The Real Problem With The Carpenter Shop
In order to submit to the process, you have to sacrifice the idol of your dreams—and it hurts. That’s the real problem with the carpenter shop. We can get so zealous about our prophetic destiny that when God speaks about something else or points us in a direction that we deem contrary to what we have seen in the spirit, we feel robbed. But God is no thief; we know that the real reason He brings us into the dark room is not to lock us away, but to better develop the full picture of who He has made us to be. So the real question we need to ask ourselves is: Why do I feel like God is robbing me? While this question deserves a number of different answers and angles, I believe they would all boil down to three major components:
We take His presence for granted. While the bible is silent on Jesus’s time in the carpenter shop between ages 12-30, the story of young Jesus at the temple clearly demonstrates that He already had an intimate communion with the Father (“Did you not know I would be about my Father’s business?”). We have no reason to suspect this connection suddenly disappeared for eighteen years. We also know that Jesus had an entire book of promises from the Father about who He was and what He would do. Yet Jesus managed to remain content in the most opposite of circumstances because He valued intimacy with the Father as infinitely higher than anything He could ever do for the Father. Where we so often see intimacy as a key to (or product of) our destiny, Jesus understood the truth that intimacy is our destiny.
Looking back on the past five years, I can trace my battle for this truth to immediately after I started living my life for Jesus. Up until that point, my entire identity had been built around being a rapper, an area in which I had experienced some minor success. It was hard to leave those dreams at the foot of the cross, but when God began to whisper new destiny over me about ministry, I fell into a trap. I thought, “OK. I might not get a record deal with Jay Z anymore, but I’m going to plant a church in my hometown next week and everybody is going to get saved.”
This line of thinking has led me into many frustrated prayer times, because those whispers always seem attached to decade long character development programs that look nothing like the promise. “You’re wasting my potential, God! Why did You even save me if You don’t plan to use me?” It is in those moments that I realize—if I’m lucky—that I have once again devalued my relationship with God to a list of objectives that look nothing like His face. We have to learn to live for His presence, viewing the things that He speaks in the secret place as a fruit of our connection with God, not the basis of it. Because if we aren’t satisfied with His face when we have nothing else, all the blessing and influence in the world will simply be a distraction from what really counts.
We still need affirmation from other sources. It is easy to receive a prophetic word, set off to the mission field the next morning, and see amazing results. It is easier still to make those results our identity. Even though the average Christian’s intentions are pure in pursuing the ministry God has given them—meaning they sincerely do want to help people and make Jesus famous with their gifts—God uses the carpenter shop to weed out any sense of validation we receive outside of our relationship with Him.
It can be hard for us to believe we will disciple nations if our current job title is custodian, yet the King of Kings settled for woodcutter for nearly twenty years. In taking so long to manifest His miraculous power, it is not hard to imagine that people doubted the word of God over His life; but Jesus didn’t need their approval because His sense of sonship allowed Him to receive infinite affirmation through His relationship with the Father. On the flipside, after He came out in power and spent three years performing miracles throughout all of Israel the same crowds that cried “Hosanna!” one day screamed “Crucify!” the next.
Jesus was able to sustain such a rollercoaster of misunderstanding, disbelief, and betrayal because His entire identity was rooted in the Father’s opinion of Him, not the broken measurements of worldly success. It is in the process that we learn to do the same thing, such that even if our dreams never come true it doesn’t matter because our validity and worth has already been established in God’s love for us. I would identify this as the battle for sonship.
When I first got saved, 98% of my old friends thought I was crazy for giving up my fledgling music career, and when I decided to withdraw from college to “pursue love” in a community of believers that felt like family, longtime Christian mentors and some family members strongly disagreed and even ridiculed me. While my path is not the path for everyone, I see now that it was important for me to come to a place where I had nothing to give my life meaning but the simple word “son” spoken by my Heavenly Father.
