OUR HURTS AND LOSSES

One of the toughest things we must allow God to do for us is to get us over hurts and losses in our lives. Now no one is immune from hurts and losses and I promise you the more we walk with the Lord the more we will have to confront them and allow God to strengthen us with might (an inward ability to deal with issues of the heart) in the inward man. God is good at making our way constructive in life to make our living worth the while of learning how to function correctly with Him. Many Christians fail to allow God to deal and judge in their lives and they carry these hurts and losses all along their way and even carry them to heaven where God will have to deal with them at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Please do not think we will be able to sneak into heaven with some unresolved issues in our lives. Sadly the message of grace has cheapened the requirement for spiritual growth and development in the church today. The message we hear today in most churches is: God loves you and He will forgive you which is true, but it is not God’s intention for us to continually use His grace (as a crutch) to ask forgiveness again and again. God’s intention for us is to confess with our own words and then repent (about face or turn away from) of our sin so that we grow in the grace and the knowledge (both) of our Lord Jesus Christ. John tells us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:9-10) God never intended for a bunch of babies with no spiritual ability, power, and revelation to lead His church. Remember at the heart of every issue is always an issue of our heart. And it is our heart (as God deals and judges in it) where our spiritual ability and character is developed. And guess what that brings us back to our hurts and losses.

Make no mistake my friend hurts and loss in our lives can be very painful. The sting of death hurts, even the death of a beloved dog. Recently our Boxer dog Grimme died, he was better than some people I know and even in this the sting of death was bitter to us. Now we understand he was a dog and not a person, but when our affections and feelings get involved in our decisions we hurt from our loss. We have always liked dogs. Karen has even taught our daughter Connie and others never to marry a man who would beat an animal, if he will beat an animal he will beat you, sound advice even for today. Do you know animals know love when they see it and when they do not see it? When we lived in Germany I pastored a church with people from all around the world who came to church with all kinds of different cultures and customs. One American custom I always liked (and still do today) is to invite people over for dinner. You learn a lot about people when you sit around a dinner table; do they fill their plate first or pass the food. Do they get the last piece of chicken or prefer it for their friends or host. But one thing I would notice was who our Boxer dog Annie (a very loving and humble dog) would go to for some affection. I noticed who Annie would let pet her, but more important I noticed who Annie would not allow to pet her, and time bore out those who Annie would not allow to pet her were real snakes in the grass.

One of the biggest areas we get hurt in is from our friends and our family. Karen and I can personally speak of this. Since returning from Germany in 2003 we have been excluded from our family because we have stood for the truth of the word of God. We have spoken out against the drunkenness and homosexuality in our family for this we have been vilified and marginalized. But that is okay I must answer to God not to my family. He will not thank me for compromising the truth of the word of God for the sake of family peace and togetherness, but I will have to answer Him for how I handled the truth of the word of God in my life, we all will. Now I will be honest I do not understand Christians some times. We understand sinners they cannot help themselves, but lately I have found sinners to be more truthful and with more integrity than most Christians, ah I forgot we have grace to fall back on. I can take you to five churches in Jacksonville (a Baptist, a Pentecostal, and three non-denominational) that Karen and I have been asked to leave or been given the cold shoulder because the pastor found out about Beholding His Glory (BHG). Two of the pastors (the Pentecostal and one of the non-denominational) invited us out to a restaurant to get to know us, but when the check came both pastors waited for me to grab the bill. One pastor (another non-denominational) and his wife we invited over to our home for supper and all they did was eat and grab three of my books not even asking me for cost to cover the books. And another pastor (the Baptist) never went out to supper with us nor even came over to our home even though we asked many times. Yet when all five pastors learned about BHG their attitudes and reactions did a 180 degree change towards us. All Karen and I wanted to do was attend their service, just come and go, give them some money, and not get involved, but once the people started talking to us and we opened up a little the pastors got defensive with us and started guarding their members as if we were going to steal members from them so we could start a church. We assured them this was not our intention, but the pastors poisoned the heart of the people against us and we got the cold shoulder so we moved on. Friend this ought not to be in the Body of Christ, but jealousy, anger, immaturity, greed, and plain old contention in the hearts of pastors and leaders will only yield division, jealousy, anger, immaturity, greed, and plain old contention in them and in the people. Never forget the closer someone is the greater the hurt they can cause in our lives. Just ask a divorce lawyer. We must guard our heart with great diligence, with the word of God, and even some good old common sense from such people who would want to manipulate and take advantage of us for their personal gain. The last time I went to Kenya we had a very busy and ambitious schedule. We spent three or four days in Mombasa (man was it hot and my air conditioner did not work in my room) and then we drove six hours up to Nairobi. Well on the trip our host pastor was getting tired (he is always a real trooper giving of himself and family) so my friend (I still will call him friend) suggested I drive since I had an expired international driving license. Now another name for an expired international driver license is no driver license, but my friend insisted I drive. Driving was not the problem, in the past I have driven from Mombasa to Nairobi, but then I had a license. I suggested we stop for an hour or two and let our host pastor get a power nap and then continue, but not my friend of 30 years he insisted I drive, well I said no, so he berated me soundly and took the wheel. He blasted off gunning the engine and I am not really sure what he did, but the entire time he drove the engine was not working properly and the brakes seemed to fail at times. This continued for some miles so we decided to stop in Sultan Hamud where our host pastor knew some folks who could take a look at our car. After about two hours and after our host pastor and the car (they could find nothing a wrong) rested our host pastor took off driving again for Nairobi. Now here is the best part of this story. When the conference started the next day one of the Kenyan pastors who served as my interrupter shared a story about how he was stopped, arrested, and taken to jail for driving without a driver license. In your country of residence it is important to follow the laws and rules of the land, but when you are a foreigner it is more important you follow the rules and laws. Just because we are doing the Lord’s work we think He is going to cover all of our little omissions of obedience to the laws of then land or following the rules in the name of the Lord, well this my friend will land you in jail just as fast as anyone else. We as Christians are held to an even higher standard of doing what is right and following the laws. I guess my friend of 30 years was not so concerned about following the laws or for my well being as he was about getting to Nairobi or resting our host pastor. But this is the same friend of 30 years who says he is eating up my sin against him (not a Biblical principle) for telling him the truth to a question he asked about his character and got greatly offended. Again take heed my friend it is your closest friends that will cause you the greatest hurts. Did you know God is more concerned about our character than He is about our ability to minister the word of God? Our revelation of God to minister the word of God must match our character if not we know not God because His words (the truth about ourselves) have not gotten down into our precepts and concepts that form our daily living, thus the manifestation of our character will always be fleshly and carnal, even though we can recite the Bible backwards and forwards or masterfully weave Scriptures to support what we are saying. Our character is God’s biggest area of concern in our lives. At the heart of all of these issues (even maybe some in me) believe it or not is pride. At the heart of our hurts and losses believe it or not is pride. Solomon tells us, “Only by pride cometh contention (confusion, anger, strife, bitterness, envy): but with the well advised is wisdom.” (Proverbs 13:10) Now many Christians do not believe this verse. They blame everyone else, even the devil for the contention at work, in their home, or in their lives, but the Bible says it is pride. And it says “only by pride,” there is nothing else that causes contention in our lives. When our pride get hurts we strike back with everything within us to seek our revenge and get our pound of flesh. Our carnal nature wants its way and will do and say anything it can to get even. Think not our flesh is not alive, oh no my friend our flesh is alive and well, subtle and sure waiting for every opportunity to get hurt and play the martyr.

