I love when I am blessed with someone who shares simple, beautiful, true wise words on social media. (It doesn’t happen often.)
Recently I have seen a lot of posts about church hurt and the solicitation of things like ‘tell me your story’ or ‘share your church hurt.’ Pastors preparing to preach sermons on the topic. Church staff feeling wronged by their particular church wanting to exact an ounce of flesh for being ‘wronged.’ A mob mentality emerging that if enough of us feel victimized, band together and share our story, elicit sympathy from the equally broken, then we must be victims.
Then I see a wise, humble man and Bishop in his denomination simply write something to the effect of ‘I have preached and shared the Gospel throughout the World for the past 50 years and choose to focus on spreading the good news of Jesus rather than focus on the hope limiting topics like church hurt.’ Wow! Thank you, my brother and friend in Pigeon Forge, TN, selling jewelry as a source of income but most likely, as a source of spreading the hope that is Jesus Christ.
I am not looking for any kind of fight or disagreement. I am not judging because I am too busy struggling with the log in my own eye. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Matthew 7:3 NIV
My question for you to consider is are you approaching a church situation from a victim’s mentality or a Kingdom commitment? Here is why I ask. I have worked with organizations for decades and find those committed to impact choose to move past the roadblocks of human failings. Leaders emerge and do not have to be assigned or defined. Leaders choose to either lead forward or lead astray. Victims and a victim mentality are tools of Satan empowered to lead in wrong ways and in wrong directions. Just a hard truth.
“Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. I will give the victor the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in God’s paradise.” Revelation 2:7 HCSB
Serving in this new season of life, God has assigned me the role of helping men walk into the identity that he (Almighty God) has given them. That is imbedded within them. That is desperate and desiring to rise up in and through them. That their past experiences are fuel cells for the task that lays before them. That as Believers in Christ Jesus, our role is to build the Church. To serve the Church and the church. To be a source of hope, love, peace, perseverance, consistency and Christlike example in the Church and the church.
Why do I write the capital C Church and the lower-case, church. The capital C church is the body of Christ. When a member of the Church is hurt, the body that is the Church heals. The body that is the Church, circles around and protects. The body that is the Church empowers and embraces the member who is hurt.
“In the same way, the victor will be dressed in white clothes, and I will never erase his name from the book of life but will acknowledge his name before My Father and before His angels.” Revelation 3:5. HCSB
There is risk in relationships and especially relationships that we voluntarily associate with. My own experience is that there is infinitely more risk in disassociation and separation. A physical church body is a beautiful group of broken individuals committed to having supernatural impact because of the King they serve. The local church should be filled with people in various stages of recovery and more important, in various stages of victory. Personalities differ. Life experiences differ. Expectations differ. Needs differ. Deliveries differ. Expectations differ. Blended together, the differences create a tapestry of life and hope so needed by each of us.
“I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd.” John 10:16 NLT
If you belong to the body of Christ, the Church, you are a victor. There are no victims in the Church and in Heaven. Grace and Mercy remove all victimization and replaces those lies with the truth that is Christ.
“I am an overcomer and I overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of my testimony.” Revelation 12:11
The hope is this. We serve a consistent God who never differs and whose love never waivers. That is enough.
“Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.” 1 John 4:4
Trust in this. Great new church bodies were and are formed by brothers and sisters in Christ, who may have left their last church for wrong reasons that God has and is using for good. Perhaps your negative experience is God’s pressing you to be the new wine that becomes a new body of His kids. That is enough!
You’ve got this.
