The First Question In Forgiveness and Reconciliation

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At some point in your relationships, you will be hurt. Someone will say something that marks you; it might be a small thing or something that changes your relationship(s) forever. You might be the one who says something. Maybe you have already experienced this and wondered, how do I trust again? How do I forgive that person and move forward?

Whenever this question or situation arises in Christian circles, we often read Matthew 18 and what Jesus says about reconciliation and hurt. Jesus says we must go to our brother or sister alone and tell them about their sin. If they don’t listen, take a friend along. If that doesn’t work, we must bring them before the church. This is challenging, and many times people skip this whole process and end the relationship, which is another blog post.

But, we skip an important part of this passage at the beginning. In verse 15, Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you.”

So, before confronting or bringing someone with us, we need to step back and ask, “Did this person sin against me?” Or did they do something I didn’t like?

I wonder if people often do things that we don’t like or irritate us. You can still go to that person to say, “When you did this or that,” or, “said this or that,” I didn’t like it. But one of the things we know from Proverbs, and a characteristic of a wise person, is the ability to let go of an insult or not be offended

Jesus wants us to pause during an emotional situation or a moment of frustration to take a breath and ask, “Have they sinned against me?”

The God of Delays (John 11)

What do we do with the delays of life? The moment when we ask God to move, and it doesn’t seem like He’s doing anything or at the very least, He is moving at a very slow pace. The moments when we ask for healing that doesn’t come, for restoration that doesn’t happen, for the mending of a broken heart that seems to break more.

Believing in God’s goodness and love is the hardest in these places.

That happens in John 11 as Jesus gets word that his friend Lazarus is sick. But instead of rushing back to Lazarus to help or to heal him, Jesus stays where he is for two more days (John 11:6). 

If you know how John 11 ends, we can shrug at this verse. But imagine this for a moment. You are Lazarus or his family, and Jesus doesn’t rush to you. Jesus stays where He is. 

This is the moment many of us have experienced. When you prayed for healing that hasn’t happened, for a relationship to be healed and mended that is still broken, for a child to be born or healed, for an addiction to be broken, and it seems like nothing is happening. 

John 11, though, shows us 3 important things about God’s delays:

They are inevitable. God’s timing is not our timing. The reason God’s delays are inevitable is no matter what God does in our lives; it will almost always feel like a delay to us because we want it now. 

They do not contradict his love. While Jesus stayed two days longer, he showed his love for everyone. He showed his care, not just for Lazarus and his family, as we’ll see, but also for everyone in front of him. 

His delays are not final. He will come in his own time and his way. It will be later than we’d like, but from God’s divine perspective, it will be the right time.

When Jesus arrives he tells them in verse 23: “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her. Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world.”

You can’t have a resurrection without a death.

Life cannot come without death, without change. 

This means as God changes us, frees us from sin, death must come in areas of our life. Life does not come without what seems like a loss.

And we know this: sometimes healing only comes after a death.

Sometimes, we must walk through the valley of death to find life. 

Sometimes, a relationship must end for us to find new life. 

Sometimes, we must hit the end of ourselves, rock bottom, to find life. 

How to Ask God for Help (Psalm 121)

For most of us, prayer bounces between a plea for help, a running conversation or to-do list with God, a reassurance of God’s power and presence in our lives, a wishlist or a shouting match with God, and wondering if God has forgotten us.

One of the most common ways we pray is a prayer for help.

Eugene Peterson said, “Trouble is what gets prayer started.”

And that’s true.

We pray out of desperation. We pray because we aren’t sure what else to do. We rend the heavens in hopes that God will hear and move. We pray through tears, mumbling, and bumbling from a place of helplessness.

We pray for health, healing, relationships to be mended, kids and parents and spouses to be saved, to be changed. We pray for jobs and finances. We pray for those close to us who are destroying their lives. We pray for wisdom in decisions.

And in all this, we are often very helpless to bring about an answer.

So, how do you ask God for help? How does He hear?

Psalm 121 gives us the answer:

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

Here are four things we learn from this Psalm about asking God for help:

Admit your need for help. This seems obvious, but asking God for help means admitting our need for help. We don’t do this naturally. We are naturally self-sufficient, self-assured people. We are raised to handle it, get it done, be fine, and not depend on anyone.

The writer of this Psalm is helpless, and they know it. They need help.

Believe God can and will help. Know where your help comes from.

