Sermon Transcript:Thank you so much, Courtney. Appreciate that. We could see the listening later. Well, we are in the middle of a series on forgiveness. And I know that it just creates some mixed feelings. Because I know that many of you all because I've totally understand that. And I know that last week, I talked about how I'm praying for myself, I'm praying for you guys, that we would be able to do the work that God wants us to do, so that we can be free that we can be free to love. And we talked about just the superpower of forgiveness last week, we want to be free. We want to be free in our relationship with God and want to be free in our relationships with others. So but you might find yourself this morning thinking about what I've thought about many times over my life, which is, I want to be forgiven, and I want to forgive others. But what about when I'm just mad at God? Have you ever been there? You've actually admitted it? What about when I'm just mad at God? You just think this is not what I wanted. Or you actually will say the words, or think them I don't I don't want to talk to you right now God, you won't even look up because you are upset at what God did or didn't do for you or for me. And you think yourself, God, I didn't want to keep working here. I had a thought I had a plan. There were some things that I wanted to do. I wanted to get married, or I wanted to have kids by now, or and I didn't want to have that many kids or whatever, right?You think to yourself, if you've been married long enough for you've had a partner long enough, this is not what I expected, he or she is not what I expected. So therefore, you begin to begrudge your situation I begin to begrudge my situation. And before I know it, I'm mad at my Creator himself. So what happens when life does not go? exactly as planned? Or when God doesn't do what we expected? We don't understand it. It's very hard for us to understand it seems confusing, it seems out of place, it seems like maybe God was out to lunch or God, are you sure? Or did you make a mistake? So what all this does, is this makes it very hard for us to trust our Heavenly Father. Why? Because we're just in that mode of I don't want to talk to you right now, I don't think we can even do this in interpersonal relationships. I don't know if you've ever done this before, where you've had some sort of spat or fight or disagreement or argument or whatever word you want to use. And you just decide I don't want to talk to you right now. But you never circle back around. And that's how a lot of us have our relationship with God. And then we go months and years, and we wonder why our life is such a mess, or we're not able to move forward. Or we don't feel forgiveness, or we because we don't understand and all these kinds of things. Who else isn't telling me the whole story. That's what ends up happening is that subtly, when we begin to distrust the goodness of God that His hand is not really the hand of a loving Father, we then naturally will begin to look around and say, Okay, if God has disappointed me, then who else isn't telling me the whole story, because what we find ourselves in is we just find ourselves in a mess. I don't know if you ever think about it this way. But you and I just know, sometimes I'm in a mess, I can feel the wreckage, I can see the wreckage, I can see the turmoil, and all we really know is I'm hurting, I'm disappointed. I felt like I've been lied to. So then we go from being skeptical. Again, whether it's true or perceived and reality, and then we go into full blown suspicion, you ever been there? And so then it begins to leak into other relationships. And for sure, we know that it leaks into our relationship with God. So we need you to take a minute and think, what have I been looking at? What situation or person or problem? Have I been looking at whatever this person or situation is in the wrong way? That's what the question I want to put forth to us this morning. Can we at least consider the possibility that there's another way of looking at our situation that seems so all consuming and tragic, from our perspective with really no hope out? Think about how we view prayer at times I think that is really telling to why we feel so disappointed and hurt by God even though God didn't do anything wrong. We'll say listen, I hope God God I hope you would give me her or him or I would wish God that you give me this and if you did this when we got I promise you I would use it for for your kingdom and for your glory. Or it would be nice God, if you just send a little extra whatever my way, whether it's a financial thing, relationship thing.Jumping. So what we end up if we look at our prayer lives, whether we actually write these prayer downs, or we're just throwing them up towards heaven when we think about them, maybe it seems like a wishing well, like if we were honest with ourselves, our prayer life really seems like some sort of wishing well, or if you want to put it in modern terms, like Amazon Prime, right, you know, Amazon Prime works, right? We were told two days, and you know, I don't know what it is, but it turned into like five or six days, and but what do we do we look at that date, and we put it in our cart, and we click and if it's not there on the 16th, or the 12, or the fifth or whatever, how do we what do we do? What do we do we all get real upset, and we get back in our computers, and what can I do? Because we know we can't call anybody, right, because there's no phone number. But that's how we feel sometimes in our own relationship with God is is that we're thinking, Okay, God, I know, this is good. I know this is right. I know that this is what I should have said, I forgot I boarded it. I've sent the prayer up, come on, God, get on with it. I'm ready. And this is how I want to receive it. Think about how we were taught to pray from the time we were very young. We were taught very simply to pray, think about the Lord's Prayer, whether you were in a liturgical setting and you memorize it or