Speaker 1: to be in the scripture this morning for our message in Acts, chapter number 13,.
Speaker 1: Acts 13,.
Speaker 1: And we're going to start off with an unofficial FCC survey.
Speaker 1: Unofficial FCC survey this morning.
Speaker 1: Here's a question.
Speaker 1: You guys ready for this question?
Speaker 1: It's a really hard question.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you this is going to be a tough one.
Speaker 1: Here it is.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been disappointed before?
Speaker 1: Okay, looking at it, I think the survey was 100 percent.
Speaker 1: If you didn't raise your hand, you're probably taking a nap or something.
Speaker 1: We've all been disappointed.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example of a major disappointment in my life.
Speaker 1: It's about a month ago Super bull Sunday.
Speaker 1: All the people that loved Jesus.
Speaker 1: They were disappointed and those that weren't bothered by the results of the game.
Speaker 1: You need prayer, my God.
Speaker 1: Have kindness on your depraved heart.
Speaker 1: Tough game.
Speaker 1: We had disappointments.
Speaker 1: I also remember when I was in college this is circa 2000s year of our Lord I would go to a place right around the corner from our campus.
Speaker 1: You may have heard of it.
Speaker 1: It's called McDonald's McDonald's been there a time or two.
Speaker 1: The thing about McDonald's is something that I feel like is really underrated.
Speaker 1: That this just isn't.
Speaker 1: No, it's a McDonald's ice cream cone.
Speaker 1: It hits the spot.
Speaker 1: Can somebody say amen, oh, my goodness, yes, some of you raising your hand.
Speaker 1: You are with me, you're my people.
Speaker 1: You know it's like heavenly goodness.
Speaker 1: And this is in the 2000s, when ice cream cones you could get one for like 79 cents.
Speaker 1: This is amazing.
Speaker 1: Now here's the problem about my ice cream cone, my McDonald's I'll go to Half the time they would run out of ice cream.
Speaker 1: This is a problem.
Speaker 1: So you get the picture here.
Speaker 1: My sweet tooth Anybody have a sweet tooth my sweet tooth has very strong demands at times and my sweet tooth would make this demand to get some ice cream.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to McDonald's and I am ready for an amazing ice cream cone with all of its sugar and cream and heavenlyness.
Speaker 1: And I get to McDonald's and they say we're out of ice cream Dagger.
Speaker 1: Then it's like disappointment and we would have to settle for plan B, which was Jack in the Box milkshake across the street, which wasn't too bad.
Speaker 1: But when you have your heart set on a McDonald's ice cream cone, right, it is disappointment.
Speaker 1: We have small disappointments in life, like McDonald's ice cream running out, but sometimes in life we have big disappointments.
Speaker 1: You've experienced them and we're going to talk about them today, but maybe not in the way that you think.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about them within the context of what do we do when we're disappointed by a Christian, by a Christ follower, by church?
Speaker 1: It happens and it's real, and how do we handle it?
Speaker 1: And here's why we're going to talk about this, because this is kind of part of a larger conversation that we've been having the last several weeks.
Speaker 1: It's been a series called Permission to Doubt, and one of the reasons that some of us have doubts or were confused or maybe even disillusioned with Christianity or the church is because somebody who claimed Christ really let us down.
Speaker 1: He probably experienced this in your life at a time or two.
Speaker 1: Maybe you had a boss that maybe they had a Bible verse up in their office, or maybe they were a cross necklace or they had a Bible verse tattooed on them or something.
Speaker 1: And they go this guy claims Jesus, but then he doesn't treat you in a very Jesus way.
Speaker 1: You're like, hmm, or you had a friend.
Speaker 1: They said they love Jesus, but then you saw how they live their life and how they treated people and how they talk to people and their integrity or maybe their lack of integrity, and you thought, hmm, I don't know about that.
Speaker 1: Or maybe there's a pastor or a church leader that you really looked up to, that influenced you, that you listened to them, that they helped guide you spiritually in some way or another, but you find out later on that they were living a double life, that there was duplicity in their life, and it hurts and it's hard to reconcile and it's like I don't understand In a church context, where this is supposed to be a place of mercy and grace and healing and love.
Speaker 1: Often a church is seen as a place of hypocrisy and scandal and corruption and sometimes abuse.
Speaker 1: What do we do about this?
Speaker 1: There's an author that gave a stinging rebuke about this very thing, about a world that kind of looks at the church and they're like scratching their head, like is this really happening?
Speaker 1: Did that?
Speaker 1: This is what Brandon Manning says.
Speaker 1: He says the single greatest cause of atheism in the world it's Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door of the church building and deny him by their lifestyle.
Speaker 1: That is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable.
Speaker 1: My man, brandon Manning, is spitting facts right here Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: So what do we do?
