Framing Your Pain

One of the hardest parts of our lives to make peace with is the pain and suffering that follows us. All of us experience hardship, and for some, it’s the defining attribute of our lives. Whether from death, loss, infertility, chronic illness, sudden diagnoses, relational hurt and betrayal, or simply from apathy and the monotony of life, all of us have painful experiences. Making peace with our pain doesn’t mean we ignore its reality. It actually means the opposite. Unlike Abel in Genesis 4, we don’t allow our pain to stir up bitterness in our hearts. Instead, framing our pain is a way for us to vocalize our pain to God. We name the emotions connected to our pain, and we voice these emotions back to God. But we also declare God’s faithfulness back to ourselves. Like Jesus in the Garden before His crucifixion, we use our pain as a reminder that God is still faithful and in control. And even in our lowest, God is still near.

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 Open your Bibles if you have one at Genesis chapter four. Greetings to the 11. It was so great to see the baptism, uh, earlier at 10 30. We had two of them. If you were there, I’m just still so moved by the testimony of both Calvin and Brandon. And so thank you guys, especially the 11 for showing up early for that.

Uh, we’re going to be in Genesis chapter four. Um, We’re going to start out with the definition. We’ve been talking about practice of peacemaking. So I want us to remind ourselves, we’re in week three, of what does it mean to be a peacemaker. So definition is on the screen. The practice of peacemaking is doing the hard work.

Remember, this is really hard. If you’ve been trying this stuff, you knew we weren’t lying, okay? The hard work of forgiving our past, forging new patterns, And framing our pain, that’s what we’re doing today, in order to fulfill our purpose of loving God and others. Week one, we talked about forgiving your past.

We specifically looked at your family tree, starting there. And then, hopefully, you having the power to forgive many other things. Uh, but remember, you are shaped by your past, but you are not shackled to it, because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, Freedom really comes when we forgive. It requires a moment of forgiveness, but I think a lot of us, the breakthrough, we’ve realized there is a marathon to forgiveness as well.

That forgiveness gets deeper and deeper the longer we do it. Week two was last week. We opened up by asking the question, when disappointment’s at your door, do you run to drama, dopamine, or discipleship? For many of us, the answer is not fully discipleship yet, but we’re on our way. And so we want to forge new patterns where we wrestle with God.

But also we reconcile with man, like we don’t let these things cause these gaps between us. We love and we forgive like Jesus forgave us. And today, it’s just more hard work. Welcome to church. It’s framing your pain. Because the reality is, is to be human is to be hurt. You can’t escape it, especially if you have the grace to live long enough.

And so a really key idea today is if you don’t transform your pain, you’re going to transmit it. You’re going to make sure other people around you are hurting as well. And we don’t want to do that. That’s not what Jesus people do. And so we’re going to look at today in Genesis four and Mark 14, a better way to make sure we don’t transmit it.

Because I don’t know if you’ve heard that famous saying, and it’s so true, hurt people, hurt people. And so it’s important for us to get healing. In order for us to be a healing agent to those around us. And so I would love for us to begin by praying. What we’re seeking to do is a heavy task, but we can do it by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen. So let’s pray together. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we invite you into the space. God, I pray that even in these next moments together, we would get honest with our own shortcomings and help us not be so blindly deceived in our own errors. God, in a sermon about peacemaking and pain, it’s so easy to think about how many have hurt us.

And may we have space for that, but help us see how we’ve contributed and give us the courage to admit it in order to step towards healing. In Jesus name, I pray everybody says, amen. How you frame your pain is how you forecast your future, like how you view what’s happened to you in your life can determine.

What the rest of your life looks like. I’m doing this part of this intro for Cade. He’s one of the new dads here. We did the child dedication last week for this is hopefully he believes this is true. This is the foundation to every single comic book, every single superhero story, right? Think about Batman.

What’s the story of Batman? Batman experienced the pain of losing his parents. Right. He had that painful traumatic experience, but through that, and it was at an early age, he transformed that pain and now he took on the mantle to help protect other people from experiencing that pain as well. Beautiful story.

But then you have the Joker, who is the villain in Batman. He also had foster parents. He also was abused as a child, neglected. But what does he do? He doesn’t transform that pain to become an incredible person. Instead, he transmits that pain to everybody around him. And this is like the typical story of the human life.

A villain gets mean from all of the pain he’s experienced. A hero gains meaning from all of the pain he has experienced and takes that burden and turns it into a blessing. And this isn’t just a comic book thing. It’s a life thing. Researchers in health psychology in the last 20 or 30 years have recently coined this term post traumatic growth.

