come naturally.
It came by me sitting with Him.
I had to stop in order to sit with Him.
(06:28):
I had to stop moving and spinning and being so busy in order to have that time to just sit with Him and to not just read His word, but allow it to penetrate my heart and to meditate on it and just to sit quietly in His presence.
As I did that, He really spoke to my heart.
Passages like in Matthew 11, verses 28 through 30, He says, Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
(06:57):
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.
I had read that passage many times before.
I didn't quite understand what it meant before, but it really began to speak to me.
(07:17):
I realized that He means just what He says.
This isn't some abstract idea that we don't actually get to realize in a tangible way.
I realized that what leads us to be burned out and frustrated and angry and disappointed with life is when we're serving other masters, or you could say false idols.
(07:40):
We chain ourselves to these things.
In my case, it had been my expectations of what my life needed to look like.
I was holding those with a closed fist.
When we do that, when we serve other masters, for different people, it's different things, these masters, these false idols.
It can be our agenda or our goals, maybe having a certain standard of living or viewed in a certain light, having a certain reputation.
(08:04):
These are all things that affect our decisions and that drive us to do what we do and to say what we say.
When we have a master that is not the Lord, that's what leads us to be burnt out and beaten down and kicked around and angry and depressed.
In my case, it's so unfortunate looking back.
When I was in the midst of all that, of just striving and striving to do the best I could and everything, I felt like I was serving the Lord.
(08:31):
I thought I was serving the Lord and I thought that this burnout was due to serving Him.
I could not have been more wrong.
The reality is I had chained myself to other masters, masters like reaching my expectations that I had placed on myself.
Those masters will always lead to our bondage and they never are satisfied.
(08:56):
Jesus says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.
God is so gentle with our hearts.
Jesus makes it very clear in Matthew 6.
He says, no one can serve two masters.
You will hate the one and love the other or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
(09:21):
That's so true.
I cannot serve both God and another master.
If my to-do list is where I'm taking my orders for the day and I'm unwilling to hold it with an open palm, unwilling for the Lord to guide me and direct me to something else, then my to-do list has become my master and I cannot serve both God and another master.
(09:43):
When the Lord would lead me to do something that is contrary to what my idol wants me to do, then I will absolutely despise what the Lord would have me to do.
During this time, the Lord was just speaking these things to my heart and I just came to realize these false idols that I had chained myself to, that I had enslaved myself to.
(10:04):
No one else had done this.
No one else had put me in bondage.
This is my own clinging to these idols thinking, if I can do this, that will make my life worthwhile.
Or if I can do this, that will mean I'm successful in this area of my life.
I had grabbed hold of these with a closed fist and was serving these false idols.
That's exactly what had led me to the burnout, the depression, the anger.
(10:27):
In contrast, God's yoke is so easy and so light and He does not run us into the ground.
He cares so gently for our hearts.
How do we begin to discern the difference between us being internally driven and following after those masters and actually what we're required to do in being faithful and diligent in the work that God has set before us?
(10:52):
As a missionary, as a wife, as a mother, there are certain things that you do need to do, and yet they can become the drivers rather than actually serving God.
How do we start to discern the difference between those masters?
Yeah, that's such a great question.
(11:13):
I wish I could say that I have it perfectly figured out, but I have found there's some really great ways to help discern those things in our heart.
Number one, the number one thing is sitting in the Lord's presence and truly opening up our hearts to Him and say, Lord, search me.
Know my heart.
Know my anxious thoughts and lead me in the way everlasting, as the psalmist says.
(11:39):
He does that.
I think that was another thing.
That was most certainly another thing that I came to realize during this season of just sitting with the Lord is how eager He is to shine His light into the dark places of our hearts and expose these things because He wants us to be free from our bondage, our chains to these false idols.
He wants us to be free even more than we do.
(12:01):
As we sit in His presence and say, Lord, search me, search my heart, know me, know my anxious thoughts, expose these false idols, then He does it.
Most of us as believers, we come to the Lord, we rattle off what we want to say, and we say, Amen, and then we get up and move away, right?
