Together: What Do I Do With My Hurt

Good morning family. How are you? So glad you're here with us. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining us online. Does this feel like it's echoey? My clicker's not working. It's on, I turned it on. Whoa. There it is. Okay. All right. We're good. We're good. Alright, great. Okay. What was I going to talk about today? Oh, what do I do with my hurt? Let me just throw this out to you. I'm always fascinated at how the Lord works in planning. There are some people who believe that in order to be moved by the spirit, it always has to be spontaneous. And there's a percentage of that. And when God moves, sometimes it's just really, you know, sometimes when there's worship and worship leaders are all like, yeah, we need to do one more chorus of that. And like the spirit moved them to do that. And I totally agree with that. Like, the spirit works on the spur of the moment, but the spirit doesn't only work in the spur of the moment. I think God makes planners because he knows what's coming and he wants people to be prepared for it along the way. And so the reason why I bring that up is because, for me, I write my sermons about six weeks in advance. I wrote this sermon about six weeks ago, not knowing what the last two weeks was going to look like. Right? And I love that because what it's done for me is, God was like, Hey, I was giving you something to prepare you to kind of work through where you were going to be, knowing that we were going to be here, knowing that I was going to be here. And so it's been really good for me to reflect on this sermon over the last week, as I've been preparing for this. And it's just a great, it's just a great reminder -- I love how God works in all that we're talking about.

This series is called Together. What we're wrestling with is why is it so important for us to be a community? What, what is it? And in order for that to happen, last week, we talked about this reality that we're just better together. We're better together than we are alone. We're always going to be better together than we are alone. God has made us for community. Here's what I know about that is true in churches. It's true, kind of across the board. Like, if the devil was going to be able to get in here and unravel what God has been doing here over the last year, and God has been doing tremendous things here over the last year, if the devil was going to be able to get in and unravel it, he's not gonna do it theologically. He's not gonna do it. He's not gonna do it politically. Like he's not going to do it doctrinally. He's not going to do it. There have been people on all sides of all of those topics and issues in our church, all along. That's nothing new. If the devil is going to be able to unravel what God is doing here, he's going to do it relationally. He's going to do it because we can't figure out how to get along with one another. And at the core of that is, is this need to deal with the fact that we hurt people and we get hurt by people. And some of that hurt we carry into -- we were never even –it didn't have anything to do with what was happening here today -- It happened when I was a kid or something like that, or somebody along the way said something or did something and it was really painful. And now I carry that hurt. I have that scar on my heart. And here's one of the things I love about the gospel of Jesus is -- that he doesn't come to save us only, he also wants to heal us and set us free – here and now – today. Like, part of walking with Jesus is that we figure out how to let go of those hurts and how to allow Jesus to heal the scars on our hearts. So that when we speak to people in community, we come from a whole place. Wholeness, because the place that I speak from is the place that I invite you to speak from. If I speak from a place of wholeness, then I invite you toward wholeness. If I speak from a place of hurt, I invite you to speak from a place of hurt. And so that's this tension of like, if we're going to be in community and we're better together, we just are. But if we're going to be in community, we're going to have to learn to deal with our hurts. One of the reasons why I think God is brilliant. Like, you should totally follow him. He knows everything. But his call to relationship for us is so profound because relationship is the one thing that actually forces us to deal with the stuff that keeps us stuck like learning and education and reading and watching sermons and all that. That's all important. That's all important stuff, but it's the relationship that forces us to apply that stuff. That's one of the reasons why I believe God gave us marriage because marriage knocks the edges off of us, right? We come into marriage with this idea and these expectations of what marriage is going to be, but marriage exposes me for what I am, for better or for worse. And so we have to work with that and we have to grow. We have to deal with those issues that keep us relationally hindered -- same thing in community that we gotta deal with those issues that keep us relationally hindered and the fear that, that kind of grips our heart. And right now in the world that we're in, there's a lot of that to go around. There's just a lot of fear. And so we're wrestling with the culture that we're in right now, for many of us, is exposing the worst of us and, and the worst things about us. And so we got to wrestle with that. Like, what do I do with the hurt that I'm experiencing? And here's the thing, you can't write a Facebook status that says “have a nice day” without somebody getting on there and being like, how dare you call the day nice? Do you know what day it is? It’s Tuesday. I didn’t know Tuesdays weren't allowed to be nice, but like it's, it's that kind of conversation all around us all the time. And so it's really hard to get to feel, to avoid the hurt that that is getting kind of tossed around out there.

