The Cry Beneath the Rebellion
From the outside, it kind of looks like arrogance or disrespect. It might even look like someone just doesn't care.
But, in all reality, rebellion is rarely just about behavior... it's a heart issue.
And sometimes, under everything we see on the outside, there's a person who is deeply wounded, disappointed, afraid or desperate to feel some sense of control over a life that has made them feel powerless.
That doesn't make rebellion harmless. And it doesn't remove responsibility or erase the damage caused by sinful choices.
Rebellion is still rebellion, no matter what drives it.
But it should really cause us to pause before we decide that we understand someone’s heart simply because we can see their behavior.
We see the anger, but God sees the wound underneath it. We see the disrespect, but God sees the trust that was broken long before we arrived. We see someone running from every boundary placed around them, but God sees the fear that tells them boundaries are only another way for someone to control or abandon them. We see someone rejecting God, but God may see someone who is angry because they once begged Him for help and believed He didn't answer.
Sometimes rebellion says, “I don't need anyone,” when the heart is really saying, “Everyone I have needed has eventually ended up hurting me.”
Rebellion might say, “Nobody gets to tell me what to do,” when the heart is really saying, “I never want to feel powerless again.”
Sometimes rebellion says, “I don't care,” because admitting how deeply they care would expose how deeply they have been hurt.
I'll also be transparent about something with this, because I too, at one time, walked in rebellion. In fact, I ran from God for 22 years, knowing full well that He was tugging on my heart to surrender.
I don't view rebellion in a teenager or young adult the same way I view it in someone my own age.
Rebellion is rebellion regardless of age, and what I mean by that is that it still flows from something deeper in the heart, and still carries consequences. But there's a level of emotional, mental and physical maturity that changes how I understand what I'm seeing.
A young adult may have an adult body while still learning how to carry adult emotions, adult pain and adult responsibility.
They may be trying to discover who they are while wrestling with wounds they don't yet have the language or tools to process. They may look fully grown on the outside while parts of their heart are still very much developing.
Now don't get me wrong, that doesn't excuse their choices, but it DOES, however, affect how I approach them, talk to them, and how I pray for them.
I actually expect more from someone who's lived long enough to recognize their own patterns, truly understands the damage those patterns cause and knows that healing requires personal responsibility.
At some point, pain cannot continue to be used as permission to wound everyone else.
And at some point, age and life experience should begin producing self-awareness, humility and a willingness to confront what's broken in us.
But when I see rebellion in a young adult, I am more likely wondering what's still developing beneath that behavior, what are they trying to understand, and what are they having a hard time expressing?
What pain are they carrying? What happened during those crucial years when they were learning what trust, security and identity were all about?
They still need truth, yes. They still need boundaries, and they still need accountability.
But they also need patience, guidance and someone willing to see beyond the adult appearance to the "still-maturing" heart underneath it.
Call me an oddball, but I have mentioned before that I see the wounds people carry, in a different way than most. I know what we see with our natural eye, goes deep beyond the surface.
We see the anger, but God sees the wound underneath it. We see the disrespect, but God sees the trust that was broken long before we arrived. We see someone running from every boundary placed around them, but God sees the fear that tells them boundaries are only another way for someone to control or abandon them. We see someone rejecting God, but God may see someone who is angry because they once begged Him for help and believed He didn't answer.
Sometimes rebellion says, “I don't need anyone,” when the heart is really saying, “Everyone I have needed has eventually ended up hurting me.”
Rebellion might say, “Nobody gets to tell me what to do,” when the heart is really saying, “I never want to feel powerless again.”
Sometimes rebellion says, “I don't care,” because admitting how deeply they care would expose how deeply they have been hurt.
I'll also be transparent about something with this, because I too, at one time, walked in rebellion. In fact, I ran from God for 22 years, knowing full well that He was tugging on my heart to surrender.
I don't view rebellion in a teenager or young adult the same way I view it in someone my own age.
Rebellion is rebellion regardless of age, and what I mean by that is that it still flows from something deeper in the heart, and still carries consequences. But there's a level of emotional, mental and physical maturity that changes how I understand what I'm seeing.
A young adult may have an adult body while still learning how to carry adult emotions, adult pain and adult responsibility.
They may be trying to discover who they are while wrestling with wounds they don't yet have the language or tools to process. They may look fully grown on the outside while parts of their heart are still very much developing.
Now don't get me wrong, that doesn't excuse their choices, but it DOES, however, affect how I approach them, talk to them, and how I pray for them.
I actually expect more from someone who's lived long enough to recognize their own patterns, truly understands the damage those patterns cause and knows that healing requires personal responsibility.