We move on.
But if we will just sit there and say, Lord, show me, show me my heart, use your light, expose the dark places in my life, expose the dark places in my heart, and then if we'll just close our mouth and sit there and focus on Him, He will do it.
(12:33):
He will do it.
He is so kind, and He does not want us to be enslaved to these brutal masters, these brutal false idols.
We will never be able to evaluate our own motives in an honest way, in an honest and objective way.
When we look at our own hearts, we will make excuses, or we will use reasoning.
(12:53):
We have such a limited understanding, a limited human understanding of how things work.
And so we absolutely must ask God to do the evaluating and ask Him to do the convicting and to shine His light into our hearts, and He will.
He will absolutely do it.
If we come to Him and sincerely ask Him to do it, 100% of the time, He will.
(13:18):
It's so important that we recognize what our idols are, because they bring impurities into our motives.
I may be moved to do this thing or that thing, and if I recognize, okay, well, I know that I have this tendency to serve the false idol of people-pleasing, for example, then that helps me discern whether or not my motive is pure in whatever decision I'm trying to make in the moment.
(13:45):
One powerful prayer when we sit before the Lord and ask Him to bring these things to our heart is just saying, Lord, search me, show me the false idols that I'm clinging to, the things that I'm clinging to with a closed fist, the things that I'm pursuing to help me feel accepted, the things that I think will give me acceptance and value.
(14:09):
Show me what these things are.
Just pray that and sit before the Lord.
These are something that I do, and I just allow Him to bring those things to mind.
And sometimes He brings them to mind right then, and sometimes He brings them to mind within the next few days at a time that I least expected.
It just kind of hits me, and I realize, oh, this is an impurity in my motive, something I'm striving for.
(14:29):
You've mentioned a number of times there that prayer that we're called to pray in the Psalms of search me, God, know my thoughts, and that can either be a very comforting prayer, or it can be a very scary prayer, depending on who we see God to be.
And as you've mentioned a number of times, God wants to gently deal with us.
(14:53):
How integral is it that we make sure that we understand who God is before we pray that?
Because if we're praying, search me, God, and we have this idea that God is an old man sitting in heaven shaking his finger, then we don't want those things to come to light.
And yet, when we see that God, who held nothing back for us, was prepared to send His Son to die for us, to gently reconcile us, then that's actually, show me where I can do better.
(15:20):
Show me where I need to fit in with your plan.
Tell me about the difference between those two ideas.
Yeah, that's so important, such an important principle.
We can have such flawed ideas of who God is.
When I was running myself into the ground, it was because I viewed God as an overbearing master.
(15:42):
At least that's part of the reason.
I viewed Him as just not being satisfied with me, that He had this expectation of me and that I was not measuring up.
To be honest, when I first became bedridden and ill and unable to do anything, I didn't want to spend time with Him.
He really wasn't somebody I wanted to spend a lot of time with.
I did read my Bible and I prayed, and that was because I wanted to do a good job.
(16:06):
I felt I needed to do those things in order to measure up when I just began to sit with Him, to sit in His presence.
I would say, God, show me who you are.
Show me your heart.
He loves that prayer.
He loves to show Himself to us.
He wants us to know who He is.
(16:26):
So many of us have such a wrong idea of who God is.
We see Him as someone who is just disappointed in us that we can never do things right.
But as we sit in His presence, He will absolutely show His heart to us.
When my first born was very young, I felt like the Lord really used that in a powerful way in my own heart to show me His fatherly love for me.
(16:52):
It just helped correct my understanding of who He is.
For any of us, when our first child starts to walk, it's very clumsy.
They throw their foot out and then they fall.
Their head is too big for their body, and their legs aren't strong enough.
They just kind of put a leg out and they fall.
Our attitude to our children is not, oh, there you go.
(17:13):
You're always, always failing.
You can't even take a step.
No.
They throw that foot out and fall, and we're like, ah, he took a step.
He took a step.
My child took a step.
Then we're like, go get the camera.
Go get the camera.
Okay, take a video.