Speaker 1: Here's the title of the message this morning.
Speaker 1: We don't do titles a whole lot here, but the title of the message this morning is when Christians let us down.
Speaker 1: When Christians let us down.
Speaker 1: If you've been confused or hurt or disappointed or disillusioned by this, you're not alone.
Speaker 1: Even Jesus talked about this in Matthew, chapter 23.
Speaker 1: He talked in other places about how there's this disconnect between what Christians say and the way Christians live.
Speaker 1: In fact, in Matthew 23, verse 27, it says this woe to you.
Speaker 1: This is what the ologians call the seven oils.
Speaker 1: This is like a rebuke.
Speaker 1: Woe to you.
Speaker 1: Scribes, pharisees, hypocrites.
Speaker 1: You're like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of impurity.
Speaker 1: Jesus, tell us what you really thought.
Speaker 1: He says in verse 28,.
Speaker 1: In the same way, on the outside you seem like righteous people, but inside you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Speaker 1: Now, multiple times in the scripture you see the word hypocrite and every time you see that it was Jesus correcting somebody that presented themselves as one thing but lived something else.
Speaker 1: And this doesn't mean that somebody's, that we're going to be perfect and we're never going to fail.
Speaker 1: No, we all are.
Speaker 1: But it's when we present ourselves as something and live in a duplicitous way.
Speaker 1: This word hypocrite in the scripture.
Speaker 1: It came from this idea.
Speaker 1: The word hypocrites were Greek actors.
Speaker 1: What they would do is they would they would portray a character and wear a mask and then they would take that mask down and then they would portray another character over here.
Speaker 1: They were hypocrites, right, they were two different things.
Speaker 1: So people understood this and Jesus is communicating that and he's saying hey, that's you and your spiritual life.
Speaker 1: That ain't good.
Speaker 1: It's not good to act as one thing and live another way.
Speaker 1: So we're going to do today is we're going to be in Acts, chapter 13, and we're going to look at two guys, paul and Barnabas, about how they handled church hurt, how they handled some people that said they were Christians.
Speaker 1: That disappointed them.
Speaker 1: What do they do about it?
Speaker 1: What do we do about it?
Speaker 1: Because it's probably happened to you.
Speaker 1: If it hasn't happened, it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this this morning, before we get into our scripture, and I'm actually going to pray and just pray that God would use this message in our hearts and in our lives.
Speaker 1: Let's pray together, lord, as we get to your word.
Speaker 1: Your word is a healing balm.
Speaker 1: Your word is a comfort to our hurting souls at times.
Speaker 1: Your word is a challenge when something is going to be challenged.
Speaker 1: I pray this morning as we just look biblically at your word.
Speaker 1: I pray that this literally for some people would be a game-changing message as we would learn and see biblically like how do we work through these things and we need your help.
Speaker 1: I pray that you would open up hearts.
Speaker 1: I pray you to open up eyes, that the spirit would bring understanding.
Speaker 1: I pray for the person in the room that is not yet a follower of you.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just here because somebody invited them or whatnot.
Speaker 1: I pray that you would work in their hearts and in their lives and we're believing you this morning.
Speaker 1: You do great things.
Speaker 1: You do great things in Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: Chapter 13, verse 47,.
Speaker 1: If you're ready for the word this morning, would you say amen, let's go, amen.
Speaker 1: I really believe through this text and through God's word.
Speaker 1: I don't say this very often at all, but I usually say this like one or two messages a year.
Speaker 1: I think this, for some people, is going to be the most important message you're going to hear this entire year and I really believe that for some people in this room, verse 47, verse 13 says this for this is what the Lord has commanded us.
Speaker 1: I have made you a light for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.
Speaker 1: So this is two guys, paul and Barnabas.
Speaker 1: Paul and Barnabas are friends.
Speaker 1: They're going around, they're traveling, they're making Jesus known to people.
Speaker 1: It says here that God commanded them to bring light to the Gentiles.
Speaker 1: Question for you guys out here Gentiles are Gentiles Jews or are Gentiles non-Jews?
Speaker 1: They are non-Jews, that's right.
Speaker 1: They're non-Jews and anybody who's not a Jew is a Gentile.
Speaker 1: So God had commanded Paul and Barnabas to get out of what was comfortable and to go and make Jesus known.
Speaker 1: So he's going to bring light to them, for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.
Speaker 1: So they're going around telling people that salvation is available to anybody who turns from their sin and puts their faith in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Not by good words, not by being a good person.
Speaker 1: It's through Christ alone.
Speaker 1: And this is what they're doing and they're meeting all these people and new people and people that look different to them and act different and eat different food and smile a little different.
Speaker 1: Just talking to these people and look how they responded in verse 48.