Anybody heard of that? I know there’s PTSD, but this is post traumatic growth. And in that argument, It’s that some people who suffer terrible tragedies like cancer, the loss of a loved one, heart disease, HIV, assault, um, paralysis, all sorts of things. Some people actually come out on the other side stronger, more at peace.

You’ll talk to some of them. They’re actually grateful for that terrible thing because their life was forever changed in a really good way. They loved life a whole lot more. And that’s a really interesting indicator. How you frame your pain, It’s how you forecast your future. Those who had post traumatic growth were able to understand the narrative.

The pain has a part in the story, but it’s not my full story. So how you frame it, it will forecast your future. To put it in more biblical language, pain, we all will experience it. We can either allow it to soften our souls or harden our hearts, right? It can soften us or harden us. And specifically, what I want us to kind of lay down the context here, there’s four types of pain I think we see in the Bible and we see in life.

The first type of pain is pain that comes from others. So within the church, we would call this church hurt. We disappoint other people. We betray other people. People betray us, disappoint us, assault us, um, they leave us, abandon us, abuse us. So a lot of us, let’s just be real. We come in with a lot of baggage because we’ve been hurt.

by people that we love and even people we never even knew, but their story collided with ours. There’s also a lot of pain from ourselves. This isn’t talked about probably enough in our culture today. We sin, right? We are the ones that contribute to some pain at times, right? And so because of our sin, we face consequences.

Some of us have physical pains because of some sort of decision we made earlier in life. Other of us have emotional pain because we haven’t dealt with relational tension well. We have relational pain. We have all the pain, spiritual pain. And it’s because of what we’ve done and how we’ve not handled certain things.

The third area is pain that comes from the unfairness of life. Pain. Pain. I really like to say, quoting Boy Meets World, the 915 didn’t get it. So I need you with me here, Boy Meets World fans. Life’s tough. Get a helmet. Anybody else, right? That’s the number one advice parents need to give to their kids. At the end of the day, sometimes guys, life’s tough and you hit them on the forehead and then you say, get a helmet.

Shout out to Eric Matthews. All right. So, but this is true. Honestly, sometimes we just need to own up to it and go, guys, life’s unfair. Right? Some of us were wrong and we were born in the wrong zip code. We were given, uh, we didn’t win the genetic lottery stuff happens and we experienced misfortune and the hard part is we see evil people, even people we love never do things the right way and yet they seem to always get the right outcome.

And that’s hard. The Psalmist described that a lot. There’s a lot of pain from that. I’m doing what’s right and I’m suffering. They’re doing what’s wrong and they’re succeeding. And we would say, oh my goodness, communion got me the grape juice. Wow. The pain of, no, I’m kidding. All right. So there’s also, Lord help us.

There’s also the pain that comes from God. Wow. Thank you, darling. There’s pain that comes from God and this is the hardest pain. It appears God didn’t intervene like you wanted him to as a pastor of this congregation. There’s a lot of pain. Maybe that God hasn’t opened your womb yet. God never healed your mother.

God still hasn’t saved your spouse. Or God still hasn’t changed your circumstance, even though it seems like you’ve done everything right. And we all will experience pain if you have the grace to live long enough. But so here’s how I want us to be peacemakers today. It’s how you handle that hurt. It’s how you frame your pain that will forecast your future.

So I feel like we’ve been harping on Abraham and his family for a couple of weeks. So let’s take it back to Adam and Eve and their family because they’re, let’s be real, it all starts with Adam and Eve, right? And so because of their dysfunction, we all kind of inherit, we obviously inherit the curse of sin.

Let’s look at Genesis chapter four. This is actually the context. Genesis three just happened. So what we would call Genesis three is the fall. Adam and Eve, were told not to eat of the tree. And what do they do? They ate from it, and now has entered sin, death, uh, Satan has this power over this world. All sorts of bad things have now happened, but now there’s still grace in the middle of it.

Chapter 4, life kind of still goes on. There’s a lot of hurt, but at least God didn’t just wipe us out. We still are able to face a new day. Genesis 4 verse 1. The man was intimate with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, I have had a male child with the Lord’s help. So that’s a great perspective from Eve.

Verse two, she also gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel became a shepherd of flocks, but Cain worked the ground. So two different vocations here. In the course of time, Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering to the Lord. So we see almost immediately, there is the sense of bringing our tithes and offerings, taking what God has given us and giving it back to him.