Then he does it again, and it's like, step, step, fall.
We're like, ah, he's walking.
(17:34):
My child is walking.
He's doing it.
Oh, we're just overfilled.
We're just so filled with joy, and we're so proud of our child.
He does it again, and we're like, do it again.
He steps, step, fall.
We're like, oh, we're so proud of him.
We are so proud of him.
(17:54):
That helped so much to help me see that God is not someone who's always disappointed in us.
He loves us.
He's so proud of us, and he loves us so deeply.
He wants what is best for us.
He never exposes the darkness in our heart out of a desire to condemn us.
He never does that.
(18:14):
He does not condemn.
He shows us those things in our heart.
He exposes the dark places in our heart because he wants us to be free from these idols that we've chained ourselves to and from the lies that we're believing, that we're living our lives believing these lies that destroy us and that destroy the people around us.
(18:34):
The Lord is so good to us and so kind to us.
I think that's just so essential is to recognize that he does that because he wants us to be free.
Now, you're still on this journey, as we all are, to truly discover more and more of who God is, but at what point in this journey did you decide, I need to write this down.
(18:57):
I need to make a way for other people to learn the story, to learn the lessons that I've learned along the way.
I knew that a profound change had happened in my life.
I wanted to never forget everything I had learned.
I'm a journalist.
I've realized that I need to write things down so that I can revisit it and remember these things that I've learned.
(19:22):
As much as I think I'll never forget this huge lesson I've learned.
It's so life-giving.
I'll never forget it.
The reality is we do.
We forget these things and we go right back into the same cycles that we had been in, the same cycles that had put us in bondage before.
I had written some of these things down.
Over the next few years, the Lord was teaching me other things, teaching me things about surrender and how we just need to surrender our lives to Him.
(19:49):
For one season, He was teaching me about surrendering my plans to Him.
Another season came and He was teaching me about surrendering our idols to Him, which is what we've been talking about here.
Another season, He was teaching me about surrendering my time, surrendering my thought life.
These subsequent seasons, the Lord was teaching me these things.
(20:10):
Then one morning a couple years ago, I realized that all these things the Lord had been teaching me over the last few years have to do with surrender.
It's all the same theme.
We just need to let go of these things that we're clinging to, these things that we feel like give us control or give us meaning.
If we let go of these things and hold them with open palms, the Lord moves in and does far more than we could ever imagine.
(20:34):
He brings such freedom and joy in our work and our lives become so much more impactful, so much more meaningful than it could ever be by our own striving.
As I realized that all of these things the Lord taught me had to do with the theme of surrender, I just had the idea of putting all this down into a book.
That's when the idea for my book, Let Go, came about.
(20:56):
I'm sure that that is going to be something that continues to shed light on this idea of surrender for many people and invite them into the sort of love that God has for them.
I'm wondering as well, how good is it for you to be able to share with the people that you're serving as a missionary, to be able to share with them this idea of a loving Father who wants them to be free?
(21:23):
The Father that you've realized that He is, it must be so good to be able to share that God, the Jesus who wants to bring them alongside and reconcile them to God the Father.
That's the God that you're sharing with the people that you're serving at the moment.
That must be incredibly empowering for you as well.
(21:44):
Absolutely.
It absolutely is.
I've found that as I break free from my own idea of what I should be doing as a missionary and just follow the Lord's leading, He brings much more impact through my ministry than I ever could have by trying to live up to this idea I had, checking all the boxes for what I should be, what my life should look like.
(22:04):
He leads me and guides me in just different ways.
It's always an adventure.
It's a roller coaster, but always an adventure.
What would you say to the person who's listening at the moment who still feels caught up in this life of having to perform, of having to consistently mark off the checkboxes, and who hasn't really come to terms with this God that you're speaking about, this God who loves us and gently wants to draw us to Himself?
(22:35):
I feel so much compassion for that person.
I've been there, and I even have a tendency to go back to that place of feeling like I need to measure up in order for my life to be worthwhile and for my life to make an impact and to be meaningful.
I have so much compassion, and I sympathize with that person.