Speaker 1: When the Gentiles heard this, it says that they were joiced and honored.
Speaker 1: The word of the Lord and all that had been appointed to eternal life, believed, interesting.
Speaker 1: These people heard the message of Jesus and they were joiced in this.
Speaker 1: You know why?
Speaker 1: Because the message of Jesus is good news and the message of Jesus is everything our hearts long for, whether we realize it or not.
Speaker 1: In the gospel of Jesus there's unconditional love and mercy and grace and forgiveness and acceptance.
Speaker 1: It's all in Christ.
Speaker 1: And these Gentiles, who lived a certain way their entire lives and done a certain thing and worshiped all these different gods and pursued all these different things, they are hearing about a God, jesus, that resurrected from the dead, that loves them, that accepts them, that welcomes them into his family when they will simply come to him by faith.
Speaker 1: And this is what they did.
Speaker 1: They were joiced in that.
Speaker 1: They were like this is too good to be true.
Speaker 1: Are you serious?
Speaker 1: They were joiced, it says they honored, and many of them they believed, they trusted, they said we want this message and they began to follow Jesus.
Speaker 1: In verse 49, this is what happened.
Speaker 1: The word of the Lord spread through the whole region.
Speaker 1: So what started?
Speaker 1: With Paul and Barnabas going to a place and talking to a couple of people and talking to a couple of people over here and a couple of people over here, an entire region was hearing the word of the Lord.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, y'all Like?
Speaker 1: Think about this.
Speaker 1: An entire region of people hearing, hearing the good news of the gospel.
Speaker 1: Would it be to God that our entire region Fairfield, sassoon, vacaville, travis, air Force Bay of Sloan County that everybody hears the good news of Jesus?
Speaker 1: What's a God that would happen.
Speaker 1: That would be amazing.
Speaker 1: And it didn't just happen by Paul and Barnabas.
Speaker 1: It happened by everyday people making Jesus known in the everyday and ordinary places of life.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing.
Speaker 1: The word of God is being spread.
Speaker 1: Think about the power of people that just make the decision.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to make Jesus known.
Speaker 1: Imagine what would happen A small church of FCC, 275 people that gather on a typical Sunday.
Speaker 1: Imagine every one of those people.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to make Jesus known in the ordinary and everyday place of life.
Speaker 1: This is what's happening here and the word of God is spreading.
Speaker 1: But some people didn't like it.
Speaker 1: In fact, some unusual people didn't like it.
Speaker 1: It says in the next verse, in verse 50, it says the Jews incited the prominent God-fearing women in the leading men of the city.
Speaker 1: Hold on.
Speaker 1: You're God-fearing women, leading men of the city, wouldn't these be?
Speaker 1: If you feared God, wouldn't you be okay with this?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you be happy with this?
Speaker 1: This is what they did.
Speaker 1: They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and they expelled them from the district.
Speaker 1: They kicked them out.
Speaker 1: They said get those guys out of here, these leaders here.
Speaker 1: They're losing power and authority and they're like I don't like this, get out of here.
Speaker 1: They persecuted Paul and Barnabas for what they were doing.
Speaker 1: They kicked them out of the district.
Speaker 1: They're like in hunger games Go to a different district, verse 51,.
Speaker 1: This is what Paul and Barnabas did.
Speaker 1: They got kicked out by some church people, not for anything they did wrong, for making Jews known.
Speaker 1: But Paul and Barnabas said if this is what Christianity is about, do so as I'm done, then do that.
Speaker 1: But Paul and Bartobit said leave in the church, then do that.
Speaker 1: They shook the dust off their feet.
Speaker 1: In fact, we say that underline phrase together ready.
Speaker 1: Shook the dust off their feet against them and they went to Iconium.
Speaker 1: They said okay, this has happened, but this is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna shake the dust off of our feet, we could say we're gonna heal a little bit and we're gonna go into Iconium.
Speaker 1: And when we look at this passage we see some reasons why Christ followers disappoint us.
Speaker 1: And then we're gonna end with giving a four-step path to healing when we are disappointed.
Speaker 1: Here's the first reason why sometimes we're disappointed by Christians If some people claim to follow Jesus but they aren't actually followers of Jesus.
Speaker 1: They claim to be a Christian but they aren't actually a Christian.
Speaker 1: Jesus says that on Judgment Day, whenever that's gonna come, that many people will say I knew you, lord, I did this in your name, I did that in your name.
Speaker 1: And Jesus is gonna say never knew you.
Speaker 1: Depart from me, depart from me.
Speaker 1: The way somebody becomes a follower of Jesus, a Christian, is by understanding that there were a sinner and that we need Jesus, and turning from our sin, understanding that Jesus came, he died for us, he was God in the flesh, he died for us, he took the penalty of our sin and we believe in him to become a follower of Jesus.