So I want to talk about that this morning. What do we do with the hurt? I want to give us some just practical projects to work on. If you find yourself in a hurt place, I know that the longer I'm in ministry, the more that I can reaffirm that this is true. Everybody's hurting somewhere, everybody's hurting somewhere. And so we want to be able to let Jesus into those places in our life and let him heal those through the power of his spirit. And so I want to begin this morning in Psalm 56.  I also want to apologize in advance. This is not a typical sermon for me. This is going to be just going to feel maybe more like a little bit of biblical therapy. And that's okay. Every once in a while, that's okay. Steady diet of that feels a little bit milk toasty. Don't worry. Next, the next two weeks, we are going to dive deep into the word. We're going to dive deep into the life of Moses. And then we're going to dive deep into the life of Sampson. But this morning, we're going to talk a little bit about, um, just kind of how we deal with our hurt. Psalm 56 begins with this. Be merciful to me, my God, for my enemies are in hot pursuit; all day long they press their attack. My adversaries pursue me all day long; in their pride many are attacking me. When I'm afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise -- in God I trust and I am not afraid. Okay. So I just wanna stop right there for a minute and say, first of all, I think that the call of all followers of God is that we don't live with a heart of fear. Okay? But I want to put a tangential idea on that. Do you like that word? I want to put an idea on that that's equally important. We also don't live with a heart of war. To have a heart that is fearless, but have a heart of war, is actually still really, really destructive. What we need to understand is that Jesus is the Prince of Peace. We don't need a heart of war. We need to have a heart of peace, and there may be a time where we go to war. That may be a time coming, but we don't do it from a heart of war. We need to do it from a heart of peace, because that honors God in the process. The right thing done the wrong way becomes the wrong thing. And so it's not just about what we do. Like where we take our stands or don't take our stands. It's not just about that. It's about the heart and the mindset with which we do it. God doesn't want us to be afraid, ever, about anything. So first and foremost, we need to know that God invites us to a heart of peace, not a heart of fear. What can mere mortals do to me? All day long they twist my words. This is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. All their schemes are for my ruin. They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps, hoping to take my life. There's so much I would like to say about that verse -- all day long, they twist my words. People will take what we say and turn it into something that you never said. And, by the way, even if you're a good communicator, I get paid to speak for a living. My wife still misunderstands me. Right. And I mean, it's obviously gotta be her fault. I'm a professional. But we say things and we say them in a way that people will, it comes out, I know what I mean, but maybe I I used a word that's a trigger word or something for somebody else. So it becomes something that it isn't in, or they don't hear it right. Or they hear it and they immediately apply it in a wrong way. Or they, as we make assumptions about how somebody meant what they said, like, there's all this crazy stuff in communication. That's like, God, why would you even ask us to talk to one another? It's so hard -- speaking. 

But when we have a heart of war, what happens more than anything else is that we look for the mistakes and we try to make it have flaws. And that's not healthy in relationship. That's not how you have genuine connectedness. Because of their wickedness do not let them escape; in your anger, God bring the nations down. Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll -- are they not in your record? Good news. When people hurt you, every tear that you cry, God remembers it. David will say in another Psalm that God stores every tear in a bottle. In my own twisted mind, I just believe that on judgment day, when we go and we stand before the Lord, he's going to pull out your jar of tears and he's going to open it up and he's gonna pour it out. And he's going to say, there's no sorrow anymore. I'm looking forward to that day. Then my enemies will turn back when I call for help. By this, I will know that God is for me. In God, whose word I praise  --  It's the second time he said this ‘whose word I praise’ --  in the Lord, whose word I praise -- in God I trust and am not afraid. What can man do to me? I'm under vows to you, my God; I will present my thank offerings to you. For you have delivered me from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life. This is God's heart for us. In the midst of all of the chaos that is going on around us all the time, God's heart for us is that we trust in his word and that we walk with him in life. And what I love about David's call to this is that it's not just about feeling God or praying to God, or this is about knowing God's word. Because in God's word, we see God's concrete promises revealed to us that are unchanging. And we see that wherever we're at in the world right now, like this isn't the first time that we've been here, whether it's me personally, or us as a culture or whatever, this isn't the first time that we've been here and God's word speaks to those spaces. And so we challenge ourselves to live by the promises of God.

