Transform or Transfer

Let Hope In

Week 1 of 5: 

Transform or Transfer! 

The beginning of the New Year is always one of my favorite times of the year. I love the anticipation that comes along with the idea of starting with a clean slate.

I think most of us are pretty hopeful about the future. We carry our dreams around believing that one day we’ll give birth to them. We generally believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today. That this new year will be more promising than the last. We like to think that our career will head in the right direction, our relationships will become even richer, and that the sense of purpose we’re chasing after will finally be fulfilled.

But there’s one thing often standing in the way of this desirable future we all hope and long for: our seemingly unforgettable past. Reality is that the best predictor of our future is, in fact, our past. What we have done in the past is probably what we will do in the future, unless there have been some big changes, some monumental transformation. And I want to start this new series in this new year with a question.

Do you like who you’re becoming?

As a student, an athlete, a parent, a friend, a sister/brother, a person

A heartrending thing about us humans is that we seem to be hardwired to replay the past— especially when our past includes pain and disappointment. We all have a natural inclination and, at times, a compulsion to allow our past to deeply impact our present.

Your past is not your past, if it’s still impacting your present.

Ever wondered why we make a handful of New Year’s resolutions every year but rarely keep them? And if we do, we almost never see a lasting change?

Ever wondered why we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over? Ever wondered why we have such a difficult time maintaining healthy relationships?

Is it because we’re not disciplined enough? Is it because we don’t want it bad enough? While the answer to either of those questions could obviously be yes, I think it’s much deeper than that.

When we keep struggling with the gnawing question of “Why am I not getting what I want in life?” one of the questions behind it may be “What am I still carrying with me from my past?”

Whether our pain is close to the surface or hidden deep within our heart, what happened in our past, if not properly dealt with, is more than likely crippling us from becoming who we were created to become.

But the good news of the Gospel is: who we were yesterday doesn’t have to limit who we can be today!

For the next few weeks we’re going to talk about 4 choices that could change your life forever.

Four choices that could help 2014 be a year you will never forget. Because this could be the year that you begin to live the life you were designed to live.

So let’s dive in with the first choice we’re going to talk about today.

Choice One: If you don’t learn to transform the pain, you’ll just transfer it.

I’m learning that everyone needs healing. Everyone has been hurt. Some of us have been hurt worse than others, but no one escapes this life without some emotional bruising along the way. And if we haven’t dealt with the hurt from our past, it will continue to impact everything we touch.

-Your secret sin nobody knows about. 

-The broken marriage you went through. 

-The sexual abuse you suffered. 

-The surprise divorce your parents got. 

-The miscarriage you experienced.

-The bully who made your freshman year miserable. 

-Your overbearing, critical parent.

Any or all of these things can and most usually will have a tremendous impact on our lives. If we don’t find ways to learn from our past, we will almost always be doomed to repeat it.

Joseph

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the account of Joseph. Talk about a tumultuous past. Joseph was the youngest of twelve boys. It’s tough being the youngest isn’t it? I can remember, way back when, when my younger brother, Blake, would do anything in his power to again acceptance from my sister and I. He would watch everything that we would do and follow us from activity to activity. Whether it was outside jumping on the trampoline or playing horses in the bedroom, Blake had to be in the middle of it. And nothing, I mean nothing, brought a bigger smile to his face then when my sister and I invited him into our world. 

Genesis 37 -Joseph was favored by his father, which put him at obvious odds with the rest of his brothers. They were filled with incredible jealousy toward him. They beat him up, threw him into a pit, sold him into slavery, and pretended he was dead.

That would be a devastating series of events for any young person, but imagine all of that happening by the hand of your own brothers from whom you crave love and acceptance. Can you imagine how devastating that moment must have been as he looked up from the pit, broken and bruised, only to see the face of his brothers laughing at him?

It’s funny how when someone says they love you, you can’t really feel it, but when someone says or shows they “don’t love you any- more,” you feel every ounce of it draining out of your entire being.

But the rejection of his brothers would just be the beginning for Joseph.

Genesis 39- Joseph is sold into slavery. He’s purchased by one of Pharoah’s officials named Potiphar.

 Now Joseph is framed and sentenced to prison for the exact thing that he had the self-control not to do. Is this not when you want to throw up your hands and say why am I a Christian? Why do I pray? Why do I try to do what is right?

Then, forgotten about in prison he’s left to wonder day after day where things went wrong, wondering why his brothers hated him. Why had his past been so full of injustice? Why was I a slave, falsely accused of rape?

Through a remarkable series of events, Joseph was not only released from prison but he eventually rose to second in command over all of Egypt.

While Joseph was helping lead Egypt, the country endured a vicious drought that forced his brothers (the ones responsible for so much of the pain he experienced in life) to travel to him seeking food for their families. It’s a long story, but eventually Joseph was not only reunited with his brothers, but he also forgave them. In a powerful moment, he looked them in the eyes and said,

Genesis 50:20 "You Meant evil against me, but God meant it for good"

Another way of putting it is, you meant harm, but God had a different plan. Joseph didn’t try to deny the past. He didn’t pretend that his brothers had never hurt him deeply. But he has the grace to grieve it rather than transfer it.

I love the phrase “but God” that we see in Genesis 50. I believe a case could be made that it’s one of the most important phrases in the entire Bible. This phrase is used throughout scripture as a turning point, a line of demarcation between peril and rescue, chaos and control, fall and redemption, hurt and healing.

But God! Every time I read a verse that says “but God” it is fantastically good news. There are literally hundreds of verses that have “but God” in both the Old and New Testaments:

The psalmist in Psalm 73: "My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever."

Jesus in Matthew 19: "Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible."

The apostle Luke in Acts 13: "When they had done all that the prophecies said about him, they took him down from the cross and placed him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead!" 

Once we were dead in sin, BUT GOD made us alive! Once we were captive to our past, BUT GOD made us free! Once we were unworthy, BUT GOD has promised to spend eternity unwrapping the riches of his grace in kindness toward us!

There’s no way around the past. No matter how hard you try you can’t erase it. The goal of this series, the goal of this book is not to become a person who doesn’t have a history—that’s impossible and useless. The goal is to find a new way of working with the past so it does not continue to impact our future. The goal is to fight the inner urge we all have to return to the past.

I’m relentlessly committed to the idea that “anything’s possible.” And I think you may be too. Perhaps it’s why you decided to come to church today. You know that transformation in your life is possible. You know that healing is possible. There’s something inside of you that says there’s more to this existence here on this earth. You long to become the man or woman God created you to be when he thought you into existence.

We love to cheer for the underdog and believe in our core that every life makes a difference. And we are right. There is no one God can’t use and no one whose brokenness is too broken for God.

This is what you need to know going into a year that you desperately hope will 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.

God is bigger than your history and more concerned with your destiny.

This act of grace, this act of forgiveness, this act of restoration God wants to give. It cannot be forced. Like anything from God, it has to be received like a gift, freely, willfully, and intentionally.

I hope you’ll continue to join us the next few weeks. This series is about how we receive this gift God so willingly desires to give to us. This series is about dreaming again. This series is about learning to transform the pain so we no longer transfer it. I can’t wait to see what God’s going to do in your life!

I encourage you today to let God be the process of healing and reconciliation in us. LET HOPE IN.