Speaker 1: Jesus is gonna say one day man, yeah, maybe you claim to be a follower of me but you weren't.
Speaker 1: Maybe you got baptized when you were baby.
Speaker 1: Maybe you went to vacation Bible school.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe you were at church every single Sunday.
Speaker 1: I was joking around a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: I told y'all I was a drug baby.
Speaker 1: I was drugged to church every single Sunday.
Speaker 1: I guess me right.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the church I grew up in, we didn't just have church Sunday morning, we had Sunday morning, sunday school, sunday night, wednesday night.
Speaker 1: Any of y'all know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know.
Speaker 1: Y'all know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Right, that's my background.
Speaker 1: Right, that's where it is right.
Speaker 1: We have revival meetings.
Speaker 1: They're about every single night of the week.
Speaker 1: It's like man, where a guy would get up and scream real loud and veins would pop out.
Speaker 1: He'd be red.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's God.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I've got it.
Speaker 1: Any of you guys have been in one of those before man.
Speaker 1: They're fun, right, good God, I'll honestly use those in my life.
Speaker 1: But going to being in a church building doesn't and going to church a bunch doesn't make you a Christian any more than me.
Speaker 1: Standing in my garage makes me a car and I go in there all the time.
Speaker 1: It's a personal decision to put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and it's at that moment that the Holy Spirit takes residence in us and the Holy Spirit starts transforming us and changing us and working in us and leading us.
Speaker 1: And if we don't have the Holy Spirit in us, all we have is our sin nature in our flesh that's going to produce the fruit of our sin nature in our flesh.
Speaker 1: So if somebody claims to be a Jesus follower but they've never truly turned from their sin, they've never truly put their faith in Christ, send their life on him, then all they have is their flesh and their sin nature and they're going to produce the fruit of their flesh and their sin nature.
Speaker 1: And it could be that the person, the leader, the whoever that disappointed you.
Speaker 1: Maybe they weren't even a Christian at all and I don't know anybody's hearts.
Speaker 1: But that's what Jesus says.
Speaker 1: Number two there are some people who follow Jesus but they're just immature in their faith.
Speaker 1: There's some people that disappoint us.
Speaker 1: They are genuine Christians but they're just immature.
Speaker 1: They're young in their discipleship journey.
Speaker 1: It's 100% possible to have been a Christ follower for years and still be immature.
Speaker 1: Years in the Christian faith does not equate to maturity in the Christian faith.
Speaker 1: Years in does not equate to maturity when it comes to Jesus.
Speaker 1: In fact he was.
Speaker 1: Chapter five talks about this.
Speaker 1: It says, everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness because he is an infant.
Speaker 1: But solid food is for the mature, for those who senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.
Speaker 1: Man, this is so good.
Speaker 1: Look at the picture that's painted.
Speaker 1: It's like if you're an infant, if you're Bailey that was up here just a few minutes ago getting dedicated would I give Bailey a tritip steak?
Speaker 1: You can't do that, man.
Speaker 1: I would like a tritip steak, but you can't give Bailey, just an infant.
Speaker 1: And the analogy of the picture is this is that if you're spiritually immature, you can't handle the meat.
Speaker 1: All you can handle is the milk because, in other words, you're a baby Christian, even if you've been a Christian for a really long time.
Speaker 1: It says here that they can't distinguish between good and evil, so it's like you don't have the discernment right.
Speaker 1: So maybe you've been hurt by somebody that they're immature in their faith.
Speaker 1: They don't have discernment on how to handle things and how not to handle things.
Speaker 1: They don't have the discernment on when to say something and when to just zip their lip.
Speaker 1: They don't have discernment, so sometimes maybe they acted in the wrong way or they said a hurtful thing, or they maybe betrayed your trust, or maybe they did something morally.
Speaker 1: That's very confusing and you're like why did they do that?
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just immature and solid food this text says in Hebrews five is through training.
Speaker 1: So the way we mature is by training.
Speaker 1: Right, I know some people.
Speaker 1: They're crazy people.
Speaker 1: They run marathons.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, we'll pray for people out there.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I'll be honest, guys, it's always been on my bucket list to run a marathon.
Speaker 1: It has.
Speaker 1: And then I run a mile and I'm like, no, that's not going to happen, not happen, not run a marathon, don't run a marathon.
Speaker 1: Those people that run a marathon, they train for that thing.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how they do it.
Speaker 1: They post on their social media like casual 10 mile run today, casual 10 mile run today I would die.
Speaker 1: And it's like oh well, 13 mile run, casual weekend, whatever Casual weekend that would put me in the hospital.
