forgiveness

Reconciliation or a Bumpy Rug?

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The other day, I was speaking with someone who mentioned a “bumpy rug.” She was referring to the practice of ignoring problems and “sweeping them under the rug.” Another similar comment I heard recently was, “Let’s just get this behind us as soon as possible.” In both cases, people were dealing with sin in families and organizations. Both cases reflected a desire to move past the sin and the hurt it caused others as quickly as possible without a desire to actually address the sin and correct it.

Very few people enjoy conflict. The average person will go out of their way to avoid it. It is not fun when others are mad at you, even if you are doing the right thing. Our desire to get along and please people means that we will try to move past problems without confronting the issue and dealing with it.

We need to learn to work through the personal pain of a conflict to pursue correction, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We need to see the value of restored relationships both with God and with each other. We need to see the importance of repentance and forgiveness to help people truly get past a problem brought on by sin. We need to see the importance of pointing out sin that is affecting others in the family and in the church.

We forget that Jesus gave clear direction on how to handle sin with a Christian brother or sister in Matthew 18: 15-17.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Jesus does not advise getting past sin quickly, and definitely does not suggest sweeping it under the rug. Jesus suggest confrontation. He gives some steps. First, go by yourself to the person you know has sinned and point out their sin. Do not tell others about it. Do not take a party with you. Go by yourself.

The second and third steps are only taken if the first did not resolve the situation. So, second, if the sinner does not respond with repentance then take one or two others with you to confirm you are not just making a personal judgement. With two or three others, you can determine if the person really has sin they need to deal with.

Third, if the first two steps do not resolve the issue, then tell it to the church. The hope is that the church will push for what is right and stand for truth and righteousness rather than sweep it under the rug. Too many churches prefer the bumpy rug to the pain of confronting and dealing with a sinning brother or sister.

There is one last step. If the person does not listen and does not correct their ways, treat them as someone who is no longer part of the church. This is a very difficult step for any church to take, yet Jesus teaches this so we know there must be times when his teaching should be applied.

We need to remove the persistent sinner from any leadership in the church yet continue to love them and pray for them and look for opportunities to draw them back to Jesus.

Jesus did not write off tax collectors and pagans but invited them to follow him. He even called Matthew, the tax collector, to be one of his disciples. Jesus treated pagans and tax collectors as potential disciples, if only they would leave their sin behind. Even as we can’t allow the persistent sinner a place of leadership in the church, we continue to point them to Jesus, with the hope that they will repent and surrender their hearts to Jesus again.

Let’s choose to pursue reconciliation, not allow more bumps under the rug!

Keep looking up,

Andy Wiebe

God Repels Sin

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“God is not repelled by our sin.

Our sin is repelled by God.”

Tony Kriz (Aloof)

Somewhere, many followers of Jesus have gotten the unfortunate idea that when we sin we push God away from us. In this way of thinking, because God is holy and cannot stand sin, God will not be anywhere near our sin – much less near us, the sinner.

Don’t lose sight of God while desiring to be right with God.

This thought causes us to develop a perspective of “working really hard not to sin.” That is a tiring and fruitless endeavor. We become people of the law, people of rules.

We memorize the “thou shalt not’s” and make up others. We say we want to get closer to God and yet our focus is intently on our sin. We work so hard to prevent sin that we forget why we try to avoid sin in the first place. We lose sight of God by the very effort we hoped would make us right with God.

If we find ourselves viewing life from this perspective, that’s a sign that it is time to reorient our thinking. We need to realize that God is not repelled by our sin. In fact, he came to face it head on.

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. 7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9 And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. 10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. 11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

-Romans 5: 6-11 (NLT)

Jesus came to this earth to die for our sins. He willingly took all our sin on himself so that he could pay the death penalty for it for us. God arranged this in order for us to become right with him.

In his book, Aloof: Figuring out life with a God who hides, Tony Kriz adds, “We do not experience God by avoiding sin, we overcome sin by pressing into God.” We need to pay less attention to how much sin we have committed and pay more attention to the one who loves us and sent his Son to die for us, even while we were full of sin. Instead of focusing on what not to do, we need to focus on what to do to grow in relationship with God.

Trade information for relation

We need to shift our focus onto God. Press in to a relationship with Him in any and every way we can and get to know him. Bible reading is one way to get to know God. It’s important that we don’t just learn information but grow in relationship with him. Let’s listen and watch for how scripture reveals God’s heart for us. Allow scripture to be our conversation together.