you just got it through being in church right Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name so holy as your name God, your kingdom come your will be done on earth, as in him give us this day what? Our Daily Bread. So what are we doing when we're asking for that? And that again, think about your and eyes prayer life, at a basic level, we pray before meals, that's normally the first sort of basic Christianity 101 that we acknowledge that everything that good we have comes from our Heavenly Father. And so we pray before meals. And so we were taught to pray, Lord, give us this daily bread, but the bread doesn't look like what we always wanted at time. So a lot of times we think this is bread. No no veg for before. But that's bread too, for some of y'all in the room, but I get that, but this is bread, right? This is Brad. Alright, so this is Elijah. This is the image I get that was bread. Then going on the next slide. This is this is for the ones that like homemade flour, tortillas, okay, you're like this is bread. And God, when you are going to give me bread? This is what I expect. But what do we often find sometimes in our cabinet, or somebody tells us? No, this is what's good for you. These things aren't good for you, because they have flour and gluten. And if you're over 40, it's hard to digest the time. So we know all these things. So what do we get? Go ahead go the next slide. Oh, no, it has a lot of problems in here has the word flat has the word wholewheat. It's in a package and and what happens is, is that we have to start partaking of these things at times, because maybe our physical trainer told us to our dietician, or we just know, we'd like to live beyond 64. And so we need to have some more things in our diet, besides that good flowered rising bread or that good flour tortilla. And so what ends up happening is that someone puts this before us and says, This is good. This is good for you. And what is our gut reaction? No, it's not. This isn't what I want. This isn't what I ordered. And we have to remember our Heavenly Father says, Know what you pray for was bread. I'm giving you bread. And then if you if you're really in the doghouse, if you're really really bad, you get rice cakes. You remember this one here? Kids? Say, Oh, no. Oh, no, I don't know what I did wrong mom and dad. But whatever it is that I have to eat rice cakes, I promise, I repent, I turn whatever it is I have to do, please, no rice cakes. But we know that certain diets are certain ways in order to get healthy when we don't get to decide what that what the bread looks like. We don't and I think about this in terms of biblically, literally with bread. Think about how the Israelites when they left Egypt so quickly, who wanted to leave Egypt without putting yeast or rise in the bread? I mean, I think there were some people as i Hey, I know this is slavery and chains and bad and all that and they're beaten us to death. But can we at least have some time for some yeast in my bread? And Jesus says, No, I will take you out so you can worship on a mountain in spirit and truth and even think about when they get out there in the wandering in the desert. How are they provided for manna from heaven. And it doesn't seem like that's the way it should be. There really shouldn't be bread that comes down and it forms a do like substance on top of the ground. And even if there is I gotta make sure to store that for extra days. And you guys know the story.And so what happens is is that we look at our lives and we look at what God has givenSo we think this is not what it should look like. And so we begin to question his love His goodness, or even to resent God for not coming through. Even though he has provided the daily bread, it just wasn't like we thought it should be or how we thought it should look like. So what ends up happening then is our lives. Just if you and I live live long enough, we will become broken, right? Broken, this is just that whole idea of because of sin in the world, eventually there will be aspects of our life, or even our whole life, where we find ourselves just literally broken. And so I've got a puzzle image I want to throw up here, just that it is in pieces. And you and I, when we think about aspects of our life, or maybe our whole life that we think I don't know what to do, I pastor I don't know where to start. And if I'm talking to God, God, I don't know where to start. Because when we know, we just know that we are hurt. And so if we've tried the God thing, if we tried the Christianity thing, and we'd been disappointed or disillusioned, or we feel like we didn't get what we want the way we wanted it, how we wanted as quick as we wanted it, we tell ourselves, Well, I've tried that. So I'm going to take back control from God, this is what we do. When we realize our life is in a mess. It's in pieces, and God's not doing things quick enough, right enough along the way that we think it all should go. So we say God, okay, I get you. And so I'm gonna take control of that now.And so we just ask ourselves, well, what are we trusting in, we're not trusting in God anymore? Because what is he wanting to do with your life to mine, the next slide, he's wanting to put it back together. That's what he's doing. We can't see this. We're never going to be able to put our lives back together our story back together, but we can trust and rely on a God, who is he's working things behind the scenes that don't make a lot of sense to us. But if we will hang with him, will realize that his providence, his ways, are higher than our ways. His provision doesn't come through in the way we expect. We need to trust that God knows something that we don't write. You ever thought about this, even with a parent? I mean, how many times did you and I think that our parents don't know what they were talking about? And it took us, some of us a lot, a lot, a lot of years to come around that, oh, they're not as dumb as I thought they were right. It's the same way when we think about our relationship