And now there's two, two types of hurt. There's past hurt and there's present hurt. There's stuff where I got hurt a long time ago, and then there's hurt where I got hurt today or within the last little bit. And the problem is that they masquerade themselves like a different type of hurt, which is future hurt. And what that means is I have a past hurt, let's say, that causes me to believe that for the rest of my life, everything is going to always look like that hurt. And so what I do is I try to protect myself from that hurt and in doing so, I wind up reinforcing a lie in my life and hurting other people. There is no such thing as future hurt. It hasn't happened yet. What you might actually find, if we're willing to trust God and take him at his word, is that rather than, than we're going to get hurt, that we might actually find some real healing and beauty in the relationship if we're willing to trust it, but we're not willing to trust it very often because we have past hurt or we have present hurt. 

Here's the other thing about hurt, hurt only comes from a couple of sources. Good news. It only comes from a couple of sources. Number one is things done to me. And number two is things done by me to others or myself. So, there's hurt from people. People have done things to me that hurts and then there's hurt that I've done to me or that I am hurting because I did something to somebody else and it was bad. Like those are the only couple of sources of hurt. And once we know that, then we can start to really focus in and you know, my dad or my mom or my brother or my friend or my whatever did this to me and it hurt. But this person here right now in this moment that I'm standing face to face with, it is not them. So I don't have to impose that hurt onto this relationship. I don't have to do that. And when I do it creates all kinds of dysfunction and problems. We got to deal with our hurt.

So the question is, what do we do with it? Okay. Number one, I'm going to give you three truths about dealing with your hurt. Number one, no one can conquer hurt alone. You'll either repress it or it will make you bitter. Okay? This is the choice. If you try to deal with hurt by yourself, I'll just get over it. No, you won't. That's the thing about unresolved emotion never goes away. It never goes away, right? It just kind of sits there in the back of your brain. And the way my dad described it, when I was growing up, the analogy works for me. It's just like you have a shelf in the back of your head. And every time somebody hurts you, you put a China, like a porcelain tea cup on the shelf, right? It doesn't go away. Just sits there on the shelf, which is fine until the shelf gets full. And then you try to put another teacup up there and something else falls off and it hits in shatters and it goes all over the place. And you don't get to pick where it goes or who it cuts, unresolved hurt. Unresolved hurt is like turning up the stove on a pot of boiling water. And then something happens and you turn the pot over. You don't get to pick where it goes and who it burns. And that's the problem with unresolved hurt is like, it really stings these people that we love, like our kids, like they pay a price for our unresolved hurt and that's really, really bad. So, either it makes you bitter or you repress it. I don't, I don't know. You know what I did with all my pain? I crammed it into a nice, neat little ball and I shoved it way down -- that doesn't work either. By the way, repression is at the root of almost all mental illness. So if you want to go crazy, repress your hurt, I don't want to talk about it. I'm fine. I'm fine. It doesn't work that way. Ecclesiastes 4 -- a famous passage. Again, I saw something meaningless under the sun; there was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. And there was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. For whom am I toiling, he asked, and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? This too is meaningless -- a miserable business! Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either one of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Like, if you're going to try to do life alone, I don't want to, I don't want to get hurt. So I'm going to do life alone. It's worse than figuring out how to heal ourselves so that we can do well, in relationship. Hebrews 3, he says this, See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily. How often are we supposed to encourage one another? Why? Why so often? Why do we gotta be so encouraging to people all the time? It's hard. Some people they're just not that very many nice things to say about them. I was a, that was a joke. That was a joke. It's, it's hard to be encouraging all the time. Why do we have to do it? Here's why, because if I'm not encouraged by the people around me, it takes me about five minutes to get messed up in the head. And as soon as I start getting messed up in the head, that starts to mess up my actions. And when that messes up my actions, it causes more hurt out there. So we want to keep encouraging one another all the time so that we can stay the course. It says, so that none of you may be hardened by sins deceitfulness. So that none of you can be hardened by sins deceitfulness. So you can't deal with your hurt alone. You can't, and you're not supposed to try. It's a deception of the enemy to say that you need to deal with your hurt by yourself. One of the most powerful things that we can learn in the healing process is the power of the words -- me too. Like one of the lies that Satan gives us in our hurt is that we're the only ones who've ever experienced this. And what I would say is, it's just not true. You're not alone. And you're not meant to be alone. And Satan plays in the dark. When you keep things in the dark, you give Satan permission to mess with it and make it feel a lot bigger than it actually is. When we bring it out into the light, then we give God the chance to heal it.

