Deep inside there is something missing in all of this, we were all made for so much more and we know it. Okay, so what do we do with that? We are going to spend the next 6 or 7 weeks talking about that. But before we start that good morning and happy New Year to you. It is so good to have you with us, especially if you are new. If that is you thanks for being willing to start your 2016 off with us. Before we say anything else we think that it is important that you know that you are sitting in a room full of people just like you, all of your story is safe and welcome here regardless of how it reads and you belong with us regardless of what you believe, even if you don’t believe what we believe. We are glad that you are here and hope that you feel and experience that in your time here today with us. So special shout out to all of you who are new, to all who came back because I asked you to on Christmas Eve and to all of our friends who can’t be here today but are taking the time to watch us online right now too. So good to have you with us.
You know I love this time of year because if nothing else it always provides a time for a fresh new start. This year’s going to be different, it is going to be the year that I, change careers, get in shape, lose weight, get married, finish my degree, get out of debt, dump that loser, start reading my Bible, open a pot store, find a church for my family…there are lots of ways to fill in that blank. Maybe that’s why you are here today trying to start out this new year a little differently. That’s what we want to, and that’s why we are starting this new year with a series designed to help all of us start this new year differently that we are calling Ransomed Heart.
ILLUST> If you aren’t familiar, Ransomed Heart is a ministry started by John Eldredge located right here in CS just over on the west side of town. They are our allies, partners, and in some cases some of our very best friends in all the world, but that is not why we are doing this series. This series is not about the Ransomed Heart Ministry it is about the Ransomed Heart Message. at this is about. Something’s missing in our lives. We were made for more and we know it. This is about you and me finding the life that we are looking for. It is not about the Ransomed Heart ministry it is about the Ransomed Heart message. If you want a better understanding of who we are as a church this series will certainly give you that and do that for you. This message is the foundation of how we grow people and of all that we do here at DCC. But it is so much more than that. This message saved my marriage when it appeared to be beyond saving, restored my relationships with my daughters when they seemed to be beyond restoration, saved my life when it didn’t seem to be worth living any more, and introduced me to a life and relationship with Jesus that I would have never imagined possible. It has done the same thing for hundreds of others sitting around you in this place that we call DCC today.
So as we start this journey together today I want to introduce you to something that we don’t often talk about, something that often feels out of bounds or even out of place in church. I want to start this series today by spending some time talking about our invisible lives. Now, before you have a panic attack I am not talking about the things in your life that nobody knows and sees but you…your deepest darkest secrets. I want to talk about the things that I think nobody really knows and sees in your life including you. That is where this journey toward finding the life that every single one of us is looking for begins. You and I were made for something more and we know it. So what do you say, let’s jump into this and see if we can figure out how to find it. Here we go…
If you have a Bible we are going to be in Luke chapter 4 today. If you don’t have a Bible we would love to give you one. They are back on the back tables that you can grab right now if you would like if you close or on you can always grab one on your way out. As always you can hit our app or the You Version app too. Or you can ignore all of that and read along with me on the screens. So, here we go let’s start in Luke chapter 4 beginning with verse 14, just a few verses to get us started.
14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read.
Okay. So Jesus not too long before this has been baptized, been validated by his Father in Heaven for all to here, withstood the temptations of Satan in the desert for 40 days and started his ministry. Now he returns back to his home church in his home town, and he stands up to read. Now, ultimately it’s what he chooses to read that is most significant here, but before we get to that let’s not miss the significance of not what he says but who he is saying it to.
JESUS HAS SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO SAY TO THE CHURCH PEOPLE WHO KNOW HIM BEST. Just think about this moment for a second. Jesus is with the people who choose to go to church on the Sabbath. His message in this moment anyway, is not for people who aren’t interested in God, it is for people who are for all practical purposes chasing after God, the people who know the most scripture, who attend church the most, and who have the best understanding of what God says and expects of them. But if you think about it there is even much more to it here than that. These are not only church people these are the church people who watched Jesus grow up. They have spent 30 years watching him grow up, these really are the people who know Jesus best. Now let that sink in for a second. If you think about it what comes with that? Expectations. We don’t expect much of people we barely know. We expect things of people we really know. So that’s in play here. In fact, I think that is why Jesus is choosing to address these specific church people. Despite what they may have heard, it is likely that Jesus really does need to blow up the expectations and limitations that they are likely to be placing on a carpenter’s son.
Here’s the point. One of the kindest things that Jesus could ever do for us is exactly that, blow up the expectations and limitations that we have placed on him in our own lives. One of the kindest things that Jesus has ever done for me is exactly that and it came at one of the most tragic, darkest, and most hopeless moments of my life.
