Beyond The Message: The Real Test of Spiritual Maturity

Welcome to Beyond the Message, a midweek space where we continue the conversation from Sunday's sermon, unpacking context, exploring your questions, and growing as we listen, learn, and follow Jesus together.

Welcome back to Beyond the Message today.

I'm joined by Pastor Grant Harris, who preached on Sunday.

My name is Aidan, and today we're going to be talking about is it wrong to use First Corinthians 13 as a wedding passage?

And we're going to be zooming in on the area of forgiveness.

But before we get into that, uh my summary of Grant's amazing message on Sunday was, which was on 1 Corinthians 13, was that the greatest evidence of the Holy Spirit at work is not miraculous gifts, but is growing in love.

It was such a timely message in our series to keep the focus and the purpose of spiritual gifts on growing in love and church community.

At one point you said uh you can have spiritual gifts, you can have spiritual experiences, you can have spiritual knowledge, but if love is missing, you've missed the point.

And I think that just really landed for me and for many people.

Um so if you haven't listened to it already, I encourage you to go and listen to the message.

Uh, Grant, did you want to say any more about this message and maybe some of the feedback you've received even?

Yeah, I think you mentioned that I said that you can have all that.

Um, but if you don't have love, you've got nothing.

I was just I'm just the messenger.

I mean, that's really what the passage said, it's what Paul was writing to the church.

And we had some really nice feedback, which has been great.

I think the feedback is like challenging because at the end of the day, when we're talking about our behaviors and we're talking about, I guess, our attitudes that we have in our hearts, that's really for hard work.

And I think even as we were just summarizing that and talking about you can have spiritual gifts, we pray for them.

There's nothing wrong with spiritual gifts.

We're learning that in the series, and we'll continue to learn that.

It's easy to do that because it's an individual thing that we can get something, but the transformation of giving it back out and how we interact with one another is let's be honest, it's one of our biggest human challenges.

And I think for me, as I've got older, you just realize how hard that is.

I had one person that I caught up with yesterday about something else, and they were like, you know, that fruit of the spirit stuff?

I think I broke them all by the time I got home.

They were like, Okay, someone coming off on the road and angry.

Yeah.

And it just goes to show you can listen to something in church, but then how does it apply as you go out from church and go home and get back into our rhythms?

So it it's super challenging.

Like I think we all we all know that.

Yeah.

So we and we're gonna pick up on particularly the forgiveness element of life in church.

Yeah.

Um, but before we get there, two things.

Firstly, uh, for those watching, uh, you'll notice that I'm wearing an all-white shirt.

Um tight all white shirt.

It is very tight.

It's uh it's a match-worn shirt.

Um, my brother-in-law, Keely's brother, plays for the team.

So uh we're super excited for the game.

The game is today.

We're recording this on Tuesday.

The All-Whites play against Iran at 1 p.m.

Uh so I got my shirt on, I'm ready.

Um, so that's why I'm wearing this shirt.

And when this comes out on Wednesday, obviously the game will have happened.

Hopefully we've won.

But if we haven't, there's still two more games and there's still hope.

And yeah, I'll be going to those games.

So I won't be hit.

I mean, you're taking time off.

You're flying out on Saturday, like I said, your brother-in-law plays for the awards.

So where are you going?

Yeah, we're going to Vancouver to watch game two and three for the awards.

So they that's against Egypt and then against Belgium.

And yeah, I'm just so excited.

I always wanted to go to the World Cup, probably to watch England, but um, you know, with Keely's brother playing for the team and and having worked with most of the people from when I worked with New Zealand football, uh, there's just so many points of connection, and yes, super excited for that.

I'll be away for a couple of weeks.

Um, this isn't the purpose of the podcast, but you know, you say you you you're looking at England.

Yeah.

Do you think it would change if you ended up with a New Zealand passport?

I mean, yeah, I know you just travel now on a British passport still.

Yeah.

I mean, are you ever gonna you know become a full key week?

Become one of us?

Uh yeah, I I will, I'm sure I will at some point.

Um I I do think that for the World Cup, if New Zealand played England, I would want New Zealand to win.

Just but that's probably mainly for Callum.

Um so um so people can tell it's not like a prerequisite to work at Windsor Park to have a New Zealand passport.

No, no, obviously.

So uh back to uh our conversation for today.

And I did promise that we'd be asking this question: is it wrong to use 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings?