Second truth. You must name and process the hurt -- name and process the hurt. One of the things that we really wrestle with is that we don't grieve things well. So we're like it was abuse. And now I don't want to have to deal with again, okay, I named it. Let's move on. No, no, no, no, no. You actually need to grieve that and process it and work through it. And some of those things are actually really significant and it's worth going to see a counselor. It's worth that -- you have to name and process the hurt. John 8:32 says, then you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free. It's the truth that sets us free, not minimizing things. Minimizing things doesn't set us free. It's the truth that sets us free. By the way, being overly dramatic about things doesn't set us free either, right? Like it's the truth that sets us free. But some of those things that we try to pretend like we try to pretend like it wasn't a big deal. You know, it just wasn't a big deal. It wasn't a big deal. We try to get over it and just move on. And we don't even know what it was. We just know that we felt bad. And then, and then once we can even name it, we don't want to process it and think through where does that come from? It's the truth that sets us free. Nothing else carries that promise. Nothing else carries that promise. By the way, that doesn't mean that you have to take offense to it. If I can name the hurt and process it, it doesn't mean that I have to be offended by it. I don't have to be offended. Probably the best book I've read in five years is the book Unoffendable by Brent Hanson. I really recommend it. I've thrown that book around a lot to people because it's just such a powerful -- and flies in the face of everything that I want to be true for me. I want to be able to be offended. Like when you hurt me, I really want you to pay for that. I don't have the right to do that. We don't have the right to be angry at people. And I know that the response to that is, but you can be angry at the things that get God angry. Really tell me where that's at in scripture. Tell me where that’s at. God does get righteously angry, but here's the thing God has permission to do all kinds of things that we don't get permission to. Do. You know why? Because he's God and we're not his character can handle it and mine can't. So we, we want to be, we want to be, we'll just get mad at the things that anger God. Well, you don't, it's not that simple. We don't, we don't do that. We get mad at all kinds of things that wouldn't anger God. So we have to wrestle with all of that stuff. Name the hurt and process, and just some bullet points about that.

Number one, process it with the right people. And number two, don't numb it. Now we numb our, her and pain all kinds of ways. Okay? We do some, some people numb with alcohol or drugs. Some people numb with food. Some people numb with other unhealthy relationships. Some people numb with music or television, or we have all kinds of things that we use as, as a distraction, a way to numb ourselves from feeling what we feel. But here's the problem with that. You cannot selectively numb. If you numb your hurt, which is on the surface sounds like a good idea, but if you numb your hurt, you numb all emotion. You also numb creativity and hope and joy. And so what you do is by numbing, isn't eliminate the pain. What you do is eliminate all the good things in life as well. Which reinforces the lie that the hurt has control over you. Commit to never numb, bring it up and deal with it. Don't pretend like it's not there. Get real, your life group may be a very wonderful space for you to do that in. Sometimes there's like, no, my hurt is way too big for that. Okay. But there are spaces where you can go and get that dealt with don't numb, numbing keeps us stuck. Third truth about our hurt, begin to be thankful to the Lord, intentionally. Begin to be thankful to the Lord intentionally. 

Here's the thing you can't un- something. Here's what that means. If you're like I’m hurt. Okay, well stop. Okay. I feel better. That's not how it works. So we don't just unhurt ourselves. What we need to do is to take the hurt and replace it with something else. The way to get past the hurt is to replace it with being thankful. The opposite of hurt is gratitude. I'm not offended. I'm thankful. Here's what Romans 1 says -- in Romans 1 super famous passage about the degradation of humanity. If you've read, if you spent time in the word, you're at least vaguely familiar with Romans 1, it's like this and this and this happens and then this happens and then this happens. Here's what it says, The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness. If they suppress the truth by their wickedness -- remember it's the truth that sets us free. Then what does the suppression of the truth do? It keeps us from being free. Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God,  -- or look at this, this is by the way the starting point for all of this, and then this happens and then this happens and then this happens. Here's the starting point -- for, although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. And it goes on and on and on. 