At some point, pain cannot continue to be used as permission to wound everyone else.
And at some point, age and life experience should begin producing self-awareness, humility and a willingness to confront what's broken in us.
But when I see rebellion in a young adult, I am more likely wondering what's still developing beneath that behavior, what are they trying to understand, and what are they having a hard time expressing?
What pain are they carrying? What happened during those crucial years when they were learning what trust, security and identity were all about?
They still need truth, yes. They still need boundaries, and they still need accountability.
But they also need patience, guidance and someone willing to see beyond the adult appearance to the "still-maturing" heart underneath it.
Call me an oddball, but I have mentioned before that I see the wounds people carry, in a different way than most. I know what we see with our natural eye, goes deep beyond the surface.
Maturity should change the way rebellion speaks...and when it doesn't? Well, that should speak something too.
So....while I won't excuse rebellion at any age, I believe compassion must consider where a person is in their development. Compassion must consider factors. Compassion must have compassion....and no, that's not a typo.
Accountability doesn't look exactly the same in every season of life. Sometimes love confronts firmly and sometimes it teaches patiently.
And sometimes love understands that the person standing in front of us may look fully grown while still desperately needing God to heal, shape and mature the places within them that never had the opportunity to grow properly.
We respond to rebellion by trying to correct the outward behavior.
We lecture, argue, avoid, threaten, show disgust, and we shame. We quote Scripture like a weapon without having any real conversation with them about it and then wonder why the person only becomes harder and more withdrawn and isolated.
The human heart isn't transformed by humiliation or avoidance!
A person may be pressured into temporary compliance, but compliance isn't the same thing as deliverance. Fear may change someone’s behavior for a moment, consequences may force them to sit still, and rules may keep them within certain boundaries....but ONLY GOD can reach into the hidden places of a heart and remove the thing that keeps producing rebellion.
Only God can expose the lie beneath the anger!
Only God can heal the wound beneath the resistance!
Only God can soften what pain has hardened!
Only God can give someone the courage to surrender the control they have been clinging to for survival!
Notice who does the work!
So....while I won't excuse rebellion at any age, I believe compassion must consider where a person is in their development. Compassion must consider factors. Compassion must have compassion....and no, that's not a typo.
Accountability doesn't look exactly the same in every season of life. Sometimes love confronts firmly and sometimes it teaches patiently.
And sometimes love understands that the person standing in front of us may look fully grown while still desperately needing God to heal, shape and mature the places within them that never had the opportunity to grow properly.
We respond to rebellion by trying to correct the outward behavior.
We lecture, argue, avoid, threaten, show disgust, and we shame. We quote Scripture like a weapon without having any real conversation with them about it and then wonder why the person only becomes harder and more withdrawn and isolated.
The human heart isn't transformed by humiliation or avoidance!
A person may be pressured into temporary compliance, but compliance isn't the same thing as deliverance. Fear may change someone’s behavior for a moment, consequences may force them to sit still, and rules may keep them within certain boundaries....but ONLY GOD can reach into the hidden places of a heart and remove the thing that keeps producing rebellion.
Only God can expose the lie beneath the anger!
Only God can heal the wound beneath the resistance!
Only God can soften what pain has hardened!
Only God can give someone the courage to surrender the control they have been clinging to for survival!
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. - Ezekiel 36:26
GOD says, “I will give.”
“I will put.”
“I will take away.”
“I will give you an heart of flesh.”
We can love people, pray for them, speak truth, maintain healthy boundaries and refuse to enable destructive behavior. We can even point them toward God again and again.
But we CANNOT perform heart surgery. We can't argue rebellion out of someone. We can't punish pain out of them. We can't shame them into surrender. We can't avoid them into compliance.
ONLY GOD can enter the locked rooms of a person’s heart and reach the places nobody else has been allowed to touch.
That's why our first response to rebellion shouldn't be judgment. It should be discernment, compassion, and intercession.
Instead of asking, “What's wrong with them?” perhaps we should also ask, “What happened to them?” What pain are they trying to outrun? What fear are they trying to hide? What longing is buried beneath everything they are portraying?
What part of them is quietly crying out for a God strong enough to rescue them from themselves?
There are people who appear to be fighting everyone around them, but the greatest battle is happening within their own heart! It comes out as anger, defiance, addiction, isolation, reckless decisions or rejection of every person who tries to get close.
And while everyone else is responding to what they are seeing, God is listening to what their soul is crying. He hears the longing beneath the rebellion. He sees the child behind the walls. He knows the exact moment the heart began to harden and what it'll take for that heart to become tender again.