For many of us, once we exhaust our ability to fix something, we still don’t go to prayer. Maybe there is a book, a sermon, a financial move, a Google search I can do, a person I can get advice from. Prayer for too many of us is a last resort.

When we get there, we say, “God, I don’t know if you can help. I don’t know if you care to help. So I’ll look around.”

Be patient. The writer of Psalm 121 reminds us to go to sleep. This communicates that sometimes our prayers will take longer than we think, but God will fight for us and work on things while we sleep.

Sleep is one of the greatest pictures of faith in our lives.

Why?

We worry, are anxious, and replay conversations over and over in our minds at night. We lie there, staring at the clock, thinking about our bank account, job, marriage, kids, and parents. The problems we experience in relationships, worrying about college, bills, health, and so on. Yet, at that moment, there is almost nothing we can do.

The people we worry about are asleep; the people we call for help and advice are asleep. The writer of Psalm 121 says, “Go to sleep.”

God is over all things. Why can we be patient and go to sleep? Not only because God is our help and never sleeps, but because verses 7 and 8 tell us that God is over everything.

He watches all things. He is not surprised by anything. Nothing catches him off guard.

It ends with a crucial word, forevermore.

Forever is a long time, yet that is our God’s scope.

Psalm 121 is a prayer to give us the confidence to ask God for help and confidence as we wait for that help to come.

Holding on to Your Faith when Life Knocks You Down

man wearing black, white, and gray plaid sport shirt covering his face

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In my years as a pastor, I’ve sat with couples who have buried a child, adults burying their parents, I’ve wept with people who just found out they had cancer and a short time to live, listened to the brokenhearted stories about the end of a marriage, a child who wants nothing to do with the family or God, the loss of jobs, financial difficulties, addictions that can’t be beaten.

Every single time, it is heartbreaking to walk through. 

These moments feel like a gut punch. 

I’ve walked through the loss of friends, difficulty in family and work relationships, loss of jobs, setbacks in life, and difficulties in starting our church. I’ve looked at mountains that seemed impossible to get past, hurt that felt so painful I thought I could never recover, a betrayal that ran deep.

And you have too. 

Walking into the church, we wonder what to do with those feelings, situations, and moments. Where is God in them? Does God care? Does He know? Are we supposed to put on a smile and pretend life is great when we just drug ourselves to church looking for a shred of hope?

This leads us to Romans 8 and one of the most quoted verses in the Bible. One that has been used for encouragement over and over in the lives of thousands since Paul wrote it.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.

Right now, you might be amid a storm in life. You might not be. If you aren’t, the reality is your storm is coming at some point.

Here are a few questions to help you see where you are, where God is in the storm you are walking through, and how to have the faith to walk through what you are in and what is ahead:

1. What storm are you facing? It is important to identify the storm you are facing. Often we don’t know what it is. We feel down, or something feels off from what used to be or what we hoped. Often it isn’t a storm we’re in the middle of; we’re simply tired or burned out. Other times we are in the dark place of the storm, and the waves are crashing around us. Also, without identifying our storm, we will struggle to see anything God is doing because we’ll simply go into survival mode or become jaded.

2. Are there any sins that need to be confronted? By this, have you sinned to get you into the place you are in, or has someone else? Take finances for an example. This can cause an incredibly stressful storm, but many of our financial issues (the housing market, retirement, etc.) are out of our control. Other financial storms are in our control (debt, spending, saving, giving, etc.). Or relational storms: did you hurt someone? Are you holding onto something you need to let go of? Is there someone you need to confront or forgive, and let go?

3. Look back at a storm, hurt, or pain from your past. With some distance from that situation, can you see God’s hand? I know that the further I am from a situation, the more clarity I have. I will often see my pride and sin more clearly, but I also see God’s hand more clearly. Now, on this side of heaven, we will not have answers for everything that happens to us. We aren’t promised that. We are promised that God will never leave or forsake us, that all things serve a purpose in God’s plan, and that all things will bring about God’s glory and good if we are called by Him and love him.

4. What does looking at your past help you to see about God with what you are facing? What is He trying to do right now? I like to look back on my life because it often helps me move forward. This is why God had the nation of Israel do things to remember how He moved in the past. This is why as followers of Jesus, we do things like communion and baptism to remember how God worked in the past, because that has an enormous impact on our faith in the future.

How to Fight Your Sin

We all struggle with something.

We all sin or have some emotion we wish we didn’t have. We carry regrets and shame from past hurts, relationships, or other experiences we hope to eliminate. But for some reason, they hang around. 

