Training Day: Kingdom Edition

Yesterday, I studied Jezebel.

Today, God turned the mirror around.

Because Jezebel is easy to identify when I’m looking for somebody controlling, manipulative, intimidating, or determined to have their way. It is much harder to ask why I kept making room for them.

Yesterday I wanted to understand Jezebel.

Today I realized I have been Ahab.

And whew.

I would like a refund on this revelation.

1 Kings 16:30 says, “Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD above all that were before him.”

Above all that were before him.

That is an absolutely diabolical performance review.

Not “needs improvement.”

Not “shows potential with proper coaching.”

Worse than everybody before you.

Ahab was king of Israel, but his leadership was marked by compromise. He married Jezebel, began serving Baal, worshiped him, built an altar for him, and made an Asherah pole. Scripture goes on to say that Ahab did more to provoke God than all the kings of Israel before him.

For years, I have focused on Jezebel because she is loud.

She manipulates. She controls. She intimidates. She moves.

Ahab almost looks harmless standing beside her.

Except he isn’t.

He has authority.

That changes everything.

Ahab repeatedly surrendered responsibility for territory he had been entrusted to govern.

That is where this stopped being Bible study and started feeling like God reading my mail.

Because I know how to be Ahab.

I was not born Ahab.

I became Ahab.

The uncomfortable truth is that the Gospel is for me.

Which means I cannot keep reading Scripture and assigning myself the role of the hero.

I am not always David standing courageously in front of Goliath. Sometimes I am Saul, threatened by somebody else’s anointing.

I am not always Elijah boldly confronting Ahab.

Sometimes I am Ahab.

I am not always Naboth standing firmly on what God gave me. Sometimes I am the person willing to compromise because holding my ground feels too expensive.

I have been Peter, passionate about Jesus and still capable of denying what I know when fear gets loud.

I have been Judas, close enough to Jesus to know His voice and still capable of misrepresenting His heart.

I have been Israel, begging God to get me out of Egypt and then complaining because freedom felt harder than captivity.

The Gospel is for me.

So I should be able to see pieces of myself throughout Scripture.

Not because I have committed every sin every character committed, but because the same human conditions are still alive today. Pride. Fear. Insecurity. Jealousy. Control. Passivity. Unbelief. Courage. Faith. Repentance. Surrender.

I cannot keep reading my Bible like:

“Whew. That sounds like her.”

“Yep. That’s definitely him.”

“Lord, I know EXACTLY who needs this.”

No, ma’am.

Sometimes God is saying, “Put the list down. I’m talking to you.”

Scripture has to be a mirror before I turn it into ammunition.

The Gospel loses some of its wonder when I am always the good person in the story.

If I am always David, Elijah, Esther, or the woman with the alabaster jar, eventually I can convince myself that Jesus came primarily to rescue me from people like Ahab.

The Gospel tells me something far more humbling.

Jesus came to rescue the Ahab in me too.

The parts of me wounded enough to become passive.

Insecure enough to become governable.

Afraid enough to stay silent.

Hungry enough for acceptance that I compromised.

Human enough to need a Savior, not just better boundaries.

That does not excuse Ahab.

It explains why I need Jesus.

And my education in becoming Ahab started early.

My dad died when I was two. My grandmother died when I was eight. My mom died when I was eleven. Loss introduced itself to me before I even understood what grief was, and it kept coming. Then came years of abuse, instability, and environments where survival meant learning how to read rooms, measure words, stay quiet, keep people happy, and avoid making an already unsafe situation worse.

Eventually, peace stopped meaning things were actually okay.

Peace meant nobody was upset.

Those are not the same thing.

When enough people leave, disagreement can start feeling like abandonment.

When enough environments have been unsafe, confrontation can feel dangerous even when it isn’t.

So I learned to swallow things.

Give another chance.

Then another.

Then apparently open a nonprofit organization specializing in unlimited chances.

I learned how to survive.

The problem is that survival skills make terrible kings.

They can get me through something without teaching me how to govern what comes after it.

None of this excuses me.

Trauma can explain why I became passive without excusing what my passivity produced.

There are things I tolerated because I was afraid.

Things I permitted because I was insecure.

Conversations I avoided because keeping the peace felt safer than telling the truth.

Times I knew something was wrong, felt something was wrong, watched it continue to be wrong, and still said nothing.

Sometimes I wasn’t keeping peace.

I was keeping dysfunction comfortable.

That is Ahab.

1 Kings 21 makes it painfully clear.

Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard. Naboth refused because the land was his ancestral inheritance. Ahab went home “sullen and angry,” laid on his bed, turned his face toward the wall, and refused to eat.

Sir.