Speaker 1: I'm like I'm not going to run a marathon, whatever casual weekend that would put me in the hospital.
Speaker 1: Man, they're training for maturity, they're training to be physically matured, whatever with their running to get to that place.
Speaker 1: There's some practices and rhythms that they do to get there.
Speaker 1: Me, I ain't there, I ain't even close to there.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing in our spiritual life there's some practices and some rhythms we have to develop to get here to maturity and many of us are one or two simple but hard decisions away from growing towards maturity in our Christian walk.
Speaker 1: We're one or two simple but hard decisions away from moving towards maturity in our spiritual walk For some of us.
Speaker 1: We need to make the decision honestly to prioritize the local church.
Speaker 1: The local church when it is a healthy, unified, word-driven church, it is a spiritual greenhouse for your growth.
Speaker 1: It's through the local church we are growing in the Word, we're serving each other, we're loving each other, we're building each other up, we're being comforted, we're being challenged, we're being prayed for.
Speaker 1: It's a place of growth in our lives and for some of us, if you would, it's a simple decision but it's hard because then you have to start prioritizing things around it.
Speaker 1: That would be a huge key for you to grow into your spiritual maturity.
Speaker 1: This is one of the reasons why we have one of the best nights we have of the year team night coming up next week it's next week at five to seven o'clock.
Speaker 1: We're going to have food.
Speaker 1: We're going to have Hawaiian barbecue.
Speaker 1: Everything's better with Hawaiian barbecue, we're going to have games, we're going to have all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: What is it about?
Speaker 1: It's about you being equipped for service.
Speaker 1: It's about you growing in service.
Speaker 1: It's about us coming together to say listen, we are better than me, we want to grow.
Speaker 1: We want to do this because we want to make Jesus known to others.
Speaker 1: And for some of us in the room, maybe you've never been connected and really fully engaged in the church.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you went to church if you had nothing going on that weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you went to church if you woke up and you didn't have a cough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you went to church if there was something cool happening on Sunday.
Speaker 1: But it's never been like church, like this, is a priority in our life.
Speaker 1: Maybe for some of you it was like that a long time.
Speaker 1: Here's how I would challenge you to do to make that a rhythm.
Speaker 1: Why, why, why?
Speaker 1: So we can grow towards maturity.
Speaker 1: The next step we need to take is we need to take the step of being in church, another step.
Speaker 1: For some of us and I say it all the time, I feel like y'all might get tired of it sometimes but like to be in this book.
Speaker 1: Like to be in this book like for real.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a direct connection, y'all, between your spiritual maturity and your relationship with scripture, like there just is.
Speaker 1: It's directly connected.
Speaker 1: And, as your pastor, if you would get in this book like regularly, every single day, maybe even like studying it sometimes, I'm telling you it would be a game changer, it really would.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of us would get, like, the verse of the day on you version and that's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's such a good snack I eat an apple every day and it's a great snack but it ain't enough to sustain me the whole day.
Speaker 1: Right, it's not enough to grow me into maturity and what I'm saying is it's for some of us.
Speaker 1: If we would start prioritizing this, the word, and maybe through a devotional or something, it's going to allow us to grow towards maturity.
Speaker 1: Maybe others in the room, maybe you're already engaged in the church there's so many are you're engaged in scripture.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's another step you need to take in your life that the spirit has led you to take and you know you need to take it.
Speaker 1: But maybe it's hard because it's something new, maybe it's out of your comfort zone.
Speaker 1: And can I say, take that step.
Speaker 1: Others of you in this room like you're not a Christian yet You're not a follower of Jesus.
Speaker 1: You're checking things out.
Speaker 1: Can I say wonderful, we're glad you're here.
Speaker 1: The best decision you will ever make is to come to Jesus by faith, because he will accept you just as you are, and sometimes in our lives there are people who disappoint us because they're spiritually immature.
Speaker 1: That's a reason why Third reason why people disappointed sometimes is because they are maturing, but they still mess up.
Speaker 1: So some people who follow Jesus are maturing, but they still mess up.
Speaker 1: I want to give you an example of this in my own life, an example of when I've messed up and the awesome thing about when it comes to me sharing content on Sundays about places I mess up.
Speaker 1: I have an ample selection.
Speaker 1: I have so many things to share because there's so many times I mess up.
Speaker 1: I remember several years ago now, I was working for my dad.
Speaker 1: My dad was a pastor for many years and I worked alongside him on his staff, and something I try to do at the end of every year is I try to go to people that are close to me, people that know me, people that are around me a lot, and I ask them what's a blind spot in my life Like, where's a place in my life that I need to grow?
Speaker 1: What's a place in my life where, man, maybe there's something I don't even see how many of you know Can be kind of scary to do?
