Mark your calendar for August events: Sunday worship service and adult Sunday School (studying Matthew), Tuesday night food pantry (with Prayze Dogs on the 10th and 24th) and Wednesday night Bible Study (studying Timothy). Men meet at church for breakfast and workday on the 4th Saturday (28th), and everyone is invited to Roger and Jeannette’s for an ice cream social on August 15th at 4 pm. To help keep everyone safe, we’re pausing the Sunday fellowship time after church and kids’ Sunday School until September 12th. Book Club will resume in October.
Father in Heaven, thank you for delivering us from use and abuse, healing our very being through our distress. Please forgive our lapses and fill us with your grace, as You keep us firmly in You we humbly pray. Amen!
Message: Real Life; Used, Abused, Healed!
Today, I am excited to reflect with you on a general concept that has consumed my own thinking for the last week. One topic is, how all of us in this life of ours are used and abused. Face it, we seem to be made for use and abuse, by our very fallen natures. Whether is being used and abused by life in general, by other people, conditions and events that we are subjected to, or due to our own shenanigans, our body’s, and very soles become weathered, warn, and tarnished. But the Lord provides us with relief. Thankfully there is healing available for all who seek reprieve, hope, and something more than pain in life.
I recently said farewell for now to a man who has and continues to mean a great deal to so many people who his life personally touched. When we escorted his warn out frail body to a place out in the country for quiet repose, rest, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the land. There was a change in my perceptions and I began to feel a quiet comfort. I couldn’t help but think about just how singularly great life can be, and is. How God blesses us with His creation (both in nature and in people), and what a help we can be to other people we meet in our walk.
And if we play our cards right (if we are available), we might get to be like that good man I just spoke of, whose life, his loved ones memorialized last week. He was one of many potential sources (flaws and all), in the Lord’s arsenal of good. Instruments in God’s portable toolbox that the Lord employs on the fly for real healing to you and me, His children in need. Yes, it’s true God nurtures those of us struggling. Also confirming that all of our lives are subjected to use and abuse and more importantly healing. Hence, today’s message title; Real Life; Used, Abused, Healed!
So today, I thought it might be profitable for us to look at how our lives are indeed used and abused, and then how God is available for our healing. Keeping in mind, that this is not a one size fits all topic. Today these are my thoughts, and tomorrow some of my ideas on this I’m sure will change like yours as we are used, abused, and healed by the only one who can truly redeem, restore, and resurrect us!
I would like to start with the idea of use, and how our lives are used. By the way my thought is being used is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of us spend our whole lives trying not to be used by other people who we think want to take advantage of us. We get so wrapped up in protecting ourselves that we never open ourselves up to being available to God or anyone else. When what we really need sometimes is a little use for God’s good.
Fact is in many cases; we get to choose in life if we want our very selves to be of service to others and how we will be used. Sometimes we will be taken advantage of and even then, there will be a greater good that will be served by employing lessons learned, and growth. What we must never do is let the negative cloud of fear and anger to overshadow the potential good available to us in life.
My friend who I just mentioned who has passed into God’s eternity was worn out. His body was used up from fighting the good fight of life. And even though his body was used up, he is not. May we all get the opportunity to leave this life with used up bodies. All of us, flawed people trying to be better people. Worn out from service to God through caring, loving, and serving other people, with vibrant soles ready for renewal by God’s splendor.
With God’s majesty and grace in mind, I am led to the second item on today’s menu, abuse. There are all kinds of abuse that exists out there, and none of them are to be tolerated or encouraged. Put quite simply, we most often think of abuse as mistreatment by one party on another or other people, or self-abuse through personal choices of behavior.
As I researched abuse, I found that the most common form of abuse is neglect. When we neglect to care for others, or neglect our own health, that is abuse. Leading one to think of how so many of us are in the midst of lives of quiet desperation, living neglected lives and lonely to the core. The causes are innumerable and really not as important as the cure.
Yes, our neglected lives are often numbed through alcohol, opiates, and TV. From the person alone in their hurt and loneliness, to the child in front of a PG-13 PlayStation game extraordinaire, abuse (neglect) is rife in our society. We as a people have forgotten that in the midst of our pain, there resides a way out. I am led back to today’s Call to Worship Reading from David in Psalm 34:1-8.
1 I will extol the Lord at all times;
his praise will always be on my lips.