You are the king of Israel having an emotional shutdown because somebody told you no.

Unfortunately, I cannot drag this man too badly because I, too, have occasionally behaved as though a boundary was a personal attack.

Jezebel sees him sulking, asks what happened, and essentially responds, “Aren’t you the king?”

Then she handles it.

She writes letters in Ahab’s name, uses his seal, arranges false accusations, and has Naboth killed.

Then she tells Ahab the vineyard is available.

1 Kings 21:16 says when Ahab heard Naboth was dead, he got up and went down to take possession of it.

That part hurts.

Ahab did not write the letters.

He did not throw the stones.

He did not personally arrange Naboth’s death.

He simply benefited from what his passivity permitted.

Suddenly, “I didn’t do it” doesn’t feel like enough.

Sometimes my responsibility is not only found in what I actively did.

Sometimes it is found in what I had the responsibility to confront and chose to accommodate instead.

That brings me right back to influence.

1 Corinthians 15:33 KJV says, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.”

Corrupt.

That word matters because corruption rarely happens all at once.

It happens incrementally.

One compromise.

One silence.

One excuse.

One “that’s just how they are.”

One “I don’t want to argue.”

One “I’ll address it next time.”

One boundary moved because I am tired.

Another because I am afraid.

Another because I love them.

Another because I cannot stomach the thought of them leaving.

Eventually, something that once would have immediately bothered me becomes something I have learned how to function around.

Ahab did not become Ahab in Naboth’s vineyard.

The vineyard revealed what years of corruption had already produced.

That is why influence matters so much.

Whatever consistently influences me is slowly moving me somewhere.

Sometimes I do not recognize what has been influencing me until I finally get enough distance from it to recognize my own thoughts again.

Yesterday, I was asking who might be influencing me.

Today, I have to ask the harder question:

What inside me made that influence so effective?

Because here is the part I really do not like admitting.

Being Ahab will have me accepting a Jezebel and coddling a Judas.

My passivity does not only affect me.

If I am so afraid of conflict that I refuse to confront what is unhealthy, I can start giving access to things that should have been challenged and protecting things that should have been corrected.

The Ahab in me can accept Jezebel because confronting her might disturb the peace.

The Ahab in me can coddle Judas because holding him accountable might threaten the relationship.

Then I can dress both of those things up in Christian language.

“I’m extending grace.”

“I’m trying to love them through it.”

“I don’t want to judge.”

“God is still working on them.”

All of those things can be true.

They can also become spiritual-sounding hiding places for my fear.

Because grace and boundaries are not enemies.

Love and accountability are not opposites.

Forgiveness does not require unlimited access.

Jesus loved Judas knowing exactly who Judas was. He washed his feet. He shared the table with him. Yet Jesus never surrendered His identity, His assignment, or truth to keep Judas comfortable.

That distinction is wrecking me.

Maybe I have sometimes called something “loving like Jesus” when really I was terrified of what would happen if I stopped accommodating it.

Being Ahab can make dysfunction look like compassion.

Passivity look like patience.

Fear look like grace.

It can have me accepting Jezebel, coddling Judas, and then wondering why I cannot hear myself think.

So healing Ahab means learning that I can love somebody without surrendering to their influence.

I can extend grace without extending unlimited access.

I can forgive somebody without volunteering to be governed by them.

I can love Judas and still recognize Judas.

I can recognize Jezebel without becoming Jezebel trying to defeat her.

Because the goal is not to become harder than the people who hurt me.

The goal is to become healthy enough that my wounds no longer decide who gets access to me.

Controlling people become especially powerful around people who do not trust themselves.

Someone else’s certainty can feel like clarity when I am unclear.

Someone else’s confidence can become my compass when I do not trust my own discernment.

Someone else’s disappointment can feel like proof that I have done something wrong when I have spent my life believing peace means everybody is happy with me.

If I do not know who I am, the loudest voice in the room can eventually start sounding like God.

And I cannot experience God correctly while insisting on seeing Him through wounds created by people.

I cannot assume God will abandon me because people left.

I cannot assume He is disappointed because somebody else is disappointed.

I cannot confuse submission to God with submission to everybody who has an opinion.

I cannot keep calling fear “discernment” because fear learned a few Bible verses.

Ahab was also indecisive and insecure.

I know that version of myself too.

Bad decisions from my past have sometimes made me terrified to make decisions in my future. When I have chosen wrong before, I can become so afraid of choosing wrong again that I choose nothing.

Except indecision is still a decision.

Avoidance still produces outcomes.

Ahab teaches me that surrendering responsibility does not surrender accountability.

Then there is Eli in 1 Samuel 2.

