Episode 12: Out of Order: Why Misalignment Feels Like Punishment

Many people believe God is punishing them—
 but what if that’s not true?

In this episode, we uncover a deeper truth:
 what feels like punishment is often the result of being out of divine order.

God is not distant.
 He is not withholding love.
 He is a God of order—and when our lives move outside of that order, things stop flowing the way they were designed to.

Through scripture and real-life application, we walk through:

•  What divine order actually is (and what it is not) 
•  How misalignment creates frustration, confusion, and disconnection 
•  Why Jesus modeled perfect alignment with the Father 
•  The practical pathway back into alignment using John 15 

This is not about condemnation.
 This is about realignment.

If you’ve felt stuck, disconnected, or like things just aren’t working—
 this conversation will help you identify where things may be out of order and how to return to a place of peace, clarity, and fruitfulness.

You are not being punished.
 You are being invited back into alignment.

Scripture References:
1 Corinthians 14:33
Proverbs 14:12
Isaiah 30:1
John 5:19
John 15:1–8

Closing Thought:
Wholeness begins where alignment is restored.

Transcript

Recording Started

SPEAKER_00 0:02

All right. Welcome to a healthy, wealthy whole and the dominion table. I'm going to do both today because I felt like, you know, I wanted to speak to both of us on the podcast and on the Dominion Table on Facebook. I want us to sit at this table and I want us to talk about something that has come across me during divine conversation with the Holy Spirit. And just some questions that I have been asking within myself based on some conversations that I have heard, some things that I have listened to, and just, you know, what I believe that needs to come forth today. So sometimes when we go through things, and I'm just going to be blunt and y'all just bear with me. Sometimes when we go through things, sometimes it feels as if, you know, like God is punishing us, right? But most of time what we're feeling is um misalignment. It's not punishment. Um, God is not trying to hurt us, he's not trying to withdraw his love from us because he never will withdraw his love from us when we are his. But God is a God of order, he's a God of divine order. And when we are out of order, then our lives will feel like it's working against us. When it's not God working against us, it's our life working against us. So I want to use an example. And this is the example that came to me. You know, have you ever gone to the bathroom? You know, you had to go to the bathroom, right? And you out shopping and you in a store, and you needed to use the restroom and the sign on the door, you gone back there to the back of the store, knowing you're gonna go in there because you have to use the restroom, and the sign tells you that it is out of order. What does that do to you? I know if I have to use the bathroom, I have to use the restroom, and the sign is out of order, and there's no other restroom in the store that could be used. Whew, that does something to me. So I just want to use that as an analogy because the bathroom didn't stop being the bathroom, right? It still had the design to function as a bathroom, but something in the bathroom system was off. And because it was out of order, we couldn't access it, right? I couldn't access it. I couldn't access what the bathroom was created to provide, which was a place for me to experience relief, right? And this is what happens sometimes in our own lives. So I want to divine, define, define, divine. I want to define divine order. First Corinthians 14 and 33. It says that God is not the author of confusion, but God is the author of peace. And this means that God operates through structure and flow and alignment. And we all know this as believers. Divine order is not control. Divine order is actually God's design functioning properly. And it is when our spirit, our soul, and our body, our decisions, everything that we are and everything that we do comes into agreement with how God designed us to live. Now, Proverbs 14 and 12 tells us something else. It says, there's a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death. Now that's misalignment. You ever know when you were in the church or in church and they say, well, you know, you can miss God? I used to hate that saying. I'm just gonna be honest. I used to hate that saying. And I think that at that time I wasn't sanctified enough in my heart or purified enough in my soul to receive a word like that, right? Because pride was still there saying, How are you gonna tell me that I miss God? You know, we can we can be the most at times, right? But misalignment is not really missing God. It's just you functioning out of the order that God designed your life to be in. Sometimes misalignment feels like it's right, right? Our feelings, right? It feels like it's right. Just like the scripture says in Proverbs, it's seem right, right? But the end of that was death. And sometimes things with us can feel right, but it's still out of order. So