I'm just going to pray right now, Lord, would you just help that person listening who feels caught in this cycle of trying to measure up, of never being good enough, of just being frustrated with life.
(23:08):
Lord, would you bring freedom?
Would you bring breakthrough?
Would you show them your heart for them, your love for them, show them that your yoke is easy, your burden is light, and help them to let go, to break off these chains that they are bound to, these things that they've chained themselves to.
Would you just bring freedom in the name of Jesus?
(23:31):
Rachel, I know that there's going to be people that are wanting to get hold of your book or to connect with you.
What's the easiest place for people to find you?
The book is on Amazon.
Our website, jimandrachel.org, is a good place to find us, learn about our ministry, connect with us.
The book really has my heart about this, and I try to keep it as compact as possible.
(23:55):
It's a 100-page book or a two-hour audio book, and I really put the contents of my heart onto every page about this.
It's something I'm passionate about, something that has brought incredible breakthrough to my own life.
My hope is that it would help others who are on the same journey who want that freedom and who want to know this God who loves them so dearly.
(24:17):
I would love to get that book into the hands of others, just to get that message into the hands of others.
And the beautiful thing, as you say, is it's not a long read or a long listen.
So for people who are still caught up in the machinations of having to perform and feel, I would love to engage with that, but I don't have time.
They do actually have time.
(24:38):
This is something that is going to be not a long read, but one that will impact them.
So thank you for making sure that it actually is going to reach those people that it needs to.
I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can learn more about your ministry, but also so they can get hold of your book and so that it can make a difference for them as well.
(25:02):
But Rachel, I just want to thank you for being so open and sharing your time with us today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
This was such a pleasure to be a guest on your show and to be able to share from my heart.
I appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
(25:23):
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
Keep the conversation going by connecting with Bleeding Daylight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or other social media platforms.
(00:29):
You'll get the links at bleedingdaylight.net.
And as you listen, consider one or two other people who need to hear this episode and then share the link or share on social media.
That'd be so much appreciated.
Could a strong sense of obligation and service become an idol for us?
(00:49):
Today's guest found that what she thought was all about serving God was actually making her sick.
In this episode, I'm joined by Rachel Jobe, a dedicated missionary who, along with her husband Jim, has been serving in an underdeveloped region in Asia for several years.
(01:14):
Rachel has walked a powerful journey from burnout and frustration to a profound spiritual transformation.
After facing intense struggles with anger, depression and a health crisis that left her bedridden, Rachel experienced a life-changing encounter with God.
Her story is a testament to the importance of surrendering control and allowing God's plans to take precedence in our lives.
(01:37):
I'm so pleased she is my guest today.
Rachel, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
It's so good to be here with you.
Thanks for inviting me onto your show.
Many of us have ideas of what we want to do with our lives from quite a young age, and I understand that for you, it was always about becoming a missionary.
What do you think it was that drew you so powerfully towards missionary work?
(01:59):
You know, I don't know.
I loved the Lord from a young age.
I wanted to serve Him, and I wanted to serve Him well.
Even right now, it's making me kind of teary-eyed thinking about it, thinking about, as a young child, I was passionate and driven.
I really wanted my life to matter, and I wanted to serve the Lord.
So tell me about your faith in those early years.
(02:20):
What sort of a faith upbringing was it for you?
My parents are godly people.
They love the Lord, and they taught their kids to love the Lord, to honor Him, and to serve Him.
I'm so thankful for that upbringing.
They definitely laid the foundation for my faith and my life, my spiritual journey.
So how did that journey begin for you towards becoming a missionary, deciding where you were going to serve and how you were going to serve, and what were the preparations leading up to that?
(02:49):
I remember as a teenager hearing about unreached people groups, people that just didn't have access to God's Word in their language, and that really captured my heart through my teenage years and young adult years in college.
That's what I had in mind.
That was my goal.
I wanted to go to an unreached people group and translate the Bible into their language.
In college, I met my husband, Jim.
(03:11):
He also had a desire to be a missionary.