We see it right away in the biblical text. And Abel also presented an offering. Some of the firstborn of his flock. and their fat portions. Notice Cain presented some of the land’s produce. This has the implication, like the bad grapes, the stuff that wasn’t always good. But then the first fruits that the first born, that’s always the best of the flock.

Um, although I disagree as a middle child, but you know, whatever. Firstborns don’t take that too far. They were talking about animals here, not humans. Um, just evidence that that’s not always true. Kidding. Firstborn son, so we’ll go with it, but gave them the best. Right? Abel did what was right with the fat portions, and the Lord had regard, or some of your translations may say favor, for Abel in his offering.

But he did not have regard for Cain in his offering. So Cain was furious and he looked despondent. Why would Cain be so furious? What’s the source of his pain? Well, it’s at least three of those four we just mentioned one pain from others, right? He feels betrayed by Abel from the little brother showing up the older brother now This isn’t Abel’s fault, but in his perspective Abel come on You’re showing me showing me up making me look bad.

So he probably feels from pain from his brother pain from self This was his fault He should have given God the best of the produce. Instead, he gave him some of it. It was kind of the last of it. And also pain from God. God is very explicit here by saying, Hey, I have favor for you able, but Cain, I do not have favor or regard for your offering.

So now in this narrative, we have to ask the question, how is God, how is Cain going to respond to this pain, right? How he responds to it will forecast his future. And so God warns him of exactly that. Verse six, Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you furious? Why do you look despondent? So he’s naming these emotions.

Now this is warning and encouragement. If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? So yeah, you’re, you did something wrong, but you can now make it right. It’s what you do next. But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It’s desire is for you. but you must rule over it. Sin is crouching at the door.

This is one of the first poetic, really, lay words that we see here in the Genesis text. There’s a lot of poetry, but this is a beautiful one. It’s showing sin is kind of typified as a beast. Think of it as a monster. So God is saying, if you open the door and feed this monster, you think you’re in control, but it is in control of you.

So if you give in to this bitterness, Give in to this anger. You’re not going to be able to control it. Your life is going to be worse as a result. One pastor growing up, Adrian Rogers would always say, sin thrills and then it kills, fascinates and then it assassinates. So he’s warning sin, which we just got introduced in chapter three, wreaks havoc and you can never control it.

And that’s true for us as well. And so really sin is coming by how Cain responds to his emotions he’s feeling within. But notice the encouragement. You must rule over it. So there is a possibility that he can say no to this. And there lies this lie that we often believe about emotion. Okay, some of us believe emotions can never be resisted.

They are what they are, and they define who we are. Sorry, this is just how I am. Others don’t even think emotions exist. These are like the two camps we have in the culture today. One is completely shut out emotion. Facts don’t care about your feelings. Anybody ever heard that before? Right? And it’s this whole idea.

I’m not emotional. Right? But the reality is God made you emotional. Like I love emotions. Some of them. Right? I love happiness and joy and all those other things. Sadness is sometimes good. I learned that from that movie. What’s the movie called? The Pixar? Inside Out, right? It’s not always just about joy, right?

So we can’t just shut it out. Emotions matter, right? But also we can’t be completely run by emotion. Cain here looks like he’s about to be completely run by emotion. And this truth is so perv or this falsehood is so pervasive today. Right? Even when you’re hearing, maybe even today, as you’re hearing the Bible, you’re thinking, okay, I believe you as long as this feels right.

But if I don’t feel like this is nice or good, then it must not be true. That is such a terrifying way to view life. That is a ignorant way that for us to think that we are wise enough to know what always what is right and wrong. And this is why we submit to God’s word. Amen. That’s why we submit ourselves, find the truth and say, you know what?

Even if I feel like this isn’t true. This must be true. And so here’s the fact about emotions I think can really set a lot of people free when we come to framing our pain. Look, emotions matter and they’re a terrible master. Both can be true at the same time. First of all, they matter. God made us to have emotions.

We actually see Jesus having emotions. They’re a key part of the human experience. So I think a lot of us, we’ve been so hurt by emotion. We try to say they don’t matter at all. They matter a lot. And in fact, they’re such a great gift from God, so it’s better just to acknowledge it. Yes, I’m emotional, but also they are not your master.

They’re terrible masters if you allow motions to rule your life. The scripture says that our desires toss us to and fro like the waves, right? We see a lot of people today having certain desires and emotions within them and it’s led them to denying God to living for themselves and they’re in utter despair.

So both of these things could be true at the same time. So now we’re back in this narrative. What does Cain do? Does he see that they matter, but now respond to it appropriately? Or does he allow his emotions to master him? Does he give in to the beast? Verse eight. If you grew up in Sunday school, you know the answer, but just, you know, stay with me.