You've said that you've taken uh over 70 weddings, and and probably about at least half of them have used that passage.

Yeah.

Uh you may have had it at your and Joe's wedding.

I think me and Keeley had, and I've only taken about a handful of weddings, but often we've used 1 Corinthians 13.

Love is patient, love is kind.

Um, you've shown us that that's kind of not really the context, but so is it wrong that we use that at weddings?

Yeah, I mean you could easily say it probably is because we're very strong here in trying to teach in reading the Bible, putting it in its context, and applying the context of scripture to our lives and what it looks like.

Um, and we talk widely about that, and you know, it's a a feature of really good biblical scholarship for us to learn that.

And so I guess at one level would be like, you know what, that wasn't even written at a wedding.

But I would say this it was written to the church, and the church is described in the New Testament as being the bride of Christ.

So, in a figurative kind of way, that is a marriage.

Um, we are the bride of Christ, and so that love for us to Christ is really important, and then to each other because we form the body of Christ.

Um, you know, the classic Romans passage and and First Corinthians 14 also then talks about a little bit about that, and so so yes and no would be my answer to that.

Yeah, I have no problem with it at a wedding, the kind of love that it talks about.

If you can manage to do that in your marriage, it's a very good thing.

100%.

Yeah, that we were talking about that this morning.

Yeah, and if if you as a spouse were patient, kind, yeah, uh not envious, keeping no record of wrongs is gonna make for a good spouse.

Uh I think the point that I would add to it would be that's the benefit of putting Christ in the middle of our marriage, though.

We often talk about Christ being the center of our marriage, and Joe and I would say that for us.

Um, but it is through Christ that we are then honed and refined for me as a husband, for Joe as a wife, that those character attributes.

I mean, marriage is hard too.

You know, marriage has its moments.

We're we're different people.

I always describe marriage as being like, you know, we're we're always going like this, we're moving, we're changing all the time as we grow and as life changes.

And so we have to allow upon the spirit to keep changing us so that our marriage keeps fresh and so that we keep aligned and and so that it's him that makes our marriage work.

I don't think I could be the person that I am without the spirit guiding me.

And I wouldn't probably be as good a husband, probably.

I mean, I'm probably okay.

You'd have to ask Joe and see what she says about that.

But and so those the passages that that kind of love that we talk about with a marriage is one that is grounded in Christ.

Yeah, yeah, and great link that that that's the spirit forming you as a husband into someone who is more patient and kind.

And and that's really what you highlighted on Sunday is the spirit doesn't just come to give miraculous gifts, but to make us people who are who are increasingly becoming people of love.

And that's what you want in a marriage as well.

Yeah, so when it comes to I guess community and things like that, if if we treated our community, I guess figuratively speaking, like a marriage, it's it's that constant work.

It's like, okay, we have to keep working at this.

I mean, practical example of how we're always learning.

It was an NBA final game on Sunday after church.

Um, we had people coming for dinner, so a bit of cleaning to do at home.

I was washing our floor uh and around our kitchen, yeah.

Uh, and watching the NBA, you know, on the side as I was doing that.

And Joe said, This is how I can get you to do more things.

You can watch basketball while you're doing stuff.

Yeah.

And she was like, I can you can do sport and clean.

And she was like, This is a new idea.

There you go.

Um, so you know, we'll be married almost 35 years, and she's just worked out a way to motivate me some more.

Yeah, that um and maybe World Cup games, you know, like that's right.

Yeah, as long as you're doing something.

I I to be honest, I'm normally on the couch.

Um when I when I normally am too, you see.

That's the problem.

But yeah, do both things.

Um one of the things that you challenged us to do in the passage, particularly in the element where it's love is patient, love is kind, love is not easily angered, um, was to put our name in the place of love.

And you actually had them on the screen all listed, and we could imagine, you know, Aiden is da da da da and see how far we got through the list.

Uh um, and that was very challenging.

And for many people, one of the most challenging would be uh love keeps no record of wrongs.

Uh, you made the point that um when it comes to being wronged or offended or hurt, we can be very good accountants, keeping, you know, really good bookkeeping records on how we've been hurt, who hurt us, when they did it, the tone of voice, even you mentioned.

Um, and this speaks to this whole area of forgiveness.

But what does it mean to keep no record of wrongs?

And and what does forgiveness maybe look like in a church community?

Yeah, I I would say forgiveness is probably almost one of the hardest.

