Be Careful How You Judge

Anything with potential for great purpose carries with it potential

for great pain.

Be very careful who you.

Give your heart to, because when you give your heart

to somebody in relationship, there is potential for intimacy. But

along with the potential for intimacy comes the potential for rejection.

Comes the potential not only for great love, not only

great comfort, but the potential for great conflict. And it

can hurt your heart when you see the potential in

someone but they don't see the potential in themselves.

There's nothing more painful.

Have you ever seen somebody start to throw their life away,

throw their gift away, throw their future away, throw their

talent away, and you want to shake them and tell

them you got so much potential. If I had your potential,

I mean some of y'all, If I was as smart

as you, I would have started my own university and

my own educational system. There's nothing more frustrating than when

you see potential in someone that they can't see in themselves,

especially if they're your child, especially if they're your spouse.

There's nothing more frustrating. Which helps me to understand why

Peter did what he did next, because he saw the

potential in the ministry of Jesus is.

Just starting to get good. It's just starting to go forward. Jesus,

We're about.

To get you on, Joe Rogan, You're about to sell

a lot of books.

It's about to be amazing. And now you want to die.

So he does something when he hears Jesus prophesy his

pain that we can understand.

He pulled him.

Aside and begin to rebuke him, which is way above

your pay grade, by the way, to tell Jesus how

to do his job. And we all do it all

the time. We tell God how he ought to be

raising our kids. We tell God who he ought to

be blessing that deserves it, and who he ought to

punish a.

Little bit because they deserve it.

We tell God all the time things that are above

our pay Now Peter sees the potential of jesus ministry

and Jesus starts prophesying about the pain he will endure

on the cross, and he says something that just I

don't know, maybe you've said this before. He said, never

put the scripture back up, please, It's so important.

I need you to see it. Because that word never

in Greek.

Is a word that they use right there that Peter

uses that is almost arrogant. He says never Greek ou may,

which is a double negative, which means it's not even

grammatically correct. But what Jesus has just said and predicted

is going to happen is so ridiculous and different than

Peter's plan and expectation for what Jesus is supposed.

To do that he says oo meh never no never.

It's like he says, he says never, no, never, this

will never.

Happen to you. Never.

They got to be very careful what you say never

about in this life.

You gotta be very.

Careful what you say never, because honestly, the moment you

get never out of your mouth, I think God starts

to laugh because he knows your future. I used to

say never all the time about parenting before I became

a parent. I would see a family disciplining their kids,

and I would think they were being a little harsh,

and I would say things or think things like, I

will never scream at my kids like that, because what

good does it do to scream at your kids and

correct a behavior that you find undesirable with an equally

repulsive behavior. It certainly doesn't acceet an example of adult maturity.

Know when I disciplined my kids, discipline them in a

way that shows them that although their behavior may be unacceptable,

their character and identity as a child of God is secure,

and so is my love. I'll never yell at my kids.

Yell at my kids so much in the house these days.

If you think I yell in this pulpit, you ought

to see me without a microphone. I kid, Oh my God,

that's how I prepare to yell to you is yelling

at them. That's how I do my vocal warmups, just

yelling all over the house. Usually I'm yelling at them

to stop yelling. And I'm a hypocrite, but I can't

help it. Because what you're saying to be very careful

who you judge at.

Their low moment.

You might be judging somebody right now for the battle

that you're about to fight next month. Be very careful

how you judge people. Be very careful how you say.

Oh well, I just don't understand people who are depressed.

After all, there's so much to be grateful about and

rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice.

And yet that's cool that you've got to pinterest kind

of faith right now. But something might happen in your

life that knocks you off balance to the point that

your stable self becomes.

A little bit wobbly for a little while, and you're.

Gonna want to make sure that you haven't judged people

for things that you don't currently struggle with because it

might happen in your house.

Amen.

I feel like the Lord is saying to some of you,

never say never.

Never, and you live in it sometimes where you're living.

With a type of pain that you thought would never

be possible for you. If nothing else, The resurrection of

Jesus Christ challenges our conception of what's possible.

I never saw a dead guy get up from the

ground before.

For if that can happen, if a stone that big

can roll away, maybe God can do the impossible for

me too. Just because I've never seen it doesn't mean

it's not possible. Great potential in the resurrection power of

Jesus Christ.

But with great potential comes great pain.

And that's what's difficult for us to understand, because just

like the greatest possible thing happened, sometimes the thing that

you said never about knocks on your door.