Cain said to his brother Abel, let’s go out to the field. And while they were out in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where’s your brother Abel? I don’t know, he replied. Am I my brother’s guardian or other translations? You may hear this all the time in culture.

Am I my brother’s keeper? Then he said, what have you done now? Does God know what he’s done? Absolutely, right? He asked us questions for us to reflect For us to be able to give an answer. God is actually giving him an opportunity to repent He’s still kind of showing mercy here, but it’s interesting how he replies.

Okay. What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground Right? So now we know he is still resisting. So now he says verse 11. So now you were cursed. Alienated from the ground that opened up its mouth to receive your brother’s blood you have shed. If you work the ground, it will never again give you its yield.

You will be a restless wanderer on the earth. I find fascinating, verse 13, Cain answered the Lord, My punishment is too great to bear. Let me just, spoiler alert, It is too great to bear for all of us. But we have Jesus, amen, who bared the punishment for us. And that’s why we celebrate and just have baptisms just a few minutes ago.

Okay, so, did Cain take that pain, And hardened his heart or softened his soul? Hardened his heart. Right? So here’s the warning. Dwelling on rejection is a damaging infection. At its core, Cain was struggling with the rejection of God and the rejection of brother. Right? He felt like he failed. And instead of giving that rejection to the Lord, working through it, repenting, softening his heart, what does he do?

He takes matters into his own hands. It infects him so much to the point it leads him to killing his own brother. And so this is such a key idea in peacemaking. We’re taking this huge concept that could take us months and we’re trying to boil it down into four weeks and then just constantly practice these things together.

But a key idea in peacemaking is how you handle and respond to your hurt and your pain. And for so many of us, that has been the tipping point and us looking a whole lot more like the devil than we are looking like Christ. Ronald Roheiser with an incredible quote from his book, Sacred Fire. All of us will get hurt.

That is a given. However, how we handle that hurt with either bitterness or forgiveness will color the rest of our lives and determine what kind of person we are going to be. So how do you handle hurt? How do you frame your pain? Hopefully we’re going to give you some tools today, but here’s again the warning.

Hurt people, hurt people. Forgiving people, forgive people. And I really believe this freedom is on offer. If we have enough faith to receive it from the Holy Spirit. So let’s look at Mark 14. So I want us to look at the best person ever and how he responded to pain. Who is the best person ever? Jesus! It’s always the answer, folks.

All right, Mark chapter 14. This is Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. It’s right before he gets betrayed and gets crucified. And so what’s amazing about Mark 14 is his humanity is on full display. We believe doctrinally Jesus is fully God. And fully man, so he’s a perfect ambassador for both sinless perfect sacrifice But weak like us and tempted like we are and yet without sin.

So we see though Honestly naming pain and struggling is not sinful because we’ll see here in mark 14 Jesus is clearly struggling and that gives courage for me And I hope it does for you verse 32 again Contrast this with how Cain responded to pain. Then they came to a place named Gethsemane and he told his disciples sit here while I pray.

So he took Peter, James, and John with him and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. He said of them, I am deeply grieved. Notice his emotions. To the point of death. Remain here and stay awake. In Luke’s account of this, uh, of this transaction of what’s happening. Uh, he actually says that Jesus was so stressed, he was bleeding.

He was sweating blood, which shows severe stress. The doctors have proven that now that we have modern day technology to understand the human body more. Verse 35, he went a little farther.

So notice, Jesus has both community and solitude. Verse 36. And he said, Abba, which is like the most intimate way to say dad, father, all things are possible for you. So he’s still honoring his father, but he says, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will. Then he came and found them sleeping.

He said to Peter, Simon, are you sleeping? Amen. Couldn’t you stay awake one hour? Now let’s have some grace. I didn’t have caffeine back then. At least I don’t think so. I don’t know my history. I just learned caffeine like two years ago. But it’s great, but it’s also not great. Verse 32. Verse, no, not 32, 37.

Okay, couldn’t you stay awake for one hour? Verse 38. Stay awake! And pray so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So once again he went away and prayed, saying the same thing. And again he came and found them sleeping. Cause they could not keep their eyes open.

How many of you had a community let you down, right? They did not know what to say to him. So in other words, it was awkward. Okay. Verse 41. Then he came a third time and said to them, are you still sleeping and resting enough? The time has come. See, the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. As we know the rest of the story, who does he get betrayed by Judas with a kiss.

