Sermon By: Jared Thompson

Written By: Amy Adams

Because we don’t know peace, we don’t know how to interpret it. Don’t mistake God’s correction for shame. We can quickly hear what God is speaking to us for correction and immediately run to a hiding place.

This information is, first and foremost, to the church, meaning the people who are already called out believers and are currently walking in faith. Understanding is something you can stand on. We must use our spiritual eyes to comprehend understanding. Because of time, we have lost understanding. Understanding hasn’t been hidden from you but for you…. Spiritual understanding for natural application.

Hurt is a real thing and it really hurts. Church hurts are sometimes the worst hurts, because we don’t expect it. We expect to see the Spirit of God and the Body of Christ in it. The Body of Christ concept came from the physical concept that the church is like the physical Body of Christ. The compassion, thoughts and power He had when He was on earth is now supposed to be in the church body as a whole. The word Christ means the anointing that was upon Jesus.

We, the church, are supposed to be that living sacrifice image of God. As God does things in heaven is how we’re supposed to do things on earth. When we don’t see that, it kind of hurts. We handle hurt wrong and we handle healing from the hurts wrong. We don’t handle it God’s way at all. Most of church hurts are self righteousness, meaning we want all the grace for ourselves but when someone else does something wrong, we don’t want to give them the same grace God gives us.

We also shouldn’t be surprised that church is a mess because it’s been messy since the beginning. If you look at somebody else and think they are a mess, know there might be a chance that you might have helped to create their hurt and contributed to their mess.

Judas betrayed Jesus and said he was done. Peter betrayed Jesus and said he was moving forward. Judas was the treasurer and kept up with all the money. How well do you think all the disciples knew each other and were travelling together for 3 solid years? How well do you think the disciples handled being betrayed by Judas? You only see them mention Judas once more when looking for a new disciple and never mentioned him again.

The church gets in a victim competition and talks about the betrayer and who’s been betrayed more. We complain a lot more than the early church because the disciples were so focused on the mission that they didn’t give the betrayal of Judas more mention or thought than needed to be. They were so in awe of Jesus that they didn’t focus on the betrayal of their best friend Judas.

After being resurrected, Jesus hung around for about 40 days, so no one would question His credibility of being the Messiah. He was there to correct the disciples and keep the mission going forward. It’s insane that when we get betrayed by the church, we abandon Jesus. When we put our eyes on God, it’s a lot harder to let those feelings of betrayal settle. God is not surprised by your trouble with doubt. Only one betrayed and walked away but the rest of them pushed forward with the mission. Why? Because their eyes were focused on Christ. Church hurts stay in the church and if you take it outside our church body, it can infect other parts of the church body.

Forgiving = I am for giving you another chance, and another chance, and another chance…. And so on. How often should you forgive? Jesus said “70X7.” Numbers had meaning back in Jesus’ time. 7 was the number of completion, which is why He said that particular number.

If you find yourself struggling to forgive people and struggling with hurts and constantly keep repeating things over and over, you have no understanding of the Spirit of God. The more we commune with Him, the more the mountains in our lives become mole hills. We’ve got to move closer to the Spirit of God. Those hurts and things become what we call a testimony. If you leave out the test part, the passing of the test becomes moaning and complaining. We forgot what the testimony was about.

A testimony is for His glory. It is not your story.

We talk about the test but we can’t handle the healing right. We are more concerned about the scar and the story than to start the healing process with the Holy Spirit. When we’re talking about healing, we’re talking about healing your broken mindset, broken perception of Him, and our broken church.

Let’s not worry about the betrayals and the brokenness. Instead, let God form you to be the person He created you to be. We go to set at God’s table, not for God to set at yours. Everything that you are becomes more and more like Christ until you’re almost undistinguishable from the Spirit of God. Become a testimony to God and become unbreakable.