with God. It even happens sometimes with you and me at work, that we think our boss is making a bad decision. But the reality is, is that you don't know everything he or she knows, and you're not in every meeting that he or she is in. So the quicker we learn this idea that God knows things that we don't, then we can trust him. We may not see it immediately, it may take us a long time to realize what all he was doing behind the scenes. And it may not know it until eternity. This is hard because what we see right here is the mess. Right? This is a house so it's a studs. So we just see this mess. We see the dirt on the floor, we see the the open planks leaning up against the wall, what we need to realize is that God is renovating. Now some of you are like I get it. Like I know that God needs to work on me, I know that I'm a work in progress. I know that I got some things that need to be worked on. And we think is just a little bit that needs to be done. You all ever moved into that house or had a friend move into a house or moved your parents into that house where you falsely thought all it needs is a little bit of paint, okay, just a little bit of tweaking here or there little bit electrical work ain't too bad old wink fix this guy won't be too bad. And what happens when you start getting into that project? What happens sometimes when you and I start getting into that project? What happens is this is worse off than we thought. And that's what happens with our lives as well as we begin to overturn stones and areas of our life that we haven't dealt with for months or years at a time. And we think oh my gosh, it is worse off than I thought. But here's the deal about the way God works if you'll let him take you all the way down to the studs. He's gonna renovate and make something beautiful, right? I mean, that's why we love to watch HGTV and other shows along those lines is that we love to see the beauty the reveal at the end. But here's the deal. Any of y'all who've ever been through some major renovation in any sort of tangible way, like a house or something, when you're in the middle of it, it is not fun, it is stressful. It is confusing. You begin to feel the pain, the real pain at the level of rebuilding that has to be done. So have you all thought about this through companies or projects that you've been a part of?And some of us just think Man, I just want good enough like okay, yeah, I hear you. This sounds like a lot of work. And so I just weren't good enough. I just want like a little shack. You know, I just want it put together I just want someI'm pleased to lay my head. And I would just tell you in God's design, what we and I think is all that we need is a little something, God will just say, Listen, if you'll hang with me, if you let me go down to the studs, I can build you something like this, you just have a picture of small, something small that you want to be a part of what God's saying is, I want to build you a mansion, we see destruction, I'm not just talking about in the future, the heavenly reality, although of course, we know that Jesus went to prepare a place for us. But it's that whole idea that we just see the mess and the destruction and the chaos and the heartache and the hurt. And I don't know how this is gonna ever get out, I don't see a way out, where we see the destruction, God sees construction, he is building something, and he is going to restore it all. In the end for those who love and trust Him and to do the great that we're willing to trust him to walk in faith, to believe is the degree that he's able to do things with our life. And what we need to do is we need to just be reminded that we're to connect our story with the story, the great story, because think about how trust was broken between us and God at the very beginning, think about what Adam and Eve did. Adam and Eve received clear instruction from God, they got to walk with God in the Garden, he was able to give them instruction from his very mouth that they heard with his very ears. And it's the first sign of trouble. When a snake or serpent or attempt or the devil himself comes to tempt them. What does he say to them? Did God really say? Did God really say, and then they begin to shrug their shoulders a lot? Oh, no, let's just try this out. And so what ends up happening is they become broken, marred with sin. And of course, all of us are broken and sin afterwards. But do we know how the story ends? It doesn't end in the garden doesn't end in the garden, but it leads to a cross and it ends, and the new heaven and a new earth Behold, God is making all things new, you and I, our lives will be restored in this life. And in the life to come. Tonight, anything I passed, I believe it, I want to trust and believe. But you and I are often like those stories in the scriptures, whether you're like, well help me help me with my unbelief. And so if you're in a position where you're ready to hunker down and say, Man, I want that freedom, I want that forgiveness, I want that abundant life that God has for me. On the other side, God's going to ask some more of you and me. And so I think about this in terms of that forgiveness, we want to bring back up the images that we've looked at in previous week, the image of that whole idea of like God, and forgiveness that he and I have to be reconciled vertically than we have internally where we can grant forgiveness to others. And then we can horizontally offer forgiveness, and reconciliation. This whole idea is sort of comes to fruition of our relationship with God in the book of First John. So if you know anything about how the Bible is laid out, you have the Gospels and you have letters, and John, who wrote the book of John, he writes some letters at the end of your Bible first, second, and third, John, he ends up writing revelation with Jude stuck in the middle there. And so we're going to look at First John chapter one, verses five, through 10. This is the message. So we were trying to hone in on what God has for us. When I see the