Verse 42. Okay. So, but let’s narrow in on this pericope, this moment in scripture. How does Jesus frame his pain? How does he respond to it? I think we see four things that you and I can also replicate. The first thing is he names his pain. Notice that Jesus describes his pain by saying he’s deeply distressed, he’s troubled.

Other translations say anguished. He’s deeply grieved. A lot of us have believed this lie that we’re not allowed to feel these negative emotions, but Jesus felt them. It’s okay for you and I to feel them. Again, it’s how we respond to those things, but we have to first name it. A lot of us, and you’re going to look in your, uh, your peacemaking guide this week that Pastor Caleb put together, he’s actually going to give us some vocabulary, how to name certain feelings because most of us just don’t even have, we just have like mad and sad and like, that’s it.

But there’s a lot more to our emotions because here’s the problem. If we can’t name it, we can’t tame it, right? To quote Fred Rogers, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Whatever is mentionable is manageable, right? So there’s something about actually naming what you are experiencing. I’ve read many people kind of use this illustration.

I think it’s really helpful. View emotions like alerts on a dashboard. So, sometimes, if you’re like me, you have to Google even, like, what does this weird symbol mean? But you eventually figure it out, right? So, in your car, if there’s something, the problem isn’t that the light turned on, the problem is there’s something deep within the engine or something like that.

I don’t know what I’m saying here. Help me, Brett. Uh, but, you know, that shows there’s issues with this vehicle. Right? So it’s a light. That’s what emotions do. It’s a dashboard for us. Okay, there’s something deep down, something gone wrong, expectations were dashed, something. So if I’m feeling this, there is a root cause, and we have to do the hard work of figuring out what it is that’s triggering us or making us upset or whatever.

Now, unlike Jesus, for Jesus, he can name his pain, and he doesn’t have to confess sin because, He’s Jesus. But for us, this is where we differ from Jesus because we have sin. So a lot of times, the pain we’re experiencing is because of sin. But it’s amazing when we do the hard work of pointing out what the pain actually is, it gives us one step closer to healing because it gets us one step closer to actually naming the sin that we’re participating in.

Let me give you some examples. Okay, what if I’m feeling resentment? Okay, if I feel this emotion of resentment. It’s probably because I’m holding a grudge and I don’t want to forgive someone. Okay, that emotion helps me go. What is my next step? I need to do the hard work of forgiving this person, right?

Cause I cannot live with resentment. So that emotion naming it led me to freedom. Let me give you a couple more examples. What if I’m feeling embarrassed? Just can’t shake it off. This happens to me all the time when I talk to you and I’m like, why did I say that? And I just think about it all the time, right?

So if you feel embarrassed, What is that emotion telling you? Probably one, maybe you were proven wrong and you’re too stubborn to admit it, or you’re so worried about your image. Maybe you have too much pride. So if I’m embarrassed, I need to go, God, that’s kind of silly, isn’t it? Okay, God, I give that to you.

I’m, I have pride. Give me a humility. Help me laugh at myself. One more feeling. What if you’re feeling angry? Maybe I’m feeling angry because I didn’t get my way. And I may say all the time, Oh, I’m a team player. What, you know, let’s meet halfway at the end of the day, I’m the captain of the ship and I always want what I want.

So naming those emotions help us get a whole lot more honest to what’s really happening in our soul. You guys with me there? Okay. So first frame our pain. We have to recognize maybe how we’ve contributed to it, what that pain is, literally name it. It helps us frame it. But notice the second thing Jesus does, and I think it’s really helpful for us when we are overwhelmed with emotion and it’s the threat that it’s about to rule us, um, and take us over.

The two, the second thing is to invite others to care for you in your pain. Right. Even Jesus, God himself needed community and said, Peter, James, John, be with me. They kept falling asleep and failing him. But he said, Come on, help me. I need your help. I need the father’s help. The Christian, the true Christian life is never about independence.

It’s about a healthy dependence. Man, do I need my brothers? Man, do I need my wife at times, right? We lean on each other. This is key. A few phrases. Sit here while I pray. Remain here and stay awake. Stay awake and pray. Right? And so he’s going through these emotions and if this is important for Jesus, how much more is it important for you and me?

I need you. You need me. Give that person a call. Lean on your community. And this is why we understand community is hard. And that’s why I encourage you to get into one of our together groups and you’re not going to feel like it’s community right away, but over the long haul, they become people you call when life is at its worst.

