CHAPTER EIGHT – More Than Conquerors

Have you ever done something wrong and you wish you could go back and change things?  Probably just about everybody has.  And since we haven’t yet figured out the whole time travel thing, we have to figure out some other way to deal with those situations.  So what do you do with those kinds of problems?

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CHAPTER SIX – Dead and Buried

Did you ever wonder why it’s so hard for some people to quit doing things they know are bad for them?  It’s usually because they’ve been doing it for a long time.

If a person smokes one cigarette or drinks one beer and realizes that it’s gross and unhealthy, it’s easy for them to never drink or smoke again.  It’s even easier for people who have never even tried such things.  If they have watched other people’s lives destroyed by things like drugs or alcohol, it’s extremely easy for them to choose never to touch those things.  But for the person who has made it a habit and become addicted after months (or even years) of use it can be an extremely difficult struggle to break free of those bonds they have created.

It’s the same way with sin.  People choose to turn their backs on God, and break his commands.  And the deeper they go and farther they run from God the more they become enslaved by their own evil.  They become so used to living in sin and their minds are so darkened that they can’t even imagine what life could be like if they weren’t slaves to wickedness.

That’s why the fact that Jesus is willing to cleanse us from all sin is such Good News.  Not only does he save our lives from eternal damnation, he purifies our lives from the stain of sin and empowers us with the Holy Spirit to be able to live the way he commands us to live.  When we choose to repent and to turn away from sin and toward God, in his wonderful grace, God sets us free from that slavery to sin and death, and we are free indeed to live for Jesus and have a brand new life in relationship to him.

I don’t know about you…but I think that’s awesome!

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What could be worse than a virus that destroys your organs and causes you to bleed from your eyes and ears and other openings and eventually killing you in extreme physical agony?

How about something that causes you to be in agony without the possibility of finding relief through physical death?

And how many people will wash their hands multiple times a day to keep from getting sick, but won’t think twice about sinning against God and dooming themselves to an eternity in Hell?

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I don’t know how many times I have heard people talk about getting revenge.  “I am going to get them back!”  And I’m not talking about when you’re playing around or having water balloon fights or things like that.  I mean when people have taken serious offence to something, and they will not rest until they’ve had vengeance.  Why do people feel so passionate about causing someone else pain?  Do they really think that will end the cycle?  Do they really think the other person will passively accept retaliation without escalating the conflict?  And when I’ve asked, “Well why don’t you just forgive them?” it’s like asking them to cut off their own arm.  “FORGIVE THEM?!  I can’t forgive them!  Do you realize what they did to me?  I’ll forgive them after I get them back.”  So they wind up, whether they exact vengeance o r not, carrying around this baggage of anger and bitterness and animosity, and completely miss the opportunity for healing in any direction.

I think that’s why Jesus said if you don’t forgive other people when they hurt you, then he won’t forgive you for hurting him.  Think about the wicked choices people make that shatter their relationship with God.  You can probably list quite a few sins.  Think about what Jesus sacrificed his life for.  Without his forgiveness, you will never restore that relationship.  Basically Jesus said, “If you refuse to forgive, you will go to Hell.”  After all the pain you’ve caused your own Creator, who has a love for you the size of infinity and therefore can feel the pain of your selfish hatred more than you can imagine, you can’t be his friend if you can’t let a little of your own earthly pain slide.  It’s completely hypocritical to expect forgiveness if you’re not willing to give it.

So besides the fact that you risk your soul by not forgiving, you miss the chance for reconciliation with others.  You can build relationships through forgiveness.  You can introduce others to the grace of God because they got a taste of his forgiveness through your grace.  God likes a BIG family.  And if you can’t see fit to add more people to it by building relationships instead of denying them through unforgiveness, then you’ve got no place in the Kingdom of God.

How’s that make you feel?