Speaker 1: You're kind of like making yourself vulnerable.
Speaker 1: I don't really know what they're going to say.
Speaker 1: I do it because, well, I like to torture myself at the end of every year.
Speaker 1: So I ask people that are close to me hey, what are places of growth I need in my life that you see?
Speaker 1: So once I'm with my dad, I work with him, I saw him every day.
Speaker 1: It's a place of growth.
Speaker 1: I asked him.
Speaker 1: I was like what's he going to say?
Speaker 1: And I'd done like some self-evaluation of into that question.
Speaker 1: So I'm like I think he might say this.
Speaker 1: I think he might say that I was like 24, I think I just made a little order in that, and I was kind of prideful too.
Speaker 1: So I was like you know, there's probably not a lot he can say.
Speaker 1: He said I'll tell you one thing, one thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, he said you need to tone it down.
Speaker 1: What does that even mean?
Speaker 1: I was like okay, I was like receiving this.
Speaker 1: I was trying to listen, you know, and trying to hear him out, and I was like, okay, I was like what does that mean?
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: Tone it down.
Speaker 1: At that time I was on staff at a church and passionate about church and the gospel and God and still passionate about that as I've ever been today.
Speaker 1: And he said here's the challenge that you have.
Speaker 1: And he said you are so passionate about ministry and about, like, moving forward, moving the kingdom of God forward, that you forget that people are the ministry and you can run over people.
Speaker 1: And I looked back at that and I was like he was so true and because in my mind, I'm going forward for the kingdom of God, let's go like, come on, everybody, right now, this is what I would do, instead of meeting people where they were and loving people well and listening to people, understanding people and walking with them and caring about people, out of tendency to be like let me grab you, come on, let's go Get things, get yourself together.
Speaker 1: We got to do something for God.
Speaker 1: It's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: People are the ministry.
Speaker 1: And while I was growing and I was in the word every day and I was seeking counsel.
Speaker 1: There was a pocket there of immaturity in my life, because I had that pocket of immaturity of not loving people.
Speaker 1: Well, what had happened is, no doubt I had unknowingly not with bad motive, but unknowingly probably hurt some people, because there was a place in my life of immaturity.
Speaker 1: And it could be in our lives, guys, that we've been disappointed by somebody because they're growing and they're trying to develop in their faith but they're not perfect.
Speaker 1: Like there's some immaturity in their life and we all have it in our life.
Speaker 1: Like we are all every single one of us in this room, like we are all susceptible to temptation, we are all susceptible to failing.
Speaker 1: There's a real enemy that wants to wage war and wages attack on us, for all of us, and maybe that somebody.
Speaker 1: Maybe they genuinely love Jesus, but maybe they had some peer pressure and they lied.
Speaker 1: Maybe that person genuinely is seeking Jesus, but their flesh rose up because they got mad and they spoke harsher than they should have.
Speaker 1: Here's the reality.
Speaker 1: Like all of us are gonna let each other down at times and in that moment when somebody lets you down, it's actually an opportunity for you to grow spiritually and for you to be more like Christ.
Speaker 1: And this is what I mean.
Speaker 1: When somebody hurts you, right, whether intentionally or unintentionally and I'm not excusing that, but it's an opportunity for you to extend forgiveness to them and for you to extend grace to them.
Speaker 1: And every time we extend forgiveness and grace, we're actually maturing in our spiritual walk, so that hurt can actually be a source of spiritual growth in our lives.
Speaker 1: Now, none of us get this right 100% of the time Not me, not you, none of us do and in those moments when we choose forgiveness to choose forgiveness is gonna allow us to grow.
Speaker 1: Now here's the problem with this.
Speaker 1: Here's really the challenge at least for me and I know for some of us is when we fall short, we often blame our circumstances.
Speaker 1: So, like, we spoke harshly, we mishandled this situation, we did the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: We're like well, my circumstance was I was tired, or I had some peer pressure, or I had a bad day or a bad week or things at work.
Speaker 1: It's cray-cray right now.
Speaker 1: Things at home is kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 1: This is why I did this.
Speaker 1: But when somebody else falls short, we have a tendency to blame their character.
Speaker 1: So if we fall short, we tend to blame our circumstances, but when somebody else falls short, we tend to blame their character.
Speaker 1: The reason I did this is because I was in this situation.
Speaker 1: The reason they did this is because they're a terrible person.
Speaker 1: The reason I did this is because I was stressed and had a lot going on.
Speaker 1: The reason they did this is because, internally, they are just terrible people.
Speaker 1: And this is another we struggle with and we gotta remember, guys, we all have flesh, we all struggle at times.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Psalmist says that we are but dust in Psalm 103.
