Choosing to Be OK with Not Being OK

Week 2 of 5

Last week we started a new series entitled “Let Hope In” where we talked about how all of us want this year to be different. To be better.

But we said there’s one thing often standing in the way of this desirable future and that’s your seemingly unforgettable past.

This series is about the 4 choices we can make that will “Let Hope In” regardless of what might be going on in your life. And the first choice we looked at last week was:

Ever wondered why you make all of these resolutions every year but nothing seems to ever really change?

Ever wondered why you keep repeating the same mistakes over and over?

Ever wondered why you have such a difficult time maintaining healthy relationships?

And if you haven’t dealt with the hurt from your past it will continue to impact everything you touch.

YOUR PAST ISN’T YOUR PAST IF IT’S STILL IMPACTING YOUR PRESENT.

And today we want to talk about the second choice:

Choice 2: CHOOSING TO BE OK WITH NOT BEING OK.

Awareness of our past doesn’t always come easy. What does come easy is denial. We are quick to intentionally bury emotions that make us feel ashamed or uncomfortable.

To complicate matters further, there tends to be a pervasive attitude in some circles of the church that communicate that once you give your life to Christ, once you’ve become a Christian, you at least need to act like you’ve got it all together.

Read your Bible. Wear your mask. Put your best foot forward. Look happy. But whatever you do:

We are...

Hurting,

Lonely, 

Confused, 

Frightened. 

So we hop from book to book, seminar to seminar, church to church looking for that new technique promising to help us change.

One of my favorite tasks around the house is sweeping the floor, but whenever you sweep the floor, as much as you can try to collect all the dirt in one place, when you sweep it into the dust pan, you always end up with that little line of dirt right there at the edge of the pan. You know what I'm talking about?

You sweep and you sweep and you sweep. You try a different broom, you come at it from a new angle, but it doesn't matter. That little line of dirt is always still there, just laughing at you. Now I just learned recently, there's actually a word for that little line of dirt. It's actually called "frust." Seriously, you can look this up. It's a combination of the words frustration and dust, and it leads to weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Sin in our lives and the way we deal with it is often like frust. We try all sorts of ways to sweep it up, clear it out, even if it means we just resort to sweeping it under the rug, hoping no one will ever find out. But it's always there.

Here's the good news though. This is what you need to know going into a new year that you desperately want to be different: From the very moment humanity fell into sin, God's plan, God's passion has been to redeem us and restore us to the life for which we are made.

This act of grace, this act of forgiveness, this act of restoration God wants to give, it cannot be forced on you. It cannot be forced. Like anything from God, it has to be received like a gift— freely, willfully, and intentionally. So how do we do this? How do we receive this gift of grace God wants to give?

That’s what I want to focus on today.

If you know the life of David, you know David had accomplished great things. His resume included great success, but his resume also included great failure, devastating mistakes. He committed adultery, and murder to cover it up. In the process of covering it up, David was found out, but when he was found out, David discovered the power and the purpose and the process of this thing called confession.

He wrote about this journey from confession to forgiveness in Psalm 32.

PSALM 32:1-7 

1 Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight! 

2 Yes, what joy for those whose record the LORD has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty! 

3 When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. 

4 Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. 

Interlude

5 Finally, I confess all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, " I will confess my rebellion to the LORD." And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone

Interlude

6 Therefore, let all the godly pray to you while there is still time, that they may not drown in the floodwaters of judgement.

7 For you are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory. 

Why do we need to confess sin in the first place? David begins by saying confession is for our sake. Sometimes I think we think confession is sort of for God's sake, like our sins sort of annoy Him and some act of confession will appease Him. But David says, "No, no, no! Confession is for you."

Look back at verse 1: Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven.There's a blessing in this for you. There's something God wants to give to you. This is about your life.

Notice all the other blessings David just sort of skips over. He doesn't talk about the blessing of wealth, or of power, or of reputation, all the things we would pursue. David is saying, "No, no, no! Those things can't heal you." We chase after them like they could, but they can't heal you. David is saying, "The way to find blessing is by being forgiven." Because David understands our most fundamental problem is a spiritual one.

Confession isn’t doing something about our sin; rather, it means admitting that we can’t do anything about our sin.

Look at verse 3. David writes, "When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long."In other words, "When I kept silent, when I was hiding, when I wasn't talking about it, when I was keeping it secret, I felt like I was dying inside."

I imagine most of us can relate to this feeling in some way or another, because there a lot of things in our lives we keep very silent about. Things we feel ashamed of: family problems, compulsive habits, sexual addiction. And while silence in the moment seems like the best, the safest way to handle it, silence always leads to more pain and guilt festering inside. It always corrodes away our soul. It corrodes away our spirit, and it always, always, always begins to affect other parts of our lives.

Now I want to pause because when we think of “confession” we tend to think of just confessing wrong we’ve committed. But I also think there’s an aspect to confession where maybe you need to admit there have been wrongs committed against you.

Somewhere along the way I think as Christians we picked up this idea that somehow Christian adults should be “beyond” or “above” being hurt. We think, “If I were a stronger Christian, I wouldn’t hurt so much.”