It was only in the free time, the tough times, the factory jobs, fast food restaurants and janitorial positions that my misconceptions about success and identity manifested and were addressed by the Father. He taught me that I was not working towards success, but from it; and what’s more, that success had nothing to do with my effort or ability, but everything to do with what Jesus did on the cross. Seeking affirmation from men or achievements became unnecessary as I began to receive the true affirmation my soul desired from God—that I am His beloved son with whom He is well pleased.
As a side note: this would not have been possible without a community that loved me, one that facilitated the healing of my heart as God spoke truth to years of hurt and bad theology. It was not only the still small voice of the Holy Spirit that led me into my identity as a son of God, but the love of fathers, brothers, mothers, and sisters in the faith fighting with and for me through my darkest of hours. Their tangible expressions of God’s pleasure and love broke more chains than I can count, and continue to shape my understanding of God’s nature today.
Our character does not exceed our calling. Thanks to Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, God is no longer in the business of punishing His people. Hebrews tells us, however, that He disciplines us as His children for our benefit as our Heavenly Father. So too the carpenter shop is not a punishment for misbehavior, but a blessing meant to shape us into men and women of character who can do whatever it is God calls us to in purity and truth. In the same way that it would be counterproductive to offer crack to a recovering addict, it would be unwise to give a strip club ministry to someone who is struggling with pornography. While we in no way have to be perfect before God can use us, the hiddenness of the carpenter shop offers both time and intentionality for the Father to apply His love to the roots of our areas of brokenness, not just the fruits.
The world doesn’t need another church scandal or influential Christian to crack under the pressures of their platform; it needs whole, healthy-hearted individuals who value intimacy with the Father above everything else to show them what it truly means to be sons and daughters of the infinite one. The process of the carpenter shop is not glamorous, but we have a precedent in and promise from Jesus that those who submit to it will be released into greater works than they could ever imagine.
It is through learning to steward the small things—each relationship, each day, each thought—that we get promoted to greater influence, because we have proven ourselves as trustworthy in God’s sight. And since God always views us through the lens of Jesus, we’re really proving that trustworthiness to ourselves. Our humility and submission to God’s ways is often won through tough personal battles in which prayer, accountability, and complete dependence on God are crucial factors. But after enough private victories are won, we begin to see that God actually works! That He really does answer prayers and keep my feet from the net; that He will draw near to me if I draw near to Him. This knowledge is so important to gain in the carpenter shop, because it will teach us the holy confidence and wisdom of relying firstly and only on God as He gives us more to steward. And we know He’ll give us more to steward, because His word says that he who is faithful with a little will receive a lot.
One way I’ve seen this manifest in my own life was through my music. When I first became a Christian, I stopped listening to secular rap for a year and didn’t record any new songs for about two years. When God gave me the green light to pick it up again, I didn’t know what to expect because it felt like I was starting from ground zero. God gave me the grace to be faithful, however, and I did what I could with what I had. Within another two years my friend Alex and I had raised $10,000 to fund our first via Kickstarter, and we’ve since done dozens of concerts, sold many CD’s, and hopefully impacted many lives. I was even able to co-found a hip-hop event when I lived in Columbus that brought 50-100 people out every month to experience local music and build life-changing relationships. I’ve even seen friends give their lives to Jesus as a result of it!
While I couldn’t have anticipated the way things have turned out when I first got saved six years ago, I’m thrilled by the impact my art has been able to have and am even more excited to see where God takes us next. I believe He has been growing my influence because of character development that takes place within covenantal community relationships and personal, Spirit-led growth. I am definitely not perfect, but I remain committed to the process and the people I’m in process with, and somehow I think God views that as progress.
In conclusion, I pray that this article has given you some insight into the process of the carpenter shop, so that you don’t have to go round the mountain as many times as I did. And even if you do, know that God is more committed to you than you are, and everything He does is out of love to make you look more like Jesus—even the boring, mundane, frustrating and hard stuff. I pray that you learn the beauty of His face, the pleasure He has over you as his son or daughter, and that His discipline is really a good thing. God loves your dreams more than you know, because He loves you more than you can imagine, but He’ll do everything He can to show you He values you infinitely more than anything you can ever do for Him.
Written by David Wade