Forgiveness the hurt that comes when someone hurts us confronts us at multiple levels.

It confronts us as I guess as partners, as colleagues, it confronts us with our sense of identity, it confronts all kinds of different things when we get hurt.

And I think it's some of the deepest hurts that we experience in life is in our interpersonal relationships.

And so, how do we deal with that?

I think is one of the greatest challenges.

I look, I think I've had to work through that myself.

Um I I help people all the time with this.

There's a little book that I give out, and I've often said I've given it out for many years, and I've often said it's kind of almost second only to the Bible.

Oh, yeah, for me, yeah, yeah.

It's called The Bait of Satan by John Bever.

And it's all about the receiving of offense and how we deal with offense.

And I give that book out a lot because I just feel that that's the enemy uses unforgiveness as a tool to divide relationships and to cause trauma in people's lives.

If we can get through that, and I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying it's overnight, and I think some of the hurts that we experience are deep and traumatic.

Um, and and I'm not, you know, I'm not reducing that in any sense, but I do believe that the enemy, the bait that is put on in our life, is like hold on to that, um, hold on to that unforgiveness, because that person doesn't deserve your forgiveness or whatever.

And so I think uh the bait of Satan, he puts it in our lives to deliberately cause us to not be reconciled to one another and to sow bitterness or to sow different things between relationships.

And so I think whether that's in our family or whether that's in the church, I think it's equally applicable.

I think if we relate it to the church, the challenges that I mean the enemy, we have an enemy, we're in this spiritual battle, um Satan, the devil, whatever you want to call him.

Uh I think uh he puts that bait into churches, he sows that into churches because we've all been in situations, I think, when churches have split or where there's been huge challenges, and so Satan just goes like, I'm just gonna make them uh sow some seeds of unforgiveness into there, and so they can't get over that, and so people will walk away from that.

And so I think forgiveness is a huge topic for a lot of us.

Yeah, and we saw that many churches saw the devil sow seeds of disunity and unforgiveness during the pandemic season and all that played out there, and you described on Sunday that that was a particularly challenging season for you.

I think it was a particularly challenging season for almost every church in the world.

And I know a lot of pastors, I'm not sure if any of us have escaped out of it easily.

I heard Craig Rochelle talking about it, one of the biggest churches in the US.

In fact, Craig's been here at Windsor, and the challenges that they experienced as well.

And I was like, it gave me a certain degree of comfort, doesn't matter where we were in the world.

Um the mandate season for us in New Zealand was very painful.

We all know that, and I think the enemy has used that to bring division.

So, how do you work through that?

How have you worked through that?

Because that was one of the most uh inspiring and encouraging parts of the sermon was that you've been able to say that you have grown in this fruit even through a difficult season.

What does that look like for you as a pastor?

And I'm thinking maybe as a as a young pastor getting into ministry, you you I imagine often become the target for blame or accusation or receive stuff, um, like a lightning rod, people have a complaint that goes to you, and you you um you're not necessarily responsible for someone's hurt, but you could get blamed for it.

How how do you not let that become better?

And I have learnt there's that passage in Philippians 4 around contentment, and Paul talks about I have learnt the secret of contentment, which is a whole nother topic.

I've always taken that as being something that is important to me to say when Paul says I have learnt, it means there's a process.

We pray for things to happen in our lives and we want stuff to happen just like that, that'll be awesome.

And sometimes they do.

Don't discount God doing that.

But it seems to be that there's a much longer process involved in a lot of our transformation.

And so when it comes to forgiveness, I think it is something that we have to learn and and we have to think about, we have to practice, and we have to get help with sometimes.

Because forgiveness can be at multiple different levels.

And if I take an extreme example, you know, the trauma of abuse, uh, which sadly is real in a lot of people's lives, but there's just multiple levels of that, and I I don't underestimate the pain that comes with that.

How do people get through that one step at a time?

Pray, support, uh if you need professional help, go with that.

Yeah, but it all is surrounded in the sense of saying we have to get through it for the sake of what God wants to do in our lives.

I don't believe God wants us to be stuck or trapped or held back because of unforgiveness, but we all know that if we don't forgive, we don't work through that process, it does sow seeds of bitterness, resentment, and it continues to fester in our hearts and it comes out in all kinds of other ways.

So I I I think my experience probably would back that up personally, but also with plenty of other people that I've worked with that this is a huge challenge for us.