Eli knew his sons were doing wrong. He spoke to them, but he failed to truly restrain what was happening.

That convicted me too.

Because sometimes I mistake acknowledgment for accountability.

“I told them.”

“They know how I feel.”

“I said something.”

Okay.

Did anything change?

Sometimes confrontation without boundaries eventually becomes another form of permission.

Maybe little me learned that survival required accommodation.

Adult me cannot keep giving that survival mechanism a throne.

That child deserves compassion.

This woman requires accountability.

Both can be true.

I can grieve what happened to me without making what happened to me responsible for every decision I make now.

I can understand why I became hyperaware of everyone else’s emotions while learning that their emotions are not commandments.

I can understand why losing people made holding onto people feel like survival while admitting that sometimes I have abandoned myself trying to prevent someone else from abandoning me.

That one hurts.

Because I have.

I have swallowed truth to preserve connection.

Called silence maturity when sometimes it was fear.

Called tolerance grace when sometimes it was insecurity.

Called passivity peace when sometimes it was trauma making decisions from an old room I do not even live in anymore.

That does not make me evil.

It makes me responsible for healing.

That is where Training Day suddenly makes sense to me differently.

Jake, played by Ethan Hawke, spends much of the movie beside Alonzo, played by Denzel Washington, watching the line of what is acceptable move farther and farther.

Jake knows things are wrong.

His conscience reacts long before his courage catches up.

Alonzo is louder. More experienced. More powerful. More intimidating. More certain.

So Jake keeps riding along.

Until eventually he doesn’t.

Eventually his conscience becomes louder than his fear.

Eventually the Ahab in Jake confronts the Jezebel in Alonzo.

Not because Jake suddenly becomes more powerful, but because he finally decides there are things he will no longer participate in simply because the person demanding them has power.

Maybe that is what God is doing in me.

I do not need to become louder.

Harder.

Meaner.

Suspicious of everybody.

I need the Ahab in me to finally stand up.

“No. You cannot do that here.”

“No. I do not agree.”

“No. I will not participate.”

“No. Your disappointment does not automatically mean I disobeyed God.”

“No. Your confidence does not make you correct.”

“No. Keeping you comfortable is not the same thing as keeping peace.”

Freedom for me may look like finally learning that disagreement does not equal danger.

A boundary does not equal abandonment.

Someone being upset with me does not automatically mean I have done something wrong.

Someone leaving does not mean I should have betrayed myself to make them stay.

I still need influence.

Godly influence.

Correction.

Community.

People who can tell me when I am wrong.

Healing does not mean becoming so independent that nobody can speak into my life. It means learning the difference between someone helping me find clarity and someone becoming my clarity.

There is the value of my contribution.

Then there is my value in Christ.

Those are not the same thing.

If I confuse them, I will keep trying to earn belonging through usefulness and preserve relationships through silence.

That woman will always be vulnerable to manipulation because she believes love has to be maintained through performance.

Maybe God is teaching me that I do not have to audition for what He already gave me.

Identity.

Belonging.

A voice.

A yes.

A no.

Permission to disagree.

Permission to disappoint people when obedience requires it.

Permission to stop calling dysfunction peace simply because nobody is yelling.

Yesterday, I wanted God to show me Jezebel.

Today, He showed me Ahab.

The injured me.

The insecure me.

The indecisive me.

The me who survived enough loss that sometimes losing myself felt safer than losing somebody else.

I was not born Ahab.

I became Ahab.

Which means, by the grace of God, I do not have to remain him.

Maybe this season is not just about God showing me what has been influencing me.

Maybe He is healing the places in me that made unhealthy influence feel necessary.

Teaching me who I am before somebody else volunteers to tell me.

Teaching me that courage does not mean the little girl inside me stops being afraid somebody might leave.

Courage means I can look at her and say:

I know why you’re scared.

I know what losing people taught you.

I know why silence once felt safer.

You survived.

Thank God, you survived.

Now we have to learn how to live.

Because the Gospel is for me too.

So I cannot only search Scripture for Jezebel.

I have to be willing to find Ahab.

I cannot only recognize Judas.

I have to remember I have been Judas.

I cannot only celebrate Peter’s restoration.

I have to admit I have denied things I knew were true because fear was louder.

The Bible is not merely showing me people to avoid.

It is showing me who I am capable of becoming without God, who I have been because of my wounds, and who grace is inviting me to become now.

So I am letting the mirror stay pointed at me.

Maybe the prayer is no longer just, “God, expose the Jezebels around me.”

Maybe it is:

“God, heal the Ahab in me that keeps giving them somewhere to sit.”

Yesterday I studied Jezebel.

Today I found Ahab sitting in my seat.

This time, neither one gets to drive.