in Isaiah chapter 30, Isaiah calls that the people of God rebellious, not because God was punishing them or hating them, but because they had started making their own plans without God. And misalignment happens when we move without God's timing, when we build without God's instruction, and when we decide without his wisdom. And then when we do all of these things on our own, the things don't work out the way that we think they should. Then we either make an excuse to justify why it didn't work, or we start wondering why it didn't work. It's because we were misaligned. Now, I want to look at Jesus. John chapter 5, verse 19 says that the Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do. That life that Jesus lived on the earth for those 30-something years was perfect alignment. Jesus never moved independently from God, he was always in step with the Father. That's why Jesus had authority, that's why Jesus had power, and that's why Jesus always had results. You see, alignment with God always produces the fruit that will remain. But misalignment from God produces our frustration. So, what does misalignment really look like? I want to bring this into a real life example, real time. When we are out of order in any form or fashion, we sometimes feel tired, but we're not actually resting. And I'm not talking about physical rest, I'm talking about heart rest, soul rest, peace of mind and heart. We're busy doing, but we're not really productive. We're building something, but not sustaining it. And we feel disconnected even when we are doing good works. And sometimes doing that and pushing that and getting that, you feel burnt out. You feel like, what's the use? You feel like, man, will there ever be fruit from this work that I'm doing? And it kind of can sometimes feel like punishment. It can kind of feel like, when, Lord, when? You'd ever ask the Lord when? What's actually really happening is that we're disconnected. There's a disconnect somewhere, and it's usually us being disconnected from the vine. Because Jesus said in John 15 that we can do nothing without him. He said, apart from me, disconnected from me, you could do nothing. John 15 and 5. Because he is the vine and we are what? The branches. So the branch must stay connected to a vine in order for it to flourish and thrive and grow. So how can we come back from misalignment to aligning, to being connected to the vine and remaining connected? The first thing we need to do is be honest enough to say that you've been doing things without God, that you've been making decisions without God, that you've been, you know, building without God, that you've been in relationships without God. You just gotta be honest and say, hey, I've done this good work, it's good. But was it God? Was it really God telling me that this is something that I should have been doing? So you have to recognize first that you were disconnected. And we've all been there at some point in time in our walk with the Lord. So that's where honesty comes in. We gotta stop not being honest with ourselves because we're not fooling God, we're just deceiving our own selves. The second thing that we have to do is get pruned. Every plant in a garden needs pruning. You got to cut back the links that don't serve that plant at all so that the new things can sprout and grow. In John 15 and 2, it says that God prunes what is not producing. So that means any of our habits that's not producing, our building that's not producing, relationships that's not producing our thought patterns, our ways, our mindsets, even good things that are good works, but they're not God things or God works. They need to be pruned and cut back. And that's hard sometimes when you really truly believe that you were doing something that God called you to do, and then you find out later, maybe God didn't say it, but it was introduced to me as if God said it. I went for it in faith, and now I'm finding out that it wasn't Him. Well, that's no shame to you. You just gotta cut back. That's all. There's no shame in minimizing things out of your life. Pruning is not punishment, it is just correction to getting us back in alignment and back in divine order, which is where we really want to be. The third thing is just to abide. In John 15 and 4, it tells us to abide in Him. And this is where most people can absolutely miss it. Abiding is not grinding, women of God. Abiding is not burning yourself out, doing all of these things for everybody. Abiding is staying connected to the Lord. It's every single day aligning yourself by staying in his word, by staying in his presence, and staying submitted in your decisions. And that's the one that we have the hardest time with submission, being yielded and surrendered to the Lord and our decisions, being sensitive to the Holy Spirit's functionings and movings and following and yielding to him. That's the place where we have the hardest time. We could be in the word all day long. We can worship and praise him and have these praise breaks throughout the day. But if we do not submit, what good is the other two? This is just the truth. It's just the truth. This