THIS is why we must be careful with how we treat those whose pain has learned to speak through rebellion. We must be careful not to write them off as unreachable, manipulative or simply “doing it for attention.” Because sometimes what looks like a desperate demand for attention is actually a desperate plea to be seen. It may be the only way they know how to say, “Something inside of me is hurting, and I don't know how to fix it.”
“I will put.”
“I will take away.”
“I will give you an heart of flesh.”
We can love people, pray for them, speak truth, maintain healthy boundaries and refuse to enable destructive behavior. We can even point them toward God again and again.
But we CANNOT perform heart surgery. We can't argue rebellion out of someone. We can't punish pain out of them. We can't shame them into surrender. We can't avoid them into compliance.
ONLY GOD can enter the locked rooms of a person’s heart and reach the places nobody else has been allowed to touch.
That's why our first response to rebellion shouldn't be judgment. It should be discernment, compassion, and intercession.
Instead of asking, “What's wrong with them?” perhaps we should also ask, “What happened to them?” What pain are they trying to outrun? What fear are they trying to hide? What longing is buried beneath everything they are portraying?
What part of them is quietly crying out for a God strong enough to rescue them from themselves?
There are people who appear to be fighting everyone around them, but the greatest battle is happening within their own heart! It comes out as anger, defiance, addiction, isolation, reckless decisions or rejection of every person who tries to get close.
And while everyone else is responding to what they are seeing, God is listening to what their soul is crying. He hears the longing beneath the rebellion. He sees the child behind the walls. He knows the exact moment the heart began to harden and what it'll take for that heart to become tender again.
THIS is why we must be careful with how we treat those whose pain has learned to speak through rebellion. We must be careful not to write them off as unreachable, manipulative or simply “doing it for attention.” Because sometimes what looks like a desperate demand for attention is actually a desperate plea to be seen. It may be the only way they know how to say, “Something inside of me is hurting, and I don't know how to fix it.”
The same God who brought the prodigal son to himself can still awaken a heart that has wandered far from home.
The same God who stopped Saul on the road to Damascus can interrupt someone who seems determined to run in the opposite direction.
The same God who delivered the man among the tombs can still break chains that nobody else can see.
NO ONE is too hard for God!
NO ONE is too angry!
NO ONE is too lost!
NO ONE has wandered so far that the voice of God can't still find them!
So when you encounter someone living in rebellion, don't pretend their choices don't matter. Don't call darkness light, or allow their pain to become permission to harm others.
But don't reduce them to the worst thing they are currently doing either. Don't shun them, act as though they are invisible or make them feel as though they no longer matter.
I cannot imagine what might have happened if, while I was running from God and living in rebellion, the man (my daddy, and Bro. Lent) and woman (Sis. Doughty) God placed in my path as prayer warriors had treated me as though I didn't exist.
They didn't ignore me. They didn't look at me with disgust. They didn't turn up their noses, push me aside or exclude me because of what I was going through.
If anything, they loved on me even more because they could see that beneath the rebellion was someone who was deeply hurting.
They loved me, but they never gave place to my rebellion. They didn't excuse it, encourage it or pretend it was harmless. They simply refused to allow my rebellion to become the reason they stopped seeing me.
They loved the person without agreeing with the behavior. They covered me in prayer without covering up the truth. And they remained close enough for me to know that when I was ready to surrender, I wouldn't have to find my way back alone. Their love didn't make me more comfortable in my rebellion.
It made me feel safe enough to finally release the hurt
I had been carrying so deeply in my heart.
Sometimes people don't need another person to remind them how far they have fallen....they already know!
Sometimes they need someone who'll stand close enough to remind them that God has not stopped reaching for them, to see beyond the behavior, to look for the pain beneath the posture. Sometimes they need someone who will listen for the longing beneath the anger.
Consider the age, the maturity, the wounds and the places within them that may never have developed the way they should have.
And remember that beneath everything they're portraying may be a heart desperately crying out for a God to save them!
WE aren't their Savior. But we can refuse to become another voice of condemnation while God is still writing their story!
We can pray.
We can love wisely.
We can speak truth without cruelty.
We can hold boundaries without withholding compassion.
We can leave the door open for restoration.
And we can trust the One who alone has the power to reach a rebellious heart and make it new.
Because rebellion is not merely a behavior that needs to be controlled.
It's a heart that needs to be delivered.
We can love wisely.
We can speak truth without cruelty.
We can hold boundaries without withholding compassion.
We can leave the door open for restoration.
And we can trust the One who alone has the power to reach a rebellious heart and make it new.
Because rebellion is not merely a behavior that needs to be controlled.
It's a heart that needs to be delivered.
And only God can do that.
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