If you want to stop the process of things blowing up in your life, acknowledge who God is and be thankful to him. Be intentionally thankful to him. Be intentionally thankful to him. Philippians 4 says this, rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again: Rejoice! When should we rejoice in the Lord? Always. Even when I don't feel like it? Yup. Now I don't rejoice for all circumstances because some circumstances are really hard. I don't want it. I don't want to rejoice for that. But what I can say is we can always rejoice in the Lord and that will help us have the internal fortitude to be able to weather -- you know, I was thinking about this the other day, my great grandfather was born in 1900, which would make him 120 years old right now. I always knew how old he was by what year it was, which was kind of cool. Some of the things that he experienced in his life in 1914, he experienced WWI; in 1918 Spanish flu; the 1930s was the Depression; 1940s was WWII; 1950s was Korea; 1960s was Vietnam. Like this was his life. Right? And I keep thinking about how interesting it is that, now in the world that we live in, like, we don't really have a frame of reference for a life like that. Like a life, a life like that is, it's hard, it's difficult, but it develops a fortitude in them. He was a crusty old German man, hard. Like, but like a crusty marshmallow, he was hard on the outside, but kind of soft and tender on the inside. You know, those people, everybody knows those people, right? Uh it's who, and, and it was the life that he lived at brought up. But, when I watched that man pray, there was a gratitude for all the things that he had been given because he knew what it felt like to be without -- that, experiencing that without was the only way to develop the gratitude for what he had. It was powerful. We need to be intentionally grateful because that's two generations removed and I'm still being reminded by the testimony of God's faithfulness by my great grandfather. Your gratitude, by the way, and your hurt and pain, it isn't just about you or the person that you're offended at. It's about your great grandchildren. It's a legacy that you're setting for the people that will come after you. It's powerful business. Here's how you do it. Simple. Start each morning when you're in your Bible time, make a list of the things that you're thankful for daily to God, start with one or two things. Like, right now, it's so easy to be thankful in Colorado. The weather here. Oh, my word. It's like the single greatest thing ever. I told you guys, I was just in Michigan speaking at a family camp. It is so humid there. And I got up in front of them and I was like, listen guys, why do you live here? You don't have to, you can move. I said, don't ever come visit me in Denver. Cause you'll never leave. Like that's so thankful for, I mean, there's simple things to be thinking, doesn't have to be profound. Start a mindset of thankfulness, start with one or two things and then work towards five to 10 things every day that you can be thankful for. And then once you get good at that, then move to things that you're thankful for about people and watch what changes. You’ll be like, man, all of a sudden this person is all new. They're a whole different person. And I would guarantee that they probably didn't change at all. But your perspective on them did because we were operating from a position of thankfulness, not of hurt. Guys, hurt is a real part of relationships. It's a real part of relationships, but we have to get through the hurt, not over it, not around it, not forgetting that it's there. We have to go through the hurt so that we can experience healing and freedom. And then we get to become an example, a beacon of light to the world because we're doing relationships in a different kind of way. People are like, what's different about that. I don't know, but I'm strangely attracted to it because we're doing relationships as God intended. 

So I have some implications for some questions for us to wrestle with in our life groups this week or wherever you have your spiritual conversations. Um, some, some questions for us to wrestle with. Number one. What from your past keeps holding you back from experiencing wholeness in your life? It's worth asking -- what, from your past keeps holding you back, I can tell you all kinds of stories of things that happened to me when I was a kid. And now when I think about them, I go, gosh, that was, that was silly. But then it really marked me. Like I had had a girl when I was seven years old on the playground West side elementary and Morland Wyoming. I was on the Merry go round. I remember that. I remember this, that clearly it was cold and gray skies. I have a perfect picture of this in my mind, right. This girl ran up to me and she said, you have a big butt. See, you laugh at that. Cause it's like, Oh my gosh, that's silly. Yeah -- marked me to this day. I don't like wearing -- when skinny jeans became a thing. I told my wife don't ever try to put me in those a kid. I mean, I don't know that I would make them look good anyway, but I just am like, Nope, I'm going to wear baggy pants. Always. I'm gonna wear baggy pants. Always. I'm getting over it. I'm getting some therapy. It's helping, you know, but that's like, that's something that marked me from seven years old until I'm 46 now. Why do I care about what a seven year old girl said on the playground? I'll tell you why. Cause it hurt. And that's a simple, I got lots of stories like that in my life. So do you. Like, where, where we were marked by a moment that. Probably if I was to go back and ask that girl, Hey, do you remember? She'd be like, no, cause it wasn't a moment for her, but it was for me. What in your past keeps keeps holding you back?

