Let’s go beyond reading words about God’s kindness.
If you are wrestling ongoing sexual sin, if you are battling shame, if you are facing past traumas; God is inviting you to experience His kindness.
Right now, what if you could hear Jesus saying to you, “I’m right here and I love you.” (be sure to look in the Homework Section for more questions)
Highlights
God is near and He loves you.
It’s hard to accept God’s love for you in the difficult areas of wrestling with sexual sin.
We carry deep within us a fear that if anyone knew the full scope of that part of our lives they would pull away.
Shame and fear are heavy burdens to carry.
It’s so important to receive God’s nearness, His kindness. It is His kindness that leads us to repentance, it is His kindness that heals us. (Romans 2:4)
Homework:
PAUSE with these Questions
- Where are you most anxious right now?
- What are you most angry about now?
- What are the places in your life that are the most difficult to share?
- What are the secrets that you’re wrestling with?
- What are the areas that you’re struggling to let go of?
- What are the things you don’t want to talk to God about?
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This Episode’s Transcription
Josh 0:03
Everybody, so I want to share a story with you. That’s actually pretty fresh, pretty recent for me. Still actually kind of walking through it, but I hope it encourages you. Few weeks ago, I had a the opportunity to have a day just to set aside for prayer. And I knew that there was there were some things that had been going on in our lives, my family’s life, my life, our ministry, that I really needed to bring before the Lord because it was stuff that I was intimidated by, or that was just difficult, hard to face stuff. And I’m like, You know what, I gotta stop dodging this stuff. I gotta bring it right to Jesus. And so I dropped my kids off, and I turned up this old country road and said, Lord, let’s start, you know, let’s dive in. So I began with the kind of top of my list the thing that was top of mind, top part for me, and I said, let’s, you know, let’s start talking about this Jesus. And, and I started kind of just letting it out. And I felt like the Lord stopped me. And, and just said, something very gentle like this. Let’s start with, I’m right here. And I love you. Let’s start with I’m right here, and I love you. And for the rest of the day, that was the theme that I kept coming back to or that God kept bringing me back to I’d even begin again with like, here’s some of the details that was going on. And again, I felt like the Lord just returned and said, let’s start with, I’m right here. And I love you. And was a really meaningful, powerful, important day. That has continued, there’s more to it than that. But I want to, I want to just park there with you for a little bit. Because those of you who are wrestling with some type of ongoing besetting sexual sin right now, some of you are dealing with deep shame about the experiences that you’ve you’ve been having things you’ve been doing. Some of you are wrestling with beginning to face things that have happened to you, either that are currently happening to you in a marriage or in relationship or in a lack of relationship, then you really want one. And some of you are dealing with things that have happened long ago in the past, and they’ve just been nagging at you. And so you’re like me, kind of saying, let’s, let’s, let’s deal with it. Here’s the list, Lord. And that’s all well, and good and all important. These things matter to the Lord. And they certainly matter to you and to your health. But I want to encourage all of us to kind of come back to why don’t we begin with something as simple as God is present to us and He loves us. So even wherever you are, right now, you just pause for a moment. And consider where are you most anxious right now? What are you most angry about right now? What are the places in your life that are most difficult to talk to others about right now? What are the secrets that you’re wrestling with right now? What are the areas that you’re really struggling to let go of right now you you love them and you hate them at the same time. And then maybe most especially what are those areas and there’s probably overlap here that you’re not really sure you want to talk to God about, you’re not sure you want to let him in one of those areas. And then from there, consider this, just hear this. God is right there with you. And he loves you. God is very near. And he loves you. God is here. And he loves you. The reason I think that this is so difficult for us to hold to is because our experience is very different than this. All of us, in our own ways have experienced being orphaned, being abandoned being having to be on our own in some area of our lives. I’m talking about those even with who had wonderful parents. But ever even though the most wonderful parent is just a parent, and they have their own limitations. Their ability to discern the movements of your heart are limited. Their ability to read your mind is limited, if not non existent. And so there are places that for all of us where we’ve lived, trying to wrestle with our own inner lives. The things that we’ve done in secret are the things that we’ve thought and secret of the feelings that we don’t even know how to express. And for someone else to meet us in that place can be very difficult, especially when we’re young. So all of us have experienced places, themes areas of our life, where we’ve really had to go it alone. It’s also difficult to accept God’s love and presence in some areas of our lives because it just doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem right.
We kind of feel like you know, God, it wouldn’t be right for you to learn Have me and be with me in this space. Because I don’t deserve it. Because I’ve I’ve held to it because it’s a source of idolatry, because it’s hurt other people in my life so much. Because what I’m doing is so wrong or because what happened to me is so painful, that it’s hard to accept that you’re with me in it. I think the other reason it’s hard for us to accept God’s presence and His love for us in some of these difficult areas, is because we carry deep within us a fear that if anyone really knows the full scope of that part of our lives, either if we’ve carried either fear, or shame, or both, if anybody really is exposed to that part of our lives, they’re going to pull away from us, either out of their own discomfort, I don’t know what to do with that out of unbelief, I can’t believe what you’re saying is true, or out of disgust of us or whatever, I mean, shame and fear, just heavy, heavy burdens to carry. And so there are parts of most of our lives where we believe that if people really are exposed to that part of our lives, they will reject us their pull away, they will distance themselves from that part of us. And so because we have that, that feeling, and for some of us, we even have an experience or experiences of that with specific parts of our lives, then we’ve learned to beat others to the punch, we will be hard on ourselves in those areas, we will pull away in those areas, we will be it ourselves, we will be self loathing in those places, so that you don’t have to be and we try to be God to the punch there as well. Lord, you don’t have to be hard on me in this area, I will do it for you, Lord, you don’t have to reject me in this area, I will reject me for you. Lord, you don’t have to pull away from me, I will pull away from you in this area. And we do it as a self defensive mechanism. And sometimes with with good reason, sometimes just out of a desire to be self protective, because we’re afraid of what will happen. But here’s here’s the key you guys, here’s the most important thing. Whatever it is that we’re wrestling with, whether it’s something that has been done to us, past or present, whether it’s something that we’ve done, past your present, whether it’s something that we are currently doing and wrestling with the reason it is so important, or one of the reasons it’s so important to receive God’s nearness to that part of our lives to us there. And his love for us there is because it is his kindness that leads us to repentance. It is His kindness that heals us. This is Romans, chapter two, verse four, it is his kindness that leads us to repentance, where we’ve been heading the wrong direction, it is God’s kindness that helps us to turn around and come back home. His kindness, that helps us to sense that that we are not commanded to come back home to receive our punishment. But we are invited to come back home to the arms of a loving and gracious Father, who has who wants to nurse our wounds and clean the dirt of us and throw us a feast and just be with us again. It is the kindness of God.
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