When we got married, we started looking at different mission organizations, found one that matched our passions, and started training with them.
That's kind of what set us down the path that we ended up on.
So you had this opportunity, finding a husband who was like-minded, and then starting the training and heading towards becoming a missionary.
(03:34):
Can you remember what it was like when finally together you set out on that adventure to go to a different land, to start to meet with people that you had never met before, with the intention of sharing your love of Christ with them?
What was in your mind?
What was your thought of what a missionary would be?
(03:56):
I think we all have in our mind this idea of what the perfect missionary life looks like or what the perfect ministry looks like.
At least I did.
Growing up and heading overseas, I had in my mind that the perfect missionary checks all these boxes.
I was driven to check all those boxes.
(04:16):
I wanted to be as fluent in the language as I could be.
I wanted to live just like my neighbors.
I wanted to be a good mom and make the best meals and make homemade snacks, be a perfect mom, and a perfect missionary, and a perfect neighbor, and a perfect wife.
I was just still very driven.
I had these goals that I wanted to attain.
(04:38):
It just didn't work out for me.
I found that I could not meet those goals.
I couldn't be perfect in anything.
Actually, it drove me into the ground.
Within a few years, I ended up just being burnt out and depressed and frustrated that I couldn't measure up in anything.
I felt like everything was one step forward, two steps backward, or at the very least, two steps forward, one step backward.
(05:02):
Well, life didn't measure up to these expectations that I had in my mind of what my life should look like to make an impact.
How soon after getting your feet on the ground did you start to realize that this idealized version of being a missionary wasn't going to be what you were going to experience?
(05:22):
My life was actually turned upside down to come to that realization.
It didn't come easily.
My health broke down, and I became bedridden.
For a determined person like me who thought that my worth came from doing and achieving and then suddenly being bedridden, unable to accomplish anything in my mind according to the way that I thought of it, that was devastating to me.
(05:45):
I felt like my life was worthless, but the Lord really met me there in a powerful way.
I found that the very things that our enemy intends for evil, the Lord delights in using those things against him.
He uses those to bring about powerful change in our lives.
When I was bedridden, I could move from the bed.
(06:08):
Sometimes I was able to sit in a chair for hours during the day, but I really couldn't do anything.
I had nothing to do besides just be still.
The Lord, during that time, really recalibrated my heart.
It didn't come naturally.
It came by me sitting with Him.
I had to stop in order to sit with Him.
(06:28):
I had to stop moving and spinning and being so busy in order to have that time to just sit with Him and to not just read His word, but allow it to penetrate my heart and to meditate on it and just to sit quietly in His presence.
As I did that, He really spoke to my heart.
Passages like in Matthew 11, verses 28 through 30, He says, Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
(06:57):
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.
I had read that passage many times before.
I didn't quite understand what it meant before, but it really began to speak to me.
(07:17):
I realized that He means just what He says.
This isn't some abstract idea that we don't actually get to realize in a tangible way.
I realized that what leads us to be burned out and frustrated and angry and disappointed with life is when we're serving other masters, or you could say false idols.
(07:40):
We chain ourselves to these things.
In my case, it had been my expectations of what my life needed to look like.
I was holding those with a closed fist.
When we do that, when we serve other masters, for different people, it's different things, these masters, these false idols.
It can be our agenda or our goals, maybe having a certain standard of living or viewed in a certain light, having a certain reputation.
(08:04):
These are all things that affect our decisions and that drive us to do what we do and to say what we say.
When we have a master that is not the Lord, that's what leads us to be burnt out and beaten down and kicked around and angry and depressed.
In my case, it's so unfortunate looking back.
When I was in the midst of all that, of just striving and striving to do the best I could and everything, I felt like I was serving the Lord.
(08:31):
I thought I was serving the Lord and I thought that this burnout was due to serving Him.
I could not have been more wrong.
The reality is I had chained myself to other masters, masters like reaching my expectations that I had placed on myself.
Those masters will always lead to our bondage and they never are satisfied.
(08:56):
Jesus says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.
God is so gentle with our hearts.