Speaker 1: It says in Psalm 103, verse 14, for he knows what we are made of Remembering that we are.
Speaker 1: Let's say that word together that we are, we are, we're a big pile of dust.
Speaker 1: That's what we are.
Speaker 1: We give insipid pressure, we give insimitation, we're vulnerable, we wanna be light and God knows how weak that we are.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think the person next to you needs to be reminded that they're just dust.
Speaker 1: This is what I want you to do.
Speaker 1: I want you to look at the person next to you right now and tell them in a very loving, christ-centered way you're dust.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and tell them right now.
Speaker 1: Tell them right now, yeah.
Speaker 1: Now look at your second option the person you didn't choose the first time, the other neighbor and tell them that they're dust.
Speaker 1: Go and do it right now.
Speaker 1: And before you're dust, good news God loves your big dust balls, all right.
Speaker 1: And before we place too high expectations on other people around us, we just gotta remember we're dust.
Speaker 1: And before we place too high expectations on ourselves, we gotta remember we're dust.
Speaker 1: Did Jesus die for us and redeem us?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: He did praise his name, but ultimately we're dust.
Speaker 1: In Acts, chapter 13, when Paul and Barnabas were hurt by these people, they didn't say like I'm quitting the church, I'm leaving Christianity.
Speaker 1: They didn't do that.
Speaker 1: They moved forward.
Speaker 1: And I think something that's important to remember and somebody told me after the nine o'clock service praise God, he's 80 something years old.
Speaker 1: He was a pastor for a few decades.
Speaker 1: He said this was a game changer.
Speaker 1: That was said and I wanna say this this is really big is that when you get hurt in the church, you need to remember this.
Speaker 1: The church didn't hurt you, but a few people did.
Speaker 1: So we're all dust, right.
Speaker 1: So we make mistakes.
Speaker 1: Sometimes what can happen is there's one or two people.
Speaker 1: Maybe they weren't even Christians, maybe they're immature, maybe they're growing, but there's a pocket of immaturity and they hurt us.
Speaker 1: Maybe somebody did terrible things, like bad evil things, and that's a bad evil thing that they did.
Speaker 1: And what we can have a tendency to do is we can say the church hurt me, when really it was one or two or maybe three people that hurt us.
Speaker 1: The church didn't betray you.
Speaker 1: That person betrayed you.
Speaker 1: The church didn't abuse you.
Speaker 1: That person abused you.
Speaker 1: The church didn't treat you wrongly.
Speaker 1: That person treated you wrongly.
Speaker 1: So the idea of, like, I'm going away from the church completely or it's really a misnomer because it was really one or two people was this situation here.
Speaker 1: Now I get the logic.
Speaker 1: When we're hurt by somebody in the church, somebody in the church, something in the church, man, I'm hurt, so so I'm not going back.
Speaker 1: I understand the logic, but it's almost like the logic of if you went to a restaurant and you had bad service at a restaurant maybe the employee didn't treat you right that you were to say I'm never going to that place again.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to restaurants at all, they're all bad.
Speaker 1: I know those types of people Right, like, you're not going to go to In-N-Out Burger.
Speaker 1: The embassy from heaven called In-N-Out Burger.
Speaker 1: Go in there, have a bad experience, you're not going to leave there and say I'm never going back to In-N-Out again.
Speaker 1: No, you, going back to In-N-Out, bro, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, there's experience with that person.
Speaker 1: Right, this person was a knucklehead, you know?
Speaker 1: And this is what could happen with the church is we can say, man, the church hurt me, when really it's just one or two people that hurt us.
Speaker 1: And when Paul and Barnabas were hurt by a couple people, a handful of people we don't exactly know how many here they shook off the dust and they kept serving God.
Speaker 1: And it's important to know that if you've lost faith in Jesus because of people, maybe your faith is in people when it should have been in Jesus.
Speaker 1: When you've lost faith in Jesus because of people, maybe your faith is in people when it should have been in Jesus.
Speaker 1: And it's possible that we had so much faith in people when our faith should have been in Jesus and the church hurt was difficult and the pain was hard, but we've walked away, maybe because our faith was not in the Savior and our faith was more in people.
Speaker 1: And when we do get hurt, we've got to shake it off a little bit.
Speaker 1: But how do we do this.
Speaker 1: I want to end.
Speaker 1: I'm out of time, but I think this is I got to end with this.
Speaker 1: I think this will be helpful.
Speaker 1: How do we shake it off?
Speaker 1: How do we actually heal?
Speaker 1: Because this isn't always something that we can be like all right, I'm just going to shake it off and I'm good now.
Speaker 1: No, that's not how we are wired emotionally and psychologically.
Speaker 1: Okay, what do we do?
Speaker 1: This is what we do.
