Good Morning Everyone,
What a reaction to the message last time, huh?
Well, fasten your spiritual seat belts, God's Not Done!
Say that with me,
God's Not Done!
Heavenly Father,
Your Word is a lamp to guide our feet and light our path.
As we begin to hear Your Word today, open also our hearts and our minds, that we might clearly hear You speak Your message to each of us.
We pray Your message will inspire, heal, cleanse, and teach
That Your Word will restore and to guide our hearts and minds.
Lord, come weave Your Words of life in us.
In Jesus' name we ask and pray
Amen.
Today, we are diving a little deeper into the series A Path To Freedom.
Last time we talked about the hurts, hangups, and habits that tend
to bind us…..
David said “He restores my soul.”
God is in the
restoring business.
Anyone want to say that with me,
Ah come on...
God Is In The Restoring Business!
Amen!
He will take the old, weary and worn out and make it new again.
Some of us may have even had to be towed in…but you know what?
God will
even do that too!
God wants to restore health,
joy, and peace….. it is not God’s will for the hurts of life to affect us
for the rest of our lives.
A cast sheep is
a sheep that has rolled over on its back and can’t roll back over. It is very vulnerable to wolves and dogs… its throat is exposed. A sheep
is a lot like a turtle in this case.
It is helpless when it can’t get
off its back.
All it can do is make a lot of noise. Baah, Baah, Baah!
Hurting people, makes all kinds of emotional noise!
And it is a result of their
pain and discomfort. They cuss, rant and rave, they scream, yell and shout!
Like a boiling tea kettle!
Fortunately, we have a shepherd, His name is Jesus!
And He will come to
us when we call on His name…. and He is the only hope that this sheep
has!
The shepherd must come and put that sheep back up on its
feet…. that is what God wants to do to anybody who is hurt spiritually or
emotionally.
A lot of times, we carry things in our
lives, that we are not even aware of…
And that is because of a river in
Egypt called…. De Nile…
Get it?
Hahaha…
Yes, I know it's really the Nile, but it sounds like
denial…
Boy, you guys aren't having it today huh?
My point is, we are all experts at denying our root cause of pain…
Sometimes the
source of our pain happened so long ago, that we have a hard time accepting
that incident could have anything to do with our current misery.
How many of us here, can look on our foreheads, our hands or arms and find some
childhood scars…
If you're married, would you look at your spouse's face….. if you are not sitting
next to your spouse… go find them and look at their face… see if you can
find any scars…
Now ask them if they can remember when and where they got
that scar….
Just don’t call them scar face!
We aren’t trying to be Al
Capone here!
We don’t want to look at the scar…. we know it's there!
The story of how it got there, is often painful to us…
And if we're honest, if we're forced to look at it and deal with it..it still hurts….
Jesus said that the Lord hath anointed and sent him to heal the brokenhearted.
Betrayal hurts….
You might have pain and broken heartedness because of a
ex, a spouse or close relative or close friend who betrayed you.
Life bruises us… life brings us hard blows… they often hit us so hard, it knocks us down or at least disturbs our footing!
You could go into work one day and
get laid off… anyone of us could be involved in a bad car accident….. we
all need Jesus' Tow and Repair Service from time to time… I thank God for it.
You
didn’t know why you were starting to think about God, but somehow, you got
yourself in a church, got yourself baptized, got yourself filled with
the Holy Spirit,
And now you are getting worked on…
But we don’t
always want to deal with the bruises because they hurt.
Bruises cause us to stumble, cause us to be bound… we can become afraid
to reach out and be sociable because we were hurt in a relationship
once…..
In life, we find ourselves in situations….
Let me tell you, that's a good time to call on the name of
the Lord.
Now, just because you remember something or the situation..
does not mean that you have not forgiven the person…
Some people
say….. that is baloney….. God does not wipe away your memory…
However,
sometimes the little blips, can be an indication that you have not been
completely healed of the situation…
When you are
healed… you no longer became angry, you don't shake, you no longer tense up at the thought of
that situation…
It no longer paralyzes you, putting you in an emotionally frozen state
where you can’t function.
Because when you are truly healed... You are free at that point!
You have been
healed by the healer!
Unless you have lived a perfect life… and I seriously doubt that ANY of us have, there is something you need to
recover from….