Jesus makes it very clear in Matthew 6.
He says, no one can serve two masters.
You will hate the one and love the other or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
(09:21):
That's so true.
I cannot serve both God and another master.
If my to-do list is where I'm taking my orders for the day and I'm unwilling to hold it with an open palm, unwilling for the Lord to guide me and direct me to something else, then my to-do list has become my master and I cannot serve both God and another master.
(09:43):
When the Lord would lead me to do something that is contrary to what my idol wants me to do, then I will absolutely despise what the Lord would have me to do.
During this time, the Lord was just speaking these things to my heart and I just came to realize these false idols that I had chained myself to, that I had enslaved myself to.
(10:04):
No one else had done this.
No one else had put me in bondage.
This is my own clinging to these idols thinking, if I can do this, that will make my life worthwhile.
Or if I can do this, that will mean I'm successful in this area of my life.
I had grabbed hold of these with a closed fist and was serving these false idols.
That's exactly what had led me to the burnout, the depression, the anger.
(10:27):
In contrast, God's yoke is so easy and so light and He does not run us into the ground.
He cares so gently for our hearts.
How do we begin to discern the difference between us being internally driven and following after those masters and actually what we're required to do in being faithful and diligent in the work that God has set before us?
(10:52):
As a missionary, as a wife, as a mother, there are certain things that you do need to do, and yet they can become the drivers rather than actually serving God.
How do we start to discern the difference between those masters?
Yeah, that's such a great question.
(11:13):
I wish I could say that I have it perfectly figured out, but I have found there's some really great ways to help discern those things in our heart.
Number one, the number one thing is sitting in the Lord's presence and truly opening up our hearts to Him and say, Lord, search me.
Know my heart.
Know my anxious thoughts and lead me in the way everlasting, as the psalmist says.
(11:39):
He does that.
I think that was another thing.
That was most certainly another thing that I came to realize during this season of just sitting with the Lord is how eager He is to shine His light into the dark places of our hearts and expose these things because He wants us to be free from our bondage, our chains to these false idols.
He wants us to be free even more than we do.
(12:01):
As we sit in His presence and say, Lord, search me, search my heart, know me, know my anxious thoughts, expose these false idols, then He does it.
Most of us as believers, we come to the Lord, we rattle off what we want to say, and we say, Amen, and then we get up and move away, right?
We move on.
But if we will just sit there and say, Lord, show me, show me my heart, use your light, expose the dark places in my life, expose the dark places in my heart, and then if we'll just close our mouth and sit there and focus on Him, He will do it.
(12:33):
He will do it.
He is so kind, and He does not want us to be enslaved to these brutal masters, these brutal false idols.
We will never be able to evaluate our own motives in an honest way, in an honest and objective way.
When we look at our own hearts, we will make excuses, or we will use reasoning.
(12:53):
We have such a limited understanding, a limited human understanding of how things work.
And so we absolutely must ask God to do the evaluating and ask Him to do the convicting and to shine His light into our hearts, and He will.
He will absolutely do it.
If we come to Him and sincerely ask Him to do it, 100% of the time, He will.
(13:18):
It's so important that we recognize what our idols are, because they bring impurities into our motives.
I may be moved to do this thing or that thing, and if I recognize, okay, well, I know that I have this tendency to serve the false idol of people-pleasing, for example, then that helps me discern whether or not my motive is pure in whatever decision I'm trying to make in the moment.
(13:45):
One powerful prayer when we sit before the Lord and ask Him to bring these things to our heart is just saying, Lord, search me, show me the false idols that I'm clinging to, the things that I'm clinging to with a closed fist, the things that I'm pursuing to help me feel accepted, the things that I think will give me acceptance and value.
(14:09):
Show me what these things are.
Just pray that and sit before the Lord.
These are something that I do, and I just allow Him to bring those things to mind.
And sometimes He brings them to mind right then, and sometimes He brings them to mind within the next few days at a time that I least expected.
It just kind of hits me, and I realize, oh, this is an impurity in my motive, something I'm striving for.