And we are a grace people. We don’t make fun of you. We will love you and care for you every step of the way. So what does Jesus do next? Let’s read verse 35 again. So he went a little further. Luke says a stone’s throw away and fell to the ground. Pray that if it were possible, the hour, this is a metaphor, the pain might pass from him.

This, what he’s about to take on the cross. And he said, Abba Father, all things are possible for you. But notice this bold request. Take this cup away from me. What is this cup? Metaphorically, this is talking about, the cup is the punishment of sin. So I want you to imagine all of your sin you’ve ever committed in your life in the past.

And all the sin you’re going to commit today and all the sin you’re going to commit in the future. Put all of that sin into a cup. That cup deserves punishment, right? And in your mind probably shame and guilt, all sorts of things. Take everybody else in this room, take all their past, present, and sin, put it in this cup.

Take everybody who’s ever lived, take all their sin, put it in this cup. Take everybody living today, in this cup. Everybody who will live, put it in this cup. This is a lot of sin. A lot of punishment. And the beauty of the gospel is the plan of salvation is that Jesus takes the cup of our sin, and therefore our punishment, so that you and I receive the cup of the marriage supper of the Lamb.

We drink a cup at the end, but it’s not our punishment for our sin. It’s our righteousness that Jesus gave us in our place. Right? So that’s the beautiful exchange. Okay? So this is really the only way you and I are saved. And it’s funny, I know Jesus knows that. Jesus has to go and die. And yet he still has the boldness and the honesty to say to God, if there’s any other way, let’s, let’s do that because these emotions are overwhelming.

I know I’m about to go through the worst pain in my life. Can you please take it away? One commentator put, he’s asking the question, can we give these people the resurrection of Easter Sunday without going through the crucifixion of Good Friday? And of course, what is the answer? The answer is no. But what is Jesus modeling for us?

Emotions matter. But they’re a terrible master. So God, you are sovereign, you’re in control, whatever you say we’ll do, but I just want to put this out there. I’m feeling hurt. If there’s another way, do it now. And we can be honest with God that way. That will bring us so much peace. Look at verse 36 one more time.

His last line, nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will. I like some translations, I think say it better, but your will be done. Amen. And this is so hard for us. I’ve even found in marriage, it’s so hard. You, you have to pick, you know, which restaurant do we go to? But I really wanted Oregano’s, but she said some Burro’s, you know, but okay, I’m going to give in.

Like the whole time I just bid her. Oregano’s would have been better, whatever. Worst illustration of all time. But the point is, for all of us, it’s so hard to give in to somebody else’s will. We have to acknowledge that. But the Jesus life is what? Father, your will be done. And that’s the last step and finding that framing your pain and finding freedom is surrender your heart to trust the Father’s love.

Getting to the point where you can truly pray, not my will, but yours be done. A few years ago, it feels like forever ago now, but a few years ago I had a really hard time. I, most of my life, forgiveness has been easy. I haven’t been wrong too much. When I have been wronged, I’ve been able to forgive them after like a week and a half, you know, it just takes some time sometimes.

But overall, wake up, don’t really worry about anybody. Some of you guys know, some of you are in the room who were there a couple years ago. Um, God possibly was calling us away from here. And so, uh, It was not what we wanted. It was never on our radar. I took a sabbatical the first day of sabbatical. I got a call from a mentor said, Hey, this is a large church in California with incredible opportunities.

I know you love your church, but you need to at least pray about this. And it was kind of coincidental in my Bible reading for the year. I was in Jonah and what’s Jonah about running from the plan of God. I was like, okay, God, you know, like, I don’t want to get eaten by whale. So it’s actually a fish technically not a whale, but I don’t want to get eaten by a fish.

And so I was like, Babe, happy sabbatical. We now have to wrestle with God’s will for the rest of this month. And I didn’t know it wound up being the rest of the year. And so it was a fight. We resisted a lot of the way. We love this place. We’ve given our life to this place. Talk to any church planner. It’s so hard to move on.

And so, uh, we finally were saying yes to the process, and um, I was giving all the worst answers possible, most honest answers possible, thinking they’ll never hire me, like I’m gonna tell them the truth, and then they, like, I kept making the pass, I’m like, Jordan, I got through the next round, and so we’re like, oh no, you know, one of those things, finally we realized, Oh my gosh, they want us to go, they want me to go and preach in view of a call.

And so we really believe in our church and transparent leadership. So we don’t want to hide things from you. And so the week before, preaching a view of a call is a Baptist thing. It means, Hey, come give your best sermon ever and then we’ll vote if we like you. It’s the weirdest thing, but that’s what they were calling us to do.