Did you know for us to allow God to get us over being hurt in our lives there must be a constant putting off of things so that we can put on other things? This is a spiritual principle we must operate in to get over hurt and even offense in our lives. In Romans Paul encourages us, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. 13Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.” (Romans 13:12-13) Now the spiritual order is, “cast off the works of darkness” and then we can “put on the armour of light.” No casting off, no putting on. No allowing God to work in our lives so that we can cast off hurts no putting on the new things that God has for us to replace the hurts. How can we receive the beauty God has for us unless we first get up from the ash pile? In our lives old things must pass away before God can bring new things into our lives. As we move from our present home to a new home and even our dog dying we must embrace these old things and allow God to work them out of us so we can walk in the new things He has for us. And again casting off hurts is painful, but please know when we get hurt it is most often our fault; we have opened up ourselves to people or things maybe we should not have. I was amazed to hear and watch the lies of Harold Camping when he said Jesus was coming back first in September 1994 and then recently in May 2011. It was not the lies of Camping that amazed me, but how the people who followed him were deceived. Millions from around the world believed him they sold or gave away their homes, cars, clothing, everything. I got emails and phone calls from Christians around the world asking my opinion if Jesus was coming back in May 2011. They all were hurt, but they all hurt themselves. No one held a gun to their head and said you must believe Camping’s lies. This is where knowing the truth will really save your life.

Now please let me turn to loss in our lives. We do not want to lose because when we lose we feel bad and cry, but this is nothing more than our selfishness coming through. When Grimme died we cried, we cried not because he died his death was a blessing due to his sickness, but we cried because we were going to miss him, it was out of our selfish nature that we experience loss and we do not like that. We all at the center of our will and nature are selfish and prideful, we do not want to lose anything and when we do our selfishness comes alive and causes us to hurt and our lives are now filled with pain and sorrow. But believe it or not God has a purpose for loss in our lives. Lose in our lives creates more of a place for God’s glory in us if we allow it. The more we lose the more God can come (if we allow Him too) and fill that empty place in our heart. If we never experience loss in our lives we will never be able to experience the spiritual gain God has for us. Did you know God measures our gain in Him not by what we can add, but by how much we can lose? The more we can lose of this world and our self the more we gain of God. This too is why God allows suffering in our lives to help keep our heart out of this world. But at the end of the day, no matter what hurt or loss we have experienced in our lives: death of a family member, an animal, our health, bankruptcy, whatever we must be able to trust them to God’s able and faithful hands, if not we will never be able to get over them in our lives. In our hurts and losses we must be able to say, “looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” while keeping our eyes on the Lord. Written by David Stahl