(14:29):
You've mentioned a number of times there that prayer that we're called to pray in the Psalms of search me, God, know my thoughts, and that can either be a very comforting prayer, or it can be a very scary prayer, depending on who we see God to be.
And as you've mentioned a number of times, God wants to gently deal with us.
(14:53):
How integral is it that we make sure that we understand who God is before we pray that?
Because if we're praying, search me, God, and we have this idea that God is an old man sitting in heaven shaking his finger, then we don't want those things to come to light.
And yet, when we see that God, who held nothing back for us, was prepared to send His Son to die for us, to gently reconcile us, then that's actually, show me where I can do better.
(15:20):
Show me where I need to fit in with your plan.
Tell me about the difference between those two ideas.
Yeah, that's so important, such an important principle.
We can have such flawed ideas of who God is.
When I was running myself into the ground, it was because I viewed God as an overbearing master.
(15:42):
At least that's part of the reason.
I viewed Him as just not being satisfied with me, that He had this expectation of me and that I was not measuring up.
To be honest, when I first became bedridden and ill and unable to do anything, I didn't want to spend time with Him.
He really wasn't somebody I wanted to spend a lot of time with.
I did read my Bible and I prayed, and that was because I wanted to do a good job.
(16:06):
I felt I needed to do those things in order to measure up when I just began to sit with Him, to sit in His presence.
I would say, God, show me who you are.
Show me your heart.
He loves that prayer.
He loves to show Himself to us.
He wants us to know who He is.
(16:26):
So many of us have such a wrong idea of who God is.
We see Him as someone who is just disappointed in us that we can never do things right.
But as we sit in His presence, He will absolutely show His heart to us.
When my first born was very young, I felt like the Lord really used that in a powerful way in my own heart to show me His fatherly love for me.
(16:52):
It just helped correct my understanding of who He is.
For any of us, when our first child starts to walk, it's very clumsy.
They throw their foot out and then they fall.
Their head is too big for their body, and their legs aren't strong enough.
They just kind of put a leg out and they fall.
Our attitude to our children is not, oh, there you go.
(17:13):
You're always, always failing.
You can't even take a step.
No.
They throw that foot out and fall, and we're like, ah, he took a step.
He took a step.
My child took a step.
Then we're like, go get the camera.
Go get the camera.
Okay, take a video.
Then he does it again, and it's like, step, step, fall.
We're like, ah, he's walking.
(17:34):
My child is walking.
He's doing it.
Oh, we're just overfilled.
We're just so filled with joy, and we're so proud of our child.
He does it again, and we're like, do it again.
He steps, step, fall.
We're like, oh, we're so proud of him.
We are so proud of him.
(17:54):
That helped so much to help me see that God is not someone who's always disappointed in us.
He loves us.
He's so proud of us, and he loves us so deeply.
He wants what is best for us.
He never exposes the darkness in our heart out of a desire to condemn us.
He never does that.
(18:14):
He does not condemn.
He shows us those things in our heart.
He exposes the dark places in our heart because he wants us to be free from these idols that we've chained ourselves to and from the lies that we're believing, that we're living our lives believing these lies that destroy us and that destroy the people around us.
(18:34):
The Lord is so good to us and so kind to us.
I think that's just so essential is to recognize that he does that because he wants us to be free.
Now, you're still on this journey, as we all are, to truly discover more and more of who God is, but at what point in this journey did you decide, I need to write this down.
(18:57):
I need to make a way for other people to learn the story, to learn the lessons that I've learned along the way.
I knew that a profound change had happened in my life.
I wanted to never forget everything I had learned.
I'm a journalist.
I've realized that I need to write things down so that I can revisit it and remember these things that I've learned.
(19:22):
As much as I think I'll never forget this huge lesson I've learned.
It's so life-giving.
I'll never forget it.
The reality is we do.
We forget these things and we go right back into the same cycles that we had been in, the same cycles that had put us in bondage before.
I had written some of these things down.
Over the next few years, the Lord was teaching me other things, teaching me things about surrender and how we just need to surrender our lives to Him.