We often wonder, am I made new? Has God forgiven me for that? Why do I still struggle (Romans 7:15)? Why do I do what I do?

Throughout Scripture (Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:24; Colossians 3:5), we are told to crucify our sin, to put it to death.

But what does that look like?

Right before Galatians 5:24, Paul has two lists: a list of sins (vs. 19 – 21) and a list called the fruit of the Spirit (vs. 22 – 23).

In vs. 19 – 21, there is sexual immorality (which is all sex outside of the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman), impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these.

What is interesting about this list is that Paul seems to put them all on the same level and says, “Living in these will keep you from God” (see the end of Vs. 21). 

What Paul says, though, is these are not occasional sins. In vs. 16 – 17, he describes these as overwhelming, all-encompassing desires that you cannot control the longing of. They are your identity. These things about us follow words like “always” and “never.” I always worry, try to control things, and care what others think. I can never stop this or that. 

Those things slowly become part of our identity, which we carry as part of ourselves. 

For each person, vs. 19 – 21 is where the battle happens. And make no mistake, we all have something. 

But how do you put them to death?

This is where the fruit of the Spirit comes in vs. 22 – 23 of Galatians 5 and the freedom promised to us in Romans 8. 

I love that Paul calls them fruit. It gives this picture of a farmer, of gradual growth; a farmer, not the fruit, does that. The fruit doesn’t make itself grow; God does. Fruit does grow. Not always at the rate we expect or think it should, but it grows.

The question for a follower of Jesus is, do you see growth in your life in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Do you see how God is working on your heart in those areas?

We take the fruit of the Spirit and put our sin to death from vs. 19 – 21.

This becomes a daily thing.

Crucifixion in vs. 24 carries this idea that it will be a death. It will be painful, complex, and complicated. Freedom always involves a war.

One of the best ways to walk this road is through confession. We practice confession daily, each week, at the communion table. Why? Because “when we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). 

One thing I’ve learned about God’s grace is that many times, the reason we don’t experience God’s grace and freedom in Jesus is that we won’t allow ourselves to. 

We too often choose to stay stuck in our sins. This is why Paul talks so much about the mind in the New Testament (Romans 8:5, 12:1 – 2; Colossians 3:12). The daily choices make up our lives, and that pertains to the choices we make to sin or not sin. Paul tells us that we have the power to conquer all that lies before us (Romans 8:11), but many of us live already defeated lives. 

What if, this week, you lived as if the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in you? Because He does. 

5 Questions About Prayer

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One of the questions many people wrestle with is, “Does prayer work?” Many of us have prayed for something: healing, a wound to be taken away, a relationship to be restored, only to have it not answered.

We have also seen moments when we prayed for something, and that prayer wasn’t answered the way we expected it.

This leaves us to ask, “Does prayer work? Is prayer even worth the time and effort?”

In James 5:13 – 20, James lays out how to pray, the role of the unconfessed in prayers, and how a church should gather to pray together.

This passage is often used to pray for the sick, which it is about. But the word for sick in James 5 doesn’t just mean physically ill but also includes spiritual and emotional weakness. This is one reason James uses the example of Elijah because Elijah was spiritually and emotionally weak in 1 Kings. That idea completely changed my thoughts about this passage and my prayer life as I prepped this message. 

In chapter 5, James gives us five questions to ask so that we can see prayer be more effective in our lives: 

Are you self-made and have little need for God? Many of us are self-made, able to work hard, strategic thinkers, or people who can feel our way out of things.

Without realizing it, we create lives that have little need for the power of God.

This begs the question of when we start praying about something and how long it takes us to ask God for help.

Do you see the hard and good times as things God has allowed? In James 5, James talks about Job and Elijah as examples for us to understand his point. Job said, “God gives, and God takes; blessed be the name of the Lord.” James wants us to see how this interacts with our prayers. Do we see the good and the hard as from God? Or just the hard?

Do you pray for your will and not God’s? Jesus taught his disciples in Matthew 6 that when they pray, they are to pray for God’s will, not their own.

But one of our frustrations with prayer is that God doesn’t answer us on our timetable or the way we want.

This is the crux of prayer. Because we will often ask for A, and God gives us B. The question we have to wrestle with is, do we believe God heard us? Do we believe God spoke to the other person? This is when we are reminded how little control we have in life, and that’s hard. 

