The Church will Hurt You

You just read it in the title so I’m just going to go ahead and say it again… The Church will hurt you.   Your feelings will be hurt, pride will be wrecked, you will question why you go there and probably even question the authenticity of what you’ve heard when you were there.

But hold on… before you walk away with your chin held high and shoulders shrugged back, you’ve never hurt anyone before right? I mean, you are the perfect picture of what God’s love is supposed to look like, and you carry about your day flawlessly loving the Lord God with all your heart, and loving others more than you love yourself (Matthew 22). 

Yes, it’s true. The same place that is supposed to teach, preach, and be the love of God, will one day hurt you.

Sorry, I had to point that out (to myself as well)…

Okay, so now that we’re all on the same page, let’s be real with each other. The truth is the church is made up of a bunch of imperfect people who are all trying to figure it out together.

The church is messy, and here’s a shocker: It’s SUPPOSED to be messy.

It’s a rehab facility for those who are wrought with sin. 

The reason that the church will hurt you is because you let it. You come. You give of your time, your hard earned money, open your heart, and burn up your energy; and by doing that you open yourself up to hurt. When we are vulnerable in that way, it stings exponentially more when offense occurs. Our normal reaction is to clam up, dig our heels in the sand and fight back, ultimately resulting in separation, discord, more hurt, and nothing of which glorifies God.

So why do we hurt those who we are supposed to love the most?

I heard a fantastic teaching from Judah Smith, Pastor of The City Church in Seattle, WA. Judah beautifully laid out that we all seemingly try to balance grace and truth in our lives and interactions with others.  It’s as though we want to find that perfect balance of 50% grace, and 50% truth so we can love each other as God commands, but be able to speak truth or correction when needed. 

Sounds like it makes sense right?

The irony behind how we actually execute this is that we tend to hurt those we are closest with and extend grace to those who we know the least about.

Let me explain by asking these questions… Who have you had the biggest disagreements in life with? If you’re totally honest with yourself it’s likely your spouse or parents right? Someone who is, or was very close to you. Come on… you know I’m right. Maybe it’s even God Himself?

Now ask yourself how you would react if a single mother showed up at your doorstep on a cold rainy night, holding her newborn baby girl who is inconsolable because she’s hungry. Would you do anything to care for her?  As Followers of Christ, I should hope the answer is an ABSOLUTE YES!

(If you answered “No” then stop reading this blog, open your Bible to Matthew 25, and read until you realize that answer can only be “Yes”)

So what just occurred in the two interactions? Well you likely showed a huge dose of “truth” to the one you had the disagreement with, being bold about bringing correction and your perfected wisdom; showing about 99% truth and 1% grace.

And you likely served up a huge portion of “grace” when you cared for the single mother and her baby girl, regardless of the choices she made to be in that circumstance, showing 99% grace and 1% truth.

Make sense?

Jesus was the perfect picture of grace and truth, and it wasn’t a 50-50 balance. It was 100-100 flawless love, order, mercy, correction, peace, comfort, and discipline.  He did this throughout his ministry such as in John 4 when he spoke to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.  He lovingly offers her a path to eternal life.

“Jesus answered (The Samaritan woman), “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13-14

Then gives her a dose of truth…

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” John 4:17-18

The Samaritan woman learns that He is the Messiah that she seeks, and instantly begins spreading word and bringing others to Him.

Jesus does this time and time again with such finesse when He interacts with people such as Nicodemus (John 3), the rich young ruler (Mark 10), and invites Matthew the Tax collector to join him as a disciple (Matthew 9).  I could keep going but I think you get the point.

You have a choice and you are in complete control of this, so you have nobody to blame but yourselves if this doesn’t work out.

You can go about your day looking for offense. You know what?  You’ll find it. Not just at the church, but at your job, in your home, in your children, in your friends. You’ll be knocking it out of the park! Hitting judgment in the face all day…

And you’ll be miserable…

Or you can walk around and be love, God’s love, to so many who need it. That means being a huge dose of grace and a huge dose of truth. Will you be as good at it as Jesus? Nope… He was God in the flesh.  You don’t have a chance at finessing grace and truth like He did in His time on this earth, but you can be who God called you to be!

And you’ll be full of joy!!!

If we all had it together, then we wouldn’t need Jesus. I don’t know about you, but I need Jesus every single second of every single day, for the rest of my life on this earth and beyond! Extend Grace, be His truth!

Grace and Truth… 100-100… Perfect Love…