Some of you have been hurt in deep, very real ways and you try to pretend like your scars don’t exist. You’ll say things like, “Well, the past is the past.”

Your past isn’t really your past if it’s still affecting the present.

You start to lie to people, people you trust, who you love. You start to withdraw from people, people who know you well. You start to get easily frustrated and angry and judgmental at other people.

All the while you keep telling yourself this same thing over and over, that nothing is really wrong with you. Nothing is really wrong with me. Until the time comes we actually believe that.

First we deceive ourselves, and then we convince ourselves that we are not deceiving ourselves. Deception typically flows in two directions. It flows inward as we try to convince ourselves and then outward as we try to convince others.

See sin thrives on self-deception, and self-deception thrives on silence, which is why we have to start by confessing to God that we’re not OK. I’m not fine. My past hurts are causing me to act out in a way that is not only not pleasing to God but is destroying the person he created me to be.

Have you ever been to an AA group or something similar? One of the first things you’ll notice will be people standing up and introducing themselves like, “My name is John. I’m an alcoholic. I’m an addict. I’m a drunk.” It’s a huge moment and everyone in the circle recognizes this is a huge step in a spiritual battle.

There are all kinds of forces of darkness trying to keep that person from coming into the light and making that statement. Everybody knows they fight the same battle. So when that confession gets made in that little twelve-step group in that basement, or health club or church or wherever it is, everybody celebrates the confession.

Unfortunately in the church today, this kind of honesty, confession, and community has become totally optional. It’s unfortunate, because I think Jesus made it clear that in his community such things wouldn’t be optional. There’s no other way to find healing from our past.

I think this is why Jesus clearly desires for us to do community in a different way. In the gospel of Matthew, a very concerned Jesus spoke to the human tendency to hide, pretend, and posture: 

MATTHEW 23:27-28: 

What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs - beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. 

Jesus says, in this community, called the church, we’re going to do things differently: we will honor the costly humiliating confession of brokenness and sin more than the appearance of invulnerability and impressiveness.

There is something intrinsically broken and sinful in every human being. Merely human efforts (education, environment, therapy) cannot cure the sin problem. My brokenness, like yours, is very complex. Jesus comes as the Great Physician. He comes for sick people who wrestle with sin, not for people who pretend they’re healthy.

If we want to be healed, we need to be honest with God and ourselves and each other. Some of you are carrying around secrets that are killing you. Maybe it’s about your past, sexuality, impulses, bitterness, anger, finances, marriage, work. But if you keep playing the game and keep silent about your secrets, you can’t heal and move forward. As David said in the Psalms, until he dealt with the problem of guilt and sin in his life, all this other stuff he was doing including being the king of Israel—was really quite pointless. He was going about his life, and he was going about his duties, but his bones were wasting away. He was groaning all day long. He felt like God’s hand was heavy upon him, that his strength was sapped. He needed to come clean.

We dare not miss the fact that David ends this prayer of confession, not with despair, not with discouragement, not with depression, not with self-doubt. He ends with joy. Vs. 7 For you are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory. 

Why? Why songs of victory?

Because you've been forgiven. You have been set free. Your lying schemes: forgiven.

Your lustful acts: forgiven. 

Your self-seeking manipulation: forgiven.

Your religious hypocrisy: forgiven.

All the guilt, all the shame, all the stuff you've been carrying maybe for years and years and years...you can be set free.

You know throughout the Bible there’s a very common association between forgiveness of sins with the healing of bodies.

The idea of this connection is there is a good God who cares about brokenness: spiritual brokenness, physical brokenness, emotional brokenness. He wants to heal. That's why when Jesus came, healing was central to his mission. Now healing is not just something Jesus did to attract big crowds; it was a sign that in Jesus, God's work to heal human brokenness has begun.

So we see all kinds of stories. This week I was looking at Matthew 8 and 9. They have one story after another of healings: lepers, paralytics, demon possessed, blind, mute, sick woman, dead girl, centurion's servant. Jesus went preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. Then right in the middle of all these stories about healing diseases is the story of the calling of Matthew.

Now this story of the calling of Matthew is actually in this section of healing stories for a deliberate reason. Most likely what Matthew was saying here is, "I got healed, not so much for me in my body, but my conscience was weighed down with guilt. My heart was kind of sick. My soul was empty. Jesus changed that. I'm one of the guys Jesus healed."

God has come in the person of Jesus to set you free. How can He do this? Through the cross. On the cross, the Son of God was stripped naked, and His arms were stretched out, publicly humiliating Him and exposing Him literally, unbearably, for the world to see. He was exposed to all of our sin. Why? So our sins could be covered. The cross is the greatest cover-up scheme in the history of humanity, and it can be your story. This freedom can be your freedom right now.

Some of us come into this year with a sort of doom hanging over us. We limped into church today wanting a second chance but knowing we don’t really deserve it. There is no story in the world like the story of redemption, and it can be your story.

Let the story of you be a story of REDEMPTION.