Now some may incorrectly look at this and say that they are merely doing the same thing when they speak about the church. The difference is the broad brush you use to paint with. To the hurt person, the entire church is false! All of organized religion is now not from God! All pastors are now evil and holding unbiblical roles. I may mention Joseph Prince or Joel Osteen for example but it is their teaching I am speaking against and I do so for the sake of the eternal destination of those who would fall prey to their teachings. I do not hold any bitterness towards them. Mark Driscoll for example is going through a lot of justified criticism right now and needs to step down and repent of the many documented abuses he perpetrated against the sheep of God. It gives me no satisfaction to say so. I wish him no ill will. I pray he recognizes what he has done and owns it because you simply cannot repent if you believe you have done nothing wrong.
Back to the key verses we see that these practices of corrupt talk actually grieve the Holy Spirit! Why wouldn't it! The Master Surgeon however, Jesus cuts right to the root of the problem when He diagnoses the true roots of our hurt. We are holding bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander and malice in our hearts. We hold them there and they fester in our spirit. We love God but somehow view His bride as no longer worthy. We are no longer kind and tender hearted when it comes to the church because underneath it all, we are unforgiving. After all Jesus forgave us for, we remain unforgiving towards the people in the church that hurt us. Instead we wear the hurt as some kind of badge of Christian honor. Yet there is no honor in this beloved and it is a very serious matter to God. So serious that Jesus told the parable once of the unforgiving servant. There was a servant who owed his master a great deal of money. The Bible says the amount was ten thousand talents and that one talent was equal to twenty year's wages for a laborer. The man threw himself at the mercy of the master and begged him to be patient with him. The master pitied him and forgave him his debt. Then the man who was forgiven ran into another servant who owed him 100 denarii, which was worthy about 100 days wages for a laborer. Instead of showing him the grace and mercy he had been shown he threw the man in debtors prison. This can be us sometimes if we are not careful. We did nothing to deserve the salvation God has afforded us yet we can dare to harbor unforgiveness in our own hearts over such trifles as "being hurt." We all know this story but perhaps it would be sobering to read the conclusion again:
Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." - Matthew 18: 32-35 (ESV)
So also my heavenly Father will do to everyone of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. These verses were spoken to the disciples when Peter was trying to justify himself by asking how many times we ought to forgive. They are very sobering verses indeed. I understand church hurt all too well. I had to forgive a pastor who had spoken an untruth about me. I can tell you my flesh did not want me to. Satan did not want me to. Yet I remember how much God has forgiven me. While I understand church hurt I realize THE church did not hurt me at all. People did. Many of which were not serving Christ at all. For them I pray salvation. For those that did the hurting and were serving the Lord I pray repentance because there is no darkness darker than thinking you are in the light. We have to realize that besides the hurt coming from individuals that God loves His bride. He died for her. We cannot stand around her with stones in our hands and call her a whore. We must forgive as we were forgiven. We must show mercy as we were shown mercy. We must realize that we were not meant to be alone but rather in fellowship with like minded believers. We must resist the urge to abuse God's Word in the pursuit of our own self justification. I remember once I sat down to do a devotional about righteous anger because I was angry. I approached it however eager to hear what God had to say on the subject and by the time He was done with me God had shown me how my anger was all about me and my flesh. None of it rose to the bar Jesus set. I ended up with a great devotional about how our anger is usually not righteous.
Beloved. Hurt is real. Pain is real. Stop letting people rent space in your head for free. Kick them out by forgiving them. We have to stop hiding behind pious sound bites and own up to our hurt, forgive and move on to what God has for us next. As these dark days grow ever darker we will need each other even more.
Reverend Anthony Wade - August 23, 2014