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So there are plenty of examples of bad churches in this world. We’ve all seen people who give God a bad name. They either teach things that are completely unbiblical or they lead people astray just for money or they are complete hypocrites teaching one thing and living another. It makes me so sad every time I hear of a pastor who got caught stealing from his church or sleeping around or doing drugs or anything like that because they are supposed to be the leaders of the church. But the pastor isn’t the only one who should be a good example. The church (the whole church) is supposed to be holy. That means Christians aren’t supposed to live like the rest of the world. They are supposed to have pure hearts and live righteous lives. By the power of God, they are supposed to be obeying his commandments–all of them. That’s what Jesus said proves who loves him…”Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me” (John 14)

So what makes a good church is when the people who are members are living just like Jesus did. If you are a Christian, I challenge you to live like it. Read what Jesus tells you to do, and if you love him, obey him. If you aren’t a Christian, I challenge you to challenge your Christian friends to put up or shut up. If they don’t live out what they teach, point out their hypocrisy. If they do live out what they teach, then listen to them. They know what it means to have new life (to be “born again”) in Christ.

The reason I did this talk was because we welcomed a new member to our church that day, and I just thought it was a nice chance to talk about what it means to be part of a church.

Enjoy!

PS. I gave this talk when it was snowing outside, and it totally reminded me of a Bible verse about snow. You know how clean and sparkly everything looks after a fresh snowfall. The Bible says no matter how gross and nasty our past looks, God can make our heart look as clean and pure as newly fallen snow. We have to choose to stop living with evil in our lives and start obeying God, but when we do, God says you get a fresh start. Isn’t that cool?! Check it out in Isaiah chapter 1.

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It’s not an Ordinary Nation.

The word ordain comes from the word order.  That’s what it means.  It can be like an order that a boss gives a worker or like putting things in alphabetical order.  When a church ordains a pastor.  They do a little of both.  That’s what happened to me.  My church made me a part of the leadership team along with other elders and deacons.  With a team committed to serving God with wisdom and humility the things that get done and the decisions that get made will be done with order and not disorder.  I also got orders from my Boss to step into this role and to serve the people of God’s church.  So I’m taking my orders to teach and to serve.  This talk is just a response to being assigned this new role.

But a pastor is just 1 role in the church.  Everybody in the church is supposed to be using their gifts to serve God as a team.  So what does it mean to serve God?  And how should we look at our own role as part of this team?

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This is kind of a continuation of “Well FORGIVE me!”  It deals with the place of forgiveness in situations of repeated abuse.  Can you mesh forgiveness with justice?  Is there a way to give grace without promoting lawlessness?

I don’t mention this in the talk, but if you think about it, the answer to that questions was Jesus giving his life on the cross.  If God wanted to forgive everybody without any desire for change, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die.  God could have just said “I forgive everybody no matter what.”  And it would have allowed everybody to continue living wicked and selfish lives.  But then Heaven and Earth would both be places of eternal evil because the law would have been thrown away to make place for universal forgiveness.  But in making his ultimate sacrifice, Jesus demonstrated the legal consequence of our evil as a motivation for us to stop breaking God’s law and live a life in accordance with all God asks of us.  So if we are willing to turn away from our selfish lawlessness and obey God, he can forgive us and promote justice at the same time.

Jesus said “Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me.”  So if we truly care about Jesus and what he said and did for us, our lives must be changed out of our love for him.  We can’t live as enemies of God if we truly love him.  So when people say something like “Just ask Jesus into your heart” it’s never some mantra or empty religious ritual that saves you.  It’s the fact that the love Jesus demonstrated for us with his life, death, and resurrection, motivates us to return love to him and live lives that will make him happy.  We enter into a relationship of mutual love and find forgiveness, not as a technicality for some empty prayer, but out of deep desire for God to be reunited with us in purity and righteousness.

So real grace not only forgives a perpetrator, but also promotes his or her best interest, which is eternal righteousness in accordance with God’s law.

Get it?

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How many times have you heard someone say they’re sorry, but their tone clearly revealed that they weren’t sorry at all?  How many times have you been the person doing just that?  It seems like people in our culture have a difficult time actually allowing themselves to regret a wrong action or feel sorrow for hurting someone else or even admit that they did anything wrong.  We always like to come up with excuses for our behavior.  It seems even more difficult for some people to actually forgive when they’ve been hurt.  So what do we do with all that emotion?  And does giving or receiving forgiveness actually do us any good?  What do you think?

This talk I gave last year was an emotional one for me.  I even felt choked up listening to it again.  But I sure am glad to have learned some things about dealing with this stuff in my own life.  What experiences have you had that you’ve learned from?

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