And so I wanted to tell you that before I left. And so we got a big meeting together on a Sunday night, Hey guys, this is what we’re doing. Me and Jordan balled through the whole thing. Anybody else remember that? Oh, it was so fun. I love you guys for still being here. And so. It’s a hard moment. We get there.

We travel, you know, we get there a little early, meet the staff and all this stuff and quickly everything unravels. I mean, I thought they knew me. I thought we knew them. No, I mean, just a lot of stuff comes out. We were like, we can’t do this. This is now it’s clear. God has been opening doors. It is now shut.

So Saturday we came home. Sunday, my 30th birthday came back. I never even missed a single Sunday. I’m a pastor’s kid, so what we do, we don’t miss. Came back. Thankfully, Pastor Caleb was preaching, because I had nothing in my tank. I was just going to re preach one of my sermons you already listened to, so there was no way I could do what I was going to do there in California.

And it was humiliating. It was some of the hardest pain and, and I went through layers of framing my pain. The first one that was hard was the pain from others. I mentioned this a few weeks ago a little bit, but I had to initially, I felt really wronged by those other people that were a part of this selection process.

And I think now I have nothing against them and I totally get their perspective. But in that moment, I thought they totally wronged me. I thought they totally did not handle it well. And so. For the next couple of months, I had to just forgive them, bring them before the Lord. And I experienced a lot of pain and a lot of betrayal.

Then kind of after healing from that for a while, I started being mad at myself. Pain of like, how dumb am I? I told you guys, even though there was no guarantee. In my mind, I was thinking, I just made my life harder because I could have from Monday to Friday, gone through this whole rollercoaster, come back Sunday, you would have no idea.

Instead, everybody knows and everybody has questions. So I had to forgive myself and realize I still made the right decision, even though it did bring a lot of pain. But the hardest moment of pain was to finally realize me and my wife got honest and said, God, we feel like you let us down. God, why would you do this to us?

We didn’t ask for this. I wanted to take a sabbatical so I can be fresh for my church and stay for the long haul. And you introduced this detour all for just at the last moment, taking it away and saying never mind. It felt rude. It felt cruel. It felt pointless. And a spiritual director of mine, um, a few months into this process, I really wrestled with him more than anything.

I, he gave me this line. He said, Trey, ultimately you can let this pain destroy you. Or you can let it transform you. It’s your call. In other words, how you frame this pain is how you forecast your future. What kind of pastor are you going to be? What kind of husband are you going to be? Are you going to be a bitter person or are you going to be a better person?

And finally, especially when it came to my pain from God, I thought I would find healing by understanding his plan, right? Oh, you did this for that. Oh, you, okay. Okay. And I realized I’d never found freedom that way. Instead, freedom was never found, or power, or hope, or healing was never found from understanding his plan.

It was from trusting his love. It wasn’t to figure it out. It was just to fall back to him and say, God, your will be done. I just love you. And I trust you. And I began to Haga, meditate with this word we use a lot, Isaiah 26, three, Isaiah 26 says. You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.

I thought, Oh, it’s not because he knows what you’re doing or has figured out the plan behind all this pain. It’s simply, I trust you, God, and you’re going to do what you’re going to do. And I’m going to keep leaning in. And I can honestly say, that’s why I can finally share that story. And it’s fullness because I feel like God has given me healing.

Interestingly enough, a lot of his plan has started to unfold. I started to realize the only way I can pastor this church is by first dying to it. I was worshiping it too much. It was my baby. This isn’t my church anymore. This is God’s church. It’s totally giving me more risk and boldness, lot of good things, but I never saw any of that until I just said, God, I trust you.

And that was the breakthrough. And that’s why I want to help you reframe your pain quickly. There’s three ways God transforms us. And if we understand this, it can bring so much healing to what we go through. So the three ways God transforms us, number one is the Holy Spirit. So he gives us a new heart.

He’s the one who convicts us. He directs us. He gives us understanding of scripture and ultimately hear me. All of the stuff we preach about every week is impossible in your flesh. But when we say, Holy Spirit, come, give me the power to forgive, give me the power to reconcile, we actually begin to receive that power.

Secondly, we believe God transforms us through habitual practice. What you do does something to you. Friends, reading your Bible for one day, Doesn’t do much. Read, reading your Bible every day over the aggregate completely transforms your life. Coming to church every week in the aggregate really does transform you.

Hospitality, peacemaking, do it all the time. It really does transform you. We’re huge components of that. But the third element that I learned through this season of my life was God uses humiliating pain. Not just any pain, but the humiliating kind. It’s that pain that other people know about and you feel that pressure.