2 I will glory in the Lord;
let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
3 Glorify the Lord with me;
let us exalt his name together.
4 I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
5 Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
6 This poor man called, and the Lord heard him;
he saved him out of all his troubles.
7 The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him,
and he delivers them.
8 Taste and see that the Lord is good;
blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
David knew what it was like to feel used and abused, because so often it was the result of his own mischiefs, fowl plays, and shenanigans that created his downheartedness. Additionally, there were plenty of times when David felt the pain of being used and abused from other people. Just recall how King Saul mistreated David, or how Goliath would have.
God through David in the Psalms teaches us that when we are in need He is there. God has always been there, its just that our heads have not always been in sink with His plan. Regardless of if our pain, abuse, neglect is caused from outside forces or through our own nonsense, God is there to walk with us as we build or rebuild our lives this time with Him.
And if you have been putting off that conversation with the Lord until you are just a little bit holier, and little less repugnant, a little more in tune with God; how’s that working for you? Fact is, you will never merit His help. None of us do. He loves you in spite of you. That’s the Good News of the gospel. That in spite of all my stupid stuff, like David, God has been waiting for each and every one of us to realize like the Prodigal Son did, being away from our Lord and on our own; “just aint workin!”
A real relationship has its ups and downs and through surviving the hard times together we can really enjoy the good times coming (Heaven) through a life, a faith, that trusts in Him.
Well, this is real healing that we are talking about. Healing that comes from a relationship of loving God with all that we have. A personal relationship that is not quite like anyone else’s because your relationship with God is unique. He knows you inside out and knows how you respond to different things.
For me it was that drive through the country last week, the Funeral procession through beautiful land that created a refreshing in my hurting sole. Because it was a caravan, there were other people hurting, being refreshed, and helping each other in their need.
Because God knows you and how to reach you, He has also given you other ways that He may reach you and comfort you. God also reaches out to us through the other people in our lives. Reminding me of today’s message reading from Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus. A Church locked in a world of pain, suffering, and idolatry. Paul instructs us how we are to help each other in this faithwalk of ours. Reading again from Ephesians 4:22-5:2;
22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
*Side Note; In our old ways of doing things, we would have thought more about our selves instead of the person(s) we are now trying to help. Now instead of worrying about how much I’m giving (how much I’m being used and abused). I’m worried if my neighbor is OK. Do they have enough to eat? Are they loved and cared for? And, before you know it, God is helping me to help other and we are getting filled with His grace! Continuing now;
25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold.
**Side Note Again; Our relationships are just that important to God. Remember in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:23-24; 23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.
God is saying in so many words; when you care for others, you are praising, glorifying, and magnifying my Holy Precious Name! Continuing with Paul’s instruction to Ephesus at verse 28;
28 Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.
29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
*You guessed it, another Side Note; Again, in so many words let me paraphrase God; “Stop it!” If we are neglecting someone, neglect is abuse and it is use and abuse to their very sole, and it is stealing from a person’s wellbeing including all of our edification in the praise of God. I wonder how many times I have stolen from you, my friends, my own wife, when I withheld part of me when I should be loving my neighbor as myself?
We have it within us to be miracle workers just by being kind to another human being today. Don’t wait until tomorrow, because tomorrow it will be even easier to wait until next week, and all of a sudden you are looking back on a life of could have been. That’s why we are called to be; “Christians of the working day”, today!
Continuing from verse 30
30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
We also have it within us to show hospitality to the Spirit, God’s Holy Spirit, who leads us by living as the Prophet Micah instructs us by “acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God”. (That’s a summary of Micah 6:8) When all of God’s family does this, we lead the way like lights of salvation to others groping in the dark looking for something better in this life.
We also begin to notice that we were lost ourselves. That we really didn’t notice that we were on a wrong path until God place a person in our lives that served as a benchmark. In my helping another, God threw out a lifeline to me, and the person I thought I was saving, actually redeemed my heart.
My hope and prayer for all of you this week as you explore your beautiful lives, is that through your explorations, you discover all of the miracles, He is placing before you.
The moment is rife for action!
By our reaching outside of ourselves, by being willing to pour ourselves out into other people who are dry from neglect, God uses us for His good. He is able to convert the world’s abuse into His use, for Healing, and before you know it life begins to quench our thirst, and refresh our soles.
Like a drive in the country! Amen!