Speaker 1: Number one four steps.
Speaker 1: Number one we acknowledge our feelings.
Speaker 1: Here's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Be real about how you're feeling.
Speaker 1: Do you feel betrayed?
Speaker 1: Do you feel lied to?
Speaker 1: Do you feel abandoned?
Speaker 1: Do you feel left out?
Speaker 1: Do you feel misguided?
Speaker 1: Whatever that is, own that.
Speaker 1: The path to healing comes by addressing your feelings, not by suppressing them.
Speaker 1: Just in life, the path to healing comes by addressing your feelings, not by suppressing them.
Speaker 1: This idea is, I feel a certain way and I'm going to suppress this now.
Speaker 1: It's not good.
Speaker 1: We don't always follow our feelings, but we address them when we say what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Number two we separate the individual from the church.
Speaker 1: Super hard to do, it's not easy to do.
Speaker 1: It's really hard when somebody in the church, somebody that follows Jesus or claims to follow Jesus and our Christian faith.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to separate these two, but we have to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry you're mistreated, but we got to separate the two.
Speaker 1: Number three we have to choose forgiveness.
Speaker 1: If the size of your hurt is big, the more harder it is to forgive.
Speaker 1: The bigger the hurt, the harder forgiveness is.
Speaker 1: But here's why this matters, because Bitterness and joy cannot live in the same house.
Speaker 1: There is no such thing as a bitter person and a joyful person.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as somebody that's holding a grudge and somebody that's also living in joy.
Speaker 1: It's just not possible.
Speaker 1: And forgiveness is something that we have to choose to do before we feel like doing it, because sometimes what's gonna happen is our feelings don't follow or we don't feel like it at first, and we have to make a decision of the will, to choose to forgive and eventually our feelings will catch up, even though it may take a while.
Speaker 1: What do we do when we're hurt?
Speaker 1: How do we heal?
Speaker 1: We acknowledge our feelings, we separate the individuals from the church, we choose forgiveness and then, fourth of all, we recognize the real enemy.
Speaker 1: There is an enemy out there.
Speaker 1: He's the devil and he's real, and he's out there to kill, to steal and to destroy.
Speaker 1: He's not out here trying to.
Speaker 1: He's holding no prisoners.
Speaker 1: He's not trying to take people hostage, he's trying to take people out.
Speaker 1: It's just the reality of it.
Speaker 1: First, peter says he's a roaring lion Like he's not a meowing kitten, okay, he's a roaring lion seeking to be made of our.
Speaker 1: Here's his MO division within the church.
Speaker 1: Here's his MO letting fester hurt.
Speaker 1: Here's his MO hindering people from hearing the good news of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ that can change you and sanctify you and give you hope and purpose and peace that you've never had before.
Speaker 1: He does not want you to receive that.
Speaker 1: That's his MO.
Speaker 1: Here's his MO keeping a community like we have, with hundreds, some thousand people when you put all these places together.
Speaker 1: There are so few people that are followers of Jesus in this community and he does not want those people to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: That is his MO and he will use anything he can to prevent that from happening.
Speaker 1: Whether that's apathy among Christ's followers, whether that's hurt, whether that's bitter, whether that's pain, but the thing is that the gospel of Jesus Christ can heal the brokenness and can heal the heart and can heal the pain, because I've been there, I've been at the bottom, I've been in the depths and I'm telling you there is a real I'm not done yet there is a real God that can heal, that can save, that can sanctify, that can reconcile, that can bring hope in your heartbreak, that can bring purpose in your pain, that can bring life to the lifelessness that you feel.
Speaker 1: Because that is the God that we have.
Speaker 1: And maybe you've been abused and maybe you've been hurt and I hate that and I hate that so much, and the enemy wants to use that to destroy.
Speaker 1: But like Joseph told his brothers in Genesis, chapter 50, what the enemy meant for evil, god meant for good.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Actually, I don't even know where that came from, I wasn't in my notes or anything.
Speaker 1: But there's a real enemy y'all.
Speaker 1: I ain't gonna apologize for preaching about it.
Speaker 1: And for all of us that follow Jesus I gotta end with this is when we hurt people, we need to learn to say I'm sorry, because we're all gonna do it.
Speaker 1: And for all of us who follow Jesus, when we are hurt by people, we need to choose forgiveness.
Speaker 1: And I end with the quote that I hope will really sink in.
Speaker 1: Being disappointed by a Christ follower is inevitable.
Speaker 1: Living with that hurt and letting it derail your faith is optional.
Speaker 1: You will be disappointed it's inevitable.
Speaker 1: But you don't have to live with that hurt and you don't have to let it derail your faith.
Speaker 1: That is optional.
Speaker 1: Let's have a word of prayer together.