That is what forms you or destroys you. And I’m here to tell you, kind of a wake up call, humiliation will always take you deeper. The question, which deep end are you going to go to? Humiliating pain has the power to take you deeper into resentment, into bitterness and vengeance, so much to the point where you can kill your own family member.

Or, it can take you deep. And to forgiveness, understanding, empathy, reconciliation. It’s up to you. How are you going to frame this pain? How are you going to frame the moment? I think this is a really interesting, helpful call to us to realize pain will happen. How will we respond to what we’re called to?

And this is the last question. This is kind of my encouragement. How do we know? That we, we have really found healing. How do you know you’ve trusted God with your pain? You can tell when you finally replaced bitterness with blessing.

Should be up on the, yep, it’s already up on the screen. What am I doing? You’ve replaced bitterness with blessing. In other words, pain from others. You have found healing brothers and sisters. When the person who hurts you, you now bless. We have found healing from God when our past that caused us pain, we now bless it and forgive even ourselves.

You have allowed the Holy Spirit to do what only He can do. When you take the pain of the unfairness of life, and you see other people succeed, and you root for them rather than envy them. And ultimately, you know you’ve allowed the Holy Spirit to do His deepest work. When you take the pain that you feel like is from God and you find a way to thank him for it, to bless him for it.

And we believe that kind of renewal is on offer. This is the greatest task. I think in the beginning of our life, we’ve been talking a lot about this. It’s a fight against lust and, and all of these other things. But I think the greatest call for most of us in this room is to die with a warm heart, to not be bitter or cold towards anybody.

Rulheiser gives this encouragement. He says, every time we find ourselves ashamed, ignored, taken for granted, belittled, unjustly attacked, abused, or slandered, we stand between resentment and forgiveness. Bitterness. and love. And look at this last line. Which of these we choose will determine both our maturity and our happiness.

I fully realize being bitter is normalized in our society. Cutting people off, labeling them, and dismissing them is what we do, but it’s not the Jesus way. And so here, I want us to really end by just saying, Holy Spirit come. Because I know you’re pushing back on this message because I’ve pushed back on it all week thinking, is this actually possible?

So two things I want us to really wrestle with. One, do we actually believe Jesus and his way? Because we can’t pick and choose. Forgiveness, reconciliation, blessing those who curse us. That’s the Jesus way. So we have to get honest. Are we willing to follow all that Jesus is telling us to do? And that’s hard for some of us.

We got to be honest. But the second thing, we have to be honest. Look, this is impossible. Without God. But that’s why Jesus says, All things are possible for you, Father. He acknowledged that. Jesus is saying, My humanity, this is impossible to do. But with you, God, all things are possible. So I want you to be honest with God in these next few moments.

The question, the, the, the, the, the response in this time is simply, Holy Spirit, come. Holy Spirit come because without you, we will stay bitter. Without the Holy Spirit, we’re not going to forgive. We’re not going to move on. Without the Holy Spirit, we’re going to keep the record of wrongs. Without the Holy Spirit, there’s no way we can reconcile.

But with God, that pain you’ve experienced from others can be healed. With God, that pain you’ve put on yourself can fully be forgiven. With God, The pain and anger from other people succeeding in life and not you. You can bless those people and ultimately you can bless God for even all the ways he hasn’t blessed you.

So let’s just bring that before the Lord. Holy Spirit come. We need your grace to frame our pain. We need your power because in our own, we can’t handle the hurt we’ve gone through. But God, give us eyes to see that when we allow emotions to master us, sin is crouching at our door.

And it destroys us far more than we can ever ask or imagine.

And so God, help us get to the end of ourselves. As a pastor of Passion Creek, I know this applies to most of us. God, I know there’s pain and resentment and bitterness and it kind of, God, if we’re honest, and I think you would like this, you want us to be honest. The bitterness feels like we’re doing something.

It feels productive. It feels like we’re seeking justice. But help us see when we’re bitter, we’re a whole lot more like Cain than we are like you, Christ. And so we surrender that. God help us. Remember you absorb the pain. We will not feel better by distributing that pain to others. The pain stops here. I pray that you bring us forgiveness and healing.

I just ask you, Jesus, that Passion Creek would be known as forgiving people. When we all go to the end of our life, we die. Not with a cold heart, but a warm one. Not with anger and resentment, but with love and compassion. Holy Spirit, only you can do that in our hearts. And we invite you now to begin that work.

In Jesus name I pray, everybody says, Amen.