Oh that'll never happen in my marriage. I would never

I would never let it. Uh huh.

And then sometimes never shows up in your body, and

sometimes it shows up in your emotions, and sometimes it

shows up in the unexpected ways that other people will

treat you.

Jesus knew so much. As an understatement. He told Peter.

At that supper that they had remember when they when

they were passing around the bread, and he said, this

is my body broken for you. This is on the

Thursday before he goes to die. So he knows what's coming,

and he knows how they're going to respond. And he

knows that Peter has great potential, not only to do

great things, but to make great mistakes. He knows that

the potential for great faith comes packaged with the potential

for great fear and failure. So he says it, So

don't think that God is some kind of optimist that

makes promises that you will never experience pain. Instead, Jesus

looks straight into the face of pain and says, all y'all,

this is the modern Charlotte translation of the Bible. All

y'all are going to fall away, All y'all are going

to deny me, All y'all one of you is going

to betray me, but all y'all are going to run.

And you know, Peter said something. I want to put

it on the screen, verse thirty one. Please mark chapter fourteen.

He said emphatically, even if I have to die with you,

I will.

Never disowned you. I never. I would never be addicted

to that. No, I would never.

I asked the preacher one time, do you ever doubt

the Bible? Because it's very complicated to believe some of

the stuff in there. And if you don't think that,

you haven't read it. So don't look at me like

that at all. You just read the verses that were easy,

but without cutting pages out, there are some very difficult

things to understand, comprehend and put your faith in.

I said, do you ever have.

To preach the Bible but you have a hard time

believing it yourself? Yeah?

He said, no, never. Never. He's out of the ministry today.

There's something about accepting your potential for weakness and your

potential for failure that makes you resilient when it happens.

There's something about being caught off guard. You know, this

kind of this kind of hope that a lot of people.

Have, like, oh, man, I hope nothing bad ever happens

to me. I hope give my basket.

It's a plastic hope, is pretty, but it's empty, is hollow.

When Paul said in Romans that this hope that comes

in the glory of God does not put us to shame,

he's not talking about an optimistic, unrealistic, plastic, pinterest hope.

It's not the kind of hope that expects for God

to dust off your life and put you on a

trophy case so that you can be seen and admired

but never tested or tried.

It's not that kind of hope. And I saw an

image of this kind of hope. And then I saw

another kind of hope. And this hope isn't real pretty,

but it's been through something.

This is a hard boiled hope. Come on, touch, somebody

say I got a hard boiled hope.

Come on, Gaston, touch somebody say I got a hard

boiled hope. It means that it's been through something. And

even if the shell gets cracked, and even if it

gets dropped, and even if it goes down to the bottom,

and even if the shell gets damaged, what's on the

inside has substance, so It's not a hope that's based

on what's on the outside. It's not bright, it's not shining,

it's not naive. This is a grown up hope. This

is a hope that's been boiled. This is a hope

that's been through the fire. This is a hope that's

been through what I thought i'd never go through. But

I came out three days later shouting about the victory

with the keys of jeth Hell and the grave. Don't

make a mistake to think that I'm praising God because

I've never been through any pain. I'm praising God because

on the other side of the pain, I found a

purpose that was greater than what I went through. It's

not that I never felt it. It's that my faith

got be through it. It's not that I was never buried.

It's just that resurrection happens when I believe them.

I'll give him shout if you gotta.

My hope is in the result.

My hope is in the outcome, and the outcome has

already been proven. And so whatever pain I'm going through

right now has the potential to become power. He already

showed me that on the cross. Come down, Ferdick, you

got guess say, it's one thing to understand that he

paid the price for the penalty of my sin, and

he did.

But his cross shows me far more.

Than what to do with the penalty of my sin.

It shows me what to do with the pain of

my life. It shows me how to take suffering and

persevere through it so that the perseverance can convert into character,

so that my hope can be hard boiled, so that

I will have a confidence not in circumstance, but in character.

What I'm going through right now is designed to show

me what I'm made of. It is meant to reveal

the potential so that I can boast in the hope

of the glory of God, not boast in my strength,

not boast in my will power, not even boast in

my own resilience. But there's something greater on the inside

of me. The same spirit that raised Christ from the

dead lives in me.

It means that every situation in.

My life is subject to the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

And if the situation doesn't change, that's okay, because.

My hope is not built on externals. Hey, thank you

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