Number two, how have you experienced Psalm 56? How have people twisted your words? We've all had it happen. By the way, We’ve ll done it too. Like, it's not like we're the innocent victims in that. We've all twisted. People's words. How have people twisted your words and how do you handle that? 

Number three. How have those closest to you made a difference in your life. In what ways have you honored that investment? If you've had people that have walked with you through some of that stuff, and you've been able to find healing as they've journeyed with you, have you honored that investment? It might be a great space to start being thankful. God, thank you for my friend who didn't bail out me. Or God, thank you for my spouse who loved me enough to call out a thing that was destructive in our relationship. Thank you for that. And maybe you should tell them.

Number four, what can you be thankful for in this season?  I don't know about you guys, but especially the last couple of weeks. And there's probably a number of factors in it, it's probably not just a one thing, but over the last couple of weeks, what I've experienced is just this deep, profound heaviness. And we're talking as a staff this last week about like, it just feels different now than like, even at the beginning, there was, there was a set of emotions that came with at the beginning, in the beginning, like March, that's what it feels like. Right? Like in the beginning of COVID like there's before BC is before COVID and then it's like, it's going to be the mark of our time. Right. That's how we met before. And then like in the beginning, God created the COVID in the beginning, there was a set of emotions of it. And then as it progressed, it felt like things were getting better and it got worse and then better then worse then better. And then, you know, as they understand the virus, there's all these different things. And now they're, and I can just tell you, like, one of the things that I'm wrestling with personally is like in California, they banned singing and chanting in church services. Like I don't, I get the science. I understand why they said that, but here's the deal, worship is central to who we are as followers of Jesus. I can't ever imagine, not, not worshiping in church service. Um, just know that cause it may or may not be coming. I don't know. I don't know. But in the midst of all of this chaos, what can you be thankful for? What can you be thankful for? Cause there are still places where God is doing tremendous work. Tremendous, tremendous good is happening and lots and lots of people are saying yes to Jesus who wouldn't have even taken a look at him four months ago. And we can be thankful for that. And I'll wear a mask for a little while for that. 

We're gonna move communion time. And we have an open table at our church. What that means is anybody who's willing to celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus with us, is invited to partake in communion, but we want you to hold the elements till the end and we'll take them all together. Um, as we think about communion this morning, I just wanna, um, I want us to consider Jesus on the cross and all the pain and all the anguish that he went through, which was ridiculous amounts, looking at you and me with kind eyes and saying, I'm doing this so that you don't have to hurt anymore. You don't have to be defined by your hurt anymore. You don't have to be afraid anymore. You don't have to be consumed by fractures on your heart anymore. I'm taking all of that in this moment. What’s the thing, the one thing, or maybe the two or three things that are in your life right now that you know that when Jesus says that to you, he's speaking about these specific things. Let's take a minute. Think about that. As we move forward. 

On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body, which is given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me. And in the same way after the dinner, he took a cup and he said, this cup, this is the blood of the covenant, which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me. 

Let's pray, Lord. Thank you. Thank you for the model of Jesus who had all kinds of things said to him, about him, all kinds of things done to him, and yet managed to be a model of how we keep offering, even the dark places of our life to you and God, thank you for the promise that you want to redeem them all. And so we offer to you or hurt and our brokenness, knowing that only you can make beauty from ashes. So we trust you with that Lord in Jesus name. Amen.

I believe that God will continue to do great things in and through our church and our community. And he's gonna invite us to be a part of that. And he's going to continue to invite us to lay our hurts our brokenness down at his feet so that he can heal those and set us free so that we can be a part of His best for our lives. And I promise you that whatever he comes up with is going to be way more gooder than anything we could come up with on our own. Right? So, may you have the courage to take an honest look at the hurts in your own life. May we have the courage to do that and, and begin the process of letting those go, letting the Holy spirit here, heal us, tapping into the people that God has placed in our life to help us. May we have the courage to do that so that we can live in the fullness of the joy that God's given us through Christ Jesus. Thanks for coming. Have a great week.