words from Jesus. This is the message we heard from Jesus, and we now declare to you God is light. And there is no darkness in him at all, I underline that because in you and I's journey, if we live in this world long enough, we're going to be kicked in the teeth. And when that happens, we're gonna we're gonna be tempted or we're really going to look up to the heavens, and we're gonna say, God, I don't think you're a good God. I don't think this is the light that you're talking about this, this seems kind of dark god and what this is saying here is, listen up, remember what was declared to you and me, God is like, there is no darkness in him at all. So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God, but go on living in spiritual darkness. It's a spiritual warfare, spiritual realities. We are not practicing the truth. But if we are living in the light as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other and the blood of Jesus. The sun cleanses us from all sins, you can see this sort of this sort of relational accountability we're to have with one another because we are loving one another and forgiving one another. If we claim to have no sin, you're like, Man, I'm good, right? I don't even I don't even know if I need the tweaks in my house. We claim to have their sin. We're only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to Him, this is what shall be led us through earlier in her prayer. He is faithful and just to white, what's the whole series about to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from allwickedness are unrighteousness if we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that His word has no place in our hearts. We don't want to be there. I don't want to be there. You don't want to be there? No, you don't. So to ask ourselves, what do we need to confess? Now again, this is where we all get a little squirmy in the service. Because you think that I'm going to ask you to confess to me, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna ask you to confess to your neighbor, I'm not This is between you and God. Because some of us we have some angst because we realize that we have a brokenness, between our relationship and our relationship with our Heavenly Father. You're thinking, Wait a second pastor, I've been listening to this forgiveness series for the last three weeks. This is the fourth week. And what I'm learning is that I am not the problem. I thought he was the problem, or she was the problem, I thought the situation was the problem. This seems a little bit like a little switcheroo. Because now you're telling me I've got some things to confess. But really, I'm the one that's hurt. They did this to me, they hurt me, he did this to me, she did this to me, they lied, they disappointed, they hurt me.every situation, every situation no matter how unjust. And it is true, that a lot ofinjustice has been done to us personally, that we feel down to our core, no matter how unjust because an opportunity for refining. You understand that term. It's an old term, just that whole idea of how we get the purity of any element of any substance that there is a refiners fire that we can then as we go through it, that the gold or whatever substance we want comes forth. And I would just say that God doesn't waste a crisis, he doesn't waste a crisis, he makes it an opportunity to teach us a few things that we need to repent of, doesn't excuse the evil, or the badness that happened to you and me, but it's just to say that when our hearts are down to the studs, it's a good opportunity to what maybe, you know, putting a bathroom over here, or maybe the piping over here or whatever, when our lives are broken down to the pieces, it's a good opportunity for it to be put back together. Again, this is most easily seen in the Scriptures with someone like job. In the book of Job, it's very obvious that you can see that Jove had a lot of things that were done to him that were straight up evil. Some of them were natural disasters, but you also had foreign enemies, and even his wife that called him to curse God and die. And so he goes through the whole book in many, many chapters of just thinking about God, what did I do? He has friends that come and accuse him of things and try to help and say, Well, maybe you did this, or maybe you didn't do this, or maybe you didn't do offering rights and all this kind of thing. And all through this job's thinking, I'm not sure if that's true. I'm not sure if that's true. I'm not sure that's true. And then a lot of ways job was innocent, because it says in the beginning that he was blameless, that doesn't mean sinless. It just means that his outward life was one of righteousness or blame lessness but what happens to job if you get all the way to job 42? What does he actually say with his lips? After God comes and confronts him and lets him know that you weren't there. In the beginning. You don't know everything job. There's other things going on that you have no earthly idea of. You can see that job shuts his mouth. And what does it say in the scriptures? It says that he repents.And so, again, I'm not glossing over or sugarcoating the first 40 some odd chapters of Job's life. And I'm not sure coding or glossing over the horrendous things that have maybe been done to you and me in our lives. It's just to say that when we get to the end, we have to ask ourselves, Is there anything between us and our Heavenly Father that we need to repent of? And if Joe had some things, as a man whom the scriptures called blameless, and surely you and I do, as well. So we have to ask ourselves, what is God dealing with you about what sin or sins you need to confess, and again, this is this vertical relationship that we're talking about. He says, I know God is in control, but the more and more I go, I just can't understand what's going on. And I want to take back control for myself. And what we what we try to control, we don't trust you ever thought about that before? What you and I try to control we don't trust me