Do you pray specifically? I know it can be scary to pray specifically because I am opening myself up to being let down or opening myself up to potential doubts and struggles. What if I ask for this specific healing and don’t get it? What if I ask God to do this or that, and it doesn’t happen?

That’s hard. 

But the example that James uses is Elijah, who was a man who prayed specifically. He was also a very flawed man, which is also incredibly encouraging. 

Do you live in unconfessed sin? Unconfessed sin creates a barrier between you, God, and others. And James tells us it is a hindrance to our prayer lives. James connects the confession of sin to answered prayer and healing. 

This is important because the healing we are promised is spiritual, physical, and emotional, but we aren’t promised when that healing will come, just that we will have it. 

What Happens While we Wait on God

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You will find yourself waiting on God at some point in your life.

We will often find ourselves waiting for God to answer a prayer, to speak to us and give us direction, or maybe you find yourself waiting for God to provide you with a reason for the season of pain or difficulty you are in.

What we do in those moments might be some of the most critical moments of our faith journey. Those are the moments when God is doing a lot in us, even if we don’t see it at the time.

In James 5, James gives us a few things to be aware of and ask ourselves while we wait:

Am I controlling what I can control and releasing what I can’t?

Farmers in the first century didn’t have irrigation systems or even weather radars to know when a storm was coming. They were utterly dependent on the rain. They had to lean into what they could control and what they couldn’t.

We will often feel like we are utterly powerless in life or overestimate how much power we have.

One exercise that has been helpful to me is one Henry Cloud suggests in his book Necessary Endings: list out what you control and what you don’t control in a situation. You might find that you have control and agency over some things you didn’t think and you might find yourself worrying over something you have no control over.

Am I being patient?

James uses the example of a farmer to show us something important while we wait: the kind of patience we are to have.

Farmers cannot make crops grow, but they can do things while waiting.

Patience isn’t something we usually want (at least I don’t), but we must lean into it because things do not change or grow quickly.

James tells us to be patient in our suffering and difficulty, for the Lord’s return is near. This is a reminder that all we are going through will one day be made right, be made new, and that everything we are going through is under the rule and reign of God, which is why James harkens back to the story of Job.

Am I strengthening my heart?

Then he tells us to strengthen our hearts because the Lord’s return is near.

We strengthen our hearts by being in the word of God, by spending time with Him, listening to Him and speaking to him, casting our cares on Him (1 Peter 5:7), and sharing our sighs with him (Psalm 5:2).

We also strengthen our hearts in community, being with people who can help to encourage us and spur us on, but who can also help us carry our burdens and point out when we need to have things pointed out to us to grow in our faith. 

Am I guarding my heart?

James then switches gears in verse 9 to tell us to guard our hearts. 

Why?

While we are waiting and walking through pain and difficulty, we are vulnerable. 

He says: Brothers and sisters, do not complain about one another, so that you will not be judged. Look, the judge stands at the door!

That vulnerability can lead us to complain about each other, judge each other, criticize people or take judgment into our own hands. 

James says, be on guard. 

This is important because, amid our pain, frustration, and hurt, we can easily hurt those around us and take our anger out on them. 

What is God doing in you now as you walk forward in a hard season?

It is easy to look forward, to look for a reason for it, but God is looking to grow us in those moments. 

Pete Scazzero said, “To mature in Jesus and learn true faith requires we go through walls, dark nights, and valleys. There is no other way.”

Finding God’s Hand

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The other day in my Bible reading, I was in Matthew 11—the story of when John the Baptist was in prison.

I imagine that John is struggling and trying to figure out what God is doing in his life and the world around him. He sought to do what God called him to do and ended up in prison for it.

He hears reports of all Jesus is doing, yet John is still in prison.

So, John sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

This is a question many of us ask at different points.

If you are a pastor, you see how God works in another church, city, or state and wonder, “Why there and not here?”

You see the life and marriage of someone else and see God’s hand and wonder, “Why them and not me?”

This is the first question of faith for many of us, why does God seem to be active there but not here?

And it isn’t that God is only active there, but that it is often more apparent to us when God is active in someone else’s world than being able to see His activity in our world.

Part of this struggle is learning to celebrate when God works somewhere you aren’t a part of. As pastors, we should be grateful that churches other than ours are growing, but that can be hard. 

One of my favorite small group practices is sharing evidence of God’s grace: going around the table and sharing where we’ve seen God at work in the past week. When I struggle to see God’s hand, hearing how God is at work in the life of others reminds me that God is at work. 

It also helps me look harder at my life and see what God is doing. 