(19:49):
For one season, He was teaching me about surrendering my plans to Him.
Another season came and He was teaching me about surrendering our idols to Him, which is what we've been talking about here.
Another season, He was teaching me about surrendering my time, surrendering my thought life.
These subsequent seasons, the Lord was teaching me these things.
(20:10):
Then one morning a couple years ago, I realized that all these things the Lord had been teaching me over the last few years have to do with surrender.
It's all the same theme.
We just need to let go of these things that we're clinging to, these things that we feel like give us control or give us meaning.
If we let go of these things and hold them with open palms, the Lord moves in and does far more than we could ever imagine.
(20:34):
He brings such freedom and joy in our work and our lives become so much more impactful, so much more meaningful than it could ever be by our own striving.
As I realized that all of these things the Lord taught me had to do with the theme of surrender, I just had the idea of putting all this down into a book.
That's when the idea for my book, Let Go, came about.
(20:56):
I'm sure that that is going to be something that continues to shed light on this idea of surrender for many people and invite them into the sort of love that God has for them.
I'm wondering as well, how good is it for you to be able to share with the people that you're serving as a missionary, to be able to share with them this idea of a loving Father who wants them to be free?
(21:23):
The Father that you've realized that He is, it must be so good to be able to share that God, the Jesus who wants to bring them alongside and reconcile them to God the Father.
That's the God that you're sharing with the people that you're serving at the moment.
That must be incredibly empowering for you as well.
(21:44):
Absolutely.
It absolutely is.
I've found that as I break free from my own idea of what I should be doing as a missionary and just follow the Lord's leading, He brings much more impact through my ministry than I ever could have by trying to live up to this idea I had, checking all the boxes for what I should be, what my life should look like.
(22:04):
He leads me and guides me in just different ways.
It's always an adventure.
It's a roller coaster, but always an adventure.
What would you say to the person who's listening at the moment who still feels caught up in this life of having to perform, of having to consistently mark off the checkboxes, and who hasn't really come to terms with this God that you're speaking about, this God who loves us and gently wants to draw us to Himself?
(22:35):
I feel so much compassion for that person.
I've been there, and I even have a tendency to go back to that place of feeling like I need to measure up in order for my life to be worthwhile and for my life to make an impact and to be meaningful.
I have so much compassion, and I sympathize with that person.
I'm just going to pray right now, Lord, would you just help that person listening who feels caught in this cycle of trying to measure up, of never being good enough, of just being frustrated with life.
(23:08):
Lord, would you bring freedom?
Would you bring breakthrough?
Would you show them your heart for them, your love for them, show them that your yoke is easy, your burden is light, and help them to let go, to break off these chains that they are bound to, these things that they've chained themselves to.
Would you just bring freedom in the name of Jesus?
(23:31):
Rachel, I know that there's going to be people that are wanting to get hold of your book or to connect with you.
What's the easiest place for people to find you?
The book is on Amazon.
Our website, jimandrachel.org, is a good place to find us, learn about our ministry, connect with us.
The book really has my heart about this, and I try to keep it as compact as possible.
(23:55):
It's a 100-page book or a two-hour audio book, and I really put the contents of my heart onto every page about this.
It's something I'm passionate about, something that has brought incredible breakthrough to my own life.
My hope is that it would help others who are on the same journey who want that freedom and who want to know this God who loves them so dearly.
(24:17):
I would love to get that book into the hands of others, just to get that message into the hands of others.
And the beautiful thing, as you say, is it's not a long read or a long listen.
So for people who are still caught up in the machinations of having to perform and feel, I would love to engage with that, but I don't have time.
They do actually have time.
(24:38):
This is something that is going to be not a long read, but one that will impact them.
So thank you for making sure that it actually is going to reach those people that it needs to.
I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can learn more about your ministry, but also so they can get hold of your book and so that it can make a difference for them as well.
(25:02):
But Rachel, I just want to thank you for being so open and sharing your time with us today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
This was such a pleasure to be a guest on your show and to be able to share from my heart.
I appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
(25:23):
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
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