if y'all work in a place where you come back behind, don't say any names here. So and so because why you don't trust them to whatever it is put the paperwork there, you know, clean the toilet or or you know, make sure that that's turned in or done right. And so what you and I are trying to do in that moment is because we don't trust him or her to do their job. Then we tryto control it, and that's what we're doing with God. When we say, God, I know you said, you're good, I got I know you said you would provide your daily bread, but it's not looking the way I want it to look, it's not happening in the way I want it to happen. It's not happening at the speed, I want it to happen. And, and so therefore, God, I am going to help you out and try to force the hand of the god of universe towards my will in my way. And how does that go for you and me when we do that?Maybe that right there is what we need to rippin off, maybe maybe I'm hitting the nail on the head right there that as you think about yourself, you're thinking, you know, if nothing else, in this whole journey of forgiveness, I see that there are areas of my life where I lack trust, where I lack belief, where I lacked faith, it's really a lot of the same word in the Greek. New Testament is written in Greek, it's the same word, this whole idea of trust and faith and belief. And in fact, if we're confused, or we need a greater sort of illustration around this idea, Jesus told a story about this, around the subject of forgiveness, and I want to close with this story we are rounding up, says this right here says, Some people brought to him a paralyzed man on a mat. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, be encouraged my child, your sins are forgiven. But some of the teachers of the religious law said to themselves, that's blasphemy. Does he think he's God? Jesus knew what they were thinking. So he asked him, Why do you have such evil thoughts in your hearts, it's easier to say Your sins are forgiven, or Stand up and walk. So I proved to you that the Son of Man has the authority on her to forgive sins. Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, Stand up, pick up your mat and go home. A man jumped up and went home. Fear swept to the crowd as they saw this happen, and they praise God for giving humans such authority.What's the other way? So some of y'all are thinking right now I'm thinking and if I'm in your head, and what I've thought in my head when I don't want to deal with God, telling me things I need to deal with you and I are thinking, what's the backup plan? You ever asked that before? When you know, you've got to do something? What is plan? B? So you're like, um, I didn't forgive. I mean, I've been harming this for a long time I've been coddling it. I think I've got it under control in an area of my heart. I'm still standing. So what's the problem, Pastor? Well, when we do that, we're like Adam and Eve, when they proclaimed right after they ate the fruit. You remember what they said?Oh, God went down the trees. We didn't die. We're still standing. You're lucky if you're still there. I'm sorry. I'm still here. So you know, God, did God lie, because they didn't die. So here, here's what happens with sin, that sin sometimes eats away slowly. And sometimes it's quickly, right. We all know stories of people who've, you know, paid a steep price for a quick decision. And we also know stories in our own lives and other people's lives where it took a long, long time for the foolishness of our actions or their actions to come out. But rest assured, going on your own me going on my own, is not the way of peace for our soul. It's just not. Right. That's what we that's what we feel so much angst is that we, we realize we're not in right relationship with God and with others. And that is really the the simplistically, the goal of life is to know ourselves and know what we have to do and to know our God. So do you want it do you and I want the peace that God is offering? That's the question we have to ask ourselves this morning. so simple yet so hard as I stand up here and say this to you. Because I've been there. I've been there where you literally like, God, I don't want to talk to you right now. I tried your way and I'm gonna go my own way. Because I saw that the unrighteous and the righteous, those who honor God, and those who don't honor God all end up at the end the same that's what we tell ourselves. And of course, it's not true or we tell ourselves I can handle this or I can do this. without repenting we use that word already. But do are we sure we understand what Repent means. Repent means a turn the other direction, walk the other way. Take one habit off, put a new habit on, repent of what we need to repent of. And guess what? There is life on the other side. There is life on the other side. That's the hope for all of us this morning, right that we would repent and that we would know that he really is making all things new. And beautiful. Let's pray.Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank you that you don't leave us wandering or wandering. I pray for those in this room right now that are harboringHaley maybe Kenny put it in words bitterness towards you bitterness towards others or grudge. God I just pray that byYour grace that you help us to release those feelings, to release those things, those tensions in our hearts and help us to confess what we need to confess to you or to maybe to others that are brought to mind and God help us to be a people that can walk in strength.Because we've done the hard work of renovating our hearts, thank you that you don't leave us to ourselves. But that you find a way to come after us and keep coming after us and that you give us more chances. And as long as we have breath in our bodies as long as those who we interact with have breath in their bodies that there is oh, oh Father, we pray that You would just grant us life that we so much seek.We asked us in Christ's name. Amen.

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