ILLUST> So I was initially introduced to the Ransomed Heart message when Wild at Heart was first published in 2001. A good friend gave me the book and said when I read this I thought of you. I was co-leading a single’s ministry with him as a volunteer at that time and still practicing law. So I read it, thought good book for guys, and shelved it. I didn’t pick it back up until a few years later when my life was on the verge of being total destruction and it was all my fault. I had just resigned as the pastor of the church I was leading after blowing my life up and having an affair. There I sat in my sin. My world got strangely quiet. People didn’t know what to do or what to say and so most chose to run away and say nothing. Most in the church quickly concluded that I had a lust problem or sex addiction. I knew that wasn’t true, but I had no explanation for how or why this had happened. I loved my wife, I loved my kids, my friends, the people in the church that I led but my actions didn’t show that. How did this happen, why did this happen? There was more to this than temptation and sin. A friend took me back to this message and the book Wild at Heart. As I was reading through it John made the comment that 95% of affairs have nothing at all to do with lust or sex. My heart jumped, I knew I desperately wanted and needed to know more. Maybe there was hope for me. Maybe there was an explanation, not an excuse but an explanation for what I had done. Maybe there was more to this than just temptation and sin. Could there be something that this church guy had not seen? It was the beginning of my journey to a place I had never gone before, it was the beginning of my journey into my invisible life.
I had spent my entire life in the church focused on knowledge, duty, obligation, and obedience trying my best to manage my sin. A lot of us have done just that. We need to be introduced to our invisible lives. Jesus is getting ready to do that…
17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Luke seems to give the paraphrased version or the summary of everything that Isaiah lays out in the first 3 verses of chapter 61. Isaiah also includes healing of broken hearts, comfort for those who mourn and grieve, turn ashes to beauty, and mourning to joy, despair into praise. What Jesus reads here is so much more than a list of categories of people that he came to forgive. These are not categories of people in need of forgiveness these are places of need in each and every one of us. Jesus is addressing what I believe to be one of the greatest gaps in the church here…
WE UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIN BUT NOT STORY. Not only does that stuff you do matter. It does, we make that clear in the church. Our sin is a big deal, it separates us from God, we don’t want that so we must learn to manage and control it. Our sin is not invisible to us in the church. Our stories often are. This is the invisible life that I am talking about. What have we done with the stuff that has been done to us, said to us, and said about us? What about when you were written off, broken up with, laughed at, beaten, neglected, raped, sodomized, abused, made fun of, abandoned, given up on, walked away from, cheated on? What about the stuff that really wasn’t our fault? What about our stories? We don’t talk about that much. Most of us in the church don’t really give a lot of thought to it at all. I spent about 40 years of my life totally missing the significance of my story.
ILLUST> When I crashed over a decade ago the most common conclusion reached about me by church people who experienced it or heard about it was that I was just a bad person. I don’t blame them. When we are not aware of our invisible lives, our stories, it is difficult if not impossible to reach any other conclusion. What I began to understand was that maybe I was not a bad person after all. Maybe I was a broken person who did a terribly bad thing. There is a difference. I started to discover that the secrets behind the worst decision and mistake I had ever made in my life were tucked deeply within my story. Being skinny, scrawny, weak, redheaded, made fun of and rejected by girls was not so insignificant after all. So much of my behavior was tied to my invisible life. So, I began to devour the book. As I read the words jumped off the page to me, I would often shout them to Stacy in the other room. I will never forget shouting to her, I get it, I have been spent all of these years wrongly taking my question of do I really have what it takes to be a man to you and expecting you to answer it. How could I have missed all of this for so many years of my life?
Suddenly, I began to have hope. There was so much more that Jesus wanted to do and needed to do in my heart, my life, and my story. Not minimizing my sin or any sin, ultimately it is your sin and mine that nailed Jesus to the cross, but I had not missed that. I had clear focus on managing my sin, doing better, and not screwing up, and had missed the significance of my own story. Jesus came to heal, redeem, restore, bring freedom, to set my captive heart free. My life would never be the same. Just a few years into my desert experience out of ministry churches started inquiring about my future. I believed that despite the naysayers God was saying we are going to do this again but this time Greg we are going to do it differently. This message of story and all that Jesus came to do is going to be the foundation of the church you will lead.
ILLUST> So I moved to Colorado Springs in August of 2008 totally committed to being a place committed to helping people understand the significance of their own stories and all that Jesus wanted to do with that and teamed up with the 80 or so people that were hear to make that happen. There was one small problem. I knew how to do that one on one in a counseling setting. I had no idea how to do it in a church setting. So through a mutual friend I reached out to Ransomed Heart. Craig McConnell agreed to meet me at Starbucks. I came loaded with an agenda. Tell me how to do this, how to program this thing, set up classes and studies, make this message fit a church. So we get our coffee and sit down and you can imagine my disappointment when Craig looked at me and said so what’s your story. I remember thinking ain’t nobody got time for that. We can get warm and fuzzy later, I need some answers fast. I didn’t get them that day. I still haven’t almost 8 years later. I have been meeting with Craig about every other week since that day.