Then Jesus says something in verse 6 that I’ve always found curious: Blessed is anyone who does not stumble because of me.

We will struggle with faith when God doesn’t do what we think He should or want Him to do. 

Many of us had a crisis in our faith when God didn’t answer a prayer, heal someone or ourselves, or change something. That is the moment when our trust becomes real. 

 

4 Questions To Ask About God’s Will

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Recently, I preached on James 4:13 – 17 and the power of numbering our days and making the most of every moment. 

We all live with regrets, missed opportunities, ones we wish we could redo or go back and undo. 

We can’t. We can’t go back and change the past; we can only ensure we don’t miss what is ahead as we move forward. But how do we do that? 

Some of us get paralyzed when we think about decisions or how to figure out God’s will for our lives. I believe some basic things can help us discern God’s will for our lives, but I have learned over the years that a few questions have helped to clarify it in my life:

What does God’s word say? 

This might seem obvious since we are talking about God’s will. But, many of us ignore what God’s word has to say regarding marriage, work, finances, integrity, or other aspects of life. Then we wonder why God isn’t being clear in our lives.

I wonder if we did what God called us to do, the things He’s already told us in Scripture; I think it would be more precise what decisions we should or should not make. 

It is also easy to read something in Scripture, get the sense that the Holy Spirit is speaking to us, and then ignore that, or think about how it doesn’t apply to me or my situation. 

What does trusted community say?

These are the mature Christians in your life who are wiser than you, and care about you but aren’t impressed by you. They are willing to say the hard things to you. The ones who can look you in the eye and tell you that you are missing something, and you will listen to them. 

This could be a boss, a spouse, a friend, etc. 

If you’re married, what does your spouse say about this decision? I’ve learned over the years, God’s voice sounds a lot like Katie’s in my life. Someone once said, “If you’re married and are one flesh, God might speak to your spouse first about something.”

Often God will put people in our lives to speak to us and keep us from making poor decisions, but we can miss or discount that. 

What is easy or hard?

This question may not apply to you, but this has been helpful for me. 

I’ve learned over the years that for me, God’s will is usually straightforward, obvious, and more challenging than the other option.

Not always, but often, the easy decision isn’t the path God has called me to

Will this get me to where I believe God wants me to be?

I came across this question years ago in Experiencing God. Instead of making a pros & cons list, the author asked, “Will this get me to where I believe God wants me or hinder me?”

We can easily get paralyzed in decision-making because we might be sure of the first step but not what comes next. So we wait until steps 2 – 5 are clear, but we need to take action and “do the next right thing.”

This gets down to, do I trust that God will show me the next step after I take this one.

Following after God and figuring out his will for our life is about submitting ourselves to him so that we can make the most of our days. 

Favoritism, Faith and Getting Ahead

Favorites. 

We all have them. We joke in our families about who is our favorite child or grandchild. So, we know what it’s like to play favorites and how that can hurt relationships. 

And from an early age, we are taught to look for who is the most powerful, prestigious, or wealthiest in any room or situation. We know who people want to be around and learn that our lives can change, often for good, when we get around those people. 

Now, knowing these things in relationships or at work isn’t bad. They can be helpful when you try to accomplish things or need to raise funds for something. 

But the question Jesus poses through various parables and James’s question in chapter 2 is, “Does this knowledge influence how you treat people?” Wrapped up in James 2 is the reality that in the kingdom of God, the rich are brought down, and the poor are brought up. The old saying, “the ground is level at the cross.”

If you’ve been following along at my church as we’ve been going through the book of James and looking at what it means to be the best of you, in chapter 2, we see: The best of you is seen in how you treat people who can’t return the favor.

Going further, the best of you is seen in how you treat people who don’t return the favor.

This is because, throughout Scripture, we are told that God is the father to the fatherless, the defender of the widow (Exodus 22, Deuteronomy 10, Psalm 68).

 If the gospel has changed us, we will not only treat and love people the way God does, but we will see them the way God does. 

Some simple ways this might show up for you are:

  • Sitting with the person who eats alone. 
  • Giving a hug or smile to a person who needs it. 
  • Being fair and honest in your financial dealings. 
  • Not cutting corners, lying, or trying to use people to get ahead at work or financially. 
  • Doing biblical and wise things, not just legal, regarding finances. 
  • Living on less so you can give more. 

The question I ended with on Sunday is one we need to wrestle with: who in your life do you need to love and serve that can’t or won’t return the favor?