Denial is so common today in our culture, especially among hurting people….
The need for
healing does not make you a freak or a weird person…it just means that
you are human…. because we are all in this same boat called life.
Various types of abuses can leave us hurting deeply… physical abuse,
sexual abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse…. they all have unique
symptoms….
Last time we talked about 2 Timothy 2:25,
"in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth."
Isn’t it interesting that this mentions that there are
people who oppose themselves….
Have you ever wanted to accomplish something, wanting so badly to be
successful at something but you got in your own way???
You said the wrong thing, you
did the wrong thing, you got mad, you didn’t study hard enough, or prepare well enough for the task.
Ultimately, you sabotaged your own success!
And in doing so, you let
yourself down… and when the Lord’s tow truck is trying to recover people,
they have all these habits, hang-ups, and hurts, they oppose
themselves…. this passage tells us to help these people in meek
instruction…. why?
Verse 26 says, "And that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will."
Satan is the source of your hurts, habits, and hang-ups….
but there's Good News!
God has made a way for His people to be free.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit has to confront us… Convicts us!
Sometimes, as God's shepherd,
I have to confront a sheep who has fallen and rolled over on their back…. and my
goal is never to condemn but always to help that sheep get back on their feet.
There's an old saying that says,
“A real friend stabs you in the front. A Fake friend stabs you in the back!”
False friends will gossip
about you and stab you in the back…but someone who loves, a real friend, will confront you, talk to your
face, in love with grace and mercy, with the goal in mind to truly help and RESTORE you!
Let me tell you, confronting someone is hard...!
But our nature, is to cover up
pain…
I think I’ll eat another sandwich, I think I’ll turn up the music, I'll run an extra 5 miles today,
I’ll drink my pain away...
God's got a Word today, and I'm here to bring you the message, those things don’t fix the problem, In fact, they only make the problem worse!
Adding even more frustrations, some time in the form legal repercussions, illnesses or health issues..
or worse...
And if the problem is not dealt with quickly and properly, the bottom will fall out!
To Get help from God, it's important to understand His character.
In
order to receive help from God, you must understand that He wants to
help you and that He truly cares for you…..
What is He like?
The
real issue for most people is not, "is there a God?", but the real issue
is, "what kind of God is He?" Does it matter? Unfortunately, most of our
ideas about God are because we think of Him like he is a parent… that is
tragic because if a parent was aloof and unloving, then we tend to think
God is unloving, if a parent was abusive, then we tend to think that God
is abusive…. we tend to transfer these images over to God and that is
not the truth…. God’s is one way and He does not change..
Have you ever heard anybody say…. I think God is like this a flower, or
nature…. or as some people use love and light.
Technically, He is Love and He is light, He created the flowers and all of nature...
Well, so what…. their idea of God may be all out of whack….
But if you really want to know what God is really like….
Look to the Word of God…
Colossians 1:15 says, "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:"
If
you want to know what God is like…. Look to Jesus Christ…. Read the
gospels…. Watch His life…. He operated with total compassion…. He healed
people just because He really cared…He wasn’t try to draw a crowd…. Jesus
just ministered, and it didn't matter if there was only one around or a
multitude…He loved the hurting…
So when you wonder what God is like…Remember that Jesus is God is the flesh!
1 John 4:7-8 says,
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love."
When you really know God, you will find out that He is a God of
love…have you ever done anything that you knew it really turned God
off…(raise your hand)…. why didn’t he kill you on the spot? Because he
loves you right? That is what God is like…. long suffering, not willing
that any should perish.
He knows where we are, He knows the way that I take…. He knows, He knows all about it………. and He loves, yes He does!
In closing:
You know what I am going to do?
I am going to rejoice because I know you have taken note of my life's distresses!
When you really know and believe that it takes the sting out of the wound.
I recall a woman I was counseling, she was telling me all
about her sins she had committed and problems that resulted from each of them….
I asked her “I see, have you taken any of this to God? Have you talked with Him about all of this?”
She replied, “Oh no, Pastor, I don’t
want God to know about any of this!!!!!!!”
She continued “Please Pastor, you can't tell any of this to God!”
Church, Stop trying to hide behind fig leaves!
Because God already knows all about it and guess what….
He still loves you in spite of it all..!
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine upon you,
and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
Brian Monzon Ministries