What I have learned from my time with Craig is this. The very best thing that I could do for this place we call Discovery Church is to walk with God and take care of my own heart, to continue to walk into my own story, and allow Jesus to continue to heal, redeem, and restore the broken places in me. Better than any class, program or system, the very best thing I could ever possibly do as the leader of this place was to stay in my own story with Jesus. There is always more that Jesus wants and needs to do there. We must understand the significance of our stories.
God is building this church on that. It is the foundation of DCC, this place that you are sitting in today. Don’t hear me wrong. It doesn’t make us better, I am not suggesting that, but it does make us different. It also makes things messy at times around here. Our mission is to help people discover their stories, experience Jesus, and live on Mission. It really is that first piece, discover your story, that makes us different. We can’t leave it out. We understand the significance of our sin, but if we really want this amazing abundant life to the fullest thing that Jesus came to bring us we must understand the significance of our stories. Let’s finish this…
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
In other words, that right there is what I came to this earth to do for you. It starts with forgiveness, but it is so much bigger than that. Jesus came to heal, redeem, restore, repair our brokenness, set our captive hearts free and lead us to the life to the fullest that he came to bring us. So, is that the Jesus that I have experienced in my life? For me, 40 years into church the answer to that question was no. And then for the first time in my life, in my very darkest hopeless moment, I began to experience this and my life would never be the same…
THERE’S A DIFFERENCE IN LIVING FORGIVEN AND LIVING FREE. ILLUST> I grew up in a church full of people committed to living very religious lives full of knowledge, duty, obligation, and obedience. I grew up doing that too. Even though they truly were some of the most miserable people I knew, I grew up following that trend it was all I knew to do. The voice spoke to me, there is something missing in all of this and you know it. I think that voice spoke to my dad too. My dad was different. He was loved but he never really fit in in that church. I guess I am my father’s son. He was a blue collar basketball coach who drank wine on occasion much to my mom’s chagrin, smoked cigars at work on the loading dock, and told some jokes that church people would have frowned upon. I’m not saying that every decision that my dad made was the right one, I am saying that he loved Jesus. My dad often worked nights. I will never forget my dad laying on his side in the bed reading this old Bible before he would go to sleep. No, he couldn’t quote it or teach it like others in the church and was even afraid to pray publicly but somehow someway he figured out how to live it. My dad passed away about 13 years ago so we never got a chance to talk about this. I watched my dad refuse to settle for a religious life full of duty, obligation, and obedience. I’m convinced my dad understood this, there’s a difference in living forgiven and living free and he wanted both. I think we all do.
I think that one of the biggest tragedies in the church today is that so many of us have settled for half of that and have lost heart. Proverbs 4 says above all else we need to guard our hearts for it is the wellspring of life, the source of this amazing life to the fullest that Jesus came to bring us. There is more and we know it. We want to live free. It is what we want for everyone that walks into this place. This is why the wristbands that we give away here say find hope…live free. My tattoo…me too…but because of this I live not only forgiven I live free. It starts with our stories. If we continue to overlook or ignore our invisible lives, we will never live free.
ILLUST> As you sit here today, I may not know you, but here is what I know to be true of you. You were born into a great story that started before the dawn of time, a story of adventure, risk, and betrayal. It is a dangerous story of good warring against evil. You have a destiny. You have a very unique and incredible place in that story. There are passions written on your heart, things that make you want to pound your fist on the table. The movies that you love, the stories that stir you to tears, the roles that you would love to play in those stories are all clues. Deep within the heart of every man and boy in this room is a core desire for a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue, and an adventure to live. Misplaced, forgotten or misdirected they go underground only to surface later in anger, addiction, or compulsion. Throughout the course of his life, he is haunted by a question…do I have what it takes to be a man. Deep within the heart of every woman or girl in this room is a desire to be romanced, to have an irreplaceable role to play in a great adventure, a unique beauty to unveil, to be desired, to be captivating. Misplaced, forgotten or misdirected, these desires do not simply go away. They go underground and surface later in addiction, control and shame. Throughout the course of her life she is haunted by a question does anyone delight in me, will I be chosen, wanted, seen and fought for? The wounds of our lives, the things that have been done to us and said about us, our stories are significant. They are evidence of an enemy who is trying to prevent us from playing our roles in this incredible larger story. The story of your life is the long and sustained assault upon your heart by the one who knows who you could be and fears you. This is your invisible life.
So, yeah we love God, but are we living free? We have just started this journey and scratched the surface today. There is so much more ahead. 6 or 7 weeks ahead. Are you living free? Don’t you want too? What if this stuff is true? Why not finish the journey before you make the call? What do you really have to lose? Listen to me there’s something missing in all of this, you were meant for so much more and you know it. The voice is real. You make the call, but I hope that we see you back next week. Let’s pray.