But it is possible with the spirit at work in our lives, and there is hope on the other side of darkness, and and there is life on the other side of death.

And there is ways the difference between us and God is that God forgives us and forgets.

He forgets our sin, wipes it clean.

We're imperfect, so we still remember, and and things that have happened to us well, it's unlikely we'll forget them.

Yeah, but we have to learn to manage that and to put Christ in the middle of that.

And there's some wonderful examples of people who have worked through all kinds of different pain in their lives and have come out with the joy of the Lord in their hearts.

That's I guess that's my hope for people.

But I just think, and that's why that book I mentioned, even the very title of it for me is the thing that I remember the most.

Yeah.

The bait of Satan.

Satan sews the bait, don't go for it, don't suck it up.

Don't say, like a fish going for a bait, don't swallow it.

Don't, don't say, Yeah, I'm just gonna hold on to this because you don't deserve my forgiveness.

All kinds of reasons for that.

So I I think it is a big issue, big challenge, and something that we have to learn.

It sounds like in what you've described that although forgiveness is a long journey and difficult and involves pain and and there are real hurts, that uh getting to a point of forgiveness it brings us into a sense of freedom.

Uh, the and and the opposite keeps us kind of trapped uh while we take Satan's bait.

Um have you experienced that freedom, like when you've worked through forgiveness in an actual like an actual for somebody?

You don't have to tell us the details, but like how how was that feeling when you came to forgive someone?

Yeah, this is probably the benefit of being on this journey for a lot of years, in that, yeah, I can certainly relate to that because it has been my personal experience uh a number of years ago.

I I felt that I was hurt, somebody said something to me uh about uh who I am as a person, and it cut really deep because, like I say, a lot of these things they cut into our identity, who we are, and that's often like, whoa, okay, that really hurts.

I remember at that point point we were living close to church.

I remember going up and standing right under the rugby post on the number one field at Rangatoto College, uh looking down over Windsor because it's in a great view over Windsor from up on that field, and when we used to live close by, we'd I'd walk our dog around that way.

I remember I sat there for about two hours one Sunday night at about 10 o'clock, and I just sat there and and I felt God say to me, Okay, you have to let that go.

That's you are loved, you are you.

Don't let that fester into your heart because at that point, and I might have even spoken to one of our elders around it at the time, I was like, if that's who I am, then uh I'm not a very good pastor.

And you know, you probably don't want me if that's the way I am.

And so for me, it was a mix, I guess, of talking to God about it, yeah, talking to someone else about it, yeah, and then having to process that and work it through.

So it it wasn't instantaneous, but I do remember that process of saying, I gotta deal with this.

I remember sitting under there was a the moon was in the sky, reflecting off the gulf, looking over our church, yeah, um, thinking about myself, and then having worked through that.

I guess one of the early examples for me, because it was towards the start of my time here at Windsor, of thinking, okay, I've got to be more secure in who I am.

And God, when that happens again, because it probably will, yeah, um, don't I've got to not allow that to get into to cause me the offense, I don't need to swallow that bait.

I am who I am and I am who God's created me to be.

So it took a while, yeah.

But I I guess it was that mix of process, my own spiritual battle, my own emotional state, talking about it with someone.

Uh, and on the other side of that, going, well, you know what?

I'm more secure than I've ever been in my life at the moment, um, because I've had to work through these things, I guess, professionally.

Um, but also that's that's personal.

I mean, I'm not a pastor that doesn't I'm not a pastor that's any different.

I'm a person at the same time.

I take my my calling seriously, I take my job seriously.

Um, but that's no different to anyone that probably gets offended you know, with what they invest their lives into.

Yeah, yeah.

Take things personally, right?

And we take things personally, we do.

So the freedom that comes out of that is very real.

And I think that would be one example for me of like, okay, that that particular issue hasn't come back to get me because I feel like I dealt with that.

Awesome.

That's such a great example, and thank you for for sharing that.

And that is what people are enjoying about this podcast is seeing the person as well as the the pastor or the preacher.

Well, I don't think I've ever talked about that, and no one saw me doing it because it was night time and I was sitting under the rugged.

You're at the highest, so you can see if anyone was looking.

That's right.

Um, that a great example of taking something to God, but also taking it to somebody else you can talk to in person and having that identity re kind of re-clarified that you are loved, that you are you, and that being the foundation, and it sounds like that just sunk deeper into you as you work through that.

Absolutely.