is how we abide. We stay in the word, stay in his presence, and stay submitted. The submission part is the part we must focus in on and do. And he gives us the grace to do it because that's his will for us. The fourth thing, John 15 and 8 says, Hearing is my Father glorified, that you and I bear much fruit. When we are aligned and you know, connected to the line, when we are in divine order, things flow differently, don't they? You know the difference. You know the difference. They flow differently. There is wisdom and clarity available in those quiet moments. There's peace that really truly surpasses your understanding. When your emotions may want to go one way, the peace of God stabilizes you and causes you not to go in sway of the emotions that are trying to rage, right? And what you build in that kind of alignment starts to absolutely sustain itself because that's the fruit that remains. Because now you are in exact divine order. And we can't, we have to make a decision that we don't want to keep jumping in and out of alignment. We don't want to keep jumping in and out of alignment like we jump in and out of diets or jump in and out of relationships or jump in and out of churches or jump in and out of jobs. We can't jump in and out of abiding in the Lord. We have to make a decision that He is our life, the source of our life, the strength of our life, the joy of our life, the peace of our life, the love of our life, and we must submit to staying and remaining in that place with him. And this will cause order and fruit that will remain. So I want to take this a little bit deeper. And this is for the people sitting at the Dominion table. If you are leading anything, if you're leading a business, a ministry, a household, if you're leading in your career, you can't govern what you're not aligned in. Governance is very important when you are in leadership. An out-of-order leader creates confusion, inconsistency, and instability in the environment in which they lead. But a leader that is in complete divine order and alignment, they hear clear, they move with authority and not with authority by voice, but authority by character, integrity, and personality. They build with structure and they produce fruit that lasts. You see, in the book of John, chapter 15, this is not just a personal model for divine order, but it is also a leadership model. Because if we disconnect from divine, everything under our leadership will feel it. You've been in places and spaces where leadership was not mature enough to handle the position they sat in, where people got into roles that really was never theirs to sit in, and everything underneath that role began to crumble. Where people sat in roles that wasn't theirs to sit in, and you underneath that role began to crumble. You see, leadership shows your character, it shows where you are in your mindset and it shows your integrity. And no matter what leader ever will ever tell you, if the if a leader does not show forth humility, integrity, and character, strength of character in Christ as a believer, everything underneath that leadership is going to be shaky. It's going to be rocky. Because wherever that leader's mind will sway them, him or her, that's where everybody else will sway who's under that leadership. Unless you come from underneath it. So I want to talk to the Healthy Wealthy Whole podcast. This is not just spiritual, right? Divine order is for your whole life. And alignment and divine order affects your body because it affects how you eat, how you rest, how you move your body. It affects your mind, what you think and come into agreement with. And it affects your spirit and who you are connected to. And when you are out of order or one of those areas is out of order, you feel it in the other areas. You will always feel like something is off somewhere. But wholeness and health, wealth, and wholeness, that word wholeness, it's alignment. That's what it is. So I wanted to bring this to us today in both the table and the healthy, wealthy, hopefully on purpose podcast, so that we would just understand that misalignment is not punishment. It's just a call to correct. It's a call to course correct. Just correct your course. Come back in alignment. Come back into abiding. Come back into the presence of the Lord. Come back into yieldedness and submission. And your life will be in divine order in every area. We're not being punished when we are out of order. Like the bathroom tries to punish us if we have to go. We're just being invited. We're being invited back into divine order. When you come back into alignment, you don't force anything. You don't strive for anything. You don't have to chase after what God already designed to flow from you to you and through you. You just stay connected to the vine because your life is not meant to function out of order. So I just want you to know your life is not for chaos. Your life is not for misalignment. It is for governance, divine order, and abiding. This is Denise, and I'll see you again back at the table and on the Healthy, Wealthy, Whole On Purpose podcast. Talk to you soon. Take care.