As we focus on God and our relationship with him, we can read biographies and learn from Christian leaders of the past who have pursued God and how they experienced a relationship with Him.

We can read about Corrie Ten Boom forgiving her German captors. We can read of George Mueller and his complete faith in God’s provision for his hungry orphans. We can learn from those who had a relationship with God that allowed them to live boldly and confidently in the grace of God.

Trade monolog for dialogue

Rather than focusing on our sin and what we are not doing, we can shift our focus to God and what he has to say to us through regular conversations with Him. I learned how to talk to God from an early age. It started with a few memorized prayers for bedtime or before meals and graduated to imitating adults. Over time I learned how to express my needs to God with my own words, even pouring out my heart to God. But unfortunately, I was not taught how to have a conversation with God. To pursue God instead of living a life focused on “not sinning,” I need to be able to talk with him as a friend. Romans 5, above, says that through Christ we become friends of God. Friends have conversations. I needed to learn how to listen to God so that my monolog turned into a dialogue.

This does not mean I have quit sinning, but that I have quit dwelling on my sin and go quickly and regularly back to God and pursue Him. As I recognize sin – as God points it out – I confess my sin and renew my focus on God.

I encourage you to “press in” to God, dig deeper into a relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ, and as you focus more on Him you will be less inclined to be drawn into sin. Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit to both remind us of what He taught and to remind us of our sin. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you as you deepen your relationship with God.

Keep looking up,

Andy Wiebe

Don’t Let Satan Give You a Time-Out!

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Many children are familiar with a “time out” This is used as a punishment to remove the person from something they would like to do and, help them see the behavior results in negative consequences such as missing out.

As a follower of Jesus, I want to do what is right and good. I read the Bible and talk with God. I make decisions to do right and work at being self-disciplined. I work at training myself to be whom God wants me to be. But like you, and everyone else around us, I sin. There are times when I allow the sinful nature in me to take over, where I do something that is clearly against God’s best for us.

Spring brings us to the holiday of Easter. This is much more than bunnies and eggs. This is the annual celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection for all people. Because of our sin, we deserved to die. That was how God created things. And then He arranged for a way out. God sent His own son to die in our place – to take our penalty for us. Good Friday is the reminder that Jesus, the only perfect human, died in our place. Easter is the celebration that when His friends went to the tomb, Jesus wasn’t there. He was alive! This resurrection gave Him the right to offer forgiveness and new life to all who believe in Him.

When we put our faith in Jesus, when we acknowledge our sin and repent of it, confessing it to God, Jesus forgives us. And we enter into a relationship with God! God now sees Jesus’ righteousness in us!

So, yes, we sin from time to time. Now what?

Often, we have this feeling that we need to put ourselves in a time-out. We feel need to wallow in our guilt for awhile before we can be in right relationship with God again. I don’t think I’m the only one who has felt this way. We think that to be sorry for our sin means we have to show it by spending time in our sorrowful guilt-ridden state.

But that is straight from the devil!

God does not want us to live in a state of guilt. Jesus has paid for our sin. God arranged this plan because He did not want us to live in guilt but to live in the joy of freedom. If Jesus already died on the cross, He already paid for that sin. The sin you are wallowing in is already paid for, already forgiven!

When we sin, we can immediately come to Jesus with it. As soon as the Holy Spirit reminds you that what you did was wrong, you can use that conviction to repent. The Holy Spirit is not pointing out your sin in order for you to feel bad, but in order for you to repent. So confess your sin, stop doing it, and get back on your feet.

Some of you might remember that old commercial that had this one iconic line: “Help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Well we may have fallen, but the Holy Spirit is already showing us we can get back up. Jesus is already reaching out a hand to lift us to our feet.

1 John 1: 9 tells us, “But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins an to cleanse us from all wickedness”.

This does not tell us we have to take a time-out. It says, confess and receive forgiveness. Receive the cleansing from Jesus, and get back on your feet. Serve Jesus again!

Yes, we sin, but we can confess and receive forgiveness immediately. We are then cleansed and ready to be of use to God again. This is the only way that I, and any other pastor, can stand up every Sunday and preach a sermon. It is because Jesus forgives all my sin of that week and that morning. He cleanses immediately so I can preach with confidence.

Do not allow Satan to put you in a time-out. Receive Christ Jesus’ cleansing forgiveness and get on your feet immediately, serving God again.

Keep looking up,

Andy Wiebe