So uh once we've uh gone through this journey of forgiveness and we maybe feel like we're at a point of forgiving someone, what's the next step after that?

Are we expected or do we need to become best friends?

Does the relationship need to be exactly as it was before?

Um, what would you say to people asking that?

It's a really good question and a challenging question because at the end of the day we're still human and we're still imperfect.

So I think a process of healing, particularly when it's been a significant issue, trauma, abuse, whatever, it could be a lot of different things.

It doesn't mean that we have to allow our people to have full access back into our lives.

There's often healthy boundaries that we need to put in place with people so they don't hurt us again, so that we're not vulnerable again.

Because I often talk about the wounds of forgiveness being like Well, I I had a motorbike accident when I was fifteen.

I came off my motorbike uh and and took my knee pretty much off.

And now it's healed and you wouldn't really see it.

But when it gets knocked, it's still sore all these years later, 40 years later.

And I often think that the wounds that we encounter in life are a bit like that.

Scars still remain in our humanity.

And so when they get knocked, they still hurt.

And sometimes we have to protect ourselves from that.

So healthy boundaries are often part of a healing journey.

Learning to live in different ways is often part of a healthy journey.

And that's why I would say often professional helpers needed.

And then to live in a healthy space.

Even when we kind of risk pain again in the future.

Yeah.

So I think for me it's like wounds heal, but scars remain in our humanity until you know we know in full.

Yeah.

And and I guess you you also don't have control over the other party.

Correct.

So they may not change or they may not become worthy of trust.

You can still forgive them, but it doesn't necessarily change them.

You can find freedom in that, and that's important.

It doesn't mean that they will have full access to your life.

Yeah.

Okay.

What a great example and and a great way to kind of wrap up our conversation today on love.

Is there anything else you want to say or I'll point listeners to next week?

Yeah, I'll just say one extra thing because if you listen to me a lot over the years, like some people do, you know, if you're gonna fall asleep.

Um I think we all have, and you would be the same, anyone that you listen to from a church perspective has kind of things that are near and close to them.

When I talk about 1 Corinthians 13, it's always been close to me because of those aspects, and I know that it's spirit-driven, so that's why it's nice.

The other thing that I used to talk about a lot, not so much these days, but relates to it closely, is all the one-another's in the New Testament.

And there's 59 of them, and you know, they're repeated through the words of Jesus and they're repeated through, you know, the letters as well.

They're closely aligned, I think, to what we've read in 1 Corinthians 13 because they talk about our interpersonal relationships, and bearing in mind that all of those letters were written to the church, um, not to marriages to the church.

So the fruit of the spirit in Galatians, the behaviors that we saw in 1 Corinthians 13, there's just these passages sprinkled right through the New Testament that talk about the importance of loving one another, bearing with one another, because at the end of the day, God uses us to reveal his kingdom.

I was listening to something recently on by NT Wright, and he was talking about, you know, why doesn't God just bring tanks and just sort out the world?

Or somebody would suspect that.

And he's like, No, in the New Testament through Sermon on the Mount, yeah, Jesus uses the humble, Jesus uses the sinners, Jesus uses the marginalized to bring about the kingdom.

And that's us the church, imperfect as we are, and so if God really wants to change the world, it seems to be over thousands of years that he does it through our lives, and that's empowered by the spirit.

And so our relationships, I just can't over-emphasize how important I think that is because it seems to be what undergirds the early church, what undergirds history since then, and I'm not sure if it's changed.

Yeah.

Oh, well, I hope um listeners just got to experience that and and see that that is a a heart, that your heart for the church.

And you really just shared your heart for the church and your hopes for the church, which is wonderful to hear all of those one another's and how we build each other up because yeah, the kingdom's not going to come through through my work or your work, it's it's our work together.

And as we continue to to speak on that, Heather's gonna be bringing the next message as this series continues looking at spiritual gifts.

And as we've already talked about, which is why we went to 1 Corinthians 13 before we went to 1 Corinthians 12, uh, the gifts are to serve love and to serve the body and to build one another up.

So Heather's gonna be unpacking the spiritual gifts from 1 Corinthians 12 this Sunday, and then we'll um be chatting about that on the podcast.

I won't be here, I'll be in Vancouver.

So uh somebody else is hosting that with Heather, but it will be a great discussion.

I'll be listening to the message.

And until then, may God continue to shape us as we listen, learn, and follow Jesus together.

Go your way.